Safe from loneliness, safe from my own exhausted irritation, safe from social isolation and boredom and hunger.
I didnt watch the door, or look for exits; I welcomed these strangers around me as peers.
Colleagues, perhaps, in the 24-hour-a-day job that is helping a child grow.
A car burns on Parliament Road in Middlesbrough, England, during an anti-immigration protest.
Particularly the parents of girls and particularly parents of color.
Somehow, we have to tread a line between fear and hope.
How, then, do I talk to my child about male violence?
How do I let him know that this is happening, and monstrous, without making him scared?
Because I dont want him to be scared.
Just as I do not want to be scared myself.
Hatred is not a word that has an easy opposite.
Is the counterpoint to hate perhaps empathy?
Do we plot hate on one side and understanding on the other?
Or does hate creep across the ground unchecked, whenever and wherever we lose faith in one other?
The subsequent violence, aimed at mosques and muslims and asylum seekers, feels the same.
We are all tarnished by the existence of such violence.
We all have a duty not to look away.
