Our Holiday

When I was a kid, we spoke of him with great reverence, his full title in tact: Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. His legacy was fresh then. Our way of life was the immediate product of his life’s work. He was a hero of our time.

When my parents married, their interracial union was still illegal in some of our United States. Here in New York, my father reported the latest developments of the Civil Rights Movement on WWRL, the city’s Colored radio station. He landed a jailhouse phone interview with the great man himself, the Reverend Doctor King, all in the line of duty.

Martin Luther King, as my kids casually call him, was our martyr.

For that he got a holiday.

On Monday morning, we began our observances in our pajamas, ensconced in Pink Panther cartoons and the weekend’s New York Times. I heard my maternal self assert the importance of his work – his legacy – to my children:

“You guys remember why Martin Luther King is so important, right?”

Yes, Mommy. He made it OK for black people and white people to be equal.

“He devoted his life to bringing about that very important change.”

Yes, Mommy.

“Well, you know how we have all these holidays from school? The religious holidays, and the three-day weekends?”

Uh-huh.

“For our family, this holiday – Martin Luther King’s birthday - is the most relevant holiday of all. You understand that, right?” Relevant. Good word. Do they know what I mean?

Because we’re black and white.

“That’s right.” We are black and white. And last weekend, when we celebrated Daddy’s friend’s 50^th birthday, and we three and a Latino bartender were the only brown people in the room, it was all right. We were welcomed into the restaurant by a smiling white hostess, and we shared the dishes and the bathroom same as everyone else. We had a fine time, all of us mixing it up. There was nothing strange about it. 

My girls are surprised by my need to explain. This is how we live.

THANK YOU, DOCTOR KING.

Moved

Our family just moved.

We landed in our new house full of boxes on the first night of Hanukah, four days before Christmas. That’s my explanation for not having posted in a long while. November dutifully marked the onset of the Holiday Season. This year, it also marked the onset of what we called The Big Purge: Throwing out and giving away a lot of extraneous personal belongings; Cleaning out file cabinets that hadn’t been undone in many years; Exorcising bottomless junk drawers; Sorting through an attic filled with baby gear that no one in our family will be putting to use any time soon. We had a lot of packing to do, so the purge came first. I thought I would be inspired to write, as I unearthed forgotten treasures, sleep-deprived and eye-high in to-do lists. But it didn’t happen. I convinced myself I didn’t have the time or energy to write.

Moving day was a twelve-hour marathon of packing, crying, consoling, and admiring the super-human endurance of eight undereducated demi-gods who did, in fact, leap small buildings in a single bound – over and over and over again, laden with impossibly heavy loads, without complaint. We forgot to light the menorah, neglected to play dreidel, and failed to fry up any latkes because Chinese food was a whole lot easier. Our youngest daughter packed some things in a shopping bag before bed, threatening to move back home. We loved our old house.

Nearly three weeks in, we are enjoying our new house. I think we will love it soon. The girls don’t talk about moving back any more. They have settled into a rhythm here, now that school is back in session and they have their geographical bearings. This new house is big. Our old house was big for us, when we first moved in. Before children, three bedrooms seemed like a huge amount of space. Complete with three acres of untouched woodland, it was our own small country.

Now we are townies, with a big yard. And this new, bigger house seems immense. I am told I’ll appreciate all the space when the girls hit their teen years. I think back to my own, sullen teens, in the two-bedroom apartment I shared with my mother and an ornery cat. It was plenty of space for us. The math doesn’t add up: do four people and one aging dog need so much more space? I can’t help but question our priorities. “Bigger is Better” was not a slogan of my youth. I was brought up with “No Nukes” and “Zero Population Growth” and “Fight the Power”.  I want our girls to be conscientious citizens of the world. It’s a struggle.

We’ve been here almost three weeks and we’re still surrounded by boxes. The holidays brought new stuff, to complement the old stuff, which we haven’t completely unpacked. We’re living very comfortably. So I have to wonder: What is in all these boxes?

I have a dedicated office in the new house. That’s the big bonus. A room of my own. Currently uninhabitable, filled with boxes of family photos, reference books, precious printouts from Ancestry.com, and my preferred computer, still hibernating since the move. I imagine doing serious work in my new office. The manuscript will get done there. I will fight distraction with a new vigor.

I’ve been up since 3:30 am, debating whether to get up and write. Or should I unpack boxes?