Daniel Tiger Sings About Fairness
A collage letter on difference and justice.
Dear Friends:
A collage letter for you
Pippin likes to sing songs from Daniel Tiger. She sings them to make sense of the world.
When I come home after a night at Book Club, she sings “Grown ups come back.”
When we have to choose between activities, she sings.
“Sometimes / we like different things / it helps to ask/ what do you like.”
She wants to know differences. She wants to identify them and name them. She wants to shout what belongs to her.
He is 4 yo. I am 3 yo.
Dad is tall. I am short.
Your bed is big. Mine is small.
Your hair is soft. My hair is curly.
You like coffee. I like chocolate milk.
My skin is white. Her skin is brown.
A character in Daniel Tiger is brown. Miss Elaina, daughter of Lady Elaine and Music Man Stan. She gets hurt but her school does not have a bandaid to match her skin.
In the show, the characters go to a factory and have bandaids made to match Miss Elaina’s skin.
The characters sing:
“Things are fair when everyone has what they need.”
Pippin is then committed to correct crayon colors to represent her own skin in drawings. “No Mom!” when I hand her a peach or an orange. “I need white!”
She tells me who in her class has what color skin.
I ask her what color her mixed race cousin is. She thinks with her head tilted towards the side. Then she laughs and shakes her head. “I dunno!”
I live in a city of differences. Uptown. Midtown. Downtown. The Hill.
I hear dirt bikes race at night through my street and by the river. I don’t hear the gunshots three streets away.
A pitbull is encouraged to attack a neighborhood cat. The cat dies. It is caught on a ring camera. The cat’s foster human makes a memorial on the sidewalk.
A police office pushes a drunk white kid and it is caught on film. There is outrage. The police cancel a private contract with bars. The bars were paying for police coverage on weekends?
The forsythia is blooming.
I am in my favorite coffee shop on a Friday morning. There is one table open. I sit at it.
To my left is the large corner table, the biggest one in the shop. Locals and regulars don’t use the big table during the coffee rush unless they are with a large group or have children.
Which is how I know the two women speaking there are not from my neighborhood. They speak loudly and at length about the “spirit of deception harrassing our children in this generation”, the spirit of “gender confusion and gayness.” How they can’t “even keep it out of the church anymore.” That they must “come alongside” these “confused kids”. To pray with them in this spiritual battle for their souls.
I feel like my blood has grown thick and hot and that my skin will split and splatter from the internal pressure. I sweat. I think this language is how children die.
They get up to leave and I stop the one who seems like she might be able to change her mind someday.
“I heard your whole conversation. It was deeply upsetting. This is a safe place for me and my community.”
She smiles through a face that doesn’t seem to move. Her spirit is far away. She says “Oh okay! Thanks!”
The question of “what to do” is in me every second. What am I supposed to do. What am I doing. What do I want to do. What should I do. What to do.
It varies in form, never in intensity. Sharp. puncture. period.
Not a question. A plea that sounds like an imperative.
I argue with a man who reminds me of the first men I tried to be loved by. We discuss the role of “value” in art and art making, how it is evaluated or quantified or if value given is even relevant to art at all.
It makes a kind of sense that we end up arguing over suffering and whether or not or how suffering matters in meaning/value/art making. Suffering not in the Buddhist way but in a word that says pain (or struggle?) repeats itself and we can’t make it stop.
I call it an argument because my body begins to feel like I am arguing to survive, not to know or be known. It might be my fault, that I slipped into this mode, from one of curiosity to sparring to try and save my teeth. The word “presupposition” is thrown out.
A quote materializes: “Don’t waste your suffering.”
“I HATE that!” I say. The vehemence in me slips out.
“It’s not a moral imperative,” he asserts.
Then why the imperative tense?
5 men from my city with green cards and refugee status were detained and deported. Their country of origin refused them because of their religious beliefs. They were sent to India who also refused them.
They were here legally. Worked justifiably.
One of them spent a night in jail ten years ago for a fist fight.
Have you ever been in a fist fight and then sent to a country that doesn’t want you?
What country will they take me to? Since thought is itself a crime now?
I feel like we should run. But where? How?
I paid $30 for the ENT to tell me I have a canker sore.
She asks me, “These are often from stress. Are you in any stress lately?”
Monday, I sit next to two women. They are planning their wedding to each other. They go through each friend they know and love and list their names and their drinks of choice for the wedding. So-and-so will only drink wine. So-and-so will have too many cocktails. So-and-so will want mocktails. So-and-so loves craft beer.
It is tedious labor. Beautiful. A party for everyone. Love that is not for two but for all the loves that have been loved.