Mockingbird Test

I’m ready for my Atticus Finch moment. I’m ready to take a beating for the little guy without swinging back. To sacrifice. To fall in the burning building. And to love some unfortunate fool who deserves better.

***
I’m at that age where my Dad felt the itching of the road. He scratched in 1977, when my sister was 3, just a little older than Naya. I haven’t seen or heard from him in almost 30 years.

I’m curious if he’s ever asked by strangers that question I ask him in my head. What do you say? I try to think of friends I left behind 25 years ago. Do I remember them? Their names or faces?

‘Do you have any children?’ the stranger would ask him. But that’s not the question.

Still, I wonder how he answers the warm-up, and what he thinks. It’s not the same as being given up for adoption. It would be like me scratching tomorrow. Putting my children in a time capsule. How would I answer?

***
‘Do you have any kids?’ the stranger asks me. I am 50 years old. The year is 2035. That’s the context.

‘What?’

‘I asked if you have any kids.’

‘I don’t know. I had two children when I was younger.’

‘Did something happen to them?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen them in 30 years.’

***

When Tristan was born I was obsessed that something would happen to me, that I would be hit by the bus from the new proverbs, the cart from the old. The fear, don’t laugh, that kept me up at night was that I wouldn’t know what he would look like as a man. I studied his eyes, imagining that all the other features would change. And waited desperately for him to speak. I tried to hold off that inevitable bus until he said his first words.

***
‘What would Atticus Finch do?’

‘What?’

The stranger asks that same question again to that 50-year-old man.

***
My cousin saw him once, in a bank, somewhere in Texas. It would jar me to stand behind him in line at the bank. To stand taller than a man you last saw when you were knee high, who put you in a time capsule.

I might ask him. It would be hard. What would Atticus Finch do?

***
‘I want to do something meaningful. I want to make a difference in the world.’

‘You do make a difference.’

’I haven’t done anything.’

‘You have.’

I know what she’s trying to say. That I may never get to save Tom Robinson from the madding crowd, but I know what she’s trying to say. The image is stuck in my head.

'People you’ve been before, that you don’t want around anymore.'

‘I want to do something to make you proud.’

‘You make me proud.’

Moments, unlike people, are perfectly suited to time capsules.