Letter to My Daughter (7 page)

National Spirit

For the past four decades our national spirit and natural joy have ebbed. Our national expectations have diminished. Our hope for the future has waned to such a degree that we risk sneers and snorts of derision when we confess that we are hoping for bright tomorrows.

How have we come so late and lonely to this place? When did we relinquish our desire for a high moral ground to those who clutter our national landscape with vulgar accusations and gross speculations?

Are we not the same people who have fought a war in Europe to eradicate an Aryan threat to murder an entire race? Have we not worked, prayed, planned to create a better world? Are we not the same citizens who struggled, marched, and went to jail to obliterate legalized racism from our country? Didn’t we dream of a country where freedom was in the national conscience and dignity was the goal?

We must insist that the men and women who expect to lead us recognize the true desires of those who are being led. We do not choose to be herded into a building burning with hate nor into a system rife with intolerance.

Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow.

Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone.

If we tolerate vulgarity, our future will sway and fall under a burden of ignorance. It need not be so. We have the brains and the heart to face our futures bravely. Taking responsibility for the time we take up and the space we occupy. To respect our ancestors and out of concern for our descendants, we must show ourselves as courteous and courageous well-meaning Americans.

Now.

Reclaiming Southern Roots

After generations of separations and decades of forgetfulness, the mention of the South brings back to our memories ancient years of pain and pleasure. At the turn of the twentieth century, many African Americans left the Southern towns, left the crushing prejudice and prohibition, and moved north to Chicago and New York City, west to Los Angeles and San Diego.

They were drawn by the heady promise of better lives, of equality, fair play, and good old American four-star freedom. Their expectations were at once fulfilled and at the same time dashed to the ground and broken into shards of disappointment.

The sense of fulfillment arose from the fact that there were chances to exchange the dull drudgery of sharecrop farming for protected work under unionized agreements. Sadly for the last thirty years, those jobs have been decreasing as industry became computerized and work was sent to foreign countries. The climate which the immigrants imagined as free of racial prejudice was found to be discriminatory in ways different from the southern modes and possibly even more humiliating.

A small percentage of highly skilled and fully educated blacks found and clung to rungs on the success ladder. Unskilled and undereducated black workers were spit out by the system like so many undigestible watermelon seeds.

They began to find their lives minimalized, and their selves as persons trivialized. Many members of that early band of twentieth-century pilgrims must have yearned for the honesty of Southern landscapes where even if they were the targets of hate mongers who wanted them dead, they were at least credited with being alive. Northern whites with their public smiles of liberal acceptance and their private behavior of utter rejection wearied and angered the immigrants.

They stayed however, in big city hovels, crowded into small tenements, and flowing out to the mean and quickly criminal street. They raised children who were sent south each summer to visit grandparents, third cousins, double second cousins and extended families. Those children grew up, mainly in the large northern cities, with memories now dead, of Southern summers, fish fries, Saturday barbecues, and the gentle manners of Southern upbringing. These are the people who are coming back to the South to live. They often find that their Southern relatives have died or have themselves been transplanted to Detroit or Cleveland, Ohio. Still they come to live in Atlanta, “Y’all like Hot Lanta?” and New Orleans, quickly learning to call the historic city by its rightful name of “N’awlins.”

They return to the South to find or make places for themselves in the land of their foreparents. They make friends under the shade of trees their ancestors left decades earlier.

Many find themselves happy, without being able to explain the emotion. I think it is simply that they feel generally important. Southern themes will range from generous and luscious love to cruel and bitter hate, but no one can ever claim that the South is petty or indifferent. Even in little Stamps, Arkansas, black people walk with an air which implies “when I walk in, they may like me or dislike me, but everybody knows I’m here.”

Surviving

Where the winds of disappointment

dash my dream house to the ground

and anger, octopus-like, wraps its tentacles around my soul

I just stop myself. I stop in my tracks

and look for one thing that can

heal me.

I find in my memory

one child’s face

any child’s face

looking at a desired toy

with sweet surprise

a child’s face

with hopeful expectation in his eyes

The second I realize I am gazing at a face

sweet with youth and innocence, I am drawn away

from gloom and despair, and into the pleasing climate

of hope.

Each time my search for true love

leads me to the gates of hell

where Satan waits with open arms

I imagine the laughter of women friends,

their sounds tinkle like wind charms

urged by a searching breeze

I remember the sturdy guffaw of happy men and

my feet, without haste, and with purpose

move past the threatening open gates

to an area, secure from the evil of heartbreak

I am a builder

Sometimes I have built well, but often

I have built without researching the ground

upon which I put my building

I raised a beautiful house

and I lived in it for a year

Then it slowly drifted away with the tides

for I had laid the foundation upon shifting sand

Another time I erected a

mansion, the windows shining

like mirrors

and the walls were hung

with rich tapestry, but

the earth shook with a

slight tremor, and the walls gave way, the floors opened

and my castle fell into pieces around my feet

The emotional sway of events and the impermanence

of construction echo the ways of dying love.

I have found that the platonic affection

in friendships and the familial

love for children can be relied upon

with certainty to lift the bruised soul

and repair the wounded spirit

and I am finished with

erotic romance.

Until…

Salute to Older Lovers

A sixty-five-year-old woman friend recently married a fifty-two-year-old man. At the ceremony there were many faces stiff with disapproval. What did he want marrying her? Weren’t there young women properly three or four years younger than he? And what did she mean marrying him? In ten years, osteoporosis will ride her back without a saddle, and arthritis will disfigure her hands. If she could not find a mate when she was younger, she should just give up, give in, and give over to old age and loneliness.

And what did I think? I said, “I commend lovers, I am en-heartened by lovers, I am encouraged by their courage and inspired by their passion.”

I have come to speak

of love of its valleys and its hills

its tremors, chills and thrills

I have come to say I love love

and I love loving love

and I, surely, love

the brave and sturdy hearts

who dare to love.

Today, these lovers

have broken the bonds of timidity

and stepped out

before the entire world to say,

“See us, family and friends

denying none of the years

which have branded our bodies

and none of the past broken vows

which have seared our souls.

You may think this undertaking

Should be left to younger hearts

But love has given us the courage to venture

boldly into the sacred country of

marriage, admitting our wrinkles,

we allow them to

show themselves bravely

and our bones know the weight

of the years.

Yet we dare

face down loneliness

and embrace the

uplifting communion

found in a good marriage.

We dare and we hope.”

They are blessed by love, and each of us on whom their love light beams is enriched.

Thank you, Lovers.

Commencement Address

And now the work begins

And now the joy begins

Now the years of preparation

Of tedious study and

Exciting learning

are explained.

The jumble of words and

Tangle of great and small ideas

Begin to take order and

This morning you can see

A small portion of the large

Plan of your futures.

Your hours of application,

The hopes of your parents,

And the labor of your instructors

Have all brought this moment

Into your hands.

Today, you are princesses and princes

Of the morning.

Ladies and Lords of the summer

You have shown the most

Remarkable of all virtues

For today as you sit

Wrapped in earned robes,

Literally or figuratively,

I see you filled with courage.

For although you might all

Be bright, intellectually astute,

You have had to use courage

To arrive at this moment.

You may be,

As you are often described,

Privileged, which of course means

Wealthy, or you have been born into an ongoing struggle with need.

In either case, you have had to develop

An outstanding courage to

Invent this moment.

Of all your attributes, youth,

Beauty, wit, kindness, mercy,

Courage is your greatest

Achievement,

For you, without it, can practice no other

Virtue with consistency.

And now that you have shown

That you are capable of manufacturing

That most wondrous virtue,

You must be asking yourselves,

What you will do with it.

Be assured that question

Is in the minds of your

Elders, your parents, and strangers

Who do not know your names,

Your fellow students who

Next year, or in the years to come

Will sit, robed and capped

Where you sit today,

And will ask the question

What will you do?

There is an African adage

Which fits your situation.

It is, “The trouble for the

Thief is not how to steal the Chief ’s

Bugle, but where to play it.”

Are you prepared to work

To make this country, our country

More than it is today?

For that is the job to be done.

That is the reason you have

Worked hard, your sacrifices

Of energy and time,

The monies of your parents

Or of government have been paid

So that you can transform your

Country and your world.

Look beyond your tasseled caps

And you will see injustice.

At the end of your fingertips

You will find cruelties,

Irrational hate, bedrock sorrow

And terrifying loneliness.

There is your work.

Make a difference

Use this degree which you

Have earned to increase

Virtue in your world.

Your people, all people,

Are hoping that you are

The ones to do so.

The order is large,

The need immense.

But you can take heart.

For you know that you

Have already shown courage.

And keep in mind

One person, with good purpose,

can, constitute the majority.

Since life is our most precious gift

And since it is given to us to live but once,

Let us so live that we will not regret

Years of uselessness and inertia

You will be surprised that in time

The days of single-minded research

And the nights of crippling, cramming

Will be forgotten.

You will be surprised that these years of

Sleepless nights and months of uneasy

Days will be rolled into

An altering event called the

“Good old days.” And you will not

Be able to visit them even with an invitation

Since that is so you must face your presence.

You are prepared

Go out and transform your world

Welcome to your graduation.

Congratulations