Justin Trudeau has our attention on the CBC
\nFor the children’s question period.
\nOur boys lean in to hear what he’ll say.
\nI’m tense, waiting for the pauses and wavers.
\nI know that ministers and fathers can lie.<\/p>\n
The seven year-old notes Justin is handsome.
\nThe almost-four year-old is watchful on my lap.
\nMy partner stands behind our chair.
\nA brother and sister in Montreal ask:
\n“What will happen to us if our parents get sick?”
\nI can feel my partner breathe with me,
\nBut we keep our focus on the boys.
\nAt bedtime she will rock the younger one as he cries
\nAnd repeats the question.
\nIt takes more time for parents to comfort children
\nThan they have to comfort each other.<\/p>\n
Justin presents a navy cardigan and meticulous grooming,
\nNeatly framed on the colonial steps.
\nI bet he’s pulling on old drama teacher tricks:
\nPretend the camera lens is the face of his youngest.
\nPretend the teleprompter scrolls a Christmas story.
\nForget the actor’s terror of an empty theatre:
\nPretend the children are all there.<\/p>\n
He starts every answer in good form: with a sigh,
\nA smile, and “I know many of you are frightened.”
\nThen he finds the talking-point groove:
\nCanada, taking care, Canada, safe, Canada,
\nBrave nurses, Canada, working together, health,
\nGood place, good country, Canada.
\nThe country’s name can become a mantra
\nFor how its settlers want to see themselves.<\/p>\n
If you let the sound be ancient again,
\nYou can hear the word that meant “village”
\nIn a time before boats and planes brought
\nSmallpox, economic plans, and cardigans.<\/p>\n
A while back, the seven year-old asked me
\n“Is Justin Trudeau a good man?”
\nBy instinct, my reply was more about myself:
\n“Like all of us, he’s trying to be a good person.”<\/p>\n
(That feeling when teaching the benefit of the doubt
\nPerpetuates a spell about white intentions.)<\/p>\n
The young interviewer, online from his bedroom,
\nSays they received 4000 questions.
\nThe selections show that children ask
\nWhat many adults ask, stripped of number-crunching.
\nA snowsuited boy in Iqaluit asks
\nWhether the virus can survive the cold.
\nA six year-old girl in Toronto asks
\nHow homeless people are supposed to stay at home.
\nThere is no question from a First Nations child about how
\nTo wash your hands without clean water.<\/p>\n
I know the parent politics of cutting a deal
\nBetween what I know, what I am ashamed of,
\nAnd what I can say to project a safe world.
\nI know the pivot between dread
\nAnd the reframe that mixes hope with fiction.
\nDoes acting the part of the good parent scale up?
\nThe Minister of Children also has to comfort oil barons.
\nHe has to pretend he knows what millennials need,
\nPromise that we can do anything when we grow up,
\nThat everything we want is sustainable,
\nThat everything will turn out alright.
\nHe shares tobacco with chiefs and then betrays them.
\nHe has to smile as he zooms with sociopaths.
\nHe has to count the money that pays for the stagecraft
\nThat prompts a boy to ask: “Is he a good man?”
\nInstead of “Does he do good things?”<\/p>\n
Justin is a month younger than me.
\nHe and I might share night sweats,
\nPalpitations, a certain emptiness about who we are.
\nHe and I might have bonded
\nIn a high school drama class in the late 1980s,
\nWhen climate collapse and trickster stories
\nWere fantasies to star in
\nRather than medicine to surrender to
\nWhen we manage to tell our children: “We don’t know.”<\/p>\n
\u2014 mr<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Justin Trudeau has our attention on the CBC For the children’s question period. Our boys lean in to hear what he’ll say. I’m tense, waiting for [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,23,684,689,112,66],"tags":[460,248,692,693],"class_list":["post-9084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-blog","category-covid-19","category-physical-distancing","category-poetry","category-politics","tag-justin-trudeau","tag-parenting","tag-physical-distancing","tag-social-distancing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}