Why I’m Crying On Vacation

And I’m Not Sorry About It

It’s not the vacation. I’m having a wonderful time, visiting family while on a leisurely road trip through the Northwest. I get to see my beloved grandnieces and grandnephews, children who are thriving and happy and delightful and safe.

But the news has found me, and I’m sick at heart. USA Today, Vox, the Washington Post and the New York Times reveal that, while I’m enjoying the kids in my extended family, other children are being ripped away from their families, and it’s being done in my name. Yours too, if you live in the U.S.

I thought, and possibly you thought too, that the abomination of family separation at the border — the infamous “zero tolerance” policy — had been done away with. Public outrage was so overwhelming that even this administration had been forced to recognize its cruelty. There was an injunction. The policy was halted. We took care of it.

And I know that the U.S. has, as one of the darkest aspects of its shadow side, done this many times before, primarily to people of color: slavery, the infamous Indian schools, those who languish in jail, apart from their loved ones, even now because they don’t have the cash to pay court fees. But for the most part, I hoped our sense of justice, our unambiguous conviction that innocent children should not be subjected to…