Revolution, revelation or a pre-school primer

I was, just the other day, equally lamenting and finding pleasure in the fact that my child is absolutely a bilingual calque of my own bourgeois upbringing.

Lamenting, because, I fear for the sense of comfort and possible incomprehension of others that don't have as much money, education, culture or opportunities than she will have and has had, and taking pride, well, because she constantly amazes me. I took her to the symphony, and she sat quietly, engaged and listening. During the intermezzo we sat together and discussed the musical instruments that she heard, she had a reasonably sophisticated understanding of how an orchestra works and me, being the sly teacher that I always am, thought I could name something she didn't know. "What's the timpany and did you hear it?" and without flinching, she scrunched up her little brown brow and said, "I think it is a rhythm instrument."

The next day she wanted to eat out, and I suggested Japanese food, but though she likes miso, she insisted on Chinese. I agreed and we sat down to eat, she pulled the chopsticks from their sheath and asked the waiter for a pot of tea. She was fully able to eat her entire meal with the chopsticks (something I hadn't realized) and then I heard myself saying, as she asked towards the end of the meal, after several cups of tea, if she could put sugar in her tea, "we don't put sugar in tea." Did I say that? Yes, I heard my mother come right from inside me, for all those years of eating Sunday dinner at Peking restaurant in the Granite Run Mall (long before there was such a thing as food courts or Panda Express) and I watched (flashback in my own mind) as Mom and Dad showed us how to eat properly with the chopsticks.

I panicked. Oh God, my child is going to be a burguesa de mierda... she'll somehow think she is better than everyone else, she won't understand. But I realized that effectively, from a position of relative comfort and culture (let's be honest, I am officially dirt poor, but that doesn't count because I live in a totally constructed and liberal university community which affords me and her all kinds of social and cultural events that my salary, if it were such under other circumstances, could never afford.) is perhaps the position par excellence to foment and enrich a sense of social responsibility, plurality and justice.

So, I sat on that thought for a few days and we got up this morning, running a little late, too late to take her for breakfast at school (which is free because I am poor, and also excellent because she learns independence from me and makes friends of all ages and walks of life) but we do her last page of math homework and I cheer her on, "You are really great at math!" I proclaim (she actually is quite good), not without my little agenda of inspiring her to believe that being good at math is a feminine quality as well as a masculine one, while being careful to not discuss questions of gender at all, just trying to plant little seeds of self-confidence. She beams at me, (she has been really down on herself lately, and I don't understand why) "I am good, not everybody is good, I've done something right!" She smiles, I smile, we leave the house on time, with no brusqueness nor tears, all is right with the world.

I turn on the car and NPR bursts forth, she hears them discussing Iraq and she comments, "I bet there are a lot of ghosts in Iraq." (she has been reading ghost stories over the phone with her Bobie and Zadie). And I turn to her, sadly, and nod my head, "because of all the people our government is killing." And she says, "yeah, Bush is a bad person who pretends to be a good person, we aren't more important than anyone else," and I say that that is why we have to vote for change, and why I didn't vote for him in the first place, and she asks who did vote for him, and she concludes that a lot of people believed his lies. And I remind her that it wasn't just that, it was much worse, that some people actually believed that because the people in our country were "Safe" it didn't matter what happened to people in other countries. "That's Wrong!!!" she cried, "Just because this is the United States doesn't mean we are better than any other country." And I agree, and she draws the following analogy: "We need to steal from the rich to feed the poor, like Robin Hood!" and I agree, "Bush is like King John." "Yes, mommy, he steals from the poor to feed the rich! and that's not fair, and it's not right! Maybe we should make our own army against him!" "Well," I temper her fervor, "war should always be the very last option, not the first, we have a lot of work to do before we get to that point, peaceful resolution is always better, that's the thinking that we have to avoid, unlike Bush." "Yeah, who kills other people because they aren't from here." We go on like this for the five minute transportation to school and I secretly smile, ok, I can forgive myself the bourgeois indulgences, because she has a social conscience, and because they aren't really indulgences if I am feeding her spirit, are they?

And I come home, ready to face the day, and all it has to dish out, when I remember the most perfect close to this musing, an ABC primer from the artist John Jota Leaños, that we saw in film class yesterday. And today, at least, it seems that there might be hope for the future. Yes, there is definitely hope for the future.