I.
I walk with my children to the bus stop on a brilliant morning. We veer around our neighbor’s spritzing sprinkler head, but otherwise the way is clear.
We walk past fresh-mowed lawns of deep green St. Augustine grass. Close-trimmed hedges hug the walls of high, brightly painted stucco houses. The sidewalk is free of broken glass and weeds and dog piles. If we step too far off the gleaming concrete, we might disturb a concealed fire ant nest. This constitutes our greatest peril as we walk to the bus stop on a pretty, sunny morning.
Other kids, other parents, join us as we walk. The kids in their backpacks and shorts chatter about Minecraft and Rubik’s cubes, video games and the beauty of high-speed wireless. We parents half-listen to the kids while we talk of bus schedules and common core math standards. We lament our fantasy football failures or check our iPhones for fresh Facebook fodder.
We walk to the corner where kids from all over the neighborhood congregate to wait for the school bus. A game of tag breaks out. My younger son is “it.” Laughter fills the air as the sun clears the top of the tree line.
The bus pulls up and the kids scramble aboard. Through the windows, I watch their heads bob along the aisle until they flop into their usual seats next to their usual friends.
Even before the bus pulls away, I begin my walk back home, back into another normal day. I can still hear the roar of the bus as it carries my children safely to school.
It all could change tomorrow. I know that from experience. Not all of our mornings and nights have been blessed and bright. Change comes as it will. We hope for the best.
Today, I walked with my sons to the bus stop on a sunny morning. I heard them laugh and saw them run free with their friends. Today was good.
II.
I walk with my child toward asylum. Every step carries us farther from our old life in Syria, closer to the promise of security in Germany.
Others walk with us and around us. We do not know them. Many of them walk faster than we do. I worry that there will be no room for us on the train.
It is hot. Sweat falls into my eyes with every step. My child whines. She is thirsty. I give her a precious sip of clean water from the last of the bottles we bought in Athens. I hold her hand, then carry her on my shoulders when she can walk no more. She weighs so very little now.
We have traveled far. We traveled by car to Damascus, then later by plane to Istanbul. By bus to Izmir on the Mediterranean, by crowded rubber dinghy to the Greek island of Lesvos and by crowded, leaky wooden ferry to Athens.
The rubber dinghy did not sink, but people fell into the water and did not surface. Many people. Children.
We have paid smugglers and soldiers and government officials and strangers who claimed to know how to pilot a crowded rubber dinghy to help us find our way.
We still have not found our way, so we walk. We travel through Greece, through Macedonia, through Serbia. We travel by bus when we can, and by foot when we must. We walk toward the train that will take us to Germany, and safety.
We find the border at Hungary closed to us. Men with guns give us water and turn us away. They do not tell us where else to go.
We are out of money now. We are almost out of water. We do not know when or what we will eat. Meals are impossible to comprehend. Do people in the world still gather and eat? Do they talk of the day’s events? Do they listen to one another talk about dreams, about aspirations? Did people ever do those things?
Where is hope?
I know not where we will go. I know only that I walk with my child. I will walk with her to the train station, and I will hold her above my head and weave my way through the throng and we will board that train if there is breath in my body.
Until then … I will walk with my child wherever we must go to feel safe. I will walk with her forever, if need be.
III.
I walk with my child through the bright and airy hospital. Every step takes us closer to remission.
My son wears a mask to protect his ruined immune system. A thin tube in his right arm runs to a clear bag of liquid suspended on a high metal pole. There are wheels on the pole, and I walk behind my son and push the pole along while he walks the hospital corridors.
He walks ahead of me down the hallway and turns into the hospital gift shop. I push the pole behind him and let him set the pace. His eyes are dim and tired above the top edge of his facemask. He walks into the gift shop and looks around for … something. He doesn’t say what. He doesn’t find it, whatever it is, so we walk out of the gift shop and into the sunlit lobby.
There are unfamiliar but pleasant-seeming people in the lobby. A tour group of some kind. Journalists, maybe. They watch me walk with my son through the lobby. One of them, a trim, middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper goatee, smiles at me as we pass.
I see the man smile. I gently nod and move on. I know that smile. It is a smile that is kindly meant, but there is a lack of understanding behind it. It’s not his fault. I hope he never has to understand, to really understand. It’s the smile of someone who has never walked behind his child, pushing a pole on wheels along the corridors of a research hospital. It’s the smile of someone who cares, but doesn’t know. I hope to God he never knows.
But I do want that smiling man in the lobby to know that all of it can go away in an instant, that every step we take could be the one that sets us on the path to a future fraught with uncertainty and fear. I know that, now. I know that all too well.
I also know hope.
I walk with my son back to the elevator. We don’t talk. He’s tired, and it’s time to rest. Later, his mother and sister will come and we’ll board the bus back to the well-appointed housing complex that is our home for the next few months.
It’s a blessing. I know that. We’re here, in this place, and that’s a blessing. We’ll walk together again tomorrow because of this place. We have a chance to walk together for ten thousand tomorrows because of this place.
I don’t know when we’ll walk away from here for the last time, but I know that we will one day.
Until then … I’ll walk behind my son, and I’ll push that pole. And when we walk away from here for the final time, I’ll throw my arm across his shoulders and walk beside him.
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One more walk to tell you about.
Dads 4 Change co-founder Whit Honea and his family will walk Saturday in the Los Angeles-area St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Walk/Run to End Childhood Cancer fundraiser. Whit’s team has set a fundraising goal of $500, all of which will go toward helping St. Jude in its mission to provide cost-free care for children with cancer and cutting-edge research into life-threatening illnesses.
If you would like to contribute, please follow this link: Dads 4 Change St. Jude Walk/Run Team L.A. And thank you.
