We are the lucky ones.
Yesterday I woke up, bought coffee, went to
work, left work, bought sushi. Meanwhile my sister-in-law laboured with her
first child. I told my students that I would be looking at my phone frequently during
class because of the situation. They were, as you would expect, quite obliging.
People like babies and people want babies to be born healthy.
I left work at 1:30pm or so and walked
towards the State Library on Swanston St, texting my housemate Megan and friend
Amy who were already at the Refugee rally. We all wanted to go to protest
about the abysmal immigration policies that are stepping up the anti in terms
of cruelty and economic waste. I found Megan and Amy and we joined the march,
which was by that point moving towards the immigration department. I got a text
from my mother. Erin was at 7cm. Not
that far off.
Erin was having a ginormatron, as she put
it. There were some concerns that he (the baby) was going to be too big. She
was possibly going to need a C-section. I realised that if this situation was
happening a hundred years ago or in a developing country, they would likely be
among those who wouldn’t make it through. Thank God for modern medicine and
hospitals and doctors.
Yesterday as I marched I asked my friends
what they thought would happen to Erin if she was at this time giving birth
not in a nice modern hospital but in a detention centre. They shrugged. It
wasn’t a good thought. Thank God my nephew won’t grow up behind bars. Held
prisoner because his parents were trying to seek a better life for themselves
and him. Or separated from them, as was the case recently with one woman. What happens to babies born in detention? Can we even find out?
I want my nephew to have a childhood and
adolescence and adulthood in a place where he is free and safe to be who he is.
Where he has healthcare and education. Where he won’t be oppressed for his race, his religion or his sexuality. He probably won’t have to face what is happening in
the places asylum seekers flee from, and that's good, I don’t want him to grow up in a place
where he can’t be safe and well. I also don’t want him to grow up in a country
that doesn’t realise its own wealth and luck and treats the most vulnerable in
this world like they are criminals. I want him to be a strong and loving and
compassionate man. I have to say that at the moment his country won't help him with this.
Atticus Declan Sessions was born yesterday at
about 3:30 in the afternoon. He is big and hairy and healthy and his mother is
well. His father is proud. His grandparents are very happy. He was
named after Atticus Finch, a character in Harper Lee’s classic ‘To Kill a
Mockingbird.’ Atticus Finch represented a wrongly accused black man in a time
where racism was the norm. He fought against an unjust system and did not
accept what was, to him, blatantly unfair. I’m sure that my nephew Atticus’s
parents want the same for him. Congratulations. He is loved by many.
