Sending My Son Out of America to Save Us Both

I am standing in the eerily empty departures area of Terminal 4 at JFK airport, trying to save my son.

The murder of George Floyd last year and the ongoing attacks on Black lives sent my fears to a fever pitch as the mother of a young Black man. It had become too much for me to bear. I made the agonizing decision to send my son to his father, my ex-husband, in London. And my daughter, his older sister, would join too. That is why I am in an empty airport, in the middle of a global health pandemic, arming my children with two masks each, plastic gloves, hand sanitizer, and my last can of travel-size Lysol spray.

When airport security wouldn’t let me go any further, I just held my son close, far longer than he usually allows in public at his age. I sniffed his neck, hoping to capture him with all of my senses. I hugged my daughter just the same, being sure to run my fingers across her cornrow braids—one of my favorite styles on her. Then I stood still and watched them walk through the empty, snaking ropes of airport security, past the TSA officer, putting bags on the conveyor, walking through the body scanner. Just before my son turned toward the gates, he looked back. I was standing in the same exact spot, but there was absolutely no one or nothing between us. I could see clearly. I waved and blew kisses.

The decision was about calculated risk assessment: Which pandemic was a greater threat to my son? As a healthy young Black man, he would likely survive the coronavirus. But police brutality needs no preexisting conditions to kill immediately. So I chose the risk of the coronavirus, but I am ashamed, and I can’t stop crying.

*

Like many Black mothers, I live in constant fear for my son. It is almost my norm—a resting fear. What sits above the fear is joy, sometimes. I am proud of him: My son is an honor student, and he played JV basketball before the pandemic. Though violence against Black boys and men has always been present, the spring and summer of 2020 hit differently. For me and my son.

I don’t worry about my daughter as much—she’s older and has a different level of social consciousness and knowledge about race relations, part of it shaped by the fact that she attends Spelman College, a HBCU, where Blackness is center stage. And unfortunately, she’s already had police encounters as a driver. She’s learned from classmates, friends, and research to quickly state her name and school affiliation, remain polite and apologetic no matter what, and always comply—even if that hasn’t proven to change much for us. Her vigilance is a form of protection. Her lived experience is a form of protection. It’s my son’s lack of full recognition of the nuances of the problem that frightens me.

But I was maintaining, and I sensed my son was maintaining. We took family walks, played Monopoly, cooked together, and had a fierce commitment to our Taco Tuesdays. My daughter, who loves to bake, made us the official taste-testers for her weekly fresh-baked treats. We were doing well.

Soon after the murder of George Floyd, things changed. For me, it was nightmares I couldn’t shake. I would wake up from my sleep haunted by his calling out, “Mama.” It was a summoning of mothers past and present that many mothers heard. As a Black mom, in my most vivid nightmare—this one the most frequent—the face under the knee pressed into the neck, was that of my son. In other nightmares, he was drowning and I couldn’t reach him to save him and pull him back up.

Soon after the murder of George Floyd, things changed. For me, it was nightmares I couldn’t shake.

A few nights a week, I would wake up sweating—one time with a scream—but always trying to coach and coax myself back to sleep. “He is fine,” I would repeat to myself. “It is just a bad dream.” But I rarely could. I tried apps, meditations, journaling. But there was no returning to sleep after those particular nightmares. As they became more frequent, the broken sleep and insomnia just got worse.

Weeks later, as the protests intensified and the police backlash ensued, buoyed by white terrorists walking the streets with automatic weapons, the collective trauma of Black people rose to unprecedented levels. I was not immune. My own anxiety about my son’s safety and well-being heightened too.

In the evenings, we usually watched thirty minutes of news as a family after dinner, engaging in lively discussions—debating topics, comparing coverage on different channels, playing pundit. But our nightly news binges changed. My son grew silent. My daughter was vocal with her outrage. Her anger would come in regular outbursts mostly directed toward the TV. The onslaught of images—protests, fires, conflicts—and seeing the people who looked like us in a righteous rage was too much for even a half-hour. I limited our TV news time to ten minutes. Eventually, the TV became a device for Netflix movies only.

*

My son loves to run every day—it’s part of his training routine and the one escape from our shelter-in-place life in the outer boroughs of New York City. But after the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, I stood nervously at the window every time he went for a run. I reminded him to carry his ID, stick to our agreed-upon route, and not put his hoodie up. The runs were daily torture for me. While he found release in his runs, they made me tenser. I would stare out the window at home as if I could see him during the entire run. At times, the anxiety of this twenty- to thirty-minute outing turned into a throbbing at my temples and stomach aches that lasted even well after his safe return.

Once, in the middle of my fourth Zoom meeting of the day, an important presentation on a global infant health project, my son discreetly handed me a Post-it Note that said he was going for a bike ride. It was still early afternoon and broad daylight. But I froze—stuck in my work performance, eyes averting to the yellow sticky note on my screen, slowly drowning in my fear of the note.

I continued with my work presentation—a key deliverable for my contract—as I heard him going down the stairs and out the door. My mind raced: Did he have his ID? What was his route? Was his phone fully charged? When would he be back? I wasn’t able to remind him to not have his headphones too loud so he could hear emergency vehicles. I didn’t remind him to not put his hood up. In a matter of seconds, I watched terrible scenarios play out in my mind. None of them brought my son home exactly as he left.

I abruptly excused myself from the Zoom and ran down the steps, yelling his name as I frantically turned locks and doorknobs to catch him. Once I got outside, he was already gone.

As I walked back upstairs, heart racing, eyes searching the empty stairwell for answers, tears filled my eyes. How could I check on my son and compose myself enough to complete my work, the work that kept a roof over our head?

As I got to the top step, my daughter, back at home because of the pandemic, met me at the top of the landing. She realized what happened and asked, “Did you catch him?”

“No,” I replied. We don’t often discuss our worries, but the look on her face expressed all of my fears.

Part of my fear for my son comes from his privilege. My son attends an elite private school in Brooklyn, where he is in many ways buffered from the realities of some young Black teenagers in America. He doesn’t live in poverty and talks about going to MIT or Cornell to study engineering and computer science—as if that’s everyone’s expectation for a sixteen-year-old Black boy in a single-parent home. I take pride in the life I’ve been able to give my children, but having some sort of privilege does not save you from the realities of being a young Black man in the eyes of the police. Sometimes, I’m afraid he doesn’t see that, no matter how many times I tell him. No matter how often my daughter tries to tell him. And that alone puts him in danger.

Part of my fear for my son comes from his privilege.

Trying to keep my mind on work and while attempting to balance the anxiety became overwhelming. My sleep was inconsistent. I cried in the middle of the day. My productivity waned. I watched my son retreat into himself, making himself numb to the daily parade of Black pain. It’s a survival tactic, but one he had to learn too soon. One he wouldn’t talk to me about. One I couldn’t ignore.

Even after he came home safely from his ride, I couldn’t sleep that night. My anxiety had elevated from my resting-fear rate to cardiac arrest. I couldn’t breathe.

*

At the same time my anxiety reached new highs, my British ex-husband messaged me to express his concern for our son. He asked me to send the children to him. Since our divorce, our children, who have dual citizenship, have spent most summers with their father in London. When we thought we were only facing the pandemic, we decided they wouldn’t travel abroad.

But he said America was no place for a young Black man, and I couldn’t argue him wrong. England is no utopia for race relations, but London patrolmen do not carry guns. And in 2019, law enforcement in the US killed 1,099 people, while only three people were killed by law enforcement in all of England and Wales. The “wasband” and I rarely communicate, but the WhatsApp messages became daily. Most frequently he simply said, “Send the children to me.” I just kept ignoring them. Usually, when the children left for the English summers, there was a set return date tied to the school term and other commitments. This time, I didn’t know what the future held.

After a few weeks, I finally decided to communicate after he said Covid-19 stopped his work and he was free to be with the children full-time. That also meant that I wouldn’t receive the meager child support, so the burden to provide was definitely, clearly, and squarely on my shoulders. My ability to produce for work seemed even more urgent, and his contribution would free me to keep things financially afloat. I didn’t want it to make sense—to send my children away for who knows how long—but I did need them to survive. I needed to survive.

For weeks, no one knew my kids left for London except my partner—not even my parents. They’re in their early eighties and in South Carolina. They were carrying enough worry about their own safety. How could I tell them that two of their five grandchildren were 3,500 miles away during a pandemic?

At first, I was ashamed of my decision. Being Black in America means you don’t get an “out.” You don’t escape. You persevere and survive. You don’t flee; you fight. I worried what this meant for my children’s identity as Black Americans—the power of our shared struggle is what creates cohesion and belonging. Five and ten years from now, when my children are in Black circles and the conversation turns to, “What did you do during the racial uprisings of 2020?” the answer “I moved to London” is not going to add to the proverbial “Black card.” I want my children to be connected with the Black American experience, not detached from it or bystanders to it. But I also wanted my son to be alive and for my daughter to thrive.

I thought about my ancestors, who could only run north and risked their lives to do so. Or those who jumped from slave ships into the ocean during the Middle Passage, choosing death over subjection. For Black people, escape has always had consequences. What would those be for my children?

*

As the days passed and I knew my children were safely quarantining with plans to pod with their father and his family, I began to sleep better. The quietness of our home became a processing plant for me to work through the trauma I carried as a scared Black mother. Not just in that moment, but collectively since Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and Michael Brown. When I needed to cry, I didn’t have to worry about whether or not I looked strong in front of my children. It was a new freedom. Finally, I didn’t feel like I was drowning.

While everyone else was learning to manage distance learning, I was learning to cope with distance parenting—sending positive video messages, organizing our family Zoom meetings, and waking up earlier for a morning check-in on UK time. On Sundays, I joined them while they cooked family dinner with their London relatives. My son told me about the new dishes he tasted (he loves food!), and my daughter showed me the hair and makeup tips she was learning from her older cousins.

I looked forward to the WhatsApp messages and videos from the aunts and cousins in their “pod,” sharing how much my son laughed every day and how he went to the park daily to practice his beloved basketball or worked on home-repair projects with his father. After a while, my kids were too busy to stay on our Zoom get-togethers for long. They had game nights in real-time, cooking in “real life.” To be honest, I was jealous. I took comfort in knowing that my daughter was surrounded by young women she admires, that my son’s father was physically present to get him through a time when Black men and their right to humanity was on a global stage.

It became clear that sending my son away was an act of survival, not betrayal. Not just for him, but as a way for me to heal myself and therefore save my family. It has also given us what all Black people need and deserve: recuperative time—a moment to step away from America’s toxic anti-Black environment.

My son and daughter came home for Thanksgiving, just before the second wave of pandemic led to another lockdown in the UK. I was back at JFK airport, this time at Arrivals. I spent the day before cooking all of their favorite foods while blasting music, dancing, and sipping a bold Syrah. The spread was joyful: baked macaroni and cheese, my famous ribs, garlic mashed potatoes, spinach, and a huge Caesar salad; my son eats a whole bowl of salad all by himself.

When they exited the door of International Arrivals, I could not get my legs to move fast enough to meet them. My daughter was glowing. When I looked at my son, he seemed taller. And when I studied his face, the sparkle of Black boy joy was back in his eyes. “Welcome home, my babies!” I said over and over. Having them back made me feel more complete. Their time away gave us all a much-needed breath, a reprieve, and a moment of rest to better cope with the unrelenting experience of being Black in America. And for that, I am grateful.

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