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You never know when it’s going to happen, that moment when a memory or random event lines up the compartments of your life just enough to make you review them all from an entirely different angle.
I was putting postage on a long-promised letter when the date on the stamp set me off. It went like this: my commemorative emancipation stamp said FREE in big red letters (maybe you’ve seen them?); the date on it was 1863; my father turned 80 last year; my father is named after the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass (2-s spelling and everything); dad’s dad was a senior, so they shared the same name; my paternal grandfather lived in the era of Frederick Douglass himself, all of which led me to this: Had my paternal grandfather been born into slavery?
I did the math for a quick minute and emailed my family, realizing later that my grandfather, while I’m sure he was an extraordinary man, he would have been past sixty at the time of my father’s conception. I never said numbers was my strong suit; the point is my paternal grandfather was very probably raised by people who had at some point been enslaved.
I’m the first one to tout the importance of diving into the messiness of living because that’s where the gold is. I’ve tried all the shortcuts, and this path is the last one left as far as I’m concerned. Even so, that doesn’t mean it’s always fun or comfortable. Feeling the mark of slavery so tangible in my family line, it seemed to explain some of the difficulty that marked our relationship—my dad’s and mine—throughout my life.
I wondered about great-grandparents I never knew—people who infused their progeny with the spirit of freedom fighters from birth. They knew the toll life in an unkind world would take and prepared them with the best they had. If I got nothing else from my dad, I’m sure I come by my fire and conviction—often disguised as hardheadedness—through his side. My brother Terry even takes to calling me Sojourner Truth when I give him unsolicited shit for things I think he should or shouldn’t be doing. Simmer down, Sojourner Truth, he’d say. Get off my back. We laugh because he’s right: when I’m on the hunt for results, I go in with tools.
Lots of American families like mine—black, white, and otherwise—don’t like to rifle through their histories, afraid of what they may or may not find. Who wants to be overwhelmed by the shame and anger of a violent, damming past you’re powerless to do anything about? How do you confront the fact of ancestors scattered and stolen from a world away? For my part, the short answers were, Not me and Damn if I know.
A few years out of college I began to inquire, timidly, about my family’s past, asking where our people come from, who was who, and how did we wind up here. The common response was to pass me off to another relative who would do the same until I ran low on passion for the cause and people to ask.
In the same way I inherited the color of my skin, eyes, and hair, and the shape of my body, I also carry the energy imprint of my family line. When the reality of my great grand ancestors hit home, I ran the gamut of rage, pain, pride, and bewilderment. At the same time I was typing out the email to my siblings, I witnessed the leader of the free world, who is both black and white, resting his hand on bibles of freedom fighters and ancestors Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. as he took the oath of office.
It’s moments like those that undo me. They’re messy, profound, everything at once. I’ve always been told we never do anything alone; that we stand on the shoulders of giants—those who have gone on before us. I used to cringe at the thought of teetering atop a quivering human pyramid of them, all waiting for me to do something big with my life, to make them proud, to honor their collective sacrifice by being somebody for the people.
The story of my father’s and grandfather’s name kept playing in my head as I imagined what their parents felt, gazing into those baby faces so open, full of life and promise. How must it have been for them, I wondered, to pass their freedom dreams on to their children, handing to them a transcendent, unbroken legacy of faith, resilience, strength and pride. I know in that moment they called in their ancestors to gather around them all, and they asked them to lend whatever energy was needed for every step they’d take toward freedom.
I never doubted those shoulders, though I often felt unworthy of them. I told myself I’d stand on what looked like my own two feet, grounded and happy to go it alone. Only, you can’t be fundamentally alone when you know you never really are.
I can almost make out that first mother whispering her dreams of life into the shining face of her sweet brown child. And that child would grow to one day whisper her dreams to hers and hers to hers and so on. And now here we are, each of us, the dream of our ancestors.
I think this legacy is what we each inherit: an omnipresent circle of love that great teachers say unites us through it all, bearing us up in good times and bad, lending strength that helps us shoulder the burdens we carry. It stands outside of time, race, gender and religious tradition. I think it’s the same love, no matter what name it takes, that keeps us fighting for the right reasons, whispering freedom to us still.
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You might also like:
What It’s Worth
Community Service
Nuts ‘n’ Honey
Origins
Who Do You Think You Are?
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Last week I included a video of a local artist’s work in the It Might Not Work post. His name is Michael Grab—seriously, it is—and he’s a self-described balance artist. I was fascinated not only by this man’s hands, but by his celebration of impermanence and beauty in the moment. I got in touch and asked him if he wouldn’t mind talking with me about his art and approach to life, which are one and the same. As you might imagine, Mr. Grab’s got ahold of something big. What a treat to talk with him about it.
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Mr. Rogers was probably the first adult who put words to the magical inner life I lived as a kid. I loved the fact that he thought every body and every person was special no matter where they came from and that the extraordinary was as real as we believed.
Earlier this week a friend passed this video on to me. PBS did some amazing remixes from early children’s shows, and I recommend them all. (Reading Rainbow is also a must-see.) As of this post I’ve watched it enough to burn the music into my brain and bop uncontrollably along with the music. This is a good thing.
In my last post I talked about the impermanence of life and the importance of stepping into the river of risk to do what’s in us to do. Fred Rogers knew all about this; he made his mark in the time he had and I will be forever grateful.
I found these words of his wisdom and wanted to share them with the helpers in all of us.
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“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in
times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”
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“The greatest gift you can ever give is your honest self.”
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“Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.”
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You might also like:
It Might Not Work
Barefoot into Joy
Hammer Time
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We talk a whole lot about passion—how to find it, do it, why we need it, and so on—and I’m all for it, mainly because I’m almost all passion. When I feel something deeply, I latch on so tight to it, you’d have better luck pulling a guard dog off the mailman. It’s that first flash of adventure and foray into the unknown that draws me in. My question, now that we’ve passed through the holidays, the end of the world, and into the sobering rest of the year is, What do we do next?
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