kunm commentary

Sunday night, between commercials, I surfed over to watch a family's house get radically redecorated. I couldn't have stomached watching an hour of the angst of decorators, construction workers, landscape artists and other prima-donna types, trying to accomplish, in one week, what usually would take them months.

This family was chosen because the husband and father was in the military, overseas, in Iraq. Coincidentally, he returned for the surprise finish, when the family would see their remodeled home for the first time.

I don't know what all they did to the home, but the family "oohed" and "ahhed" appropriately. I came back at the end, as the family stood in the 1/7th scale imitation of Dodger Stadium that was their back yard. The boys were squeeling happily.

Then they brought out a "special" guest, in a catcher's mask. It was Dad, back from Iraq.

If you'd told those boys they'd have to spend the rest of their lives in a cardboard refrigerator box in a downtown alley, they wouldn't have cared.

I saw two starved sets of arms, clinging desperately to a father, frantically trying to absorb the love they'd missed for however long he'd been gone.

I saw a silly, chattery, bouncy, red-headed kid transform suddenly, as the wounding and trauma of seperation, of worry for a parent's safety, flooded out of him. He couldn't hold his daddy tightly enough.

And I thought about the kids whose parents aren't coming home.

I thought about Afghani kids, Iraqi kids. I thought about the Timor Tigers, who conscript -- aka kidnap -- small children into their terrorist gangs. I thought about Palestinian kids, throwing rocks, passing bombed-out walls bearing posters of suicide bombers. I thought about South African kids, orphaned by AIDS, in a country that's trying desperately to heal from Apartheid.

I remembered the ten years I lived in the so-called "War Zone" of Albuquerque. I know some people consider that label an epithet -- mostly the property owners in the area.

But the label pertains.

After my daughter died, I opened my home to the neighbor kids.

We did homework, learned to cook and repair things, gardened, created art and just talked together.

And I heard their stories.

Not one child who came to my home hadn't witnessed serious violence or criminal behavior. Many had been victimized directly. Most didn't live in two-parent families. None lived in houses, either rented or owned. Most struggled to make it through the day with enough food, without being hurt. Many tried to make it through the day without being caught for trying to take care of themselves and their younger siblings.

I recognized something in those boys on my TV last night. It was something about deprivation. It was something about bravery, to survive trauma.

And I imagined. What if we adults made children the center of our decision making -- not in theory, but as the main motivation of our lives?

What if every ambassador, CEO, politician, preacher, landlord, soldier and parent made the welfare of children his or her main priority?

Those boys last night didn't care about status symbols. They didn't care about upward mobility. They weren't interested in mass-produced gizmos from a big box store.

All they wanted was the nurture, protection and support of their daddy. Love, comfort and security were all that mattered to those boys.

Their priorities were simple, reasonable, logical.

Why aren't ours?