Last February, my son Elias, named after the prophet, saint and mountain, was playing hard in a high school basketball game. We were winning, and the coach was about to put on the second string. But then our team stole and threw the ball to Elias on a run.

He’s been working on the dunk since he was 11, and now it’s a reliable piece in his arsenal. But diving is difficult in a game. So when you get a rare chance, you have to practice. And so he took three steps and launched himself at the basket, slamming the ball home and hanging a little too long.

He went under the board, landed at an odd angle and crashed. One of my principles as a parent is to let the coach and the coach do their job. Kids get hurt, it’s usually minor and there’s no need for helicopter parents to rush to the field. But I spent years as a volunteer doctor in a rural ambulance service and know the difference between a make-up and a real injury. It was bad and I ran downstairs.

Elias’ leg was horribly distorted and his kneecap was dislocated – an extremely painful wound. He was out of breath, in agony. My wife held his hand and helped him breathe. He blew out most of the ligaments in his knee, damaged his patella and was ruled out for the season. When his surgeon came out of the operating room, an hour later than planned, he looked pale. “I’ve never seen an injury like this,” he said. He used a cadaver ligament to make the repair.

Over the winter, Elias worked with a wonderful, creative, and kind physical therapist in Minnesota, starting a few days after surgery. I quickly weaned him off the oxycodone. In the freezing Colorado winter, he used crutches for six weeks. I wrote to the family of the ligament donor: “Your son helped Elias walk again.”

Elias said he saw new things in the world, the purple sunrise on his way to therapy; a club with Latino friends who cook authentic food. All along, we’ve talked about “first world problems” like this athletic injury, as opposed to real world problems; Israel, Gaza, Haiti or Sudan. We talked about perspective. About privileges. Just 10 months after the injury, on the night of the presidential election, Elias ate three slices of pizza and went to basketball practice.

My wife and I watched the results with a few friends who are policy experts and climate change activists like me. We watched in shock as the dials ticked towards a Harris defeat. I felt a physical sickness creeping into my stomach. My daughter Willa, a philosophy major, called in desperation. I tried to comfort her on the phone, still feeling the visceral pain of dropping her off at college three years ago when I physically couldn’t let her go. I still can’t.

Things got worse as the night wore on. I couldn’t imagine the next four years. I was concerned about: community, humanity and health; attacks on Department of Education and vaccines; Ukraine; women suffering in medical purgatory and deportation camps.

Elias has a Latino friend who is loved by his classmates. He is autistic and extremely shy. After the election, he said: “I will be deported.” For him to be sent back to Honduras would be no different than sending Elias: he has no ties.

There will also be real consequences for public lands, for greenhouse gas emissions, for the deficit that no one seems to care about, but that will cripple Willa and Elias’ futures. EPA chief doesn’t believe climate science.

When Elias came home from practice, alarmingly, he had a deep, boxer cut under his eye. “An elbow. It took me by surprise.”

The wound was gaping, the kind that produces a scar. I washed my hands, dabbed the cut with betadine. Cut small pieces of tape and gently pull the edges together while Elias closes his eyes. I gently pressed the tape down, making sure the adhesive stuck. I placed my hand on his head, as I had done since he was a newborn slick with amniotic fluid; and when he wept upon discovering that the gnomes were not real; and when I hugged him when he got his first hit in Little League.

I thought about America’s constant search for ideals that, at the same time, acknowledges our imperfections; not greatness, but a “more perfect union.” I thought of Elias’ friend and remembered my Catholic friend’s reminder of how a society is measured, quoting Matthew: “For the least of you is the greatest.”

Elias opened his eyes.

“you’ll be fine”

“And you’ll have a scar.”

Auden Schendler’s new book, Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul, comes out this month. He lives in western Colorado with his family and writes in a personal capacity.

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Originally published: November 18, 2024 at 10:32 AM MST