I had THE Conversation with my Son

I told him that oil is bad for the world

(Originally published October 19, 2020)

My son is three and a half years old.

Since social isolation commenced, we go to the train stop near our apartment and sit on the platform for a small picnic. He loves everything train, so sitting there with our roasted chicken and homemade bread is a perfect afternoon for both of us.

The platform where we usually sit, looking out across the four lanes of tracks, is often blocked by idle oil tankers. This obstruction sends us to the main platform where the passengers disembark or wait for trains — less socially distanced, but we go to the end sitting away from them.

We are in St. Petersburg, Russia, where people use trains much more than in the United States. The flow of trains is usually eight an hour. On this very windy day, wind has become a problem here; the refinery smell from the cars blows across us at regular intervals. Oh, good Lord, smell that…horrible, I tell my son.

He speaks Russian and English and is tuned to every sound I make. I speak only English with him, so he wants to catch the nuances of “Papa’s language” because no one else speaks English with him.

He often hears me saying, “ Oh my God, “when I read about the fires in California when reacting to the record-breaking temperatures worldwide. He often hears the: Oh, good Lord, unbelievable, ahhhh. I am 53, and so this displeasing groan comes packed with a lot of angst, some wisdom, and a heavy dose of frustration. He hears that sound a lot lately.

He knows I am upset about the climate calamity underway. It keeps me awake at night because, as an older father, if all works out and I live as long as I am statistically supposed to, I will have maybe 30–35 more years on this earth. At the rate we are going, our planet will be like in the movie Interstellar, if not worse.

My worry is, where will I be able to find a safe place for him? What can I do to ensure his life won’t be so heavily altered by the oncoming climate tragedy? Not using straws just won’t cut it, I fear. My son is fully in tune with my existential ruminations. He feels my worry. Every time the gusts come, I let out an oh, good Lord, unbelievable, ah followed by an Oh my God. I need him to be informed and prepared, but I also need to let him be a kid, right?

He is in tune with the weather because of my stress over it. I want to leave Russia, but the United States scares me. My home state of New Jersey is getting hit with rain storms that drop not inches of rain per hour but feet! Powerful hurricanes are wiping away towns. Massive snowstorms and even tornadoes nowadays are the norm. My son, sensing my stress over a tornado in New Jersey last year, began playing a game where a “Canada” — what he calls tornadoes — blows all of his stuffed animals off the bed and around the room. The idea of moving back home makes me think this wouldn’t be a game.

I think he might have a plan

Photo by Zane Lee on Unsplash

His preoccupation with trains is like that of many kids his age except for one thing. There is a way he looks at the wires and large clasps of the parked trains and how they connect, making me think he is seeing more. His ability to assemble his Brio wooden train set is now beyond mine — he lays out crossings, intersections, pass-overs, loops, and traffic flows that I think a civil engineer would struggle to do.

Maybe he is doing what other kids do at his age, but I need to see more. For my sanity, I need to believe that the 1% or 2% of the evolutionary difference in his DNA is the part that keeps humans ever evolving and makes parents say stuff like these kids these days are doing things we never could. When they are born, they already understand (put in the technological break-thru of the moment). My generation is failing at saving this earth. My generation elected a Donald Trump. We aren’t changing our habits; instead, some of us think using more straws or power-consuming light bulbs is bravado — to hell with the earth, man, I am a patriot.

My son is obsessed with the plumbing and tries to figure out where the water goes to and comes from; in the airport in Frankfurt, the ceiling tiles had been removed, and instead of continuing to our gate, we had to stop so he could study the massive, multi-colored bundles which fed Europe’s largest transit hub. His eyes absorbed every turn and twist of the wiring, and once he felt some pattern had been established, he let it be known we could continue — he was two and a half then.

The benefits of the multi-generational family, we spend a lot of time with his grandparents, who are also very active and busy repairing their small country house and growing food — as if the case in Russia at the “dacha” — are flowing his way. Engaging us in the way we engage him, I decided to have the conversation with him.

A breeze blew, and the oil blew over us again. He wrinkled up his little nose and said foo, pop, stinky-stinky. The smell was strong, so I told him that, bud, pop hates oil. I honestly felt like I was breaking all parental conventions. I really do. It’s so foo. It’s not good for us. It kills our earth and just makes its so windy. He dislikes the gusty days as much as I do.

But the choo-choo needs benzin (gas) pop. In his world, if the train needs oil to go, then this means that oil is a good thing. I was stepping into sacred territory.

It does, pal. But maybe something else could be used to make the choo-choo go, maybe Marcello’s poopy? His eyes shot up, and he giggled. Marcello is our 20-year-old cat. No, he squealed.

I know Pop’s just kidding. But maybe something instead of oil. Oil is just bad, pal. Smell that, right? Look at how dirty those trains are. I am sure there is something less foo, don’t you think?

Yeah, he said; then his eyes focused on the dirty trains still dripping oil onto the tracks beneath them. He had that same look he did when studying the wiring in the ceiling in the airport. He looked at me and smiled. He wanted to calm me, for he felt my worry.

I felt hopeful that he would save us. I pulled him closer and hugged him tight.