Injustice Is Big, Starting From As Early As Childhood

Write Down the Bones Deck to Free the Writer Within — This is my wish for you: that you take these cards, grab the topic on one side and write, write, write. Then flip to the other side of the card and take note.

I’ve always used the word topic instead of prompt. Prompt is the starting place, but topic indicates more the idea of plunging in and immersing. Natalie Goldberg

Perhaps our final grandson was born this week. He was born on the same day as his uncle, Duane. He came by emergency cesarean section (c-section). He was a few weeks earlier than planned. His grandmother was upset because of the protocol involved in having the procedure.

She went into the list that was needed before they could have the c-section. It sounded like an injustice. Why can’t they treat each situation as unique to that mom and baby?

All the maneuvering and checking for dilation. Why does she need to be dilated when she has had to have a C-section with her other children? Her doctor was on vacation. She knows her baby wouldn’t have had to go through all the stress of the protocol if her doctor had been there.

She didn’t have the protocol with her doctor. They couldn’t find the heartbeat, get him out now was Grandma's point. Injustice. His heartbeat wasn’t showing on the monitor at the nurse's station. Grandma could tell the nurses were in a panic, but the doctor wasn’t there.

They were making our daughter get on her hands and knees and pull a leg above her head, and other awkward things to find the heartbeat. Protocol they said, before the C-section.

Then our grandbaby was born healthy and met all the tests they gave him. A healthy baby boy, born 7 pounds, 7 ounces, and 20 inches tall. The same weight his mother was born at. He has more hair than Grandpa, which Grandpa thought was injustice.

As a Native American woman, I thought, he was born a white male with privilege. His other Grandma has some Native American ancestry but you can’t tell. His Grandpa does not, and the baby's dad does not. He will have an easier life. I see the difference in how my grandchildren are treated based on skin color.

When he is our number 28 grandchild, and our youngest daughter just gave birth to him at age 39, we may be done having grandchildren. Now, we are waiting for a great-grandchild due this summer to our 25-year-old grandson. This boy will be Native American, as is his father.

Natalie Goldberg’s Write Down the Bones Deck Prompts — Where do you find injustice? What do you feel about it?

When my now 17-year-old grandson was two years old, we were walking through a park. The other family had gone ahead of us. All of a sudden a woman came running up to us, asking if the little boy was lost. She ran to him and scared him and he came running to me hollering Grandma.

She thought because we didn’t look alike that he couldn’t possibly be my grandson. I remember thinking how that was so sad and such an injustice that people judged familial relationships by the color of our skin.

Much of my growing up was with racism and prejudice. That was an injustice. It continues with my darker-skinned grandchildren. That is injustice.

My granddaughter yesterday was wondering why she was being treated so badly at the airport by a couple of different workers. She is now in her early 30s. She has Alaskan Native ancestry. She had her two children with her. One obviously Native American and one not obvious by looks, but Alaskan Native.

Natalie Goldberg’s Write Down the Bones Deck Prompts — This is a big topic. I’m not asking for a scholarly school essay or a political harangue. Sink down deeper. Begin with where you live, what’s around you. Perhaps you haven’t thought about injustice very much. Don’t tell me, “I like to mind my own business.” It’s all around us and we need to know about it. Explore this topic. We must wake up to it and feel its ache. So many of us don’t have the luxury to merely “explore” the reality of injustice. We are in the middle of it from birth — because of our nationality, the color of our skin. Wake up to what you honestly feel, where you’ve seen it, how you’ve experienced it — and express it.

The mind here might begin with generalizations, but hang in there. Give your heart/mind the space to find and settle into its details and what you truly need to say.

There is so much injustice in our world

These days injustice has surged

The US government has a short-term memory

Expecting everyone else to keep history

in mind. Promises in mind

Attempting to change all of the kind

of things the people wanted

some of which have haunted

me and mine. Okay fine

Get elected, change everything

There will be a fight I sing

We are warriors and we had to be

So much injustice every day

going on in this country today.

Let’s fight injustice, fight for our right

to have a better day for our children, our light

their future. No going back.

Let us all keep track.

~~~~

First published by Mercury Press on medium.com