Day 164, Paris, France
For us, the Friday evening was just that, another beautiful Fall night in Paris. Madi and I walked to the store to buy some Milka chocolate advent calendars that we can’t find at home. Then, Paul and I went for a walk around Montemarte/Sacre Coeur and past the Wall of Love in Abbesses. Little did we know that while we walked past the Wall of Love, terrorist attacks were happening around the city. Sadness and fear are my first responses.
My tolerance for living around violence without fear, or less fear, is often higher than those around me. We’re mostly products of our experiences on this one, as am I. In the 50’s my parents immigrated to the States, they met in seminary and married. They were surprised and disappointed when they got flack for having an African American Best Man, and became committed to change how minority groups were treated, especially African Americans. Their response to the segregation of that era was to do their part to desegregate one neighborhood by moving our family into it. When I was born we lived in an African American housing project in PA where my parents had started a community center/church. We left because of violence directed at my dad, who felt his life was in danger. In St. Louis, my parents took certain precautions, no one slept in the front room in case of shootings, they paid bigger kids to walk my sibs to the elementary school half a block away so they wouldn’t get beaten up. But eventually, even two people who had lived through a war couldn’t stomach the ongoing violence in our neighborhood. At seven, my brother was threatened with a pipe on the playground. The principal told my parents he couldn’t keep my siblings safe. Then a man in the Mennonite church, where my dad was a minister, shot his kids when they were trying to steal his wallet, killing one and paralyzing the other, on and on. Next we moved to an African American neighborhood a couple of miles from the now well-known Ferguson area. There was still violence, but less concentrated. Until I left home at 16, I grew up in a neighborhood with fighting and frequent sirens. Like others who grow up in this kind of climate, you develop intuitions that help you stay safe in your school and community.
In contrast and by design, our girls grew up in a peaceful Canadian community. I didn’t care for the girls to hear the news, a continuous string of the worst events in the world. When the girls were young, we didn’t disclose violent events. Even when we were in London during the 7/7 bombings, we kept them away from the tv’s. Now as teenagers they are tethered to their friend networks, with only brief respites like family meals, movie theaters, and sleep. Now if I want to inform them of sad news in my own way, I have to beat the text from the girl who likes to be the first to break bad news, and dang, she’s fast.
The grandparents and my sister asked how the girls were doing. The reality is, the news at home was always full of domestic mass shootings in schools, theaters, work places, as well as terrorist attacks around the world. The girls experienced the Paris attacks the same as the others, through online news reports and some brief text convos with friends. Every horrible event brings shock and sadness for a time. But there have been no big changes to their day to day living. The reality is, every day when we choose to get into a car, send kids to schools, go into work where someone at any point in time has been unhappily fired, any setting really, horrible random things could happen. Daily living is full of risks. When traveling, same as when we aren’t, risk-related choices also have to be made. Here we decided not to go to the opening of Hunger Games Part 3, but went when theater wasn’t so packed the next day. There are certain countries we would like to visit but won’t because they seem too unstable with violence or kidnappings. This post is provocative. Why My Family Will Still Be Going to Paris for Christmas
Not being paralyzed by random violence is more of a head game than anything else. Fear is one of the more interesting monsters who lives in our heads. Sometimes it sits on your shoulder to helpfully steer you away from trouble, while other times it irrationally messes with you to limit your freedom. Travel, like all other aspects of life, is a matter of moving past the whispers of fear to make decisions based on facts and sound intuition. That’s all we can do, and then we need to go out, live, and keep seeing the world.
