I’m learning that I’m rarely alone in my feelings or my thoughts, however isolating they may feel.
So I’m wondering if there are others out there who struggle with raising a child amid the climate crisis.
Within ten years the world may change so much we are in unending catastrophe. My girl will have just gotten her license, if cars are still a thing, which I imagine will be true.
I picture her as an adult, grilling me as I remind her that once there was clean water and she took a bath every day, sometimes twice! Showing her videos of Planet Earth and what used to be.
The urge to sign her out of everything and travel to Alaska and see glaciers while we can, is tempered by the reality that we are currently living in a pandemic and travel is likely out of the running and beyond our tax bracket.
One day, I assume, she will approach me with the same fury I brought to my parents. “How could you let this happen!?”
And maybe I’ll tell her about my time with Environmental Action and show her pictures of us at the Climate Now rally. Maybe I’ll remind her that we did what we could, reducing our plastic at the refill station, riding our bikes in town, composting and picking up trash. Or maybe I’ll just stroke her hair and apologize.
I have memories of sitting in the station wagon with my mom in the front seat, driving to EcoSLO to drop off our separated recycling. It was a lot more work then and she did it. With three kids and a job, she still separated the paper and the glass and the aluminum cans and drove them over to be weighed and received. I remember that. Perhaps my child will remember something too.
But at the end of the day it’s bigger than what my child thinks of me (although it’s hard to imagine anything bigger than that at the moment).
Sometimes I cave to the impulse to spoil her now to make up for the dystopian future ahead. Yesterday she had hot chocolate with breakfast. Right now, as I type, she is watching Kung Fu Panda.
What did Roman mothers do just before the fall? They probably were making lunch and playing make believe.
I call my representatives all the time, we need to green the grid, we need to get serious about this, blah blah blah. I don’t know that it will make a difference, but I know that for me, giving up altogether would be the ultimate defeat.
I understand, or am trying to, that there is SO MUCH beyond my control. I am not responsible for that, how could I be? But the things that I CAN do. I am absolutely responsible for that. And I never want my girl to see me refuse to do the things I can. Fueled by courage, rather than ego. I know I am not Captain Planet. But I will do what I can.
I may be playing “I Spy” as the Titanic sinks, but the kid needs to be entertained.
So maybe we’ll stay in our pajamas all morning and have chocolate milk with breakfast. Then this afternoon we’ll go sit in the sunshine and listen to the birds and stare at the clouds and enjoy this beautiful, amazing planet. Short and fleeting like a beautiful, amazing childhood.
Take good care and be gentle with yourself. You are loved by me and others.
Pretty Good Ugly 