Child In Danger
It’s still unseasonably warm and sunny here, even for Southern California. If it wasn’t for our imminent departure for London and colder climes I think we might fly off the edge of the world altogether, pulled into an orbit of strange doings and unearthly light. Luckily this does not seem to be our fate for the moment!
Travel arrangements are as stressful and complicated as ever; difficulty seems to be written into their nature nowadays. After a few months where all Covid associated noise had faded into a muffled background it’s back; gleefully front and centre. As ever, my Brits In LA Facebook group is a lifeline of information. Frantic questions about testing requirements and welcome information from those who’ve ‘made it’ to the other side are traded at a galloping pace. Harassed, I sit at my desk and long for the days when remembering suitcases, passports, boarding passes and children were our only concern! Nonetheless we march on regardless. No sitting obediently at home in our mandated box for us.
Taking a break from all things travel, we went out last night, my daughter and I, to see the American Ballet Theatre’s production of the Nutcracker at the Segerstrom Centre for the Arts in Costa Mesa. It was a wonderfully exuberant performance, beautifully executed with great stage sets and costumes. Clara and the Prince danced the grand pas de deux exquisitely. Sadly, given the state of the world right now, there were several notes of discordancy so sharply pitched that they were impossible to ignore. Perhaps the most egregious of these was that every single child dancer was fully masked while none of the adults had to endure such discomfort. I looked around the audience, all of whom were fully masked by venue dictat, despite having had to show either a vaccine pass or a clean PCR test to even be allowed to cross the threshold. Will our existence ever be what once it was? It should be said, that in clear contrast to some places I have recently experienced, every single member of staff was warmly friendly, courteous and helpful throughout the evening. No petty tyrants were given purchase here.
My husband and I enjoyed our daughter’s rhythmic gymnastics club’s Christmas Showcase this afternoon. We have great affection for her Russian coach. She has been a steadfast support and mentor during a time when it has been necessary to take the greatest care with whom one allows to influence one’s child. We sat with all the parents we’ve come to know over the past eighteen months and I remembered the same time last year. We watched the streamed performance on phones in the parking lot as no parents were allowed inside the gym. Normality of sorts has returned and the afternoon felt warmer for it.
Later my daughter snuggles close to me as the evening draws us in with her whispering shadows. Our breath rises and falls together. I hear the beat of her heart and think back to a time seven years ago when I lay in bed feeling the wonder of the kicks so familiar to any woman who has carried a child. I am amazed anew at the gift of motherhood and marvel that this beautiful girl was once a tiny tadpole on a blurry scan. Janusz Korczak’s* words float into my mind:
‘As a mother you say, ‘My child’ When if not during your pregnancy do you have more right to say this? The beating of the tiny heart, no bigger than a peach stone, echoes your own pulse. Your breath provides the child with oxygen. The blood courses through you both and no drop of blood quite knows yet whether it will remain the mother’s or become the child’s. Every bite of bread becomes the material for building the child’s legs on which she will run about, for the skin which will cover her, for the eyes with which she will see, for the brain in which thoughts will burst, for the arms which she will stretch out and the smile with which she will call you Mummy’**
Janusz Korczak was a Polish Jewish educator, children’s author and pedagogue. He died alongside the two hundred orphans under his care in the gas chambers of Treblinka rather than abandon them when he could easily have done so. He was a hero who knew a thing or two about the true meaning of self sacrifice and love for others. He had numerous friends who begged him to leave the orphanage which he ran in the Warsaw Ghetto and save himself. His reply never changed,
‘You wouldn’t abandon your own child in sickness, misfortune, or danger, would you? So how can I leave two hundred children now?’
* Janusz Korczak was the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit
** extract from Loving Every Child, Wisdom For Parents by Janusz Korczak
