Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
-Maya Angelou
I am by no means a quiet
wall-flower. Those who meet me in
passing, I am sure, sum me up as an over-indulged only child, the product of
hippy parents drumming ideas and beliefs into my head. Those that knew my strong willed mother and
that meet my liberal father may tend to stride off with an "unhuh, that's
where she gets it from" attitude.
But my childhood was
balanced. I do not distinctly remember
political or social conversations. I,
of course, always "knew" my parents' political beliefs and where
their moral and social compasses directed them. But I was neither encouraged nor discouraged towards or from
anything.
Before I go any further, let me
explain a little of "who" I am.
I am a bi-racial child of the late 60's, early 70's that identifies more
with the "white" culture yet strongly identifies herself as
black. My love of my family is evenly
divided. But I am more Haywood (black maternal)
than Hall (white paternal) because of the enormous strength that I heard, saw
and felt from my mother's side of the family.
Internally, I feel I owe such a debt to my mother's family for the depth
my maternal grandparents, seven aunts and my one uncle helped instill in me, that
even if I didn't meet the "one-drop" rule many times over for the classification
of " mulatto", I would firmly attach myself to the black "label".
And I use black and white. Even in my grayness, I use those terms because
they speak of a time in which I am most comfortable. Political correctness cannot instill in anyone political kindness. African-American
and Caucasian to me seem overly stiff, formal and I feel often tend to mask the
actual intent of the speaker. But black
and white bring to mind my childhood. A
time when – hate mongers wore their hate on their sleeves – but were beginning
to temper that hate in just enough of the world's changing attitudes to make
them kinder and gentler racists. I am
comfortable in that time frame. I don't
need every person in every corner of this country to respect or like my
identity - yet it would certainly make a more peaceful and homogenous society
if kindness and tolerance were birthed or trained into each of us.
That being "explained",
in my childhood, the strong fight for desegregation and racial equality
occurred prior to my entry into this world.
Not that 1970's Texarkana had embraced the culture of racial equality
that other regions of the US had. There
remained in Texarkana a very intolerant attitude towards bi-racial couples and their
children well into my years in high school.
In fact, in some parts of Arkansas, when I graduated from high school in
1987, some schools still held separate proms from whites and blacks. (Hey, I'm sure they were equal.) My last vivid remembrance of
"hatred" from my childhood, is a fleeting memory of some racial slurs
being thrown my way as I walked to 8th grade in either 1983 or
1984. But long after the slurs stopped,
I would here bible thumpers quoting that the "egg and the yolk shall not
mix", I remained isolated from most children in my neighborhood and endured cinder-blocks thrown through our windows for many years.
And yet, I remember no long,
heated discussions about racial equality.
My parents taught me to embrace who I am and each aspect of where I stem
from with pots of spaghetti shared around a table with long mustached men puffing
cigars and smoking pipes, pasta tossed on the kitchen wall of the home we
rented from a local white attorney who let me sit at his desk and staple my
hand by accident. Birthday parties long
forgotten but shared with this attorney's child. Goat roasts of the "pet" who'd spent the week tied to
my swing set. The last week as it
turned out. Wine fermenting in the
basement – exploding eventually. Taj
Mahal towering over me in the living room after having performed at the Perot -
standing in front of the wall of National Geographic Maps with which my father
had wallpapered the living room. Maya
Angelou books inscribed to first my mother by my father on a birthday many,
many years ago. Now inscribed to me on
my first birthday after her passing. Handed
down from mother to daughter. My
childhood was steeped in the peace and comfort of not labeling or identifying –
but just having this extraordinary group of minds and personalities and
cultures surrounding me. Summers at
Albert Pike with the serenity of my father's father, engineering dams for
myself and my four cousins from Dallas as we hunted crawdad's with bits of hot
dogs. Summers in Michigan with my
mother's sister and my cousin Kevin where amateur pyrotechnics always seemed to
take place, dolls got dissected and we flew out of windows on a dare. They were my village. My people.
Sometimes even my Village People, I'm sure. But childhood passed with calmness.
Today, it seems different to me. I often feel as if perhaps equality peaked in my childhood and is
more on the downward side of the slippery slope. Perhaps it has little to do with the people and more to do with
the "rat race" that engulfs us more often than not these days.
I know it remains. Deep inside. That quiet
comfort. I feel it when I return to
Albert Pike with a red headed blue eyed angel on my shoulder and watch as my grandchild
floats and squeals and floats from my arms to her momma's to her aunt's to her
grandpa's and back again. We are many spectrums of a rainbow. The journey for
equality may have started with the big rocks and boulders being pushed out of
the way by the likes of King and Malcolm X, but the tiny ripples of respect are what reach
the shore.
I'll be the weeping willow drowning in my tear
You can go swimming when you are here
And I'll be the rainbow after the tears are gone
Wrap you in my colors and keep you warm
That's how strong my love is, darling
That's how strong my love is, baby
That's how strong my love is
That's how strong my love is
-Taj Mahal
