Friday Original Poem

My poem this week was never meant to be a poem.  It's more of a rant and I didn't write it.  But it's the most passionate and beautiful thing that I read all summer, so I am sharing it here.

As a little background, I will tell you that one of the orphans we hosted this summer was a particular challenge.  I still sport a large, yellowing bruise where he pinched me in an effort to shake loose and run recklessly towards Bryn Mawr Avenue.  And my gentle husband was the person who shouldered most of the physical retaliation that our new baby needed to exorcise after years of loss.  So it was out of character for my husband to fill with rage at a stranger and zoom down an alley blaring his horn at the man.  It was also one the loveliest things I've ever seen him do because it was a rage born of absolute, protective love for someone who desperately needs and deserves it.  My husband posted these words on Facebook that night.


Dear Man-Who-Self-Righteously-Marched-Toward-Our-Car-Telling-Us-to-Stop-Honking-Our-Horn,

I agree that the six year-old child honking the horn of our minivan non-stop was SUPER annoying. Trust me, I was standing right next to the car. 

And I'm sure it was disturbing your dinner, as you stated. Hell, it had been going on for five minutes, it was disturbing MY dinner, and I'd eaten an hour earlier.

And I realize that when I then tore down your alley blaring the horn myself that it must have really sent you through the roof (as noted by the impolite finger you displayed as you chased after our car.)

But as I was pulling the screaming child off my steering wheel, tears running down his face, I realized something. You might not have been just some entitled a-hole trying to impress your neighbors with some artisanal cheeses or Chilean Syrah or whatever--you may have been laid off today or being broken up with or losing your house to foreclosure. But this crying little boy lost his mother as an infant and his grandmother one year later and has been in a country for six weeks in which he understands maybe a dozen of our words. So although I believe we are all fighting the hard fight in our own lives all the time, yours and mine are not as hard as his.

Next time, he gets to honk the damn horn all he wants.

I love you, Kevin.