I was reading about the $37 million dollar payment to the family in the wrongful death civil suit of Korryn Gaines. Anand came to climb into bed with us because he was too scared to go to bed on his own, which is a pretty common occurrence; he’s an imaginative kid. The world is dark and full of terrors.
So I told him a story about a kid named Banand, who loved bananas; it was a pretty silly story, and I soon had him howling with laughter, which probably woke up Kevin a little, but that’s the price of fatherhood.
When the story was done, I covered Anand’s small face in kisses, and told him to go to sleep, and tucked the covers around him. Then I lay beside him in the dark, thinking that if you paid me a million dollars for every *second* that child has been on this Earth, it would not come close to compensating me, or the world, for his loss.
Our children are literally priceless, and in America we are failing them, day by day, second by second.