How different we are, and yet human just the same
ne of my Methodist sisters, with whom I have been walking and talking and sharing for the last couple of years, reached out to me in great distress.
We have tried to be comforting to each other. When we talk, we discuss our upbringing and things that we have been taught about right and wrong, good and bad — not just in our homes, but in our schools and churches.
Lately, with all the goings on around us, she seems shaken from her foundation and is at her wit’s end. Many days when she reaches out to me, I can hear hurt and tears in her voice. It is at that time that I think to myself, “Lord, what has someone said that has broken my friend’s heart this time?” At the same time, I am sure that she wonders why I am not crying, angry or upset.
I reminded her of the complexity of our culture and our history that accounts for us being different. I asked did she not wonder about the expression that we use: “Just laughing to keep from crying.” That is truer of Black people than any other group of people that I know. If we cried about everything that hurts us to the core, we would be crying oceans of tears on a daily basis.
I told her that is why we like being around other people who are like us or understand about our culture — because we laugh and cry about many of the same things. Some of the things that we laugh about when together would cause others to cry, or get angry and grab their gun and go find the source of their pain. God created Black people differently, but we are wonderfully made.
How different we are, and yet human just the same. That difference does not make Black people any less or any more than other humans. There are times when many forget about the humanity of Black and brown people.
My husband shared with me about when he was a little boy about 7 or 8 years old. A white lady named Mrs. Zoe noticed that his mom had a most beautiful flower garden, and she asked if Hardy could come to her house and work in her flower garden. Hardy’s mom allowed him to go, knowing that he knew nothing about flowers, but she thought that he could possibly learn from the experience (and that he did).
He went to work for Mrs. Zoe. On arrival, she showed him where the hoe and rake were and pointed him in the direction of the garden area where she wanted him to work, then she went into the house.
He said that he worked diligently chopping up every root that he could see and raking the area clean, so clean that he wanted her to believe the she could eat off the ground and the food would not get a grain of dirt on it.
Hoping to please Mrs. Zoe, he raked it several times because she had been nothing but kind to him. This was not his first time doing little odd jobs for her, but this was the first time working a flower garden. She was the kind who had even allowed him to sit on her back porch to eat lunch, not on the steps at the back door.
Around break time, she came to tell him to stop for lunch, and she spotted the flower garden clean as a newborn baby’s bottom — with not one plant standing.
He was standing with his chest sticking out and his head up in the air, waiting for the sound of a happy employer proud of her employee’s work. He said that Mrs. Zoe caught her chest with both hands like Redd Foxx used to do and exclaimed with a tone that he had never heard coming from her.
She was such a gentle kind and soft-spoken lady he did not realize that she had that kind of sound in her body. “Oh no!! You have cut down my peonies!! Oh! Oh no!! What am I to do! My peonies are gone!” She was looking toward heaven as she cried out.
Now as an adult he is able to share that childhood experience with me, and we laugh about the tragic situation. Sometimes when we are out in the yard hoeing or raking, the memory comes to him and I say “Now you be careful. Do not destroy my peonies.”
He laughs, but we both realize that that experience was etched in his psyche and affected him as a child. He was blinded with fear of what would happen to him for committing such a “crime” to such a “gentle lady.”
We have power over our mind — not outside events. When we realize this, that is when we find strength and are able to overcome. Overcoming our frailties and those of others is what impels us to walk above the fray and the obstacles of life. So many times, even these days, we still laugh to keep from crying.