AGE: TEN
Hitler brings you a mug that says UBERMOM: WORLD’S BEST.
“I am not better or worse than other moms,” you explain, nervously. “All moms are equal.”
“Whoa,” Adolf says. “Okay. Geez.”
AGE: ELEVEN
“We had a career fair at school today,” Adolf tells you. “They asked what we wanted to be when we grew up.”
You freeze. “And what DO you want to be when you grow up?” you ask, nervously. “Remember, you can be anything you want. The sky’s the limit. Just not a horrible dictator who kills millions of people. Unless, by putting that off limits, I make it the one thing you want to do. Wait, never mind. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”
AGE: TWELVE
Hitler asks if he can walk to school by himself. You panic. Without the Internet to tell you whether you are parenting right or not, it is difficult to tell what approach to take. Is Helicopter Parenting or Free-Range the right approach to take for a growing Adolf? Should you send him to camp this summer or not? Does he need a math tutor? Would being better at math help or hurt him in the long run? Why didn’t you think about any of this when you decided to take this on?
AGE: THIRTEEN
Hitler has written a report for school entitled “My Hero is Abraham Lincoln.” You go through it with a red pen correcting Hitler’s grammar.
“There should be a word for someone who cares as much about grammar as you, Mom,” Hitler says.
“There is,” you say. “Agrammarn—Lorax. A grammar Lorax.”
AGE: FOURTEEN
Hitler gets a growth spurt. One morning he comes downstairs and announces that he is trying to grow a mustache. “Absolutely not,” you tell him.
AGE: FIFTEEN
Hitler has been locked in his room all afternoon and you don’t know what’s going on in there. “You need to let me in, Adolf,” you say, knocking for a fifth time.
“SHUT UP!” he yells. “YOU DON’T KNOW ME! YOU DON’T KNOW MY LIFE! YOU DON’T KNOW MY STRUGGLE!”
“I WISH YOU WOULDN’T USE THAT WORD!” you yell back.
AGE: SIXTEEN
You should not have thrown Hitler a Sweet Sixteen, but he asked so nicely. He gave a speech, but it was bad. He looked at his shoes the whole time and mumbled and spoke indistinctly. This made you feel pretty good.
AGE: SEVENTEEN
Hitler doesn’t get into art school. You cook him his favorite dinner and repeat the family mantra, “Other people are not to blame for your problems.” He seems okay but he is so hard to read these days. Teenagers.
AGE: EIGHTEEN
He gets into college and you ride there with him. There are so many lessons you wanted to impart. But what can you possibly say now? You hope he packed enough sweaters. He outgrew the one with a giraffe on it years ago but you still have it in a drawer.
“Don’t worry, mom,” he says. “I’ll be fine.” But will he? You don’t know.
You leave him at the dorm and cry all the way home. Maybe you should have killed him when you had the chance.
October 23, 2015
You May Already Be Running
WHEN YOU WENT TO BED, you were a senator or a governor or a representative.
It had not touched you yet.
But now it is 2019.
You wake up in a cold sweat with only one thought: Somehow you must get to Iowa. You are not from Iowa. But it is calling to you. You think, “If I do not get my hands around an ear of corn, I will perish. If I do not clutch an Iowan infant in my arms, something horrible will happen. If I do not tell the people of Iowa what I think is wrong with America—and yet, what I think is right with America, too—then life will no longer be worth living.”
You have been to Iowa maybe once or twice before. You thought nothing of it at the time. You saw John Delaney there, out standing in his field. He heard the call before anyone else. He dropped his plow and let his oxen run free and went straight to Iowa. You laughed at him.
But now you must get there. You must get there this year. You feel the stirring in your blood. There is something there for you, and you must go.
People asked you, “Are you thinking of it?” And before you said no.
Now you are “not able to rule out thinking of it.”
Once the idea has insinuated itself, it is only a matter of time. Even the act of not thinking about it admits the existence of the possibility of thinking about it, and by then, it is too late.
Suddenly, your life begins to change.
You have written a book. You did not know you were writing a book until you saw it at the airport one morning with your name and face on the cover. (When was this picture taken? You do not remember taking the picture.) The book is called Uplifting the Dreams We Hold Dear, or My Country ’Tis of Thee, or Sweet Land of Liberty, or Certainly We Must All Promise, or Every Day Is Extra!!!!, or This I Swear, or God Dreamed a Wish, or Six Things I Know, or I Dreamed a Dream, or Life Worth Living, or A Fight We Must All Fight, or We Had Better Fight, or We Hold These Truths, or To Be Self-Evident, or That All Men Are Created Equal, or And Endowed by Their Creator, or With Certain Unalienable Rights, or Among These, Life, or Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, or My Uncle Made Me Swear to You This Day, or My Grandpa Made a Promise, or Neighbors, or United, or Divided, or Stronger, or Scrappy Little Nobody.
You flip through the book. It has a very wide font. You have discovered a lot of things wrong with America, the book says, but also a lot of things great about America. You wish someone existed who could solve some of them and celebrate others of
