While teaching student workshops this week and enabling classes to create a play called “The Timeline of Aviation,” a student approached me. He looked angry and sad. He told me that he didn’t like learning about the Enola Gay airplane because it had been used to drop bombs on Japan. His family is Japanese. He is 9 years old.

I searched for something, anything to heal the moment.

I said, “I think I understand how you feel. Do you know that my family is from Germany? We were considered enemies and called Nazis by Americans during the same war. I don’t like that either. But my hope is, that in teaching you how the invention of the airplane has been put to use in the past, that you will understand how it might be used to heal the future. We must now work together as one to heal.”

“Do you understand what I mean?”

He nodded his head, but continued to look unsettled. He squeezed my hand. I squeezed back. We parted. I hoped.

-Serena