I See the Future

every morning

Hello, Friend—

I should be writing Snow in April today. I’m dreadfully close to the deadline. But, this afternoon, I’m writing this essay instead because, ever since I clocked in for my shift today, I’ve had thoughts running through my mind. As I changed diapers. As I tickled toddlers. As I let them hug my legs. As I put them to sleep.

I work with the future every day, and it’s not a conspiracy theory.

What is this world coming to? so many people ask. It’s a valid question. But maybe it isn’t the most important question.

Maybe the most important question is: Who is this world coming to?

The answer is:

Those to whom we give it.

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Many of us are afraid. Many of us hate. Many of us even talk about what we hate. This is how we will make a difference, we tell ourselves. This is how we will somehow make a stand against the onslaught of evil rising up around us. This is how we will matter.

And then at night we lie awake and wonder what difference we made in the world today.

Children? It is terrible to think about children. It is terrible to read accounts of rapes and early sexual education and whatever it is that teaches a child they mean nothing as themselves, that maybe they are actually a cat, that they can be loved only as what they imagine is better than who they are. Perhaps some of us intend to avoid having children because of this. It is not my reason.

There are worse things. There is abortion. There are wars. There are sins so dark I hope I will never learn of them.

And there are lesser things. There are news headlines stating that new generations’ IQ is going down. There are all sorts of conspiracies about AI. There is new literature that makes us ask Why do books exist anymore?

And there we find ourselves—maybe Christian, maybe atheist, maybe Catholic, maybe anything or everything else—asking: What is this world coming to?

Who is this world coming to?

I can tell you, because I see them every day.

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No matter our religion, there are things upon which we agree. Truths. Sometimes even sacred truths. One of these things is death. Memento mori. Remember, man, that thou art dust, and into dust thou shalt return.

I am twenty now. One day—it could be in sixty years, in thirty, tomorrow—my heart will stop beating and my lungs will stop exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen. I will not hear or see or speak. I will die.

And so will you.

Is it sad to think about? Maybe. Maybe for those who will remember me. For me, if I live according to what I have promised God, it will not be sad. If I do what He has asked, I will find only joy.

But it may be sad for others, and that is my responsibility. Not to cause sadness. But to leave behind someone whose heart I will have touched, a people in whose memory I will live, a body of work that will carry on what I now fight to tell others.

And yet, memory is not the heart of what I must leave. The heart of my legacy will be lost in the void of childhood amnesia. Gone with the memory of the arms that held the future as she cried. Vanished with the recollection of the smiling teacher who looked when the future demanded it.

And that is not, to me, a tragedy. It is not something to mourn over. These children are not mine, and they have no duty to remember me.

Which is why it is what I do for them now, actually matters. Not because I matter more than their parents—but because I am one of their first routes of exposure to a cold world. Because, for a little while, they are young and it is I who choose their line time music and sit on the rug with them. Because, for a little while, they are young and it is I who teaches them to throw their paper plate away and stand still as I clean their face.

I work with the future every day. I hold the future. And I listen to what it has to say.

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Today, as a treat, I’m going to tell you about a few of my students. I call this a treat because, to me, it is one. I love my job, and I love it from the diaper blow-outs to the mistaken “Mommy!”

There is one child whom I think may actually be of a similar mind and temperament to the well-known Little Flower, St. Therese. For the sake of privacy, I will call her Angelina here. Angeline is less than two years old and is already talking. She is the most intelligent toddler I have met in my life—smart enough to literally tease me by calling me “Mommy!” after I remind a classmate that I am not Mommy. (Speaking of which, that classmate has now escalated to calling me Mommy, Daddy, and [big brother’s name].)

Angelina asks, “Wha happen?” when her classmates get hurt. Once in a while I’ll have to convince her to let me change her diaper—why? Because I ask. Because even if a child is only two, they still deserve respect. Because they are a person.

One of the first things to impress me about Angelina was her pattern-recognition. I changed her diaper one day during her first week in my class. “I’m so proud of you!” I told her as I set her down and started to spray the diaper changing mat.

She walked away smacking her hands together. It took me about five seconds to realize why.

At our daycare, we listen to children’s songs a lot. One of them is that “bringing home a baby bumble bee” one, where the child carries a bumble bee. Then the bee stings the child, and the child squishes the bee. Then the child realizes his hands are dirty and wipes them off.

I’m bringing home a baby bumble bee

Won’t my Mommy be so proud of me

I’m bringing home a baby bumble bee—

Ouch! It stung me!

… And cont’d.

Angelina had heard my telling her I was proud of her and associated “proud” with this song. And so she walked away doing the hand signals we teach the kids on line, for that song.

Angelina is amazingly intelligent. But she is still human.

It is not her pattern recognition that I admire the most. Not even her vocabulary. Not even her empathy. It is something else. I have nicknamed her “Angelina” for the sake of this essay, but she is not an angel. There are things she does not like, one of which is leaving her water bottle on the shelf. So what does she do when that is the rule?

I will remember the first time perhaps forever. She whimpered. Clutched the water bottle.

“Angelina, please put it away,” we told her.

And she put it on the shelf. And then she stomped her foot and cried. Loudly.

That was a temper tantrum. Those were explosive toddler emotions.

But they came after she had listened.

That is why I compare her to St. Therese. Because St. Therese wasn’t born an angel, either. She wasn’t even born a saintly human. She had her tantrums and her little annoyances and her tears. But she was intelligent enough at a young age to recall them later and put into her story for us to read decades later.

Angelina is not my only student, of course. There’s another, the one who calls me Mommy. I’ll call him Danny here. There are other things he does, such as grabbing my legs approximately fifteen times a day and hugging me. Such as climbing into my lap whenever I sit down. (Even aggressively, sometimes.) Such as calling, “Mom, Mom!” when he wants me to see that he can jump from a height of four inches.

It is not the six inches that touch me. It is the fact that I must see him jump them.

That doesn’t tell me anything about him, you may say. It tells me something about me. But no, it tells me something about him, too. It tells me that he feels at home around me—literally.

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I’m going to interrupt this essay, because my writing of it was interrupted, and so I will try to finish it now. I had planned to say much more. I had planned to make several references, include several examples, draw several conclusions. But right now? I am feeling mildly hurt, and that is okay. But it does affect how the words will come—or not come.

But every hurt passes away. I will go to sleep in a few hours, and I will sleep. And then tomorrow I will get up and walk to the bus stop for another shift working for the future.

My remaining thoughts are these:

Our children are the future.

And they are not abstract. They are concrete, here, now.

Don’t let your fear for the future take away from your time with that future.

Because they may not remember. But they will continue. And we will not.

God bless and Mary keep you,

Gabrielle Marie Kozak, Architect Author

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