If I Could...

If I could I would protect you...my sons

As the mother of 4 boys I’ve heard many times

How lucky I am that I don’t have to worry about you...

As much as I would have to if you were girls...

Each one born of me, 

flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood

filled with God’s breath and blooming with the nourishment

provided by pure mother’s milk and the warmth of my total adoration

As you left the safety of my womb...

Soon your lives will be out of my hands

Each one a tiny fragile gentle soul grown within my core from the smallest of elements

into robust vibrant intelligent boys with a zest for life

that keeps me moving, even when I have nothing left.

I am the first and last word in their lives, the daily details comfort me. Mami knows all.

Someday, I will wait for a word to know how you are... Where you are...IF you are.

James...my eldest, my protector and my friend

Who with me saw rough times, battled past statistics

Defied the borders set for who we are 

We read books that open our scope, 

Write words that pull in our community

We love brightly to the sounds of our laughter and deep understanding

Jesus Gabriel... my ChuChu...the rebel without a cause

You fight direction at all cost

Fall scrape your knees, take the blows that come with your constant inclination to

Run into the wind, to do things the wrong way and hope to have them come out right

Your embrace and smile have the intensity of a small star

You smolder with a passion that frightens me... people follow you, they look to you

I pray that the power in you is used wisely...

Judah and Benjamin - my twin toddlers...You are just beginning to speak 

but your strength, my duo, has been felt since before your birth...

I asked the Lord for your name...Judah I read...then Benjamin I read. 

Overwhelmed by the beauty of this name I closed my eyes and thanked God quietly for the child in me with such a  blessed title

Until I saw two and my mind was rocked...and I knew that God has plans for you

Leaders of nations, fathers of tribes... 

You will be men

Puerto Rican men from the Bronx...

And if I could...I would protect you...

First and foremost my reply to those who say that I don’t have to worry as much 

have to remember that in times of crises the mantra is, “Women and children first”

We live in a world that beats our men until they come out the other side a mis-shapen version of the lovely creatures that they could be

They are meat to the government...numbers and bodies pumped out into the world to conquer, anonymous and only as good as the two legs that they stand on.

The need for an able bodied workforce could make drones of my bright shining babies ...plugging them into the big machine for the greater good of humanity regardless of what they become and what condition they are in in the end. 

There are women out there preying upon our good men, using them to fulfill their needs for attention, with poisonous lying tongues they bring deceit into their lives and put them at risk of disease

There are others, who began just like mine pure and clean and somehow along the way they were damaged and will hate my sons for no reason other than that they exist. The proverbial bullets, jails, the gaping maw of evil in this world is frightening...

They will battle uphill to be all the man that they can despite their geneological history, their place of birth and their social status, which depending upon the circumstances can be the blessing or the curse. 

Experience after experience, the light of innocence has shone less in your eyes

I see the reality dawning upon you. The first one to embark, my eldest, James...

You call me when you need me, when the pressure has begun, when the hugeness of the task at hand becomes overwhelming... you call to me and I open my heart to all that you have to say, aching because thisprocess is not easy... to tell you this will be hard, it will not get easier, that these moments too shall pass...so we talk... 

we sit and I teach you to tell me a

nd I listen

and I listen and advise

and I listen and love

and I listen

And I know that this at some point,

This will be the only way that I have left to protect you

Comments

[taino brigs]

As a parent myself, I know how difficult it can be to express in words your love for a child. You have done so beautifully. Your love for them is flooded over every word. I love it. Peace.

taino