Every morning, I hear a beep from our home alarm system, then I hear our front door open and close. My son, Christian, is heading out the door for his morning run.
Christian is a wrestling recruit who is heading to the U.S. Naval Academy for Plebe Summer in a few short weeks. He’s preparing his body and mind for the tough weeks ahead, as his brother did four years earlier. He wants to be like his older brother, Ricky, who recently graduated from the academy with a B.S. in physics and his father, also a grad, who served as a Naval officer for 23 years.
As I roll over to try to get a few more minutes of sleep, I feel a queasiness in my stomach. I chant to myself, “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK … God is watching him,” hoping to lull myself back to sleep.
My efforts are futile. Christian suffers from the same condition that caused Minneapolis police to allegedly murder 46-year-old George Floyd, the condition that caused a former police officer and his son to allegedly kill Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia: He’s large and dark. Christian is 6 feet tall and 230 pounds.
I lie still and frozen in my panic, not wanting to wake my husband by tossing and turning. My mind wanders to horrifying places as I envision police officers stopping him based on nothing more than what they see: a large, dark-skinned black male running at 6 a.m.
Will instant assumptions be made, conclusions drawn? He must’ve stolen something from the town center up the street, or robbed a house in the upscale neighborhood he’s running from. They won’t know he was born and raised in that neighborhood. Will he be shot with his hands up and his knees down, or choked until the last ounce of breath drifts away from his body?
When they make the conscious decision to stop, frisk and brutalize, they won’t know that he’s getting ready to wrestle at a Division I school, or that he is a prolific songwriter and singer. He can belt out a tune in a silky baritone that would cause Teddy Pendergrass to smile from heaven.
My mother called him Chocolate Chip (Chip for short) because she said he was sweet and brown, hence the name.
The officers who interrupt the steady flow of his size-13 feet hitting the pavement won’t know that he’s a big teddy bear who adores his twin sister and his two brothers, who respects his dad and honors his momma. They don’t know that, like his dad and brother, he wants nothing more than to serve the country he loves, but the question is and always has been: Does his country love him back?
Will his unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness be stripped away from him by a gunshot or a chokehold administered by those who don’t believe all men are created equal?
About 30 minutes into my fully awake nightmare, I hear another beep. The door opens and shuts. I take a deep breath, put my heart back in my chest, and thank God he’s home.
