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What’s a Parent to Do?

My son and his body are held in this moment of scarcity in a country that gives weapons more rights and privileges than the body that carried and bore him

By Maggie Doherty

It’s likely a familiar refrain uttered from generations of parents when they look upon their children, summer sun streaking hair, shoulders bronzing, hands wrapped around a sand shovel, buckets full of rocks: Don’t grow up. Addition: This is a whispered prayer years after those sleepless nights of infancy, when diapers are done for, and your kindergartener is dependent in all the ways that you want but his body is still buzzing with wonder and curiosity. 

Watching my son fill a bucket with rocks and explain to me his extensive sandcastle building plans I knew the phrase escaped my mouth was a really prayer, and not one just deployed in the tinge of nostalgia. No, my plea runs deeper for childhood in this country where boys become weaponized and radicalized. My son is young enough in this brief moment to not have to endure the trauma of mass shooting drills in a house of education. My son and his body are held in this moment of scarcity in a country that gives weapons more rights and privileges than the body that carried and bore him. 

I have a daughter, too. And I’m stalling on what I imagine her future to be, where her body is controlled by a government entity that claims to be pro-life yet gives her nothing in the way of healthcare access or reproductive rights. Hers a body caught in political waves of extremism and dangerous nationalism. Of course, her body, with its skinned knees and welts of mosquito bites from camping and nights spent in the woods, does not yet know what was determined by a Supreme Court in a distant capital where truth, consequence, and facts are cast aside for profit, for control, for corruption. 

So, what is a parent to do? No matter the body counts in our schools, or the two years trying to live and thrive through a pandemic seems to have changed the lives of these little bodies for the better. I can’t freeze time or stop my kiddos from growing up, but I can keep the sand buckets well stocked, the campouts and raft trips with friends scheduled no matter how strong the wind blows outside of Cut Bank, and let those healthy, happy bodies soak in the sun, build sandcastles, toss rocks, and hold onto the dream of childhood. 

For now, I keep praying: Don’t grow up. 

Maggie Doherty is the owner of Kalispell Brewing Company on Main Street.