Dear girls: As I write this, you are at the beginning of February vacation and planning some kind of throwback movie marathon, a nostalgic return to films that carried you away while mom or I brushed your hair before bed.
We are separated by years from the last of those evenings, and my bedtime is earlier than yours now, but I can still feel the damp weight of your hair in my hands. I wish I could remember the smell of your shampoo, but I can’t find my way there. Maybe that’s because Mom was always trying new brands, looking for something that would tame the snarls, or maybe it’s because memories never give us all we want. But do you remember how I would try to work out the tangles with my fingers, how I would hold your hair tightly near your scalp to lessen the sting of the brush strokes?
By the time you read this, it will be almost time to return to school. Mom and I had to work all week, so you were together a lot, just the two of you. And now your relationship will never be the same. You understand that, right? Even uneventful days change our lives a little bit, and forever. There was movement for both of you this week, imperceptible shifts, because that’s how our stories work.
All in all, the four of us are moving through our collective story with ease these days, especially now that winter has begun its slow fade, but we’ve talked about how fragile it all is. The reminders are everywhere, and they are relentless. Even as I write this letter my job requires that I stay abreast of the news, of unpleasant things.
There is an update about the coronavirus, which we talk about nearly every night now. And a once-powerful man named Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape. You should know that throughout your lives you will encounter men like him, men who will use the sharp edges of whatever is broken inside them to try to belittle you, to threaten you, to take from you. Read about the women who are standing up. Their strength is yours.
There’s also a story out of New Delhi about people fighting over a new citizenship law. One photo shows a bloodied Muslim man on his knees, alone, trying to protect his skull from a crowd of men with large sticks. I would show it to you, but part of me wishes I could unsee it. The photo is heartbreaking –not because it’s unique but because it’s not.
But all of these stories, they’re not all that we are. They’re not even most of what we are. And so if you’re going to be consumers of news, and I hope you will be, try to create equal time and space for literature, for art. It’s a crucial balance.
You both slept in on Monday morning, but had you been awake you would have seen me in the big chair finishing Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. There’s a part I want to share with you, but it won’t be easy for you to read. The first words are almost cruel in their bluntness and represent a kind of knowledge I tried to shield you from until I couldn’t anymore. But I hope you see that Hamid achieves something wonderful – he unifies the human narrative: “We are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another.”
Do you see how he uses his story to expand your story, our story? At the heart of empathy is a curiosity about how people became who they are and what makes us the same. When you give yourself over to other people’s stories, you shed the weight of your own narrative – and it feels something like freedom.
I’m sorry. This letter has become a lecture, and you guys get plenty of those at dinner. All I really wanted to say, before I attempted to say everything, is that I loved brushing your hair at night. I love that it’s a little piece of our story, which for me is always present tense and unfolding.
As I write this, and as you read this, we are at the beginning. Always, the beginning.
Love, Dad.
(Dana Wormald is the Monitor’s opinion editor. He can be reached at dwormald@cmonitor.com or 369-3370. On Twitter, @dana_wormald.)