DEAR PRESIDENT TRUMP: the immigrant at your table

Dear President Trump,

Last Thanksgiving, we had a dear friend over for lunch.

She’d never been to an American Thanksgiving before, but she said yes, because she loves my boys.

She’s a florist in our city, and when we began buying flowers from her, she formed a bond with these two boys who hugged her and knew her name and cared.

She is Muslim, but spent what I’m sure was a slightly uncomfortable few hours in our noisy home and ended up playing hide and seek in the front yard with our oldest son.

Don’t you see the beauty in this?

A Native American, her best friend who is white, a Muslim, a man of German-European descent, and two toddlers gathered in our dining room to celebrate an America-created holiday.

These are the moments you are threatening. 

These are the moments you are trying to steal from us with executive orders.

But perhaps the real spirit of America, the one I see in my own people and indigenous brothers and sisters, the one I see in the immigrants and refugees who are planted here, is that we keep going.

We keep telling our stories and gathering at the table and we keep sharing our lives, because we refuse to live in fear and we refuse to act out on our hatred’s behalf.

So it is in this second letter to you that I ask you to remember the people you grew up around.

Remember the ones who gathered at your table, friends of your mother and father, friends who knew your story, knew their stories, cried and laughed because humanity was that important.

Remember those people who gathered at your table, and ask yourself how we make room for more of those kinds of experiences today, outside the bounds of national security interests.

Remember, President Trump.

With Watching Eyes & Steady Hand,

Kaitlin Curtice