Rally Reaches Out to Adults, Children in Different Ways

They were two little boys on a big silver bird in the sky. One had on a black Nike baseball cap and an Orlando Magic jersey, his hair knitted in cornrows. The blond had on Nike shoes and a shirt with a T-rex stomping across it. “Explore the Smithsonian,” it read.

We were 33,000 feet above the Mississippi, heading back to Los Angeles from the Stand for Children in Washington, D.C. The blond, gravity and federal aviation rules aside, was standing on his chair so he could see the other boy in front of him. He was talking up a storm.

“What kind of music is that, Devon?” the blond asked.

“What grade do you go to, Devon?”

“Where do you live, Devon?” Pause. “Devon?”

Now the boys were coloring pictures for each other as fast as they could turn them out. Something wonderful was happening: They were becoming friends.

“What do you want me to draw for you now, Devon?” asked the blond, whose name was Jesse.

Devon thought for a moment. “A dog,” he said.

Sitting beside Devon was his 12-year-old cousin, a big girl with a big heart named Cathy. They asked me for more paper, and then Devon drew a picture of a boy in a torn jersey with “Bull” and “23” on the front and “JESSE” printed above his forehead. His arms were bulging and he had a mean look. Jesse was impressed.

“He looks so strong!” he said.

As for Cathy, she drew a large heart with an arrow through it and the words “JESSE loves CATHY.”

Jesse didn’t quite know what to make of this, but he smiled.

They were three children from different worlds. Over the course of 6,000 miles, they had shared M&Ms;, seen the Lincoln Memorial and tens of thousands of children. Looked down on the snow-capped Rockies and the yawning Grand Canyon. Gone from sea to shining sea. Two of them had never been out of Los Angeles or flown in an airplane or ridden a subway. But at this stage, they had transcended any differences. They had connected.

Exactly what Stand for Children was all about.

*

It is now nearly a month later. And as I look back on our trip to Washington, this is one of the moments I remember most. The rally, which drew 200,000 people in support of government programs that aid children, was exciting and fun--”educational” in the best sense of the dreaded term. It inspired in me a resolve to get involved with children again.

But the march was also a humbling lesson in parental expectations.

Jesse was my 6-year-old son. Devon and Cathy belonged to the Tuesday night basketball and books group run by All Saints Church, Grace Community Bible Church and Pasadena Presbyterian. All Saints raised the money to fly the two of them and 12 other young people from Pasadena to Washington. The kids earned spending money by washing cars and selling See’s candy, and slept on the floor of a church in Arlington, Va. The oldest was 21; the youngest was Devon, 10.

“We really wanted them to have the experience of being with people who are trying to make changes in our society and who care about children,” said Helen Cooper of All Saints. “The whole point of Stand for Children was to emphasize we want to leave no child behind. We wanted to include the people we’re concerned about.”

My son and I were with All Saints too, among the 200 or so members to attend--the largest group out of Los Angeles.

I went because I wanted to protest the appalling conditions so many children in America grow up in, to register my voice as a mother and a citizen. Criticism of the march as a partisan tool being used by people such as Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman seemed beside the point.

My son went because in some amorphous way I thought it would be “good for him,” the powerful fact of so many adults and children together in a righteous cause.

Hope springs eternal.

On the morning of the march, our group met on a grassy slope under a big elm beside the Reflecting Pool. It was gorgeous and warm and the planes were soaring toward National Airport. We had been there maybe 30 minutes. And as I sat there amid the banners and the signs and thousands of ordinary Americans, this feeling came over me of absolute awe. And then I heard my son say, “Can we go back to the hotel now?”

*

So it went for much of the historic day. I had bought a disposable camera for us to record the event with. My son, who had just gotten the Nikes for his birthday, took photos of other kids’ shoes and a Dove ice cream box. When he got bored, which was often, he drew dragons in my notebook or mimicked the gospel singers on stage. I wanted to sing “Kumbaya” with the masses. He rolled his eyes and wanted to buy a T-shirt.

At home the other day, our neighbor Jean asked my son, “What did you like best about Washington?” and he responded, “I got to ride in four taxis!” To his grandparents, he mentioned the pool at the hotel and the Natural History Museum.

At school, Jesse’s kindergarten class greeted him as a minor celebrity. “Did you see the White House?” his teacher asked the first day we were back. His friends wanted to know the important stuff: what they served for lunch on the plane, whether he saw the president.

The attention seemed to catch him off guard, make the rally come alive for him in a way I had not been able to. He recalled for his friends the beauty of the Lincoln Memorial, the majesty of the Washington Monument. I’d been so busy trying to make my son experience what I wanted him to experience that I had failed to give him any credit. He would absorb his own lessons, his own message from the march, as would I.

Last week I was reminded of that truth by two events.

First, Marian Wright Edelman dropped by All Saints. The doyenne of children’s rights met with some 25 members of the church. They talked of strategy, of where they should go from here. Then the controversial advocate asked to visit the church’s day-care center, where she knelt down and talked with the little boys and girls.

Two days later, a group that participated in Stand for Children spoke after church during the Rector’s Forum. The adults told of how the event had deepened their commitment to children, of their search for a way to take action.

As for the kids, they were shy and sweet and direct. Asked what they liked best about Washington, they stood at the microphone and stammered and looked at the floor, mumbling three-word responses.

What stood out for them, finally, were the tangible and simple things--the ride on the airplane, all the people they saw and, yes, the Natural History Museum.