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Lorraine crouched over a large piece of paper on the back porch. In one hand, she held a paintbrush and in the other, leftover paint from test swatches for the house. Her little boy sat beside her, coloring with some crayons she had given him to keep busy while his baby sister napped.
“How is your drawing coming along, David?” Lorraine asked.
“Good.” He carefully used the yellow crayon, staying in the lines he created. “I’m drawing me and Dad like Captain and Mr. Spock.”
Lorraine smiled. “You’ll have to show Dad when he comes home. He’ll love it.”
“Mama? What are you drawing?”
“I’m making a sign.”
“A sign? Like a stop sign?”
“Sort of, yes.”
“What does it say?” David asked, making his way over to his mother. He peered over her shoulder, staring at the symbols in front of him. Lorraine picked him up and sat David in her lap.
“Do you recognize any of the words?” she asked.
David pointed to one word. “Stop!”
“Yes! Good job, David!”
David beamed. “What do the other ones say?”
“It says ‘Stop war in Vietnam’,” she read, pointing to each word as she did.
David looked back at his mother. “What does that mean?”
“It means we want to stop the fighting that’s happening in Vietnam,” Lorraine explained.
“What’s that?”
“Vietnam?” Lorraine adjusted the boy in her lap before continuing. “It’s a place in Asia. That’s really far from where we live.”
“Who is fighting?”
“People in Vietnam and people from the United States, which is where we live.”
“Why are they fighting?”
“I don’t know, David.” Lorraine sighed. The parenting books didn’t have anything about explaining war to a five year old. “Sometimes people just do even when they don’t need to.”
“Like the Klingons,” David remarked.
“Is that from Star Trek? The show you watch with Dad?” Lorraine asked.
David nodded. “They started a war and took Captain and Mr. Spock.”
“Is that right?” she muttered.
David continued to drone on about the episode and Lorraine was completely out of her depth. She knew that when the voices on the television said “space: the final frontier” or anything about an Enterprise, it meant Star Trek was on. Aside from that, she knew basically nothing. Star Trek wasn’t her kind of show. George loved it and David certainly liked watching it with him, but Lorraine had no interest in it herself.
“...tried to kill them, but the Organians were okay,” he babbled.
“That’s good.”
“The Klingons are bad,” David said very seriously.
“They don’t sound very nice.”
“Is your sign gonna stop the war?” he asked.
“Oh, uh,” Lorraine hesitated. “No. Not exactly, but it will send a message.”
David stared at her, confused. Lorraine thought for a moment about how to explain it in a way her son would understand.
“You said the Klingons were bad, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What makes them bad?”
“They started a war. The Organians don’t like fighting.”
“What would you think if that happened in real life?”
David thought for a moment. His eyes furrowed a little. “They shouldn’t do that.”
“That’s the message the show is telling you. Even though the story is about the Klingons, it’s also sending a message about things that can happen in real life,” Lorraine explained. “My sign is doing that, too. The sign says to stop the war in Vietnam, but when I stand with other people and their signs, it sends a message that we’re all against the war.”
“Really?”
“Yes, isn’t that interesting?”
“I guess.” David squirmed in her lap. “Can I finish my drawing?”
Lorraine chuckled and kissed the top of his head. “Of course you can.”