Sarah saw it coming, and I brushed her off.

We weren’t sure Violet would make it. 

Sarah went through one false labor and then another, and I said to my wife, “I’m afraid this one might not make it.”

But then, Violet arrived, and we knew she’d make it, even though she was teeny-tiny and spindly and as red as a steamed lobster.

When it was safe to do, I took my turn visiting my daughter and new granddaughter in the neonatal ICU at St. David’s Hospital. A nurse guided me through a series of double-doors and down several long corridors and finally into the NICU unit. As I weaved through the maze of oxygen tents that held the preemies, I was shaken by how small they were, no bigger than my hand, and yet, they seemed to be fighting furiously for their lives.

I arrived at a corner room where Sarah was feeding Violet, and it took everything I had not to burst into tears when I saw my daughter holding her daughter. 

Nothing prepares you for that.

I suppose I held Violet for a moment, but I don’t remember. I was more concerned about my own baby. How was she? How did she feel? Was there anything I could do? How about a cheeseburger? P Terry’s is right next door. You want fries? A root beer? A beer?

No thanks, she said. She was fine. Violet was fine. Everything was fine. Relax, Dad. We’re fine.

I either wasn’t allowed or inclined to stay long, and I spent most of my time struggling to make small talk without asking embarrassing questions about sitz baths.

Before I knew it, the nurse who walked me in walked me out, and on the way, she said, “Don’t worry. She’s the healthiest kid in here.”

•••

So, Sarah and James brought Violet home and like that, Violet turned 1. She was as round as a cue ball and looked so Asian strangers assumed she was adopted. She looks so Asian because James’ mother is Korean, and Violet inherited a bucket of her DNA.

Of course, I fell for her instantly, and she seemed to take to me, so we got along fine. What I enjoyed most about her was also the thing that scared me the most, and that is the fact that she was and still can be off-the-charts defiant. She believes she knows how the world should work, and she works to bend it to her will, and when the world doesn’t comply, windows rattle.

I’ve seen her defeated only once. She’d thrown a fit and was sent to her room to find a happier place, and when Sarah peeked in to make sure she wasn’t gutting a doll, she found Violet sitting on her potty, her head bowed, her hands clasped in her lap, looking like a political prisoner who’d refused to betray her country.
•••

Like all first-borns, Violet was intrigued the idea of a second born until she realized the second born was sticking around. 

 “You mean, we’re keeping him?” she asked her mother. 

 “Of course.” her mother replied.

“Forever?!”

Violet couldn’t believe it. No had asked her about it, and if they had, she’d have told them she neither wanted nor needed a playmate, as her little brother, Robbie, would soon learn — again and again. Robbie worships her, and she tolerates him when it serves her whims or needs. 

I babysat them one morning, and Violet had shoved Robbie, who was 18 months old at the time, so I had to console him and then explain to her why shoving her brother wasn’t only wrong, it was bad long-term strategy.

“First, he’s little, and it’s wrong to pick on little kids,” I told her. “Second, he’s not going to stay little for long, and you’re going to stay little the rest of your life, so the next time you shove him, he’s going to shove back, and then you’re going to be in big trouble, Missy.”

No response, so I told her, “You need to know something,” I said. “I’m not afraid of you. I raised your mother. I’m pretty sure I can handle you.”

She crossed her arms and scrunched her eyebrows and stiffened her bottom lip, and I knew what that meant. It meant, “We’ll see, old man.”

•••

Here we are, two years later. Violet remains defiant — more defiant than her mother or me or anyone in the family. We don’t know what to make of her. She’s vim and vinegar one moment; milk and honey the next. 

She loves to visit us, alone, and corkscrew into a blanket on the couch in the TV room and watch something on Netflix in peace and quiet, away from her pesky brother.

I suspect we’ll see much more of her in the years ahead because she lives just down the street. Soon, we’ll think nothing of walking downstairs and finding her asleep on our couch, surrounded by an empty box of Rice Krispies, a carton of chocolate milk and a grape popsicle stick. I can’t wait.

•••

I wrote the first draft of this a few days after the mass murders outside Atlanta and before the mass murders in Boulder, and my dominant sentiment was and remains, “I’m so sick of pent-up, fucked-up white men who, for no better reason than they’re having a bad day, take out their anger and frustration on former co-workers, innocent bystanders and/or first graders.

By the way, Violet is a first grader, so, of course, I worry about her. I worry I’ll need to walk her back and forth from her house to our house, then from our house to her house, even though we live on a safe street in a safe neighborhood in a ritzy part of town. Somehow, I don’t feel safe these days. I certainly don’t feel safe for Violet because she’s so obviously an Asian American.

That’s hard for me to admit. A month ago, Sarah mentioned something about escalating violence against Asian Americans, and I brushed her off.

“I don’t buy it. These right-wing nuts are too busy hating AOC and Pelosi to waste their time on Asian Americans. As for Violet, she’s in no danger. Stop worrying.”

Clearly, I underestimated the American capacity for ignorant rage. 

I forgot about Orlando, Parkland, Sutherland, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Luby’s, the Walmart in El Paso and on and on. I thought the last time would be the last time. I thought pigs would fly. I forgot that I live in a country where it’s harder for a 21-year-old with mental health issues to buy legal marijuana than it is to lumber into a gun store and strut out with an AR-15 and a box of shells.

I forgot I live in a country that was recently led by a narcissistic sociopath who juiced up his cult by denigrating and stigmatizing “others.” He demonized anyone who believes Black lives matter, climate change is real, the minimum wage could jump to $15 an hour without bankrupting the Walton family.

He told his idiot sycophants that QAnon and Antifa were real — tangible and concrete — like the U.S. Army, that it had generals and guided missiles and fancy headquarters somewhere, possibly posing as a New Jersey pizza parlor. 

He deemed legal immigrants “rapists and murderers,” then he blamed his political troubles on a “China Virus” he first denied even existed. Once it reached pandemic proportions, he claimed it was no worse than a bad case of the flu, then predicted it would magically disappear. A few hundred thousand dead later, he informed the CDC it might want to look into reports he’d heard on Fox & Friends that COVID could be cured by huffing Clorox bleach.

When one hair brain suggestion after another frizzled, he doubled down. He ranted about election fraud that never happened and bullied honest local officials to cook the books. In a televised debate with Joe Biden, he refused to condemn white supremacists and the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” 

On January 6, 2021, he blew his whistle, and his lapdogs stormed the Capitol. I watched and assume you did, too — in disbelief and horror — as a sitting American president incited his know-nothing deplorables to prowl the halls of the House and Senate in search of the Vice President and the Speaker of the House and drag them of their offices and try them on charges on high crimes and misdemeanors against the United State of Trump.

 When the riot was over, Fox and OAN and Newsmax blamed anyone and everyone except Trump for the most shameful moment in American political history since the internment of Japanese American citizens to “relocation centers” during World War II.

The alt-right media ignored the noose, the zip ties, the Trump flags, the MAGA caps and the QAnon signs. They claimed the clown wearing the fur and horns must have been Antifa, and the dope who ransacked Nancy Pelosi’s office a BLM infiltrator, was likely on the Soros-Gates payroll.

As for the kooks who kicked in doors, smashed windows, and stole paper weights, they later testified they never meant to do nobody no harm— not even the Capitol police officers whom they’d stomped, doused with bear repellant, and beat with batons and flagpoles. 

Who will ever forget watching this? 

How do we put it behind us? 

How do we teach U.S. government in high schools? 

Why would we even bother to delude ourselves into believing we are a nation united, and that our elected officials value country, principle, and the rule of law over blind party allegiance? 

How do we not sink into sullen cynicism after Mitch McConnell laid full blame for the insurrection on Trump, then let him off the hook, then declared he’d “absolutely support” Trump in 2024 should he win the GOP nomination? 

This would be comical if it weren’t so surreal. Unfortunately, it’s where we are, and it’s who we are. Google “Pro-Trump mob stomps DC police officer.” Read the 2,000-plus comments posted on CNBC’s website. They’re nauseating.

“These citizens simply feared for their lives.”

“The officers were in on it.”

“Cop getting squished in between the doors, hilarious.”

“Karma is a bitch. Best video I’ve seen in years.”

•••

Since then, the incidence of attacks on Asian Americans has risen to almost epidemic levels. Sarah saw it coming, and I didn’t believe her.  I assumed the racist bimbos and bigots, the Kens and Karens, the wackos in fur and horns, and the Braveheart wannabes in commando chic would never target Violet because I’m her grandfather, and I’m white, so isn’t that what white privilege is all about? 

I suppose not.

It kills me, knowing my daughter and her husband are now forced to have the same conversation with my granddaughter that so many Black parents are forced to have with their children. 

“Be careful. Watch where you go. Watch what you do. Watch who you’re with, and what they’re doing. Know why you’re there. Know how you’re getting back. Do nothing that might provoke them. They’re just looking for an excuse.”

I know I’m late to this party, and I admit I’m speaking out now because it affects me directly in a way it never has before. I turn 70 in October 2022. I’ve survived the Cold War, JFK’s assassination, Vietnam, assorted civil rights movements, military incursions on behalf of cheap oil, presidents good and horrid, polio, AIDS, Covid, the birth of social media, the death of decent music, but for the first time in my life, I fear we, as a nation, may not make it.