December musings

December 19, started...December 22, completed

December and the holiday season, already half over. There is an anxiety I associate with the end of each calendar year; a feeling that there is no turning back and that the past is moving farther away. It's this last idea that sits heavily especially as memory starts to pale and what you remember loses the nuance of the experience.

I am sitting in a Starbucks at the corner of 73rd and Broadway looking out at a row of trees that have been wrapped in bright white LED lights; so white the color is almost silver. As late afternoon sets in, the trees are brightening. It's the week before the winter break for most NYC independent schools and the last few days left for Christmas shopping. Lots of shopping going on.

It's the sixth Christmas since Gregory died and still he is in every holiday step I take. Buy, don't buy... spend the money, don't spend the money...turn on the Christmas playlist...put out the creche...make sure there's enough wine... These things swim around in my head as I move through the season. It feels so different with no one to confer with, no one debating the exact gift for the girls. A long way from our traditional midnight run to Toys R Us when we used to check out the hottest items and get angry over the separation of boys' and girls' toys. That shopping trip always led to arguments over whether children would be happier receiving toys or clothes or other more enduring playthings; signature dolls, wooden toys. It wasn't always that Gregory loved the little bake ovens and doll houses and all the things the girls would see on TV and exclaim, "I want that!" There was the year when Gena was the only child and he and Christopher bought a wooden rocking horse in the City and Gregory carried it home on the hour-and-a-half subway ride to Queens. Or the time he insisted that Kathryn needed a horse of her own and Splash, a neighing, rocking spring horse, took up residence with us. But those efforts quickly got embedded in family schedules and collective enthusiasm for advertising and we were swept up in the mad dash for Cabbage Patch Dolls and Lullaby Ernie and Chatbot. Gregory was the grumpiest in anticipation of the holidays, but the happiest on Christmas morning if the girls were playing with something new and exciting amidst piles of ripped off wrapping paper, the one unique wrapping we saved for Santa to use.

It is the third Christmas since Mom died and I feel her energy all through the season. I have images of her at the piano playing Christmas Carols and memories of her choir at Legacy. She made community wherever she went; something I am still learning to do and am not sure I will ever do in the ways that she could. Her socks have become more dear and keep me warm all winter. I finished the sock yarn blanket from all of her half-used skeins of sock yarn thinking I'd give it away; soon it will be a gently used gift.

We are gathering in Rochester this year for Christmas. Georgia and her family will be here and we'll see Ellen's and John's families at Kathryn and Pat's open house today.  Emma is in New Zealand and we will miss her family though knowing they are in the throes of summer helps to ease the absence. Some year we will all be there enjoying the sun and beach. Some of us will eat Christmas lunch at FBH with Dad. He seems to have lost energy for showing up, but is always interested in knowing where we all are. I hope Ruby gets some fun toys so that we can all play with them on Christmas morning, but I'm certain they won't come from PoPo.

A trip to Montgomery, Alabama

We have been in Nashville since Thursday at the Annual People of Color Conference. The teachers and students have all gone home and three of us stayed on to take a bus trip to Montgomery, Alabama for the day. It seems fitting to enter Montgomery in a bus, to honor those who had the courage to hold a bus boycott to fight for justice. The boycott began on December 5, 1955, almost 63 years to the day, and ended after more than a year on December 20, 1956  with a Supreme Court ruling declaring the laws in Montgomery and Alabama that segregated buses to be unconstitutional.

Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative and it is EJI that has created the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. They also created the Memorial for Peace and Justice a remarkable expression of affirmation and declaration. The walk through the memorial was a slow and measured walk through the collective presence of 4400 people, named and unknown, who were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950. In the beginning you are standing side-by-side with these individuals who are named on large steel columns. They are grouped within the counties where they died. As you work your way down a decline you realize that at some point you are looking up and the steel columns are hanging above your head.

The entrance to the museum has these words:

"...we remember the thousands killed, the generations of black people terroroized, and the legacy of suffering and injustice that haunts us still....telling the truth about the age of racial terror and reflecting together on this period and its legacy can lead to a more thoughtful and informed commitment to justice today."

Elsewhere these words appear:

We will remember.

With hope because hopelessness is the enemy of justices.
With courage because peace requires bravery.
With persistence because justice is a constant struggle.
With faith because we shall over come.