Lives joined by love emit a joyous song. This peal of joy, in the beginning sung in close harmony, rises and falls with the rhythm of time. The melody can rush ahead, then drop back while the harmony sings alone.
When one of the players in the duet strikes a wrong note the other plays on, keeping the music flowing until both once more have found the place and continue together, again in harmony.
When the song grows old, as one day it must, if it has been played truly, it fades away, gently, naturally, to a soft hum, then, in the normal course of things, a whisper sung by one. But even when it seems to fall silent, if you listen carefully, you can still hear the faint but lovely echo of the love song that was their life.
So excuse the discordant notes, forgive the frailty of the song carried alone and continue on until your partner finds the place and the full melody can swell forth again in all its loveliness
.
You are the music of each other’s life – live it, love it, cherish it – and each other. A beautiful song is a rare and lovely thing.
Shirley - September 2, 2003
Saturday, March 27, 2010
THE WOMAN IN THE ALLEY
I’m in the middle of Kathryn Stockett’s book THE HELP and trying to slow my reading down. I know when I have finished, I’m going to be wishing there would be a new episode, a new chapter every week. I don’t remember why I bought the book – it’s a hardback and the price is around $25, not my usual budget range. But there it was and somehow, I know now I was meant to read it.
It is fiction, but it isn’t. Reading about these three African American women and their lives has opened for me a door I didn’t know was there to a way of living that has shocked and terribly saddened me. It has made me wonder why the individual tragedies of the Civil Rights movement and the reasons for It, the understanding of the vital need, never touched my life, or my heart.
I wonder why, at this late time in my life, I’m learning and understanding things like this. It seems I should have been aware of life beyond my own. As a college student and beyond, life was pretty much all about me. What was happening in the country, in the world, was simply background “music”. How very sad, how reprehensible!
I remember riding the bus up Biscayne Blvd to my college campus. It was always in the early morning and usually there were only a few passengers. Often, however, there was just I, the young college student almost bouncing with plans for the day and the excitement of being in college and another. She was there every morning, sitting in the back of the bus.
I was naïve, a New Englander, living in Florida most of my life. It seemed to me that when there were only the two of us, she could sit up front with me or I could sit back with her. I certainly was old enough to know “how it was” but still I tried to engage her in conversation many times in the beginning. She was quiet and kind, but refused to share in any kind of conversation. I knew, of course, why she was sitting in the back of the bus, but like too many of my generation, I thought it was stupid and the custom could be just brushed aside, forgotten.
I grew up seeing the separate facilities for “the colored” and as a child questioned it. I was told that was the way it was. I wasn’t a normally defiant child, but I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why my little brother and I were forbidden to go through the garage door into the alley to visit with the “lady doing the wash outside in a tub over a fire.” The first time we met her, she was sweet to us, if a bit tentative. Oh, and yes, she was black but at our early ages, my brother and I were colorblind.
We never knew her name, only that she was nice to us, and we took every opportunity, carefully lest we get caught, to go out to visit with her. We never knew what happened, but after six months or so, she just wasn’t there any more. I can’t remember how many days we looked for her, always to be disappointed.
Looking back now, I wonder. She was very old, wrinkled and stooped, so did she get sick, did she die? Or, worse, did my parents, without saying anything to us, or her employers have something to do with it? You know, “unless she is officially taking care of them, they should know their place in the world and so should she.” I can hear it all now!
My brother is long dead, but the memory of our escapades and of the kindness of that sweet old woman are among the most vivid of my thoughts of him, that time of our lives, and of her. I wish I could tell her how she alone perpetuated the color blindness of my whole life. It seemed that she formed my perception of color and it makes me glad but it makes me sad too. Sad that I didn’t pay more attention and lend my strength, my voice to the Civil Rights Movement – even for her alone.
I am grateful we met and I know by now she is in the glorious Love, she sang to us about and that she understands. When I was asked who I am most looking forward to meeting in Heaven, it is she, the little lady whose name I never knew.
It is fiction, but it isn’t. Reading about these three African American women and their lives has opened for me a door I didn’t know was there to a way of living that has shocked and terribly saddened me. It has made me wonder why the individual tragedies of the Civil Rights movement and the reasons for It, the understanding of the vital need, never touched my life, or my heart.
I wonder why, at this late time in my life, I’m learning and understanding things like this. It seems I should have been aware of life beyond my own. As a college student and beyond, life was pretty much all about me. What was happening in the country, in the world, was simply background “music”. How very sad, how reprehensible!
I remember riding the bus up Biscayne Blvd to my college campus. It was always in the early morning and usually there were only a few passengers. Often, however, there was just I, the young college student almost bouncing with plans for the day and the excitement of being in college and another. She was there every morning, sitting in the back of the bus.
I was naïve, a New Englander, living in Florida most of my life. It seemed to me that when there were only the two of us, she could sit up front with me or I could sit back with her. I certainly was old enough to know “how it was” but still I tried to engage her in conversation many times in the beginning. She was quiet and kind, but refused to share in any kind of conversation. I knew, of course, why she was sitting in the back of the bus, but like too many of my generation, I thought it was stupid and the custom could be just brushed aside, forgotten.
I grew up seeing the separate facilities for “the colored” and as a child questioned it. I was told that was the way it was. I wasn’t a normally defiant child, but I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why my little brother and I were forbidden to go through the garage door into the alley to visit with the “lady doing the wash outside in a tub over a fire.” The first time we met her, she was sweet to us, if a bit tentative. Oh, and yes, she was black but at our early ages, my brother and I were colorblind.
We never knew her name, only that she was nice to us, and we took every opportunity, carefully lest we get caught, to go out to visit with her. We never knew what happened, but after six months or so, she just wasn’t there any more. I can’t remember how many days we looked for her, always to be disappointed.
Looking back now, I wonder. She was very old, wrinkled and stooped, so did she get sick, did she die? Or, worse, did my parents, without saying anything to us, or her employers have something to do with it? You know, “unless she is officially taking care of them, they should know their place in the world and so should she.” I can hear it all now!
My brother is long dead, but the memory of our escapades and of the kindness of that sweet old woman are among the most vivid of my thoughts of him, that time of our lives, and of her. I wish I could tell her how she alone perpetuated the color blindness of my whole life. It seemed that she formed my perception of color and it makes me glad but it makes me sad too. Sad that I didn’t pay more attention and lend my strength, my voice to the Civil Rights Movement – even for her alone.
I am grateful we met and I know by now she is in the glorious Love, she sang to us about and that she understands. When I was asked who I am most looking forward to meeting in Heaven, it is she, the little lady whose name I never knew.
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