Dear Sept,
We’ve been expanding our circle of friends. Your friend Lucas’s big brother, Wolfgang, has started hanging out at our place. He seems troubled. I don’t mind giving him advice when he comes asking about school and college applications and financial aid forms. I know plenty about those. He’s just so angry. I’m not sure how to help with that. My poppie always said, “Don’t judge an angry man. This isn’t an easy world, and you never know what road they’ve been down.” So, I try compassion.
But this angry young man has brought something into our lives that threatens to squeeze out any compassion I can feel. He’s showing you a harsh reality of life on this earth. It’s the way it is, but I was hoping to keep that harshness from you for as long as I could.
He broke your dollhouse.
“That was clumsy of him,” you said. “He should look where he was going.”
I should have kept my mouth shut. I would have, if I’d known how much it would upset you. But I didn’t know. Back in my youth, I learned about the cruelty of others before I learned to walk. But this is something new to you.
So when I said without thinking, “It wasn’t an accident,” I let the full force of that cruelty come rushing into your world. It shattered it.
You were still sad when you came home from school the next day.
“Look,” I said. “I fixed the dollhouse. Didn’t you notice? It’s not broken anymore.”
“I’m not sad over the dollhouse,” you said. “I know you fixed it. It’s OK. I know that. Thankyouvermuch. I’m sad that someone could break it on purpose. It’s somebody’s home! It’s our dolls’ home! How could they break someone’s home?”
I tried to explain the feelings that could make someone do something like that.
“Suppose you felt really bad inside,” I said. “Like everyone was against you. You didn’t have a chance. Life was unfair. You weren’t sure what you were going to do. All the pressure’s piling on. And inside, you just feel bad. Jumbled, mad, angry, scared, alone.”
You looked at me.
“So then, with all those emotions scrambling your mind and body, you need some kind of release. Maybe if you break something, you’ll feel better, you think. So you crash the nearest crushable thing.”
You wailed. “It’s so mean! It only wrecks things and makes people feel bad and then the mad person still has all that madness only now they feel bad for wrecking everything for everyone else! Oooh! It sucks!”
I hadn’t heard you wail like that since you were a little one grieving for your bizaabgotojo.
“And it’s not even an accident,” you said, once you could talk again. “It was on purpose. How can people be mean? It doesn’t make sense!”
“Everybody has meanness in them,” I said. You looked at me with disbelief. “It’s part of being a person. Maybe you don’t, because maybe beings are wired differently where you come from, but here, on this planet, it’s part of being a person. Blame it on evolution. But goodness–being kind and gentle and understanding–that’s part of us, too. If we always go getting all upset at every instance of meanness, then it doesn’t give much of a chance for the goodness to grow. I think we should be patient with Wolfgang. At least then, we’ll have good feelings inside of us.”
You took a big breath. You sighed it out. You closed your eyes, and I saw that blue rose inside myself that I see when you’re shooting your love to me.
I heard the word sintuliyu. You’re a peace-bringer, Sept.
You know, I’ve been wondering a lot what brought you all here. I mean not in the realm of cause-effect: I know on that level it was an “accident”–the ship you were on crashed, and now you and your siblings are here. But I’m not so sure about accidents. On the level I’m thinking of, the cosmic level, everything happens for a reason. There are no accidents. So on that level, what brought you here?
We know that when there’s a space, it’s filled. We have a big gap here–a big yawning maw–for peace. You’re the peace-bringer, kid. And I think that’s what brought you here.
Your pops, drinking in your peace, every day.
–Seb
Cathy Tea's SimLit Anthology 