I have to start this blog with a confession: I have never been particularly good with kids. I have an intense love for them, and a strange awe for people who can navigate a mind so porous and malleable. Probably because I’m the youngest of two half-siblings on my mother’s side, and an only child to my father. Still, the thought of sitting across from my 5-year-old self, something I’ve imagined for years, comes with an immediate sense of closeness.
He’d show up in some jeans, small black shoes, and an untucked flannel a size too big, because he’ll grow into it. Food crumbs would still be on his face. He forgets napkins exist. I’d order him a lemonade, something sweet and bright. I would have coffee.
I’d have to explain what an internship even is. I’d tell him he made it to the Lincoln Memorial, the one he remembers coming to life at Night at the Museum, and I think that alone would surprise him more than anything else I could say. Not that I work near Capitol Hill, not that I’ve been inside the U.S. capitol, but that the statue is real, and I stood in front of it.
I wouldn’t ask how he’s doing, but how he’s feeling. I’d ask what excites him, what worries him, whether he still likes Hot Wheels (he’d probably ask if I’ve started a collection yet; I haven’t).
Little me earned a family nickname back then: Mr. Fix-It. I didn’t always know the shape of my family’s hardships, only that they existed. That they were persistent, and that showing up mattered. Whether that be leaning on my father’s shoulder or tracing the lines on my mom’s palm. That instinct traces back to my time in Migrant and Seasonal Head Start, and I think he’d be wide-eyed to learn he could carry that same instinct onto a national scale. That be through wide-reaching environmental projects at MDB, with his OCDC family at the Public Policy Forum, or through Hill visits that connected both worlds. I’d tell him he’s going to keep showing up, just for a much bigger family now. And in many ways, whether I’m sitting beside my senator or looking up from my desk to a clear view of the Washington Monument, I’m still that same kid on the other side of the table.
Blog Author: César Galindo – Class of 2026
Published on August 3, 2026