Masks fall from the ceiling

[ishai_wallace]

After synagogue last week, there were masks on the tables in the kiddush. The tables were covered in blue cloths and in the middle of each were stacks of beautiful feathered masks and noise-makers. Our synagogue was a little late celebrating Purim, but we got there. The Small Person was delighted to see the masks and sorted through them to find a large, brightly coloured, heavily feathered number. He put it on and was thrilled with his transformation. From small person to giant bird.

When he finally removed his mask to eat, he told me with great seriousness "I want to take it home, so I can take it with me the next time we go on an airplane.".

I was about to launch into how we are not allowed to take masks on airplanes, and caught myself."What for?" I asked.

"Because every time we go on an airplane, they tell us "masks will fall from the ceiling" but they never do."

Oh. Oh. And suddenly I had a vision of an airplane, full of passengers, where brightly coloured carnival masks fall from the ceiling. People put on the masks, probably there are streamers, maybe there is music, and suddenly the plane is a very festive place. It occurred to me that he has a giraffe mask, which makes the wearer look like a giraffe, an elephant mask, that makes the wearer look like an elephant, and a monkey mask that makes the wearer look like a monkey. I expect that he heard "oxygen mask" and understood it as a mask that makes the wearer look like an oxygen, whatever that is. And there is something about that for me - both how clearly it is him extending what he knows to understand what he does not know yet - and that it is such a safe understanding of the world. In the Small Person's world, the masks that should fall from the ceiling on the plane are to entertain and amuse, not safety equipment.

I did not say anything about masks and airport security, or 9-11, or the desire of people to see someone's face to "know who they are". I just let myself look into his reality and marvel.

... .... ....

Speaking of air travel, we have applied for a new Passport for the Small Person this week. The last one, that we applied for as soon as we received his "father and father" birth certificate, has expired, which makes sense - he's not looked like the squish of an infant pictured in that passport for some time. He went with his Papa to get new passport photos taken on Tuesday, and they quite clearly had a terrible experience. I was not there, but both of them have told me about it:

Quoting from a text message, Papa said:                                                     Stanley told me this about what happened:
The photographer said "young lady ... something, something".                    "We went to the photographer, and he said
I didn't address that directly, but I did refer to Stanley as "dude".                  something very mean to Papa. We got very mad.
The he said "that's a boy?" I replied in the affirmative.                                  Papa was mad and told him off and I was mad too.
Then he said "no it's not! Wait, is it?"                                                             We smashed out the door - but it did not break,
Then, he just started repeating : "what is it? What is it? What is it"               and then we went to the nice place."
I had a total loss of cabin pressure, screamed at him, slammed
his door as hard as I could, and we went to the place you suggested.

I have a whole range of reactions to this

1. How dare someone say this to my child? "What is it? What is it?" is not an appropriate thing to say to anyone. To say it to my personal very tender Small Person, who really believes that gender is a choice and something people get to figure out for themselves as they wish is totally upsetting. Bad photographer. Gender fail. Bad behaviour.
2. I know that it is his hair that people read as "girl". His beautiful, long, curly, falls in ringlets, never been cut, hair. He has long hair like that because I think it is beautiful. We do talk about "bodily autonomy" including that it is his hair, and that he can cut it if he wants to, but I am in no rush and am not encouraging that. Still, my choice that he has long hair, made him vulnerable to this person voicing his prejudice all over him.
3. I am sure that my parenting, in general, contributed to this. I have declined to train The Small Person into the societal gender box assigned to people with penises, which I think makes him fabulous, and allows him freedom to explore and figure things out for himself - but it also makes him vulnerable. The photographer was doing the work that we generally assume parents will do - squashing a child's gender expression, demanding gender conformity and punishing "gender transgressive behaviour". It made it so clear to me that it is not enough to make room for The Small Person to explore and play with gender, it's not enough to teach him that you need to ask what pronoun people prefer and then use it, it's not enough to teach him that his gender is right, whatever it is in any given moment. I need to also teach him how to respond to gender bigotry, and to defend our values.
4. I recognize that all manner of parents have to teacher their children how to respond to bigotries large and small. Not having to do this is a privilege. My responses are informed by my own white privilege. It feels emancipatory to teach him that he is already right about his gender. I'm going to need to do more work to recognise that teaching him to confront prejudice and hate is also emancipatory. Writing this helps. Putting it in this language helps.
5. Both of them, both the Papa and The Small Person thought they were responding in defense of the other. The Small Person did not feel personally target, shamed or challenged. And while I could feel good about the Small Person receiving the lesson that his Papa will stand up for him, I can also feel good knowing that his empathy is strong, and that he feels like he can do exactly the kind of advocacy work I want to teach him toward. We're trying hard to raise a revolutionary around here. He's clearly on board, at least at the moment.

I heard Papa's version of things first, and I worried that the photographer with his ignorant questions had made "the masks fall from the ceiling". I worried he had made the beautiful coloured feather masks fall from the ceiling, past people's faces to lie on the floor. Not in a festive way. I worried that The Small Person had heard and understood, and thate his safe and loving understanding of people had been irreperably damaged. I was wrong.

I have however been thinking a great deal about how we teach our children to have hope, power, strength and possibility in the face of hate. The answer, very clearly is that we teach our children that they have the power to change the world.