The Mother, The Child, and the Television Screen

There’s a fine line between caring and being invested. It’s a difference similar to the line between compassion and empathy. In both cases, the former brings emotions that can be examined, dealt with, and set aside as the feeler sees fit. But the latter, the being invested and empathizing, those emotions become a part of you. They stay with you longer, until you can deal with them or set them aside. Seeing her mother, curled on the couch, eyes flicking between the television screen and her phone, receiving ping after ping of messages from friends reacting to the same news program, the child couldn’t help but wonder if she herself had ever really been empathetic.

“Protestors stormed the capital,” the mother said when the child emerged from her room for only the second time that day.

“Oh?” Was all she could respond. How could a protest even make it to the capital, she thought. One look at the tv screen filled with MAGA hats and Confederate flags provided her the answer.

She’d just wanted a snack, maybe some coffee, and to go back to her room. She’d been learning a pop song on her violin, a challenge because the layers of modern tones in pop songs don’t always translate well to the classic wooden instrument. She was stuck on the bridge and couldn’t quite figure out how to blend the layers of tones with the right notes. She couldn’t practice well with people in the house, her violin was too loud and the child herself too shy. Instead she sat on the edge of the couch.

“He gave his big speech then just went inside! I mean, he got them all riled up and now…” the mother’s voice trailed, gripped by fear and disbelief.

I should be more afraid or worried, the child thought. Instead she wondered how the US representatives didn’t know the proper methods for sheltering in place. The thought pulled her to an old memory of her sitting in the computer lab with her class and second-grade teacher, backs against the wall as their teacher tried to impress on them the importance of being quiet without ever saying the words ‘active’ or ‘shooter.’ Then another memory, only a year later, when the child’s whole school had been placed on lockdown for a bomb threat. The whole thing had lasted maybe an hour and was ultimately just a middle schooler playing a prank they didn’t fully understand the repercussions of. It hadn’t been a traumatizing event, in fact, she couldn’t help but remember them with some fondness. Active shooter drills or drills like them were always presented in a form of a game. Like high stakes hide-and-seek, or some sick team-building exercise. How else do you teach kids to survive something adults could so easily prevent?

“Why are they calling it a protest?” The child asked, as the same footage of windows being shattered, and offices being broken into played across the screen again and again. She was growing more frustrated with the news anchors than she had been with the protestors. It seemed like only one of the groups really knew what they were doing, and she couldn’t decide which was worse.

Hours passed this way, with the mother feeling and the child wondering if it was so wrong that she was hoping some gun control laws would come out of this.

Occasionally her fingers would twitch as the melody of the pop song played again through her head. It was a love song, slow and melodic and filled with emotions much happier and much more hopeful than anything the news had to offer.

Still, she watched the screen with her mother and saw, for what felt like the hundredth time, a security guard push and redirect a mob giving the chamber time to lock up. Neither could deny the impressive and valuable feat, but it was the cut to the news anchor, her proclamation of, “sometimes all it takes is one good man,” that broke them.

The child burst into laughter, “I think they could have used a few more a lot earlier.” Even her mother, muscles still tense, couldn’t help but smile. Humor and games and laughter, that was how she grew up. And what else could the child offer to the situation?

Her fingers twitched again. She was growing tired of the same footage, of no new news, and what felt like no real progress. The child knew her mother loved to hear her play the violin, she’d told her so nearly every time she’d caught her sitting on the floor of her room silently plucking the strings and fingering through a piece. But it had been so long since the child had really played, bow on the string, music filling every square inch of her room while another person was in the house. She loved playing but hated performing. Just the thought of it filled her with a fear the tv screen could never hope to give her.

She looked again at her mother, still curled on her seat and scrolling through her phone searching for something new. Before the child could stop herself, she asked,

“Would it bother you if I practiced?”

The child’s mother looked up at her and smiled, “I’d love to hear you play.” The mother meant it, but in that moment of eye contact the child could see how drained her mother was, how tired the events of the day had made her. All the child had was energy that needed an outlet.

So she went to her room and closed the door. Not that the door would make any real difference, the walls were so thin the child could always hear when the tv was playing. She knew her mother would hear every note she made, but the door helped her at least feel like she was alone. Like she could make a mistake without being heard.

The child tuned her instrument first. Warm-up notes that meant nothing, shared nothing. Then, she practiced the part of the song she had already figured out. Her bow arm wouldn’t quite cooperate, it was putting too much space between notes that needed to bleed into one another. She moved on to the next part, then the next. There was nothing she could do to help with the images on the tv screen, but she could figure out these notes. She listened to the bridge again, toyed with the strings, listened, made notes, listened. She wondered if anyone in the riot, anyone with any real kind of power over the situation, would listen after this. If any of them had listened before it all started.

She finished the first half of the bridge. She listened again to the second half and let her fingers ghost over the strings in an attempt to catch the sounds. She made notes and played again, but it wasn’t right. She listened again while ghosting her notes, trying to play spot the difference between what the song was saying and what she was playing. She wanted the notes to go a little higher, sing a little longer than what the original bridge was playing. She tried to adjust again and again, but it still wasn’t quite right. Her notes didn’t match the song, but the tone was close. The child’s music still held the love and hope the artist sung of, and the child decided that was as close as she could get for the day.

Arm tired and fingers slightly numb, she loosened her bow and placed both it and her violin back in its case, taking care to fasten the Velcro strap and lay the felt cover over the delicate wooden instrument. Then with a swift flourish she zipped the case shut and pushed it back to its safe place against the wall.

The child walked back into the living room where her mother was still curled on her seat, television still on, but this time her eyes were on her phone. The mother looked up to her daughter and smiled again. “Thank you, that was beautiful.” The child returned the smile but could tell her mother had still only grown more tired.

“Any updates?”

“There’s supposedly a curfew,” the mother laughed.

The child giggled in return, “Oh?”

She looked back at her mother and was filled with a sudden wash of gratitude. In that moment, she realized her mother was feeling everything, so the child didn’t have to, whether the mother realized it or not. She wished she could take some of it, but there was nothing on the screen she hadn’t decided to let go of long ago. The child walked over and sat next to her mother, a woman who lived for hugs, and wrapped her arms around her.

“I love you, mom.”

“I love you too,” the mother replied, kissing her daughter’s head.