Thinking About It

My wife and I are thinking about it. And when you’re thinking about it, you think about it all the time. We think about it and say “well, we’re not quite ready yet,” but everyone always responds “well, there’s no such thing as ready and you just have to do it.” So we think about it. And all the things that it involves.

We think about sleep schedules. We think about what the best kind of stroller is. We think it’s the Nuna, but it might be the Uppababy. We think it’s the Nuna with the car seat. We think.

We think about getting a SNOO. Then, we look at the price and think about asking our friends whose babies are now toddlers if they still have their SNOO. If they want to sell it. We think about diapers and bills. We think about hearing them laugh for the first time. We think about pregnancy as a concept. We think about pregnancy as a very real thing. We think about what they will look like. We think about which cartoons they will make us watch until we want to strangle Peppa Pig. Or Daniel Tiger. Or Big Bird. We think about how we will inevitably become the kind of people who say “Bluey is actually really good. Like, it’s not just like a kids’ show. You know?” We think about hosting birthday parties. We think about reading to them. We think about doing one-parent, one-language. We think I may need to read to them only en español. We think El gato en el sombrero just doesn’t rhyme! We think about which soccer kit we will buy them. (Colombia, obviously. Arsenal, for sure. USA? Idk, maybe.) We think about all these things all the time.

Earlier this week, ICE shot and killed Joan Sebastián Guerrero, a Colombian national, in Biddeford, Maine. He was driving his car. His child was with him. She is three years old. He is dead. His last words were “I tried to stop.” Now, I think about this all the time.

I think about how I am Colombian, like Joan Sebastián. I think about how we don’t look alike, but we don’t look that different. Different ID numbers, same great flavor. I think about how he was younger than me and already had a three year old. I think about how he had a work permit. I think about all the people who proudly say people need to “come here the right way,” but have no idea of the difference between a work visa or a green card or citizenship. I think about liberals who also have no idea about this difference. I think about posting about it on Instagram because that must help? Right? Surely? It is better than nothing. Right? Right?

I think about how Joan Sebastián just voted for a far-right candidate in the Colombian election. I think about how that president-elect has said nothing about the murder of a Colombian citizen by a rogue paramilitary police force. I think about how that same president-elect made his fortune as a lawyer defending paramilitary death squads in Colombia. I think about how Joan Sebastián had every right to vote for whoever he wanted. I think unkind thoughts about people voting against their own interests. I think about how I am being cruel. I think about the “falsos positivos” scandal in Colombia. About hundreds of young boys taken by the military, murdered, and dressed in rebel fatigues, to look like casualties of war, which of course, lead to bonus payments. I think about how they were eighteen when I was eighteen. I think about how my entire adult life, I have been faced with the reality that if I had been slightly less fortunate, if I had been born in a different home, in a different city in Colombia, to a different family, I would probably be dead. Murdered in the name of order.

I think about how this piece isn’t funny enough for this Substack, which is supposed to be about satire and humor. I think about how I feel like I’m making this man’s death about me. I think about how I can’t stop thinking about it. About his senseless death. I think about how his last name means warrior. I think about his daughter. I think about how we’re thinking of bringing a daughter or a son into this country. I think about driving them around. I think about the Nuna with the car seat. I think about doing one child one language. I think about having to explain to a child that I do speak English after they hear me speak it to a cop that pulled me over. I think about the episode of television my wife and her co-workers wrote about the cruelty of traffic stops last year. I think it won’t be a cop that pulls me over. I think it will be an out of shape ICE agent with a vendetta. I think unkind things of anyone who would join ICE.

I think about driving in Kansas City, where my wife is from. I think about never leaving my city. I think about how Kansas City just hosted the World Cup. About how wonderful it has been to me, to my family, to so many visitors from Colombia, from Argentina, from Ghana. I still think about not driving there again. I think about how fear is how they win. I think about hope being an act of resistance and all that trite stuff we have to say these days, but I think about how it’s trite for a reason and the reason is that it’s kinda true. I think about how cynicism is the tool of the weak and oppressors everywhere want us to use it. I think I could make jokes about them. Really good ones. I think about how I was lucky to write some jokes with my friends to make sense about the horrors of ICE. I think about that video of the ICE agent slipping on ice in Minneapolis. I think of Renée Good. I think of Alex Pretti. I think of Lorenzo Salgado Araújo, shot and killed by ICE just a week before Joan Sebastián. I think about how they said he had “a substance” in his car. I think about how the substance was salt. I think about how we don’t know all the facts. I think about how this is an “ongoing investigation.” I think we don’t know the facts, but we know the truth. I think we all know deep down. I think even ICE agents know it.

I think about having a baby. I think about my wife. I think about Joan Sebastián. I think about his wife. I think about his baby. I think of her Bluey pajamas. I think about it all the time.