“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.

He’d been listening to us discuss our plans for the coming week.  We were coming back from ten days away , and were his only passengers, this talkative, animated family of two white parents, a Black 8-year-old girl, and a light-skinned Black (deeply tan, curly headed) 4-year-old boy.

My husband and I had been trying to track recent community-listserv exchanges about which upcoming event was the “real” anniversary of the March on Washington: the march to the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, or the program at the Memorial the following Wednesday with President Obama among the speakers.  (It now seems that both are “real,” but then it was a puzzlement.)  I’d just been reminiscing about the 20th anniversary march, and reminding the kids of MLK’s “I have a dream” speech, when we’d been issued our challenge.

Now I dutifully, happily typed in “inventor traffic light.”  The popular search options came up as I typed, and I loudly reported to the driver (with a conspiratorial smile) that the third-most popular was “inventor traffic light African American.”  Then I pressed the search button and waited for the results.

Truthfully, it seems a number of people are given credit for inventing the traffic light, but one (the only African American among them) may have been the first to patent a three-light system like the one we use today.  In the moment, all that was clear was that that was the name we were looking for.

“Garrett Morgan!” I declared.

“He also invented the gas mask,” said our driver (and about that, my cursory search suggested, there was no dispute). I was suddenly surprised, and at the same time not surprised, that I had never heard of Morgan.

“The only reason I know that is that my son had to write a report on an invention, ” he called back to us, “and he chose the traffic light. “

As we turned into long-term parking, he called, ”Okay, here’s another one:  What was the first Black Order of nuns in America?”

We gave.

“The Oblate Sisters of Providence,” he said, “I only know that because they taught me.”  He laughed, and then puffed up with fake pride, when we asked where. “St. Pius V, right here in Baltimore.”

Our conversation continued as the driver made his way through the lot. And then we were at our car.  As he helped us with our last bag, and bid us goodbye, the driver smiled again, shook his head, and  reached to shake my hand.

“Your family is beautiful,” he said. “Really beautiful.”

There are moments in my family’s life—if not daily, then more than once a week—when I think Black adults are appraising us, and deciding , in the words of Glenda from The Wizard of Oz, if my husband or I are “a good witch or a bad witch.” In other words, are we doing okay in raising these children? This doesn’t bother me a bit, in theory, and only sometimes does it end up bothering me in practice.

Hours before, I’d received two very different reactions from Black women at the airport we’d flown from —one who saw my daughter’s hair, fuzzy from being in pigtail braids for days , and quietly grimaced; the other who caught me tenderly lifting the braids toward each other and fastening them into a bun, and smiled warmly. To one, I was a bad witch. To the other, a good witch.  I’ve learned to let the bad-witch moments go, as long as they are outweighed by good-witch moments, which they generally have been.

And “really beautiful”?

Definitely a good-witch moment.

(To find out why I had  The Wizard of Oz on the brain, check out my next post: Pop Quiz #2: American Icons)