Our Children

Love Keeps No Hours

For every parent who loves a child they cannot reach, and for the children, who pay the greatest price.

I never met my father. He was gone at seven months, and they handed me a story where a father should have been.

A child believes the story. A child has nothing else. So I grew up on a story, and I made myself a vow: I would never do to my children what my father did to me.

My father left. I came back.

I came back down the long gray road, six hours, seven, every week. Six years, seven, every week, half a father in two cities, whole in neither, so no child of mine would ever wonder whether their father would come.

Now hear me, you who keep the clock, you who are paid by the hour to end what you profit to prolong. You will not end it. You were never built to end it. Peace is the one thing in this world you have no way to bill.

Did you think we would not notice? Did you think the children wouldn’t pay? Did you think a parent’s heart could be itemized away?

You may bill us by the minute, you may bill us by the year, but love was never yours to bill, and love is why we’re here.

And the meter runs.

It runs through birthdays. It runs through graduations and every empty holiday, while a child is taught, word by word, to turn against the very blood from which that child has come.

I had a son. His name was Mackie. From the seventh grade, every time I came back, a little more of him was gone, and there was nothing I could do. Nothing.

Do not tell me the children do not pay. I have a son to prove it.

I am not the only one. Go and count us. Count us all. We are the calls that ring and ring, the birthdays sent into the dark, the photographs that stop at a certain age. We did not stop loving. We were stopped. And we are not finished. We are not finished yet.

And you, child, wherever you are tonight, whatever you were told, whatever you believe: you were never the war. You were never the price. You were never the reason. The blood you come from is not your enemy. It is a song in you. It still knows your name.

So let the meter run. Let them bill the night. Love does not send a bill. Love does not watch the clock. Love keeps no hours.

The door is open. It was always open. Come whenever you are ready, next week or ten years on, and you will find me here.

I am here. I am here. I am here.

If you are a parent or a child who is hurting tonight, call or text 988, any hour.