I like you!

 When I was young, our family tradition was for my father's family to gather at the farm.  My father had inherited the home where he and his siblings had been raised.  His brother's family lived only a few miles away, and one of his sisters lived about an hour's drive away.  However, the other two sisters lived in California and Texas.  The sister in California did not visit regularly, but the family from Texas came nearly every year.  

It was a dream come true for all the cousins.  Usually, they came after wheat harvest and planting, so my father was not so busy.  We kids roamed the farm unsupervised, climbing trees, creating hide-aways in the sandhill plum thickets. playing hide-and-seek, roaming, and making up our own games.  I thought cousins were the best!

Anne Frank's Journal

Not long after a family visit, my mother and I had gone to Hutchinson, a small city--at least it seemed a city to me.  Unlike my freedom to roam at the farm, I was told to stay near my mother.  Suddenly, I saw someone remarkable.  A black man, or perhaps a boy, was standing nearby.  I was delighted, and I called out to him, "I like you.  You are my cousin."  It was the best compliment that I knew.

He smiled back, but my mother was flustered.  I had no idea why, but she rushed me away from my new friend.  He smiled, and I smiled back as my mother pulled me away.  Many years later I still remember my confusion.  I didn't think I had done anything wrong, but I could see that my mother was upset.  Certainly, telling him that he was my cousin was the friendliest thing I knew to do.

Years later I had married, and my husband and I were in college.  Most of the students were like us, from farming communities or the small towns that serviced farming.  We both crammed our classes into the morning so that we could rush to our jobs, working until the stores closed.  A social life was slim. Among the classes I took was one that awakened me to different populations and the mistreatment of minorities.

Our trips home were limited, because of the class loads we took and the jobs we both had.  I was very close to my father, and he was interested in the classes I was taking.  I must have been especially excited about the social science class, and I was sharing what I had learned in that class.  As I expounded on the importance of fare treatment of others, my father agreed.  He began to describe a man he had worked with at the Kansas Forestry, Fish, and Game, before returning to the farm.  All of his comments were positive, until he closed with what he thought was a compliment by saying "and he knew his place."  I immediately responded.  "And what place was that?"  My question confused him, for he had never considered what he had said as demeaning.

After graduation my husband was stationed in New England as a young lieutenant. I taught High School English, with the variety of students to be expected in a city.  Students, soldiers, others were black, white, and brown, as were my students, and it was all so different from my Kansas background that I simply accepted it as an introduction to America.  One of my student's parents had tattooed numbers on their arms, and I had to be told why.  I was embarrassed to have been so ignorant about WW II that my student had to explain to me why his parents were tattooed.  Our eyes were opened to the Melting Pot that America is, and we took it all in as a discovery of history and the uniqueness of our nation.    

A lot has changed for the little girl who saw the black young man as just someone new friend to meet.  As I reflect on my innocence, I cannot but ask myself if we have become too fearful of others who are different from us, missing the opportunity to meet a new "cousin", as I had done as a child.

I close with Anne Frank, who knew the horror of the war and the danger around her, but she wrote in her journal "in spite of everything I believe that people are really good at heart.  I hear the ever-approaching thunder which will destroy us too, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again."  Of course, we know that what she had believed too horrible to happen lead to her death in a concentration camp. 

History warns us, yet we ignore the messages from the past and the dangers of the present.  I was right when I told the dark-skinned boy that he was my cousin.  He understood that it was my way of wanting to be friends.  The world needs to listen to the child who saw a brown skinned boy as her cousin.  We need to listen to the Jewish girl who believed that cruelty would end and peace and tranquility would return.  Our leaders need to listen to the innocence of children.