You Are Not The Special One: A Letter To My Son

Published in MUTHA Magazine, March 5, 2019

The other day, romping through the living room, stuffed kitty under one arm, you stopped, raised your little chin like Nero and declared: “I am the special one!” Floppy blond hair, brown eyes wide, a pint-sized superhero, minus the cape. The performance should have been funny. It was funny. Your dad and I laughed.

So, why does my chest feel tight? Why this dread? You’re always bringing home words, songs and habits (good and bad) from school. And really, shouldn’t every six-year-old have the right to stand among loved ones and declare with the confidence of the chosen: “I am the special one!” Children learn better soon enough. 

But that’s not true, is it? Watching Judge Kavanaugh’s tantrums on television last fall I knew it wasn’t true. Not all children learn better. There, on the television, I saw what happens when a privileged boy, like you, grows up believing he is the special one.  

Such a boy grows into someone who views others as allies or obstacles to a success measured in money, power and popularity; a man who remains—at seventeen, twenty, forty, fifty—as deluded about his own relative worth as you, age six. A petulant man clinging to the lie that he earned advantages he was born into, and that people not born into the same advantages—or the same religion, ethnicity, nationality or gender—deserve less regard.

I don’t wish for you a life of such spiteful delusion. You are a special one. That’s true. You will always be my special one. But you are not the special one.

Read the rest at MUTHA Magazine