Yesterday I took advantage of my status as Wealthy Aunt from the States (which still makes me laugh, but I guess comparatively speaking it's the truth), and gave my nephew Raul a fine day in Xalapa. We spent a few hours at the Museo Interactivo -- an educational kids' museum a lot like Explora in Albuquerque -- which included dinosaurs, old cars, experiments with gravity and electricity, a film in the planetarium, and a sculpture garden in the forest reserve surrounding the place. He seemed to enjoy the sculptures just as much as the science exhibits. I have such joy at this kid's openness to life; such hope for his potential. We took a taxi back downtown, ate tacos al pastor, watched some guys painting a new mural, and talked a lot. I did my best with the double challenge of language and inner voices (which still say I have no right to advise anyone on their lives, even a 9-year-old kid) and offered what wisdom I could scrape together for him, on living through the very possible separation of his parents. At about the same age I was when it happened to me. I said all the things I needed somebody to say to me then, but didn't get: that none of it is his fault, that both his parents love him, that he's got a wonderful heart and a brilliant intelligence and is stronger inside than he may know. That it won't be perfect but it will probably be alright. That it's beautiful that he's such a sensitive soul that he cries at the tears of others, and I really hope he doesn't forget how to cry as the world needs more guys with that ability. That if he just studies well and reads a lot and stays healthy, he can do pretty much anything he wants in the world.
Which, by the way, I asked him about. What do you want to do when you grow up? He smiled. He had an answer ready. He said he'd like to be mayor of a town so he could get people to take better care of their land and water. And maybe to work with solar energy. And also to travel the world. And could I please check in with him when he gets old enough to travel, and take him along if I'm going somewhere interesting.
In the interest of objectivity: it might or might not be entirely fair to tell a kid who lives without plumbing, in a decidedly anti-progressive town with mud streets, where I wonder if anyone, seriously, ever goes to college instead of getting pregnant at 15, that he can do anything he wants. But history does validate this possibility in equally unlikely places. I'm gonna hold out what hope I can for this one.
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