Dear John,
The last couple of months I’ve been walking our youngest son home from middle school. The one-mile walk has consistently been the best part of my day. Moving our bodies, taking in the sights, just being outside and having the time to have a real conversation, something that couldn’t happen if we only had the six minutes in a car.
We talk about what happened at school that day, what I’ve been up to, the Beatles or Metallica song that we want to learn on guitar and drums this weekend, the war in Ukraine, whatever is on his or my mind. We point out landmarks along the way, including the house on Nevada street that my grandfather Frank O’Rourke grew up in or “The Lady on the Hill,” El Paso High school, a neoclassical masterpiece built in 1916 that Frank would graduate from in 1931 and where I hope our son will graduate from in 2029.
One of the things we’ve been talking a lot about lately is climate change. Why it’s happening, what it means for life on the planet. The extreme weather we’re seeing, the species we’re losing, the fact that it’s so much hotter on our walks home today compared to when Frank was walking home a hundred years ago. We talk about what we can do about it, whether individually or as a country.
We talk about what my parents’ generation has done and has failed to do, what my generation has done and has failed to do, and what’s left for his generation to do. There’s not another generation left to fail to do.
Not all of our conversations are about something so serious. And sometimes we don’t talk at all for a few blocks. It’s just good to be together.
Last Friday when we got home, he sat down at the kitchen table and pulled the books and notebooks out of his backpack and started on his homework. Which would have been the last thing I would have done in 6th grade at the start of the weekend. I would have waited until Sunday night, late Sunday night maybe even early Monday morning, rushing at the last possible moment to get it done in time. Isn’t that the nature of homework on weekends?
“It’s Friday,” I said, “you can do that stuff later. Why don’t you go have some fun?”
Not looking up, he replied “I’m doing my future self a favor. After that I can have fun.”
I hope all is well in your world. As the new year gets under way, I will be teaching a seminar on voting rights and lessons learned from Texas at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics a couple of days a week; reaching out to Powered by People volunteers to get your best ideas for how we use this organization to advance voting rights and democracy in Texas; and visiting independent bookstores and universities across the state to share lessons learned from my book on how the right to vote makes all else possible, “We’ve Got to Try.”
And walking our son home from school every chance I get.
As they say, keep the faith, keep up the fight and let our action be the antidote to any despair that tempts us.
Beto
