A letter to our newborn American child

You were born upon the third night of curfew and in the 3rd month of the Covid lockdown, entering the world as around us an epic history swirled.

When your mom entered into labour, authorities helicopters circled above our apartment. Our midwife’s assistant was questioned by officers outside the door. And when we looked out of our window soon after your birth, a convoy of New York team cars darted over the Brooklyn Bridge towards the towers of Lower Manhattan, lights flashing scarlet and blue.

Everyday for a week afterwards, a column of demonstrators made that same journey throughout the bridge; 10s of countless them yelling the mantra of the motion, Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.

You gulped your very first lungfuls of air as protesters across America shouted “I can’t breathe.”

We selected a home birth because you were born at a time when people were terrified of healthcare facilities. However in the nights ahead of time, as roadways were clogged with marchers and riot police formed human barriers across the bridges and significant opportunities within blocks of our home, we feared our midwife may have a hard time to reach us, and also that our paths to the neighboring ER spaces might be cut off.

Having actually been pushed into hibernation by a viral assault that eliminated more than 17,000 New Yorkers, parts of the city were now paralysed by protest.

Both your mother and I had experienced coronavirus, a disease we had actually never heard of at the start of this eventful year. And even in the womb you would have felt the violent convulsions of her body; heard the coughing fits that left her breathless; perhaps even sensed her adrenal dread of hospitalisation.