our needs are simple, our wants are few.

Me: "I really want some sweet tea."

Mama: (wandering aimlessly around the kitchen with a pen in her hand,) "I just want a piece of paper."

All men created equal

I'm reading a book called The Help by Katherine Stockett. It's set after Rosa Parks took her famous bus ride and right around the time Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed a dream and James Meredith entered Ole Miss as its first black student.

Until my high school history class four years ago, I pretty much labored under the delusion that once segregation ended, it ended. For good. I did know there was still a lot of prejudice and hatred that lasted for a long while in some Caucasian circles, but I really did think that those circles were the minority.

Well, they weren't.

The Help is narrated from three different view points, and one of them is the perspective of Abileen, the black hired help of a finicky, too-good-for-her-britches white woman. Abileen was raising this woman's child, just as she'd raised twenty other children for white people. After the little girl's mama spanked her for using Abileen's bathroom instead of her own, (back then, I've discovered, the "help" was required to have their own bathroom, separate from the rest of the house, because the white people were afraid of catching a disease from the blacks,) Abileen wrote:

"I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the Negro side of town. I want to stop that moment from coming - and it come in ever white child's life - when they start to think that colored folks ain't as good as whites."

That moment. It came in every white child's life, especially if they lived in the South. The moment they decided that colored folks aren't as good as whites.

As I was reading, (you can buy the book here or get it at your library - it's worth it, but keep in mind it's not for kids to read,) I was overwhelmed with thanksgiving that we've come as far as we have in America.

I see segregation being like a massive door in a medieval castle. Little by little, blow by blow, the battering ram of equality has succeeded in knocking it down, but that didn't happen all at once. The efforts of William Wilberforce, the civil war, the Emancipation Proclamation, the civil rights movement, all these things were blows to the door. Prejudice still lives, especially in the South, but it's so much better, at least outwardly, from what it used to be.

In the early nineteen hundreds, President Theodore Roosevelt invited George Washington Carver, a black man, to be his dinner guest at the White House, and oh, the scandal that ensued!
And now, we have an African-American president for the first time.

The Help was set in Mississippi, and it told about one woman who had to give up her baby girl, because she was too light. The white woman she worked for considered having the daughter of a black servant being so close in color to their own children an affront to white people's respectability.

It was against the law for whites and blacks to marry each other. If they broke that law, the very least, (and the best,) consequence was imprisonment. More often, it was lynching.

Today, all over America, Caucasian families adopt brown children, and African-Americans adopt white kids. There's intermarriage between black people and white people. I don't think we stop and think about how great a blessing this is. It's pretty much normal. It's every day life. And that's so wonderful.

Like I said, prejudice isn't dead. But I really believe it's breathing its last. Maybe, Lord willing, by the time I have children, there will be absolutely no doubt in anybody's mind that "dirty ain't a color."





::Clarification::

I don't view this through rose colored glasses. I realize that racism won't fully die until Jesus comes back. But I do believe that perhaps in another generation, it will be completely dead outwardly... not within some people's hearts, but in our country as a whole.

Phoebe Can Read.

Let me repeat that:

Phoebe Can Read.

Yes, I know. It's amazingly wonderful.

Now, that doesn't mean she can read The Iliad or The Great Gatsby, nor does it mean she doesn't complain about having to read the word "everybody" every single time she comes across it. The word "everyONE" never gives her a bit of trouble. Oh, no. But everyBODY? Just kill her now.

But the point is, She Can Read.

I am very, very delighted.

I didn't read until I was seven, (Phoebe is almost seven,) and recently, after a particularly frustrating day of lessons, I went and re-read the first chapter book I ever read. I still enjoyed it quite a lot, which means a. I was a super intelligent seven year old who was able to read a really advanced book, b. I'm an exceptionally stupid eighteen year old, or c. it's just a good story. (I'm going with c.)

I'm going to give the book to Phoebe for her seventh birthday, because tutoring her has allowed me to make the precious journey of learning to read all over again. And I have to say, I totally sympathize with Phoebe sometimes. Why DO they throw in all those extra "silent" letters?? She would've been reading weeks ago if four words out of five didn't didn't have a silent "e" somewhere in it.

Bottom line: I'm not gonna lie. I never thought she'd read the word should.

But she can. She reads "should," and "could," and "would" like they hadn't even tripped her up for three months and many, many tearful sessions.

She's so pleased with herself, and she told me at least three times today "This just feels so good, KK! You were right! Reading is fun!" Then she refused to read "everybody" for the fourth time, but oh well.

Happy, happy day.

Dear World,

I love buttercups... or daffodils... or jonquils.

Whatever you want to call them, (personally, I prefer buttercups, because, duh, cups of butter, how awesome is that,) I adore them.

Their braveness in popping up during the first stretch of warmth and sun always inspires me, (some people might call it stupidity, since we always have a couple of late frosts, but I like to be optimistic and encouraging. Not that the daffodils know of my encouragement, but I'm giving it anyway.)

And since Spring is my Most Favorite Season of All, seeing the bright splashes of yellow dotting the most unexpected places makes my insides flip and flop, because buttercups, of course, are Spring's own personal Messengers. (Incidentally, Spring also enjoys eating creamy butter by the bowl full, in honor of her favorite flower. I know that's true; the fairies told me so.)

A couple of days ago, I tramped through the overgrown, (and I do mean OVERGROWN,) yard of an abandoned house, scratching my legs most abominably and getting mud on my pink silk flats, all because I knew that hidden in amongst the brambles and briers, early buttercups slip up through the still cool ground and perform their own particular form of intoxicating magic.

And there they were. Waiting for me. Lifting their sunny little heads and nodding in the breeze as if to say "we're waiting! we're here! love us!"

So I did. I loved them and picked them and brought them home.

Beautiful.

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ode to a Sky Lark"

An Expotition the second.

Okay. Remember this post? The one where Courtney and I got hopelessly lost and scratched our hands and thighs up on brambles and risked life and limb climbing through deep gullies? Yeah, that one.

Today, Catherine and I decided to look for the cemetery again, and... we found it.

In about five minutes flat.

Yeah.

Courtney, I'm not saying you were bad luck, but...

-------------------------------------------------

It was very secluded and very enchanted. The headstones were broken down or covered in vines and dirt, and the sunlight slanted weakly through a thick roof of tree branches. It was a corner of the world hidden from the fast pace of life... a place where people have stood and mourned, a place where flowers have been planted, a place where people are supposed to be remembered, but have mostly been forgotten...

---------------------------------------------------

And Alfred Smith turned out to be Alfred McCowen. Yes, disconcerting, I know. But there his grave was. And there it will be until the moon and stars pass away... or an earthquake comes and the ground folds up on itself. (I don't actually think that's what technically happens during an earthquake, but whatever. I'm too lazy to go look it up on wikipedia.)

uh, um, sure.

Me: "Well, I like grapes, but I don't like grape flavoring."

Lee: "You're JUST like my Daddy! He likes peppermints!"

"East or West, Home is Best" is taking on a whole new meaning.

I'm looking through all our pictures this afternoon, (okay, not all of them, because that would take roughly two days, including infrequent meals and bathroom breaks,) picking out some of my favorites to order and take with me across the bounding billows. (Incidentally, Mamaw asked yesterday if I'd be traveling to Ethiopia via boat. Um, no.)

Not only is this picture search making me teary/happy/reminiscent/amused, it's making me realize for the hundredth time that I'm going to be so doggone homesick. Really. I am.

I love to travel, I do. But BY FAR the best part of every trip is coming home. I didn't used to feel that way. I dreaded coming home from a trip, (all the laundry, all the boring normalcy,) but now? Now I embrace unloading and coming in, rushing cozily around with mama, putting everything to rights. I love everything being in its right spot. I just love my house. It's beautiful, and it's home.

And my family. We're a very tight knit group, you see, and rarely does a day pass, (I would say close to never,) when I or Mama don't talk to Laura and Anna on the phone at least once apiece. And text with Joseph and Jacob. Even see their faces once in a blue moon. :) And, of course, the kiddies are in and out all week long.

So, wow. I'm leaving all this for three and a half-ish months? (There's a not-tiny part of me that's still hoping for AHOPE to email and say "oh, we're only going to need you for six weeks. No more."

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy about this trip. I am very genuinely looking forward to all of it - the bewilderingly new experiences, the novelty and difficulty of living in a third world country, taking care of the children, loving new people... all of it. Except for the homesickness I know will come, probably the moment I step on to the plane.

I'm not scared of it. I don't expect to be miserable, because I'll have the most important Person with me, and it's not like going half-way around the world fifty years ago, for heaven's sake.

But that doesn't mean leaving all this will be easy.





















p.s. I have a little crush on our Hopper Room. I want a room exactly like it in my house o' dreams.