Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time there was a mommy and a daddy. They lived in a house in the United States of America with their little girl. She was a wonderful little girl, and they were wonderful parents, and they decided that their family was such a happy one that their little girl should be a big sister. Within a few months they learned that the mommy was going to have a new baby, and they began to get a room in their house ready for the wonderful girl’s little brother or sister. Everything was just right.

But then one day the mommy felt that something wasn’t just right. She felt a pain in her tummy and went to the doctor. The doctor told the mommy that she would not be getting a baby after all. "In fact," said the doctor, "you will never be able to have any more babies at all."

The mommy and daddy were very sad.

Even though the doctor had told them they couldn’t get any more babies of their own, the mommy and daddy knew they were wonderful parents and still had lots of love to give another baby. Plus, they had a room all nice and ready. They called an Agency and asked if they had any babies who needed a wonderful family.

"Babies are hard to get," said the Agency Lady, "but if you want an older child, there are lots and lots of those to choose from." The mommy and daddy said that would be fine, and so they filled out forms in triplicate and got their fingerprints taken and had CPS come and look through all the cupboards in their house.

One day the Agency Lady called and said, "You are wonderful parents and we think you should come and look at pictures and see which older child you want." So the mommy and daddy went and looked through stacks and stacks of files. They found a picture of a little boy who was six years old. He lived far away across the sea in a country where there had been a war. The little boy had pretty brown eyes and black hair, and the wonderful mommy and daddy looked at each other and said, "This one is our little boy."

It took a long time for the little boy to come from the country across the sea to the United States of America. So long, in fact, that the mommy woke up one day while they were waiting for the boy to come and told the daddy that she needed to go to the doctor again. The doctor ran some tests on the mommy and looked at the results.

"But you told me I couldn’t get any more babies," the mommy said.

"Oops!" said the doctor.

So the wonderful little girl got not only a new big brother but a new little sister too.

And they both arrived within one little week!

The wonderful family lived very, very happily ever after.

* * *

I told my class during a discussion recently that my family must have looked like the United Nations getting out of a car. There was my dad, blue-eyed and blonde-haired with a red beard; my mom, auburn-haired with brown eyes; my brother, the black haired, brown eyed boy mentioned above; my surprise sister, with curly brown hair and blue eyes, and me, the wonderful green-eyed blonde. For a few years our varied palette became even more colorful when we had a foster brother and added one of African descent to the mix.

Looking at my family- at my parents especially- now, I see that in the shadow of the shameful age of this nations worst racial strife and intolerance, they were among the first- certainly the first in the Midwestern towns my father pastored, to walk the talk of their belief. Not that they did it to make a statement- oh, no. They did it because it was he only thing to do. Yet, simply by looking at us together in a restaurant or in church, I’m sure people were forced to consider: "If they can do this in their home, why can’t we do it in the world?"

At least for a moment.

It’s really not a difficult concept. Just shut your damn eyes and live together in peace. Listen. Depend on each other. Open your arms. Nurture each other. Love every person for who they are. Don’t make any judgments based on anything but the beauty that shines from within; because believe me-- shine it will.

My parents humble me.

At the time, I didn’t see them as revolutionary; that came later. Because they were, after all, my parents. They were just like everybody else’s parents: they expected me to do well in school; they came to all my plays and concerts; they fed me three times a day, flipped the porch lights on and off obnoxiously if I sat too long in the driveway with a date, and fussed if I got home past curfew. And they did the same for the rest of us. They were simply my family. Maybe we looked weird to other people, but we didn’t see it. All we knew was that in the eyes of our parents- we were the same. Equal. As I grew, that extended itself until that’s the way I looked at the whole big, beautiful world.

Call me a Pollyanna, but I still do.

There are very few things that truly frighten me, but one of those things is the inexplicable fact that there are still people on this planet in the year of our Lord 2008 who can somehow justify to themselves that it is right to make distinctions based on genetic difference rather than character. There are some people who have the power to conjure enough fear of melanistic diversity to ruin individual lives, thwart fractions of our society, and change the course of a nation.

Oh, come on, people. Forty-four years after the wonderful mommy and daddy went to the Agency, we have to be better than this!

Just shut your damn eyes, and--

See.