My white son went to a protest….and another, and another…. And every time he texts to let me know I am bent over, on my knees, eyes closed, heart pounding, praying for his safety.
I pray that he will not be trapped in a police round-up of anyone considered violent, or hit by rubber bullets, or real ones, or tear-gassed while exercising his right to free speech. I pray that he will not get beaten up for the color of his skin—yes, I admit it. Racism is that ingrained that I fear his white skin will endanger him in the company of those who are black. And I fear white agitators will make an example of him, beating him to make whites believe the lies we’ve been sold about black violence.
I pray that he will not get caught up in doing things he would never think or do alone but which are easier when you are part of a large group. I pray that he will not have a change of heart, a loss of his sense of justice, by anything untoward he might experience.
I pray that his mask will be enough to keep him from getting ill.
But most of all I just pray he will come home safe and sound.
That last one is the prayer I have offered every time he walked out the door from childhood, whether to the yard, the playground, the school, clubs, college, work, and his own home away from mine. It’s different now, praying for a return home in safety and soundness. It is a fear I have never experienced. I feel the terror for an hour or an afternoon.
I think of my friends and colleagues who are Black mothers and the prayers they have prayed for their sons. I realize we have had lives of praying the same hopes, differently. Even though I may have a small shred of empathy due to the hour or two I pray for my white son at a protest, I can only begin to grasp the level of exhaustion and fear that lies behind their prayers for their black sons walking out the door any day, every day, without a protest in sight.
How can a mother live with this always?
If nothing else could move me, surely the empathy between mothers can. It must. Equality must be had. Racism must be defeated for the evil it is. Anti-racist laws must be enacted, and law-breakers must be restrained and prosecuted.
And love for one another must become contagious across every difference we have, beginning with our different skin tones.
Love must win.
My white son went to a Black Lives Matter protest…one of my proudest moments of being his mother.
bevfriedlander 