Pride
Not a day passes by when I'm not proud of my children. They amaze me in so many ways that no explanation I could offer could be understood adequately. But over the last few days, I have, more than ever before, been filled with so much pride and love for my firstborn child that sometimes, all I can do is cry tears of joy. Petunia has always been the single most empathetic, kind person I have ever known. She is filled with such patience and such love that I don't know how her head and heart contains these things. I fear that she will end up a pediatrician with nine children of her own because she is especially so very good to her brother Dash. I also fear that because she wears her heart on her sleeve, it will be trampled. It will be a challenge to teach her to love with some limits -- as in, that boy who tells you "you suck" is not worth your tears. I will have many years to teach her strength, though. It is a blessing that I will not have to teach her fundamental kindness. I will not have to teach her what good citizenship means. I will not have to teach her fairness, and equality, and the difference between right and wrong because she gets it already.
Last night, when Barack Obama was elected President, Petunia's eyes were glued to the TV screen. She got a little hung up on the "Wait... they get a new puppy because they're moving into the White House?!" thing (because she -- and I -- and Dash -- want a dog so badly)... But she got past that in time to hear President-elect Obama's tribute to a woman named Anne who lived through a time when neither woman nor blacks could vote. She heard his references to Dr. Martin Luther King, and she understood those references because we've studied MLK together. And at the end of the speech, Petunia turned to me and commented, "Can you believe that in Grammy's time, they would've made Obama sit in the back of the bus?"
Petunia is living proof that one can teach your kids how to think about the world instead of what to think -- and the kids will make the right connections anyway.
While my heart burst with pride for Petunia's excitement over demonstrating for No on 8 earlier in the day, that excitement lessened this morning with Prop 8's passage; it will now be in the California constitution that marriage is exclusively for men and women. When Petunia asked me what this means for her friend's same-sex parents, I had to tell her that, in the eyes of the state of California, they probably were no longer married. She asked if they were still married in God's eyes; I told her that only God could answer that.
Her response was: "Well, Mama, I kept my sign, and I guess I'll have to carry it some more then." She understands already that when you really believe in something, it might not come to pass without a lot of hard work. She is willing to do that work, and I will be honored to have her at my side while we carry signs and work toward marriage equality for all. (And, as I noted to friends earlier, I am confident that we will carry those signs for as long as it takes; we will not let you down.)
*****
Prejudice
On a personal note, I am a former member of the Af-Lat-Am society at my boarding school, though I am neither black nor Latina. I joined Af-Lat-Am because when I showed up at my elite boarding school, the rich white kids from Greenwich wanted nothing to do with a poor (compared to them) kid from rural West Virginia. The kids from the Bronx, and Queens, and North Carolina, and Tennessee? The kids that didn't look like me at all? They befriended me, and they supported me, and they are the reason that I acclimated to and graduated from one of the very best schools in the world. I did not vote for Obama because he was black. I voted for Obama for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was his understanding that poverty comes in many forms, and that hope is not owned only by the most privileged in our society.
It is not lost on me, though, that my native West Virginia -- a traditionally blue state -- voted for McCain. I felt it coming -- it is a predominately white state, and, having grown up there, I know that prejudice not only exists but thrives there. But even though I saw the Red vote coming, it hit me like a train, and I cried for my former home like a lost friend. I know that a host of my kin voted for McCain, and I pray that it's because they felt he would lead best -- and not because he wasn't black. I'll never know for sure, but I'll suspect forever (well, actually, I won't suspect my kin, but I will suspect a lot of my childhood "friends"). At the end of the day, the joke's on them (except it's not a joke to me, but justice): they now have a black President for at least four years. But that part of the victory is not sweet to me -- it's a rather bitter pill to swallow. There is a lot of prejudice in this world still, and it should not have a home in any one of our fifty states, no matter how black or white, gay or straight. I hope my children live to see less unkindness that I have -- and that if they do see it, they don't become as jaded as me. I'll work on becoming less so over the next four years -- because, after all, I do believe that Hope applies to me, and to us all.
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