It’s one of those times when the mundane becomes the sublime, which is why this photo is part of the Decency Project.
My past few days have been blessed by pictures neighborhood parents posted of their children starting their first day of school. Admittedly, it’s a retrograde passage of my life, since I recall the first day of school for each of my children as though it just happened. It’s one of those seminal moments in a parent’s life that lasts forever, and like hashmarks on the door jamb showing the rate of your child’s growth, these instances mark the growth of your personal history and lend it worth. An objective correlative, it you will.
An unfortunate fact of the Decency Project is the inherent pathos invoked when juxtaposed alongside on Donald Trump. Can you imagine a picture of him as a grinning little boy off to his first day of school? Did his parents even want one of him?
Can you imagine him having one of his own children? Or, for that matter, his children of their children?
For me, the answer is no, and it’s pretty sad, really. The rest of us, the 99.9999 percent of Americans, enjoy lives packed full of these cherished moments, and the likelihood that Trump does not and will not invokes a certain compassion for him, at least for me.
