Pier

When it was time to learn to swim he said his father simply walked to the end of the pier and threw him into the deep blue crisp water where he kicked and swung his arms just enough that he managed to stay afloat, his cries for help either unheard or ignored by his father who stood with his hands cupped, yelling something muted by the waves crashing over the boy whose eyes filled with salty tears and the sudden consciousness of the word ABANDONMENT.

So when he turns to me and offers his perspective on the state of immigration in this country I can’t help but imagine how he was once left drowning and lost all his trust in the world, and by his own sheer will he climbed back onto the pier and judged himself a man who could survive independently, just as his father had felt when his own father (the boy’s grandfather) threw him off the same pier at the same age and stood unmoving while he (the boy’s father) nearly drowned and forever grew a dark fear of the unknown because the things one does not know, one cannot trust.

And I’ll say to him something to the effect of ‘but not all [people] are bad’ but he won’t be listening because in his mind the whole world is evil and the only sanctity is his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the faculties of his own mind, a mind ignorant to the historical truth that rip currents held his tiny head above the waves and pushed his fragile, thrashing body towards the safety of the break wall that day, where frightened strangers pulled him up the ladder and stood him on his wobbly legs and wiped the tears from his welling eyes while debating whether or not to call Protective Services.