Dear Editor,
As I sit at a splash park in Bullhead City on a mid-80s day at the end of February, I watch families and children laughing and playing together in the same water and on the same slides.
Many of the children have beautiful olive tones to their skin, while my own have beautiful, melanin-deficient light skin — made even lighter by the mineral sunscreen I’ve just slathered on them so they don’t turn into lobsters.
And the striking thing is this: no one is saying, you’re too light. No one is saying, you’re too dark. No one is asking who belongs. No one is asking who has papers and who doesn’t.
It feels natural. Ordinary. Completely unremarkable.
Just a normal day. Kids at the park. Sun shining on all of us.
Children don’t care about culture wars. They care about who will race them down the slide and who will stand under the giant bucket waiting for the splash.
But in the wider world we share, I can’t help but wonder: What if ICE came here? What if one of these laughing children lost a mother or father next week to detention or deportation?
Right now, no one cares who voted red or blue. Parents care about towels, sunscreen, and making sure no one slips.
But what happens next week? Next month? Will all of these children have the same chance to grow up safe and steady?
Or will policies — sometimes defended in the name of Christian values — reshape their world?
As a Christian mother, I cannot help but think of the Jesus I was taught to follow — one who welcomed children rather than sending them away.
Today it feels right, peaceful, even safe — but how fragile might that peace be?
Today, the water falls on everyone the same.
I just hope it always does.
Virlinda Foster
