He remembered meeting my mother back in the ‘60s, he said. He told me that what he remembered might surprise me.

This was years ago, not long after my mother died. I was talking to a veteran DC-area activist, who as far as I knew had only met my mother at my wedding.

The activist, a guy in his 60s named Mike, already had the distinction of having been the college roommate of the leader of the religious community (or some might say irreligious community) that my family was part of in my childhood. We’d stumbled upon that random connection years ago. Now, he apparently had another small-world revelation for me.

Somehow it had come up that I’d grown up in Bowie, Maryland, in a Levitt development called Belair.  Well, Mike had been part of protests in the Belair development, back in 1963, because the developer would not sell homes to African Americans.

I mentioned clear memories of having Black neighbors, but admitted that it was perhaps 1968 or 1969. I actually don’t know when they moved in.  I was born in 1966 and simply have no memories, of any kind, before I was two or three.  But I couldn’t imagine my very-liberal parents buying in a restricted development I told him. He thought his memories suggested otherwise. He was cryptic.  But I was pretty sure that Belair hadn’t even been on my parents’ radar screen as early as 1963, and despite her strong political instincts, my mother wasn’t one to do civil disobedience. So he couldn’t have met my mother then. I didn’t say those things aloud. But I did decide to let it go.

Until this week.

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I have no one to blame but myself.

The 50th Anniversary March on Washington this past Saturday was the only commemoration that my 8-year-old daughter could hope to attend (since she will be in school on Wednesday, the actual anniversary of the original March). And I blew it.

On the Friday night before the Saturday march, my family and I spent a wonderful and long-awaited Shabbat dinner with friends…and I let my gluten-intolerant guard down. Continue reading →

The next-to-last stop on my recent family trip to Minnesota was, randomly enough, to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, MN.

My husband and kids and I had spent two days with my brother’s family at their home in Minneapolis, then four glorious days with them on the north shore of Lake Superior, and three on a smaller lake an hour from both Hibbing (Bob Dylan’s birthplace) and Grand Rapids.  The highlight of the small lake visit for me had been, on our last night there, a sighting of a bald eagle taking off from a tree near me, and soaring in all its majesty, right over my head.

It was a week for American icons. Continue reading →

“I’ve got a quiz question for you,” our driver said, smiling, as he maneuvered the yellow Econopark shuttle into the flow of traffic. “Who invented the traffic light?”

My eyes widened. “I have no idea..,” I whispered, and grabbed my phone with my left hand while poising my right index finger. “She’s got Google,” my daughter declared, and the driver laughed.

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The World’s Best Donuts (according to the sign, and the bustle outside the shop that sells them) are just down the street from our rented flat, in a lovely small town, on the north shore of Lake Superior. This is our first morning in this gorgeous part of the country, and I am sitting at an outdoor table, at the aforementioned sweet shack, just a block from the water. A cool breeze is blowing, and I have my nearest and dearest (husband, son, daughter, brother, sister-in-law, nieces) all around. There are even some friends who happen to be here (in town, and at this popular hangout), just for good measure. Life is good, right?

My daughter is beaming, so grateful for this treat. And I am smiling, but not because of the treat, and not because of the blissful setting. I am smiling because I should be smiling because of the blissful setting, and I’m trying to mean it. But inside, I’m trembling, afraid to touch the crumb-and-sugar-coated table. Afraid to touch my (equally crumb-and-sugar-coated) son and daughter. I am just hoping this will all wrap up soon. And then, someone declares that we must, must, must begin each day this way.

Xanax, anyone?

Let me explain. I have Celiac disease. Celiac is an auto-immune disease triggered by gluten, a protein in barley, rye and wheat–and thus, in donuts (and nearly everything else). Continue reading →

Today we brought mini-popsicles and donut holes to our son’s preschool (because he was quite clear that he wanted both popsicles and donuts) for a bittersweet celebration of his moving on.  The school is year round, but because we’re heading out for vacation–and because he got into a Pre-K class in his sister’s public school–this was goodbye, to a loving bunch of kids, and some of the best early-ed teachers I’ve ever known.

I remember visiting the school years ago, and–as I had for my daughter before, at other institutions–furtively counting the children of color to make sure my child wouldn’t be the only, or one of the only, Black kids in the class.

As it happened, in his class there were a disproportionate number of kids who came from mixed-race backgrounds, just like my boy.  But despite reading all the right books with him over the years (The Colors of Us, Shades of Black, etc.),and quite unlike our daughter at that age, our son didn’t seem to notice such distinctions. Continue reading →