SHOSHANAH
We each start from where we start.
And so I start
with one early memory
— a snapshot in time —
Another quickly follows.
Then another and another and another.
Early memories grow quickly into a stack of snapshots.
It is quiet work.
It is humble work.
It is helping my heart.
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Early Memories:
Born white, 1955, North Carolina.
Daddy, a farm boy, become a city lawyer.
Mama, a city girl, become a homemaker.
Parents to my sister and I.
Trying to raise us right.
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Snapshot in Time: 1960 – Age 5
Sunday Morning:
Baptist “Sunbeam Band”.
The little children in Africa, they are so poor.
God loves them so much.
Our missionaries are teaching them about Jesus.
“Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.”
We sing with bright confidence
as we slip our shiny dimes
into the slot of the box
to send to the missionaries
for the children in Africa.
God loves them so much……
…………………………………………………………………………….
Sunday Afternoon:
A long drive to our Grandparents’ farm.
A hot summer day.
A long country road.
A small wooden house.
A little black boy
playing on the porch
wearing only underwear.
My sister and I point and giggle.
Mama shushes us.
“Don’t laugh. He can’t help it.
It’s hot. And he’s poor.”
…………………………………………………………………………
Thursdays:
Martha comes to clean our house.
A red brick house in a white neighborhood.
Martha, black and stout, quiet and kind.
Wears a gray dress. Has grandchildren our age.
We (with bubbling eagerness):
“Bring your grandchildren with you! We want to play!”
She (softly with a smile):
“Oh no, no, no. I can’t do that.”
Mama pulls us aside.
Mama (gently and firmly, trying to raise us right):
“Martha can’t bring her grandchildren.
White children play with little white children.
And colored children play with little colored children.
That’s the way it is.”
………………………………………………………………………….
Snapshot in Time: 1960’s — School Years
I read the newspapers. Cities on fire.
I hear the grown-ups talking.
They are troubled — by the “uppity negroes”.
They are afraid — of the “militant blacks”.
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“Well, he’s not as bad as some of ’em,
but why does he have to get them all riled up?
Why can’t they just stay in their place?”
………………………………………………………………………..
A black man wants to join our all-white church.
Mama: “It’s a ‘test-case’.
He doesn’t really want to join our church.
He’s just ‘testing’ us.”
Smart-mouthed growing-soon-into-a-young-teen me:
“So pass the test. Let him join.”
Mama: “He can join the black First Baptist Church
— across the way — We built it for them.”
The church votes. They vote “no”.
………………………………………………………………………….
Snapshot in Time: 1968. 13 years old.
Elizabeth is my best friend.
We are both turning 13 this year. Real teenagers.
April 4th: Today is Elizabeth’s Birthday.
Her family takes her to a fancy restaurant downtown.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot and killed.
The restaurant closes up. Sends everyone home.
There is anger in the streets.
Anger. And fear. And curfews.
…………………………………………………………………………………..
David. Really cute. Really sweet.
A country boy. My first boyfriend.
We visit on the farm.
We talk on the phone.
David walks to the pay phone, down the way,
outside the corner store.
For one shiny dime, we can talk as long as we like.
He: “There goes a coon. Oh, there goes another one!”
I imagine raccoons waddling in the warm summer darkness.
He: “There goes a coon in a truck.”
Me: “A raccoon in a truck?! What?
He: “No, not a raccoon! A coon! You know.”
No, I don’t know.
Until I do.
When he says the other word.
I have convictions.
“That’s not nice.”, I say.
I say it softly. I say it sweetly. I say it with a smile.
Because I love this boy.
My convictions fall softly and land without a sound.
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Snapshot in Time: High School Years (late 1960’s/early 1970’s)
I am active in the Baptist Youth Group.
“Yes!” to Civil Rights. “No!” to War.
“Yes!” to Jesus. “No!” to the Klan.
……………………………………………………………..
My friend Jessica lives down the street.
She goes to Civil Rights Marches with her parents.
The KKK burns a cross in their front yard.
………………………………………………………………………………
The demographics of our town are: 70% white / 30% black.
I know this because there is constant talk
that the schools must reflect the 70/30 ratio.
We have 4 High Schools in town:
All-white, all-black, mostly white, more mixed.
The “solution”: Close the black High School.
Redraw the lines. Bus the students.
It is not a happy solution.
Elizabeth’s parents send her to a private school.
Jeanie’s mom sends her to a Christian school.
My sister and I stay in the same school.
Black boys walk six-abreast in the hallways.
Belts unbuckled — just in case.
Between classes, I walk down the stairs, around and back up.
To avoid the hallways.
To avoid the big black boys with belt buckles.
To avoid the “just-in-case”.
…………………………………………………………………………………..
We vote for a white Homecoming King and Queen.
And for a black Homecoming King and Queen.
Because that seems only fair.
………………………………………………………….
There are fights. There is fear.
There are hurts. There is hope.
It is awkward.
We make friends.
……………………………………………………………………
Wanda has light skin and long curly reddish-blonde hair.
She looks white. She sounds black.
After class, a white girl dares to ask:
“So Wanda, what are you? Are you black? Or are you white?”
Wanda looks us all in the eyes
and waits a long few silent seconds…..
“My Mama’s black. My Daddy’s white.”
Then, surely to shut the wondering from our eyes,
she states decisively and definitively:
“I look white. But I’m black.”
……………………………………………………………………………
Marlene is black.
We are in many of the same classes.
I like her. She sits at my lunch table.
Most of us at the table are going together
to the State Fair on Friday.
We are meeting first at my house.
Without thinking, I invite Marlene.
Before I realize the implications of my invitation,
Marlene quickly declines.
“No thanks. I’m going with my cousins.”
The implications of my invitation?
Our house is a “whites only” house.
“White kids go to the fair with white kids.
Black kids go to the fair with black kids.”
I know this. I offer no more invitations.
………………………………………………………………………………
One sunny Saturday, Anna and I walk over to David L.’s.
(Anna and David are taking a shine to one another)
David L. and David M. and Clark are shooting hoops
outside, out back.
(So many “David’s”. Only one Clark)
Clark is black. The rest of us are white.
David L. is the Baptist preacher’s kid.
Anna is Catholic. Not that that matters.
But to some, it does.
Mrs. L. (the preacher’s wife) comes out smiling
with lemonade and cookies.
Cold lemonade and fresh-baked cookies.
Smiling.
I notice this.
…………………………………………………………………………….
Another black man wants to join our church.
I hear disagreement in the house.
Mama: ” He’s a college student from Ghana.
He was converted on the Mission Field
by our Baptist Missionaries.”
(My Sunbeam Band shiny dimes at work!)
Daddy: “Let in one Ghana student, and they’ll All come in.”
Mama: “But he’s from the Mission Field. He’s from Africa.
How can we say “no” ???
(by checking the “no” box, of course,
like my Daddy does, of course)
The church votes. They vote “yes”. !
The other Ghana students, they do not come.
……………………………………………………………………………………….
Our Youth Group (First Baptist Church, white) is to meet
with the other Youth Group (First Baptist Church, black).
We walk – across the way – from our church to theirs.
We walk through Capital Square, taking no notice of
the statues we grew up playing on: canons and horses,
and bronze white men with muskets.
In the church hall, we sit across from one another
in folding chairs, beneath bright white fluorescent lights.
Hopeful teenagers, black and white,
shepherded by hopeful leaders, black and white.
The times they are a’changin’…..
We all mean well.
We don’t know what to say.
We speak softly.
It is awkward. Hopeful and awkward.
…………………………………………………………………………………
Snapshot in Time: Young Adulthood (1970’s)
I marry young. We move much.
We move to New Mexico.
We live in a gentle Spanish village in Northern New Mexico.
I meet a world I never knew.
I love everything about it.
…………………………………………………………………………………….
Daddy: “Why are you always trying to be something you’re not?
Why are you always wanting to be an Indian or a Mexican?
Why can’t you be happy with your own kind?”
Daddy grew up poor
Fought a war
Went to law school
Built a life
Made a family
Proud to provide
Who are “my own kind” ?
The don’t-rock-the-boat, love-your-own-kind,
eat-your-grits-and-mind-your-own-business,
yes ma’am, yes sir, please and thank you,
be nice, behave, properly-educated,
well-to-do Southern Baptist
polite-society nice white Southern people?
Maybe I’m not happy with “my own kind”…..
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Snapshot in Time: Atlanta, Georgia, 1983
Grown-up and married with children of our own.
Trying to raise them right.
Metro Stop. Underground.
My blonde-haired, green-eyed daughter (3)
befriends a little black boy (3)
— as children do —
She (laughing in a friendly way): “You’re green!”
The harsh lighting casts an olive hue to his brown skin.
I see her point.
I see the boy’s mother tense up.
I feel myself tense up.
Should I shush my laughing child?
He (not laughing): “I’m not green.”
She (still laughing): “Yes you are. You’re green!”
He (firmly serious): “Then you’re green too.”
She (still laughing): “No, I’m not. I’m orange!”
Stretching out her bare arms to display the obvious orange:
“See??? I’m orange!!!”
He (breaking into laughter): “Oh! Right! You’re orange!
You’re orange and I’m green!”
His mother and I glance at one another and smile
as the Metro rumbles toward us.
Through the eyes of children…..
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Snapshot in Time: Raising a Family. 1980’s
Columbia, South Carolina, 1985: Buying our first home
Realtor: “Growing family, need good schools?
Two good areas: this one and that one.”
We: “Yes, please, and we prefer racially mixed.”
Realtor: “Really?!? Well then, that would be this one.”
And we buy our perfect little house.
…………………………………………………………………………………
1986: Mama and Daddy come to see
the perfect new house and the perfect newest grandbaby.
We walk about the neighborhood.
I want them to be proud.
Daddy: “Seems to be a lot of dark people in your neighborhood…”
Me: “We like that. We love this neighborhood.”
Daddy: “Ohh…..?……”
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Snapshot in Time: Rhode Island, 1987
First Day in the New School for our daughters (6+7).
Daughter: “But Mom, I don’t understand.
Where are all the black kids?”
Me (not yet comprehending the demographics of our new town):
“There are no black kids in your class?”
Daughters: “There are no black kids in the whole school!”
Daughter: “Well, there are two kids that are kinda gray…..”
(from India and Guam)
I wonder: Have we come full circle — back to an all-white world?
Except the two who are “kinda gray”?
“Red and yellow, black and white
And green and orange
And kinda gray…..”
“They are precious…..”
Through the eyes of children….
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Fast Forward through the Snapshot Stack to 2024:
Now 30+ years into the newer kinder marriage.
Five kids all grown, and some now with kids of their own.
Willimantic, Connecticut
2020 Census Data:
Population: 18,149
White: 52%
Latino: 36%
2 or More Races: 15%
Black: 8%
Foreign-Born: 9%
What am I doing now to counter racism?
To dismantle white supremacy?
I am trying to live local.
I am learning Spanish.
I worship with the local Spanish-speaking Catholic Church.
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Snapshot in Time: 2012
La Iglesia del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus
Before going, I meet with the priest.
He gives me a bilingual missal and a Spanish Bible.
He looks me in the eye and says:
“To enter into a language, is to enter into
the experience of a people.
Do you understand this?”
I nod, knowing only that I do not know.
Understanding only that I do not understand.
And yet I believe…..
He says: “Plenty here are undocumented. I don’t ask.”
He says: “Come. You are welcome here.”
…………………………………………………………………………………….
I came then and I still come.
I have been welcomed from day one.
During the first mass, I understood only three words:
“Jesus, Aleluya y Amen”
A new friend there laughed and said:
“That’s not a bad place to start!”
I try to speak only Spanish.
Which, in practice, means I say little.
Which, in practice, also means I miss much.
It keeps me humble.
A connection grows beneath words and beyond words.
I cannot explain that.
I dwell barely at the edge of their experience.
We start where we start.
We go where we go.
I choose to live local.
Every day is a new beginning.
The “snapshots” do not end.
The “snapshots” reveal.
They teach. They challenge.
It is quiet work.
It is humble work.
It is helping my heart.