…the questions that prompted this writing were about how family, home, neighborhood and school experiences effected my life and made me into the person I have become…
I was blessed with a mother and father who loved each other dearly. They loved me and my brothers as well and we lived in a warm home with plenty to feed our bellies and our hearts and our minds. My mother cooked simple delicious dinners, we never worried about our next meal and almost always had dessert. From his place at the head of our table, our father buttered each slice of bread for the 6 of us. It was a ritual, a gentle tradition. He both led us and served us.
Our father could not carry a tune, but he sang to us and we loved it because we adored him. We all sang and some of us still sing. There was always music in our home, some of it played on the Zenith stereo some on my mothers piano. We had recordings of Ravel, Gershwin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mitch Miller and the Kingston Trio. I added the Beatles, Cat Stevens, Kenny Rankin and Frank Zappa. There were tonettes, recorders and a silver flute, an auto-harp, a violin, a mandolin, an electric guitar, a banjo and more than a few harmonicas in our home. I also had a tambourine and made my own dulcimer. My mother encouraged our love of music and gave us the confidence to be inventive and creative throughout our lives.
It was okay to play dress up and dance in the front room. It was okay to play baseball and kickball and war in the back yard. Yes, we played war, and my brothers had toy guns. At some point we had a BB target pistol. I don’t remember shooting it. I do remember overhearing a conversation between my father and a fellow merchant. The merchant kept a gun in his store, my father did not. When asked what he would do if someone robbed his store my father responded that he would probably hold the door open for them because he knew that he could not harm someone or take a life over money or things. Hearing him say that made me proud and a little afraid of guns.
Our father could recite Hiawatha, Casey at the Bat and other poems. He faithfully read Twas the Night Before Christmas to us every Christmas Eve. I can’t remember not believing in Santa Claus my most fondly remembered gifts were a Betsy McCall doll and a small Zenith transistor radio. There were also beautiful clothes that my grandmother handmade for us.
I think we may have been the first family in our neighborhood to own a color television. In his furniture store my father sold Zenith and Maytag products and Lazy-boy and Kroehler furniture. When we were children both our father and grandfather taught us that our hands were to stay in our pockets when ever we were in his or any other store. To this day it annoys me to wear clothing without pockets. My mother was a registered nurse who was mostly a stay at home mom and my father worked 6 days a week. Vacation weekends were taken at Crooked Lake, then Sylvan Lake and for a magical while we owned an island. I remember boat rides, fishing for bluegill, fireworks reflected on water and standing waist deep in the lake while it rained softly, hearing thunder in the distance, being foolish and feeling brave.
I didn’t do well in elementary school. I believe that I was abused and bullied by a teacher and principal in the third grade when I would have been 8 years old. I blocked those memories but they haunt me in the form of fear and meekness that has taking decades to over-come. There is still a small girl with liquid brown eyes that hides beside a brick wall, she occasionally visits my deeper blue dreams. I did not read well, until a teacher in the 7th grade help me with a machine that trained my eyes to correctly track lines of words. The first book I remember reading was Lord of The Flies. I learned to love science fiction and still do to this day. Our mother is an avid reader and has kept track of every book she has ever read and how many times she has read it. My brothers did well in school, all of us went to college and had professional careers.
People of color lived just a block away and I hesitate to say it because it sounds so cliche, but their neighborhood started on 6th Street, and was across the railroad tracks from mine on 5th. Ours was the only school in the city except for a small Catholic School. So we experienced a sort of 1960s style, Civil Rights influenced, integration by default. In sports, skin color didn’t matter, neither did the amount of money a family had or where they lived, our teams were powerful and legendary and drew from both races. But I have a vivid memory of a music teacher asking if it was okay with our small ensemble group if a black student joined us. I was completely baffled as to why it would matter, unless he couldn’t sing and he could sing, he was brilliant. Of course we all agreed that he should join us, never realizing the power we had wielded over and stripped away from him. This was only an inkling of how the lives of people of color differed from mine. I felt like everyone should have had the same opportunities that were afforded to me and my brothers. We were all in the same place and had the same teachers. But I grew up in a town where two African-American men accused of murder and falsely accused of rape were beaten and lynched in the courthouse square by a mob of over 10,000 people. This occurred in 1930 when my father would have been 15 years old. He never spoke of it and I prefer to think that he was not a witness to that atrocity. The subject was not taught in school even though it was reportedly the last public lynching in my state. I was insulated from all that. Made naive by censorship and an insensitivity to the remnants of fear that had to have lingered between anyone involved, however remotely, in that vile incident, and their heirs. A mere 38 years later I graduated from high school.
I have a picture of the folks who attended my 50th high school reunion. There are a lot of things to notice in the picture, mainly that over a hundred of us are missing and that even though we have all gotten older we still look pretty good. I only counted a few people of color. I also notice that we don’t seem to be in tiny cliquish groups like had been popular in the 60s, but are all mixed together in a nice blend. Absolutely everyone was friendly, seemed very happy and were willing to share their successes and hear about mine. Everyone wondered how the lives of the missing 100 plus alums had fared. No one seemed to know. No one talked much about them.
I know that I lived a life of privilege and had many advantages. I chose to spend my adult life working with people with intellectual disabilities and their families. Meeting their needs and serving them has been my passion for almost 40 years. I am not a leader and although I have an important point of view I am not very political. I was not as successful at marriage as my parents or my brothers. Sometimes this has made me feel like a failure and other times I felt freed. I worry about my children and about the water and the air and trees and just earth in general. I dream about exploring the unknown, robots, artificial intelligence, space probes and the unnamed moons of Jupiter. I swear way too easily and too often. I don’t feel so tiny and insignificant, even faced with the vastness of space. I throw my arms wide open to embrace time without end and space without measure. I stand with my hand over my heart when I sing the national anthem and make my pledge of allegiance to the United States of America – The one that’s under God and has the most beautiful flag in the world. I also support the right of any person to express themselves as they see fit and I will fiercely defend and uphold freedom of speech and the liberty of all people whether they believe as I do or don’t. Although, I should mention that disrespect and meanness make me defensive and cranky. A defensive and cranky Judi is not a pretty sight. I kneel only to God, but would step up to help all who kneel for any reason, to stand when they are ready. I hope that someone would be willing to help me up too, because damn, I’m old and can’t get up so easy anymore.
Judith A. Sears
©09/07/2018
5,839 Prime Words 