Tone Deaf

After a terrifically terrible day at my job teaching elementary school, I have a very specific memory of coming home to my little boy who was not quite school age and holding him close. It reminded me of the reason I do most of the things that I do. There are not many things like it. Which is why I can imagine Ivanka Trump chose to celebrate her Sunday morning with her son. As fleeting as those moments can be, they are certainly worth noting.
On social media? While your father is busy tossing around rhetoric blaming others for his draconian measures that keep other parents from holding their sons and daughters in a similar fashion? Fifteen hundred children have been lost by the department of Health and Human Services. According to testimony given by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, it's not really their job to figure out where they got to, not "legally" anyway.
So while the fate of the parents of these children is excruciatingly slowly determined, those Sunday Celebrations will have to wait. As Ivanka's daddy's henchmen continue to treat each and every illegal crossing as a criminal event on a par with members of the MS-13 gang, more and more loving embraces are put on hold. To keep America safe.
Safe from the kind of horror unleashed by parents who are fleeing their circumstances in their own country with the hope that the best country in the world certainly can't be any worse. It is Ivanka's daddy who seems bent on the notion of showing them just how wrong they can be.
When I think of children being torn away from their mothers and fathers, I think of Nazi soldiers separating old from young as the trains pulled into concentration camps. This is not the way we do things in America, is it? Not the America that Ivanka wakes up in, anyway.
So what do we do to keep this embarrassing trend from continuing? That's a tough one, since the level of empathy shown by Ivanka's daddy is on a par with his level of tact in general. Parents everywhere should have the opportunity to cuddle their children on a Sunday morning. It isn't just a comfort. It is strength. And everyone deserves it. Especially the children.