Yesterday morning, like every morning, the kid and I drove the 30 minute route through Baltimore that leads to her new charter school, nestled deep at the city’s center. It’s impossible to cross any broad expanse of Baltimore without hitting areas where the road is strung on either side with boarded-up row houses, block after block (this set on flickr, taken by a local photographer, perfectly captures the strange desolation we see here every day). It’s an urban moonscape, empty and forbidding.
This is Baltimore, cold stone and concrete and immediacy. There is no facade, no face the city presents to the world that conceals its essential truth. For better and for worse, Baltimore is urban living with the mask torn away.
There are miles of these streets in Baltimore. I can’t help but feel a certain amount of sadness, and a touch of uneasiness, as we drive through those eerie, dead zone blocks. I’m not sure what M makes of them. She’s been living here since before she could walk, long before she could speak complete sentences. This is the only reality she’s ever known.
There’s a particular section of road we hit every morning near the lush green campus island of Johns Hopkins that is a especially difficult. Five long city blocks. If we hit all the lights green, it’s perhaps a minute’s time, a blip on the radar of the experience of the day. A dispiriting sixty seconds.
Seen from the corners of my eyes as we move past them, those sad, empty row homes with their plywood doors and black, gaping windows look like faces. Faces frozen by fear, or sadness. Or death.
Yesterday we hit a red light. M shouted out to me from the backseat, “Hey look! Free stuffed animals!”
She was looking at one of several street corners we pass in this five block stretch where a light pole has been festooned with balloons and teddy bears and cards, an urban marker memorializing someone’s death.
“No baby, those aren’t free stuffed animals,” I sighed. Then, of course, I had to explain what they actually were, what they actually meant. As I said the words, I felt my throat close, and a fist tightened around my heart.
By the smallest degrees and increments we destroy their innocence. As parents, we have no choice. We can’t lie to them and pretend the world is better, easier than it is. We can’t omit the reality that people kill people every day on these streets, on the streets of every city in every country the world over. We can’t hide the truth that the same humanity that makes Pixar films also makes human beings who murder without flinching, without conscience or remorse. We can’t not answer their questions when they ask them. We have to tell the truth, though it might break our hearts to do it.
It does, it does.
Yesterday, the truth was, and remains: five blocks of desolation, concrete, and death. And I hate that I had to be the one to break it to her.
Ugh. I have often wondered what I'll say when eventually I'll (possibly? maybe?) have a child that asks something I don't want to answer. I know the streets you're talking about in Baltimore and the memorials. I think you're doing a hell of a job.
That's a tough discussion to face under any circumstances, but the fact that it arose out of her instinctive recognition of balloons and stuffed animals – the simplest totems of childhood – adds new facets of heartbreak to the experience.
Great post.
As usual, this is just awesome, Tracey. So hard to break it to the little ones just how harsh the world is around them. I feel for you. Hell, I feel for M too. The only thing we can do as parents is fill up their surrounding with just plain awesome. Right?
From now on, whenever I see one of those impromptu memorials, I'm going to think of them as a Child's Yard Sale of Death.
What did M say in response to what you told her?
The truth is the hardest, yet best thing we can give them.
I had to explain suicide not to long ago. Sigh.
OOOOF. " We can't hide the truth that the same humanity that makes Pixar films also makes human beings who murder without flinching, without conscience or remorse"
Such a horrible hard truth.
Posts like this show what a writer you are and why your blogging from experience matters. Keep on keeping what you do!
And there is the beauty, the very thing that make children Magic. Maybe for a nano-second, the world is less cruel/unfair/unappologetic and those aren't what they *are*. Maybe for one nano-second, they are only "free stuffed animals". Even though we know they aren't. Long live the nano-seconds and the eyes of children.
Until said children start being pains in the asses. Then they should watch television. Or something.
The truth is sometimes ugly, life is sometimes ugly. I wish we didn't have to shatter that rose colored glass through which children see the world. I haven't had to have those conversations yet, but I know they will come as my almost 3 year old daughter begins asking more and more questions. I don't want to have to change the color of the glass the looks at the world through.
Oh this was a great post. I remember being fifteen and dropping off a balloon and bouquet at one of these memorials (not in any urban setting, off the NJ Parkway after a car accident, but still).
The fact that M. saw it and thought "oh free stuffed animals" just breaks my heart into two.
You do one hell of a job. Philadelphia has a lot of very similar blocks to a lesser degree. Sometimes it is heartbreaking and sometimes I see the things people are doing in those areas to make it better: murals! gardens! and I feel hope. All depending on my mood it seems. It also makes me want to become someone with just a little more free time to help plan or organize something. Maybe one day sooner than later.
Thanks for this snapshot of solidarity. Mine asked last night for a reassurance that "there are no monsters in this world." And then my heart broke, again, as I thought about my job, which is on so many days, to break hers.
Amazing post. Beautiful and heartbreaking all at the same time. I’m just starting in on having to disappoint/disillusion my daughter sometimes. She is almost two. You mean I have to keep doing this? Sigh.
One of my students just had a friend pass away. She was a 5th grader. I can't even imagine. And to think of living in those conditions and then having a child pass away….. I hate the fact that I teach in a "suburban" area but I have students who eat their dinner from free samples at the grocery store. Why can't we do more as a society?
gah, my heart, Tracey
This weblog is being featured on Five Star Friday – http://www.schmutzie.com/fivestarfriday/2010/10/1…
Yes, the shedding of their innocence happens slowly and each time we have a "free stuffed animal moment" it kills me a little inside. Her loss of innocence is my loss of a carefree child.
This is a sad post, but also very beautiful; you have a gift for writing. Thanks for sharing it and for linking up!
Since my son was born we have lost two fish and two cats. We've had to explain Heaven. Grandpa Joe is also in Heaven and he had died before my child is born. Tyler has grieved for one cat, about a month later, but still doesn't understand Heaven. On Father's Day I took him to see my father's grave and Tyler looked around the cemetary and said, "Where is he?"
I remember images like that from Chicago and just recalling them is disheartening. You painted the picture quite realistically with your words. It is commendable to be concerned about your child's reaction to the grim realities of this world. But the grim realities will not disappear before they are grown. It is best that they face sorrow and pain within reach of your loving embrace. Stay close, within reach, for as long as you can. Never shield the world from their view but stand beside them and face it together while you can. I'm delighted that you linked up with this week's Saturday Sampling.
My contribution to Saturday Sampling is from my resurrected original blogspot. I'm hoping to gain some followers. I'm #15 – Hearten Soul For You at http://heartensoul4u.blogspot.com
I grew up in Baltimore, and it has always been heartbreaking. In the 70s, Hamden was a very scary place to be if you were not a member of that community, even if you were white. Yet, Roland Park and Homewood were only around the corner. Fells Point was okay, but you had to be careful the further you got from the water. The racial divide was ugly and bitter.
I did some consulting with EBDI a year ago, and it was still heartbreaking. Some things have changed dramatically, but so many have not at all.
Baltimore is one of those cities that unites and divides the most extreme cultures. It is what makes it beautiful. You are doing a brave and admirable thing raising your daughter in Baltimore. It provides such a broad spectrum of reality and illusion, with a speckling of arts and music and theater and individuality to create unique and gorgeous characters. Charm City may not always be charming but it is certainly real. And you are doing an amazing job of balancing the fantasy with the reality!
Something about those boarded up row houses still seems beautiful to me. Perhaps, though our hearts are broken, we are still gifted with the child-like memories that allow us to see things in their simple, innocent form.
I agree with Andrea. Coming to Baltimore in the 90's, I've seen some of the best and worst things in Charm City. And I have no regrets about raising my 5-yr old boy in Baltimore, where he also sees the magic and innocence among the decay and sadness. I feel like it is the best thing I can do to raise him where I -don't- hide the worst aspects from his eyes. I still remember encountering college students that had never seen a homeless person before – I just can't relate to such a sheltered life. It didn't help that these students were also the most selfish, least compassionate people I've encountered. The boy's daily daycare drive was through those East Baltimore streets, and I've been glad that they have led to opportunities to talk to him about the world. At the same time, he has helped me continue to see the moments in the city where there are still free stuffed animals, flowers growing from the cracks, rainbows in broken glass, etc. Thank you as always for always having the right words at the right time…