Saturday morning, as the pancakes were filling the house with that Saturday morning smell, as the blueberries settled through the batter and grazed the skillet on the other side with a staccato of sizzles, as she puttered through the midst of the preparations as she always does – close and meandering, underfoot and brimming with ceaseless chatter, she began to say these words. They should have blended in with all the others, the instructions to the babies in their strollers, the request for juice in a particular color cup, the sing-song bits and clips of songs or books. But they caught my ear because of the way she said them – differently – and I know all these words that she speaks. I know them although I don’t often listen. But I know them enough to know when they are new.
…I know you are asking today “How long will this take?”
More talk to the babies, and then a sing-song version of an unfamiliar tune with familiar lyrics,
…I have a dream…
…every hill and mountain…
…this is our hope…
So I asked. I asked her about the books that she had read, what she had talked about at school. She told us about the different drinking fountains, the different seats on the bus, the different schools. What power those stories must have had on her, at the age of four, sitting in that room of many colors. Did they look at each other, did they make the same impish, incredulous looks – the kind of looks they might exchange when the beanstalk grew out of those magic beans or the wolf landed in the boiling pot of water at the base of the third little pig’s house? They are too young yet to be uncomfortable in these truths. More likely they are the stuff of tall tales, of ancient rules that make no sense to us today. They will grow. They will learn more. There will be times of discomfort, of realization, of awakening. But they are one more generation, and she brings me hope. And, as with everything else, a new perspective. She peppered the day and the weekend with more phrases, and I commented that they must have really talked and read and listened to a lot about this man whose name she repeated without an ounce of hesitancy. She shrugged, and replied, “I just really like his speeches.”
Every year she spends the MLK holiday with her dad, downtown at the plaza in front of the courthouse, and inside the walls that heard the suit by Dred Scot and that of Virginia Louisa Minor, Suffragist, for the right to vote, and then through and under the symbol of westward expansion and the place where many gather to march again on this day each and every blustery January. This year, in her dad’s absence – away on a trip, we got to go through this ritual, this time reaching the top of this monument that we can see from her third floor window. It was her first trip up this monument, and she was quick to find the Courthouse and the gathering crowd 630 feet below. It’s a great tradition she and her dad have started, and her grandmother and I were lucky enough this year to be a part of it.
