Finding hope
We always celebrate the day we met at a December wedding more intensely than the day we married. For us, that’s the day life changed and our family began. So we take a night away to enjoy and remember all the fun it was at Christmas all those years ago. This anniversary, we crossed the Mississippi and landed in Memphis.
Little Rock was never far from our minds.
The road from Memphis to Little Rock was conceived as early as 1824. Soon, the path hosted settlers, the Trail of Tears, and, later, Civil War troops. I’m sure that road provided a tangible link to the intangible cultures that would become enmeshed within both cities.
As we walked in Memphis, we watched barge traffic slowly funneling through the uncharacteristically thirsty Mississippi River, listening to tugboat waves lapping the Memphis shores. Little Rock is the same way, a city with a river as its lifeblood, a downtown built on trade and travel through the flow of water.
We stopped in the historic Peabody Hotel to inhale the Christmas decorations there, pausing for a breath of its beautiful lobby tree with the sound of clinking bar glass in the background.
We do the same in Little Rock at the Capital Hotel, enjoying its natural beauty and the decorations alongside the history within its walls.
We followed the streetcar tracks in the South Main district, an artsy area with great bars and restaurants reminiscent of Little Rock’s own SoMa. The similarities ensured we ate dinner there.
Memphis has Beale Street, and Little Rock the River Market.
Both cities struggle with the problem of crime, the difficulty of finding a solution that could slow this painful train. As we moved west on Poplar Avenue, a host of firetrucks sped by. Later, we learned a shooting had taken place nearby. Memphians bowed their shaking heads and the mood tangibly dampened.
It felt all too familiar.
Any time we’re in Memphis, we pause at the Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum. This year, we moved slowly, taking in the feel of that awful scene where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.
Like Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957, the contractions of hope sprang from difficult times. Dreams don’t die with the dreamer, they tell us. There is often pain at the start of promises realized.
We walked for hours that night, enjoying the Memphis air and nostalgia for Little Rock, for home, all at once. Christmas lights, trees, and wreaths pulsated with the warmth and goodness of the season, all speaking with the symbolism of hope. Wreaths epitomize victory won, life eternal. Evergreen trees—emblems of resurrection; twinkling strands—reminders of the light of the world.
When we walked past that balcony once more, we quieted in the darkness outside Room 306. There, from the sidewalk, we took in the white and red wreath marking the spot where Reverend King died.
Southern cities like Memphis, like Little Rock, find hope even in the night.