Thank You For Speaking
As much as I love my parents for their early-established dominion over my life, marked by hard pinches on the ear for the most minor offenses, my mind drifts to think of white liberal parents, same age as me, strolling through the park calling after their Haydens and Brookes, pulling them aside to gently ask them what their intentions were for purposely spilling out their juice. To be honest, neither parenting approach is one hundred percent agreeable - but maybe they’re not mutually exclusive. How does one deal with the little people we call kids, and how do those methods characterize the rest of their lives?
These concerns come naturally; I’m the oldest child of three, plus three younger cousins, all essentially raised under the same roof. There was simultaneously all the time in the world and none at all for me to spill my juice. As soon as Kelsey was born, it was about her juice, then Austin’s, Joseph’s, Zach’s, and finally Hilary’s - who can now spill as much as she wants. Our parents, and presumably theirs before them, spoke to us with the tone of those who deal out the pinches.
My educator friends prescribe that the best way to talk to kids is to speak to them like adults. This is to say that we should take them seriously. Assuming, or more accurately, expecting a child to comprehend what we’re communicating with no regard to their limitations is to in fact, teach them how to talk.
I admire the contemporary white parents who would never even think to raise their voices, let alone a hand, to their children. This is the privilege of distance. I have a feeling that it’s just as easy for most of us to yell at a kid when we’re with them 24/7 as it is for rich white people to simply hire a woman of color to do it for them.
That’s not what I’m trying to get into though.
From ordering a sandwich in a crowded deli, to acknowledging a best friend’s presence by their nipple shaped ceiling lamp through Facetime - it goes without saying that the ways in which we learn to communicate to others and just as importantly, to ourselves, are critical to our day to day well-being. It’s all-encapsulating and it starts from the fucking jump.
My entire life, my mother would tell me stories about how her older brother Joaquin terrorized her as a kid. My entire life, Joaquin never had a job. I knew Joaquin as a goofy adult. A fun, kind of scary, but always intriguing uncle. He had a lively, outward affection for animals that I hadn’t yet seen in a grown man. He and his family lived with my grandparents. His domain was the open garage complete with a collection of knives, military-grade flashlights, and a dual screen computer system that he’d built himself. He would be the first person I would see when we pulled up - belly out at a work desk, Marlboro 100 under his mustache, the shine of an unflattering LED over his balding crown, focused on whatever task he had at hand. This image of him becomes clearer in my mind now knowing that he died a week and a half ago.
Addiction, in the most ironic sense, stems from an individual’s attempt to take some form of control over their lives. The truth is, Joaquin wasn’t the guy you wanted to be compared to. My mother did it constantly. It wasn’t hard - like me, he was the oldest son, with all this time and never quite enough to get it right. I too have nerdy eccentricities and will put on embarrassing affectations when approached by a kitten . We both have a penchant for irritating my mom. The common warning was that if I didn’t apply myself, I would end up just like him. Smart enough to build computers, never smart enough to hold a job. Unable to provide for his family. Drinking too much, smoking too much, doing too many drugs. Lazy. The list goes on, but to certain eyes they all mean the same thing - waste; something my dad would mutter as he filed his taxes for him a year too late (Joaquin either never learned how or never wanted to).
Be it uprooting in the middle of adolescence, an undiagnosed mood or learning disorder, or just the ordeal of being brown in the US, whatever it was, Joaquin addressed it in his own way. And as toxic as it may have been, I knew him to be naturally kind-hearted. When he visited us, he never came empty-handed. Always something to give, and it would be the most random assortment of shit from extra batteries he found in his van, overripe papayas from his yard, one time even straight-up bullets just in case we ever needed them. The last time I’d seen him was two years ago on Christmas Eve. He carried around a personal bottle of red wine talking loudly about his cats and George Carlin to the unsurely amused audience of his family. It was a whole show. I will miss him.
The fact is over the past few years, Joaquin had been in and out of rehab for alcohol abuse. That Christmas he must have weighed less than 100 lbs. He continued to drink until it eventually killed him. Being quarantined for the holidays this past year, my parents and their friends, true to form, made it a custom to drop off food at each other’s houses. Gifts of love and care and community. Through speakerphone I heard him sweetly ask my mom, his baby sister whose hair he’d pull and would toss into the pool, to bring him roasted duck. That was the last thing I heard him say. He wasn’t feeling well and at that point was essentially living alone.
I wonder if they ever talked about his feelings when he was young. Did anyone ask him what his aspirations were? What he found pride in? Did anyone even care to ask? How would those answers have changed throughout his life? I never asked because let’s face it most of us tend to have a cool, vindictive contempt for those of middle age, and if not that, at least an indifference. Not to be eye-rolling at “this generation” but it can’t be clearer that the trend of shitting on boomers and the like, though justified, is just out of a fear of getting old. Fear of the possibility that we can deal just as much damage to the people after us, and the ones after them, ad infinitum.
Joaquin isn’t completely blameless. I have to believe that we dictate what happens to us, that we can make conscious decisions to shape our individual futures. That makes this story sadder than it already is.
The cycles of abuse we’ve created and perpetuated for ourselves are so ingenious and horrific that we forget that they are like their makers; mortal. They can grow old and die if we’re willing to let them. There are countless new prescriptions for teaching people how to be. The Western cultural emphasis on finding value within yourself first and foremost is a moot point. Whether we like it or not, we inform and rely on each other to distinguish wherein our value lies - and I believe that is something we can control, starting with the formidable, everyday task of considering people as people.
As much as we reprimand kids for being kids, we also celebrate them for that fact. For being, in a lot of ways, more human than us. They cry when they need to cry, spill when they want to spill, run and laugh and play carefree. Somewhere along the way that changes. We begin to celebrate work, industry, efficiency. Lack these things as an adult and your value decreases, time goes on and it’s never enough. As dismally universal as this is, it’s especially true for immigrants. It’s why they come to America. I think about how easy it is to feel like a failure in the world. Like it’s its default setting: you have to play, and if you don’t, you lose and even if you do play, you still fucking lose. I imagine my Uncle Joaquin never lived that feeling down. I know little about how he was raised, but I doubt the rhetoric I got was very different.
My own nephew, Noah, is nearly two years old. Despite the pandemic and me living across the country, I get the distinct pleasure of seeing him learn how to talk. I have this video of him attempting his first word: salsa. Before he gets too old, I want to ask him to explain his intentions for his bad behavior, to describe his dreams, ask him how he feels about the world, how he feels about himself. I might have to occasionally pinch him on the ear, but I’m going to speak to him like an adult - like I want to understand him even when I don’t, like I want him to understand me. To let him know that nothing will ever be wasted by the fact that he is alive, and simply talking back.