Two Pictures

Has it really been almost nine months since I blogged? Wow! This is what happens when Facebook becomes a habitual, time-consuming, guilty habit. The need or desire for slowly and deliberately pecking out feelings, emotions and events has been replaced with instant connection to friends and family. This is my personal retreat far from the Madding crowd, so to speak.

I was catching up on my Twitter feeds and read one of my follower's comments that she hadn't blogged as much as she had Facebooked in a while and I remembered this blog and wondered whether it was stil open or had been shut down. Imagine my surprise that it's still here AND I still remembered the password.

Everyone who follows me here follows me on FB but most of my FB don't know I used to blog. Too much personal stuff I don't want them to know about me. And what I don't want floating around the blogosphere I keep in my leather bound journals given by my good friend James.

Something else that made me think about this blog was emailing pictures of Butterfly to my BFF Pete. This is her first week of kindergarten and I wanted him to see her all dressed and coiffed and fearlessly ready to leave her mom behind and go to school. I had asked her the night before if she were scared or nervous. Not this one! Butterfly was ready and more than eager to go and meet her new teacher.

Somewhere, there is a picture or painting of a little black girl all dressed for her first day of school. The difference between that little girl and Butterfly is that little girl's eyes are not sparking with excitement. Her face is not beaming with smiles and the errant skip or hop is not a part of her actions. That little girl's face is downcast and her face is shadowed by images of uniformed men in front and in back of her marching her up the steps of the school.

How brave her parents were, allowing her the chance to knock down segregation but I wonder if her parents were able to sleep the night before or were they up periodically pacing back and forth, wondering whether they had made the right decision. Did the mother give in and cry during the night? Did she get up and pray whether she should reconsider?

Those two pictures are juxtapositions of each other, and they stand to remind me of how far we've come as a Black people and a Nation. Perhaps I shouldn't make this a race thing although that's what it was back then. I have two cousins who are autistic. It used to be they were not allowed to attend public schools or were relegated to "the special little bus". But this year Daniel began his first year as a high school sophomore and his brother Shaun his first year of public school too.

I'm so proud of them. I'm proud of us as a Nation even with all this crap going on now. I'm proud of that little girl and her parents. I only wish I knew the picture/painting I'd post it as a promise to my niece and cousins.