My current immigration status is: saw a really pretty cloudy, still bright sky over a cornfield while riding my bike here in Ottawa, and cried.

For a while in the last year we've been in Canada, I kept having a dream that we had to return to Lincoln for something, maybe a wedding, or even just a visit, and then we realized we didn't want to go back to Canada at all, even though all our stuff was still back in our place in Ottawa and it was going to be really awkward to explain to our friends and family that we were back now actually, and let's just forget that whole thing we said before about moving, okay?

I haven't had that dream in a while now; I realized it when I saw the sky open up over the Experimental Farm on a beautiful recent fall day.

Other people are having different dreams, back in the US. I read about the whole apartment building forced out of bed in the middle of the night a few weeks back, in Chicago, and it took a long time to get the horror of what was reported to have happened out of my head.

My empathy didn't used to be quite so vivid, I think, or come with so many pictures attached. A little kid was killed by a garbage truck here recently and the picture of the happy little kid who isn't any more physically hurts each time I see it, on social media or the news or in updates about a vigil or a rally. A young trans woman who just wanted to swim, to compete and have a normal American college experience, was found to have died today. I'm off social media now for the day because it hurts too much to see her beautiful face; to know she shouldn't have died; to know why she died; to know she could be any number of my friends; to see myself, in my own small way, in her.

I think about that apartment building that night in Chicago, and so many of the small moments before and since where the routines of daily life in cities around the US is being interrupted by senseless violence and intentionally stoked fear, state-sponsored terrorism coming straight from the highest halls of power in what used to be/should be/was/could have been/will always be my home.

The people who are most under threat currently by the US's new secret police with seemingly unlimited funding are people who don't look like me - people who don't get read as white. I've always known that we're all human, right? In a "love for humanity, all the humans" kind of way. Having children has made me feel so much more connected to other humans on a spiritual level than I ever have before, though. I see other parents at the park and maybe the foods they eat at home or the languages they speak or the way they dress or the colors of their skin are different from mine, but I know we're both at some point needing to yell "do not jump off of that!" and "get that out of your mouth!" and saying "do you want your hat?" and getting an immediate "no!" as the little cheeks turn rosy as the sun goes down. We all just want our kids to be safe, and healthy, and happy. We want them to please just eat something for dinner and please sleep when it's bedtime.

Since having my first kid I can't stop looking around at politicians and all the "bad guys" of the current moment in the US and around the world and imagining them as little babies. Helpless little babies who have simple needs, hard to satisfy - milk, clean diapers, cozy jammies, warm arms to rock them and mouths to sing to them and kiss their little baby heads. Everyone I meet, everyone in every seat of power who gets to decide who lives & dies, whose life gets harder or easier or wiped out entirely with a stroke of a pen or a triumphant group text about bombing an apartment building - they were little babies once, and they were probably cared for by someone who wanted for them what I want for my babies. To keep them safe, and clean, and healthy so they can grow up and learn about the world and do whatever they'll do as grownups. To get them to please, just please sleep, little baby. Someone wanted that for them before, probably with all their might.

I don't know what my point is here really other than this is what I think about a lot these days. That we were all babies once, even the people who've grown up to do so much harm, and to have values that seem so incomprehensible and foreign to my own. And all us grownups also have a lot in common, especially those of us who are parents. My heart is breaking for the parents (and the not-parents, and the kids) in much more danger than I am, danger maybe I can say I escaped. How soon is too soon to have survivor's guilt, when the metaphorical (and sometimes all too real) bullets aren't done falling yet? And my heart is also breaking because I miss my home, my friends and family, my community. All of it at once.

Hug your babies, hug your friends, hug your community and your neighbors and shower everyone you meet in care. We're all just little beings with simple needs, hard to satisfy. Harder than it should be.