Protecting people with words

Our six-year-old son Jonah likes to have his toenails painted. Who wouldn’t, really? It’s downright delightful to express yourself with color and sparkle and to receive a few precious minutes of creative, quiet and undivided attention from Mom or Dad. Why should his younger sister have all the fun?

But here’s the thing: Jonah’s friends at school have made it abundantly clear that when it comes to toenails, seafoam green and Superman red aren’t acceptable for a six-year-old boy. So when he wants to sport those colors, Jonah has taken to doing so under cover of socks and shoes, using them as an armor-like protection against cultural forces much larger and more formidable than his four-foot frame can handle.

They start in so soon, these forces that swirl around us, threatening to sweep away not only particular delights but also, if we let them, the very heart of our humanity. A boy in our daughter’s preschool class, whose father was killed earlier this year in gang-related violence, sometimes wears a crimson hoodie decorated with photos of his father on the front. Across the back is a striking, defiant message: “The father was despised, and so shall be the son.” His family covers him in that sweatshirt like a preemptive protest, like armor in a world ravaged by violence, poverty and racism.