Be Well, My Friends

My Dearest Friends,

I’ll miss all of you.

It’s with the utmost sadness that I must bid all of you farewell. Your Season of Bright Colors has come and the fun we shared underneath the summer sun, during your Period of Green, is long gone. We all were younger then, now aged as a result of the changing seasons.

Remember when I arrived here in the early days of summer and you were just coming into your own: green, supple, flexible in the warm summer breeze. I too was new. A new job. A new life with hopes for a better life.

Yet that better life also brought with it struggle, and I truly appreciated your companionship as I made the adjustment back into this state. For salving the unpleasant burns, I thank you all for being there. I shall truly miss you.

As you recall, my journey of understanding started under the roof of my front porch, by your tree, when the contractor noticed my face, stared at my car’s in-state license plates.

Remember when he asked me, do you live here, as he unloaded the building supplies from his truck? He didn’t give me enough time to respond. I know all of the black people who live around here, and you’re not one of them.

It was a rough welcoming. I had lived in this state before when my son was younger and his mother had found a job, a job that suited her and not him. Yet they moved here just the same. I moved here because my son floundered as he adjusted. His being different was pointed out to him often. I wanted to be there to help him through this critical time in his life.

But now I live here on my own accord. I have a good job, a nice place to live. Yet I can’t suppress the fear that at some point somehow someone in some way will say something about race. I hoped that each day I could slide by unnoticed.

Under your tree in front of my apartment, Fred from the third lowest branch told me he didn’t understand.

He asked how the other humans knew I was black? Since all of you look alike, even when the seasons change, Fred couldn’t understand the concept of how anyone could ever look different?

I appreciated Fred’s perspective. When I arrived in the summer, you were all green and still growing. Now that it is fall, in my eyes you are red, orange, yellow, brown and green and lovely. Similar to the announcement made by old proud Meg from one branch up from Fred, of course, we’re all lovely. Isn’t it obvious? We’re all lovely. Not an ugly one of us lives in this tree.

And so, I learned a lesson from all of you that day. There is a great advantage to being the same. Here, I live in a world where differences are highly rewarded, but only in certain places or at certain times. Like those of you in the tree, my world best understand those who look alike, dress alike, share similar social and political views of the world.

When my son left the state to go to California for college, the kids at school who were from Compton told him that he didn’t understand racism. That he grew up in a place honored for its idyllic liberalism, that my son couldn’t fathom the depths of pain felt when slapped by the waves of racist behavior.

However, he showed them his understanding by taking their argument one step in an unexpected direction. He illustrated to the Compton kids that after facing biased behavior, they got to go home to their families, to their neighbors, to people looked like them. Meanwhile, my son went home to his mother, who is white, and his neighbors, who are also white. He never had a safe space where he could relax around people who looked like him, unless he went elsewhere.

And remember the time when Andrew from that really high branch asked what a neighborhood was? Living in a tree you are all live in one place. You can recognize other trees, but you all pointed out that humans confused you. Our trees weren’t as easily visible to you. To you, we seemed to live in randomness with no sense of order. Remember when Andrew said that?

I thought, how lucky you are to live together, grow together and change together, not noticing differences. How lucky you are!

On Main Street one day, I heard an older gentleman complain to his wife that the number of people living in town who looked like me was starting to grow. The “dominos,” he called us, all black with white dots for eyes, were multiplying. But that’s okay, he told her. Once there were too many dominos, they’d line us up and hit the first one. Eventually, we’ll all fall. The older gentleman and his wife both laughed.

And when the Season of Bright Colors is over for you, you all will have matured to the point of decay. Falling, you’ll nourish the ground on which your tree stands, and thereby nourishing the roots for the next generation, a generation that you will never meet. An unselfish destiny you never question.

Yet, I’ll still be here. And when the next generations of those like you comes along, I’ll befriend them. I look forward to befriending them. And I’m certain that they’ll have the same questions that you have. They won’t understand what you don’t understand, and for me this relationship will start over again. And I’ll revel in its newness and curse its naiveté.

But I’ll be here, slowly growing into the my own maturity and struggling with the distrust humans have for those who are different. Meanwhile generations after generations of you will come and go, thriving in universal acceptance, but passing none of that wisdom on to us.

Be well,

C.H.