Separation Anxiety

A month or so ago, I was temporarily separated from my phone for less than 24 hours. When we were reunited, I made a joke about a mother and child reunion. Little did I know that a few weeks later, mothers would be separated from their real live children on our southern border.

I can only imagine what the parents are going through, and what those children are experiencing.

I do, however, remember acutely the couple of times I was, however briefly, “separated” from my parents.

Growing up, we frequently went swimming on nearby lakes, but once a year, my family went on a day-long adventure to the ocean beach. Although we later switched allegiance to the more modern (the facilities, not the beach) and generally better venue, Horseneck Beach in Westport, Massachusetts, when I was little, we went to Nantasket Beach in Hull.

While Horseneck was a somewhat nicer beach, Nantasket had a lot going for it, namely, an amusement park – Paragon Park – across the street, and a saltwater taffy stand LeHage’s Taffy: Oh, So Good. (Nantasket also had a covered pavilion, where my grandmother – who had terrible arthritis in her knees – could sit all day in one of her good dresses, her hat and fake pearl choker and watch the ocean. Nanny eventually gave up on the beach, freeing us up to try something new at Horseneck.)

I must have been 3 or 4, and was walking with my father on the sidewalk across from the beach. We were probably heading to the LeHage’s stand. Anyway, I decided to exercise my independence, so let go of his hand and forged ahead. After a minute or so, I turned around to make sure that my father was still behind me. Gulp! There were grownups there, but no one I knew. I went into high anxiety mode and started to run back up the sidewalk. I didn’t have to go very far, as my father was right behind the strangers. He took my hand and – wearing that big old grin of his - assured me that he’d had his eye on me the entire time. But I remember exactly how I felt when I turned around and couldn’t see him, and that was panicked.

Fast forward to my first day of kindergarten, when I was 4 and 3/4’s years old.

The parish school didn’t have kindergarten, so I wasn’t going to school with my sister, but to Gates Lane School, the public school that was pretty much right next door to Our Lady of the Angels. So while I was close to the school where my sister Kath went, I was not in the same building. I was pretty much on my own.

My mother and brother Tom (then 2 and 1/2) walked me down to school to drop me off, and were going to come back a few hours later to fetch me.

When my mother had brought me into Gates Lane School, we entered through the front door. But when the patrol line left the school, it was via a side door.

Oh, no!

How were my mother and Tom ever going to find me?

I backtracked up the stairs, pushing against the flow of kids who were getting bigger and bigger as I went up the line. My plan was to get back into the school, find the front door, and thus be reunited with my mother and Tom. Given my fine sense of direction, I’m pretty sure I would have gone MIA in the bowels of the ancient and cavernous Gates Lane School and the Worcester PD would have to have been called in.

Fortunately, I as rescued by Yvonne LaChapelle, a lovely neighbor who was in the eighth grade. She took me in hand and told me she’d stay with me until we found my mother and brother. Which we did.

But I remember how I felt, thinking that my mother would be waiting at the wrong door and we’d never find each other. And that was panicked.

So I can only imagine how those little kiddos felt when they were taken from their parents, grabbed by strangers, put in detention and/or shipped off to god knows where.

Last Saturday, my sister Trish and I participated in the Boston march in support of immigrants and, in particular, in support of family reunification.

It always feels good to stand up and be counted, although after the march landed on Boston Common and the speechifying began, we were sitting down in the shade to be counted – it was well in the 90’s. There were a couple of really stupid chants – “No borders, no nations” – that we couldn’t bring ourselves to go along with, but for the most part the message of support for immigrants was loud and clear, and ones we could get behind. (And for much of the march, we were near a young woman holding aloft a boom box playing songs like “This Land Is Your Land” (Pete Seeger version) and “Come On, People Now, Smile on Each Other.” So we got to do a sing along.)

Trish and I didn’t carry signs, but if we had, here’s what they would have said:

The immigration issue is admittedly complex, but what I do know is that we don’t have a crisis in which hordes of murderous millions are storming our gates. That’s pretty much a bit of fakery ginned up for political purposes. And what I do know is that separating children from their parents isn’t the answer to any question other than ‘how can we screw with brown people?’