I hadn’t meant to make a political statement—I just wanted my kids to have fun. But maybe fun and history weren’t so separate after all. A few months later, my daughter asked, “Why do people still like the queen if she wasn’t nice to everyone?” And just like that, the real conversation began.

That day at the parade taught me something unexpected: sometimes, joy and discomfort coexist. And as a parent, my job isn’t to shield my kids from hard truths—it’s to help them make sense of them. We don’t always get it right. But we can keep learning.