Becoming a Parent in the Age of Black Lives Matter

In a park about half a mile from my home is a wide-open field of grass, whose thin, uneven blades rise up past my ankles. The playground near the park is, like other playgrounds across the country, no longer open, surrounded by the orange-plastic fencing that has become unsettlingly familiar. Swings and seesaws and monkey bars that were once teeming with children sit in silence. Robins have begun making a nest at the top of the slide, building a home in the empty corner of the jungle gym’s small deck.

I have a 3-year-old son who loves to sing songs from at the top of his lungs and a 1-year-old daughter who laughs like there are fireworks in her belly. Almost every day over the past three months of quarantine, I have taken my children to this field as the culmination of our daily walks. We are almost always the only people there, and relish the sweeping emptiness that surrounds us. We park the double