Frequent ANTIGRAVITY contributor Danny Cherry Jr. is a fiction writer and sometimes-journalist who is a native of New Orleans East. He currently resides on the Westbank with his wife, 10-month-old son, and emotionally needy teacup poodle. His fiction has been published in award-winning literary magazines such as FIYAH Magazine; and his journalism has been seen beyond these pages in Buzzfeed News, Politico, and more.

By the time I finish reading my child a bedtime story, the Louisiana coastline will have lost several yards of wetland. In that same amount of time, a single Palestinian child will have been murdered. My child is snug in my arms, sucking on his fist and cooing, while I tell him a tale of a mother who promises her son she’ll never stop loving him, titled Love You Forever.

She promises he will forever be her baby, no matter how old he gets:

“I’ll love you foreverI’ll like you for alwaysAs long as I’m livingMy baby you’ll be.”

In this book, the mother is driven by an innate desire to protect her child—something I have. But that mother isn’t a journalist, someone whose vocation by either choice or calling is to stand and watch the unobscured realities of the world on others’ behalf and tell them what we’ve seen. And I’ve seen horrific shit. Only place I feel my baby is safe is in my arms because the horrors of the world don’t even stop at the school steps. That mother in Love You Forever ain’t have to look at her child and be scared if he’d be blown away by a weapon of war in between classes at recess. That mother didn’t have to think about if her child’s school would be raided by ICE, and worry that her child could potentially see kids dragged out and sent to camps. Or if they would one day discover their identity is something other than what they present as, in a state hostile to different gender identities.

By the time those thoughts are gone the book is done.

I kiss my boy on the forehead, put him to bed, and go back into the living room. I open up my laptop to work on my next article. It’s about the (unlikely but still possible) potential reversal of same-sex marriage, which could result in some gay people not being able to have a child—a privilege I get to have, while mine sleeps safely in his room.

There are two things I’ve always wanted since childhood: to be a writer, and to be a dad. In regards to the latter, I wanted to be like a sitcom dad: Firm yet tender like Uncle Will, goofy and affable like Phil Dunphy. I wanted to have mornings where the family all sat around a table and had an almost impossible-to-eat amount of food, right before the kids ran out the door in order to catch the school bus. And right before they would leave, I would tell them I love them. They would feign embarrassment, hanging there on the threshold. But deep down, I’d know they loved me too. So when I saw the ultrasound of the little nubby gummy bear that would become my son, I was elated, and all that corny shit I liked when I was a child flowed through my mind. I started planning potential names and subsequent nicknames, as a montage of future father-child hijinks played on rote in my imagination. I was also nervous. I would now have an extension of myself in the world that I had to care for and protect. I had to learn quickly though, because nine months flew by and next thing I know, I’m in a hospital holding a screeching baby to my chest, telling him over and over how I was his daddy, and how I was happy to meet him. He was soft and bendy and fragile looking, and I kept my hands far from the soft spot in his head like it was a self-destruct button. When I held him those first few weeks, I stepped gingerly, nervous that a banana would fall from the sky like a game of Mario Kart and I’d drop him and he’d implode into the ether.

I’d eventually learn that babies are little tanks with God-like grips that could rip your goatee from its roots, and they have a kick that’ll crack a rib if you ain’t careful. But my little gummy is also a bubbly, goofy little thing with big cheeks and a toothless smile that lights up a room. He has a cute laugh that is usually followed with an even bigger laugh, and subsequent smile, like he was shocked he could make that noise. One of my favorite things in the world is how he loves to hold my hand when he’s sitting next to me on the couch. He particularly loves to do it when I need to be writing. But it’s fine. It stirs something in me when I look to my side and see my child looking at me, holding my hand, eyes big and black like the space between stars, and a visceral emotion often fills me in those moments. The moments where I realize that the byproduct of the love I’ve shared with his mother for most of our adult lives has manifested into perfection personified. Those big black eyes looking at me, reminding me that I and his mama are his world. Often, in the evening when I’m holding him in the dark after reading to him, I whisper to him that he is my world. But just like with the son in the story I love to read for him, he will grow. My baby, he will always be. But because of that second thing I wanted to be growing up—a writer—I know my view of him won’t be everyone else’s. Depending on the way the political winds are blowing, he could one day potentially be a “thug” due to his complexion, or a “groomer” due to who he may one day love. To live on the margins in this country means to nonconsensually be an empty receptacle for the majority to pour their hate and fear into.

Being a politics writer means I have to be tapped into what’s going on around me. During those early weeks of my son’s life, the Republican presidential nominee was nearly assassinated. I had just gotten back from a run to Walmart and walked in the house to see Trump’s fist in the air on the TV, recognizing in that moment that something in the political climate shifted to a point of no return. When faced with the realization the country is near a point of implosion, fear of dropping your child looks tame, because there’s scarier shit out there.

It’s not just our country, though. Right here in Louisiana our government is making life a living hell for queer people—trans minors specifically. That’s a topic I’ve written about prior to being a parent. I interviewed the parent of a trans teen who was the victim of a hate crime. In the course of researching that piece, I discovered other kids who were victims of hate, including one young trans individual who screamed “we are all in danger” at the same moment the lawmakers in our Capitol were patting themselves on the back. That juxtaposition broke my heart—the glee of adults and the fear of children. In the middle of my last rounds of edits, I turned the story in. I couldn’t read those words over and over and over. All I wanted to do was tell those children they were loved, that everything would be fine. I wanted to tell them that by the end of it all the arc of history bends towards justice, and like a sitcom episode, the things that were broken would be mended in the end. But I couldn’t. And I can’t.

As a parent now, the news hits different. Once upon a time I viewed the rapid news cycle with a degree of distance, but now that gap has closed since an extension of me will be out in the world. In my child I see a world of possibilities. But in a world of possibilities, anything is possible. If anything is possible, you don’t know what to prepare for.

At this point in my narrative, much like a sitcom, the storyteller in me wants to pretend there was some big “a-ha!” moment where I stopped having existential fear over the world I brought my child into. But that’s a lie. Life isn’t a sitcom. Life isn’t like the book I love to read to my child. There was no grand epiphany. I just woke up and realized one day that it was pointless to worry about “what-ifs,” whether they be potential knee scrapes or something more existential. I realized that there was a power in being hyper aware of all the insane shit going on in the world: You cherish the mundane moments more. You grow to appreciate the calm moments in your life. Life may not be a sitcom, but it sure isn’t the horror show I used to think it was. Things are bleak, but my toothless gummy bear brightens my world. And that’s all I can do. I just focus on being the dad I want to be, and on the things I can control.

I can’t control politicians, but I can make my child laugh. I can’t personally drain the swamp, but I can give my child a bath. I can’t end world hunger or clothe the naked, but I can spoon mushed carrots and applesauce into my baby boy’s mouth, and I can fly him around the house, pretending he’s Superman. He won’t always be in the safety of my arms, and that still makes me a little nervous. But whatever may come, may come. For the time being, I’ll be on my 1000th rereading of Love You Forever with my little gummy bear, whispering to him, “I’ll love you forever / I’ll like you for always / As long as I’m living / My baby you’ll be” in the dark safety of his room, as everything else melts away, and I hold my world in my arms.

illustrations by Victoria Allen

Follow me @ twitter/bluesky/tiktok/instagram at Deecherrywriter.

I have a politics newsletter, by the way, called Where There’s Smoke! Sign up, and help me get to 2k! Me and Teddy would appreciate it :)