It's How I Grew Up.

The way of the world has gotten controversial and confusing, with too many trigger words and too much bias. I know in my mind and in my heart that it’s a way of turning the world towards a much better light, having many truths of many different peoples winding their ways to the forefronts, causing some to open their mind to other truths as the old norms slowly fade.

I know this. I feel the changes breathing life into new thoughts which become new actions coursing through the veins of people of all skins, much like the swirls of blue and green in the deep, deep ocean.

I embrace these changes.

But, in having said that, I miss who I was as a nine-year-old girl, growing up in the 60s, becoming a woman in the 70s, and now, in this new century, on my own downhill slope towards becoming a memory in the minds of those that love me.

I never questioned who I was or where my heritage landed me. Born in the mid-west and quickly moved to the South, I never looked at my parents and wondered what their thoughts on the societal norms of the years were. They moved to Florida because the weather was so much more convivial than the constant tornadoes of Oklahoma. My life, growing up in a small pine-woods hammock, with only five houses within a mile, was anything but complicated. I loved climbing the old grandfather oaks, the hot, balmy breezes of June and fishing in a little natural pond, hoping to catch bream, all the while knowing I would always let them go. I was raised as an innocent, with the black and brown skins of the two friends in my small community equal to my own freckled pale one. In my nine-year-old world, we all played the same games, learned the same subjects in school and struggled equally riding a bicycle in the treacherous sugar sand that Florida hammocks are made of. We feasted on honeysuckle blooms, believed ourselves to be Spanish conquistadors when we played amongst the oaks and shared tomato sandwiches, as was our nature. We shared. Our parents dined together on special occasions, attended churches on Sunday and our mothers shopped together. Our fathers sat on riverbanks and small wooden bridges and fished sometimes and when the fish were not biting, they went to the fish market to save face when they brought their “catch” home.

It was only when I was enrolled in a private church school on the hope that I would be exposed to a more broad education that I learned of the difference a skin color could make. I was thrown into a world of the children of local doctors and lawyers, who could afford the tuition. These children made sure I knew that I wasn’t on the same caste level, although I made straight A’s and followed the rules. I wore dresses my mother made, while the other girls were wearing store-bought clothes. It was my first experience of prejudice and societal bias. I was miserable.

Soon, my childhood friends in my neighborhood started to avoid me. Nothing had changed in my heart. As I was now in a private school, and no longer rode the bus home with them or had the same teacher, I was slowly and painfully being cast aside. My skin color was becoming equated with a privileged education, and suddenly the same girl that shot marbles, although badly, and went trick-or-treating with them on Halloween was not as welcome to after-school play.

It only took two years of private education to not only break my heart, but to break my parents’ budget as well. The decision was made to enroll me back into public education, and it was a jubilous day for me, to be amongst other children my age who didn’t look at me sideways. Both of my neighborhood friends had moved away, and I desperately sought out new friends. My “junior-high” school was in a mixed-race neighborhood, and there were plenty of all skin colors there. All prejudice seemed to be like wisps of smoke in the wind. Entering a newly-built high-school, with a ratio of 70% black to white students, some white parents rebelled and received special compensation to go to “the other high school,” fearing that more black students meant as lesser education. It was not the case. There was no racial violence, no preferential treatment, no talk of being woke or inference of privilege for any skin color.

We all just got along. Our parents got along. If any of us had disputes, it was never because our outsides were different colors. I have always said, “I don’t see the color of your skin,” but I did – and do. Of course, I do. As do others of different skin color see mine. What I mean to say is, I understand now, through the reemergence of the equality and civil rights issues from the 60s to the new century, I accept that there was far more struggle in becoming seen as equal if your outside color was anything less than some shade of cream and pink. That is a sore fact of humanity. A blight of not knowing and not understanding; a cruel lesson from history.

We are all born into this world without the stains of the past. It is part of our struggles as parents to put aside our own previous or current conflicts, whatever they may be, so that we can imbue our progeny with a clear sight of their own future; to excel on their own merit and integrity and to be supported in their endeavors as they grow into adults. For them not to learn the distaste of unequality as a human being, male or female, or to experience the hate from another race because of the color of our skin. That is not up to any government; that is our task as humans and our cross to bear. It is important that we learn from history and not bury it or destroy it, but to teach from it. We must come together as a human race undivided and heed the teachings of the great writers and poets, such as Henry David Thoreau and Maya Angelou, who lived through many of the same struggles. We must listen to great activists, among them Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela and Betty Friedan. We all must strive to be inspirations of fairness and equality no matter our skin color, to all who come after us.

That is our purpose. To love each other. Without reservation or conditions.