I had a dream last night. And no, it wasn’t a dream that filled my head with carefree thoughts. It was a dream that woke me from my sleep like a siren in the night. A dream where I woke up clenching my blankets, my heart beating one thousand beats a minute, and my throat so dry I couldn’t scream if I wanted to. I moved closer to my husband, who peacefully slept, hoping to find that feeling of safety that might calm the terror. I still felt shaken.
Waking him felt like the only option to regain any sense of security in the dark silence of my own bedroom. He calmly woke up and did his best to calm my anxiety. I told him of a dream where something insidious was in our home. Our daughter was asleep and it lurked around trying to find prey. I couldn’t see it but I could hear it swirling around my husband and I as we tried to arm ourselves. It laughed at us. Nothing seemed to make it waver. I could feel it closing in and we were not prepared. I’m not sure that any form of protection could have stopped it. I remember the feeling of hopelessness as I tried to keep it from my daughter who was unaware and at peace. It started taunting us as it closed in and before it attacked I woke up.
The thing is, this wasn’t something that could be categorized as a dream. This was in fact a real life nightmare playing out in my REM stage of sleep. This is the nightmare that keeps up any mother or parent during the day and night. It is our fear of not having the ability to protect our children, no matter the age, from something we cannot always see.
Dangerous people can be found in familiar places. There is prejudice and hate living in minds that we cannot see and hearts that we cannot connect with. It is for that very reason that I am afraid. I am afraid for my daughters who may one day love another man or woman of color. I am afraid for my nephews of mixed ethnicities that may face these dangerous minds too soon in their young adult life. I am afraid for the men in my family who bare too much melanin in their skin for those who see it as a profiling specification and not as a natural and beautiful biological makeup. I am afraid for the children who will go without a parent because hatred in the world took them too soon. I worry for my friends; who even aware of the dangers in our society as people of color, may be in the wrong place with the wrong person at the worst time.
We can speak the names of those who have fallen at the hand of evil we know as racism and hate but what will it matter if there are never consequences to make it change? What will it matter if we stay calm and comply just to feel a bone crushing weight on our necks? What are we rewarded when we gather to bring awareness but are battered and beaten for raising our voices? The answer is simple. Nothing will matter UNTIL we start to see the change. Nothing will change until we stop accepting this nightmare as our reality. We may not see it right away but arm in arm, step by step, and with our voices lifting higher and higher; together we can make that change. We can turn a mother’s nightmare into a thing of the past.