the Bitch in the house

… I remember my grandmother, I am moved beyond words at the proceedings today. I watch in joy and in laughter as President Obama stumbles nervously over his oath of office. I relish in the circumstance of our time, the moment of our recommitting to democracy. I am awed by the force of change and though it is a difficult time, I can feel positivity leaping on the air. And yet I cannot forget the sacrifice my own grandmother made in forging a ‘white’ future for her children. She lived with a shortsighted view. She saw that the far off dream of a world in equality – one that my children feel that they know (even in its flaws) – would never come to pass. She hoped for a heavenly place and that is where she laid her faith, even when her mind could not hold that ideal together. She was not a whitemiddleclassreverend’shousewife. She had a past, she had a family, she belonged to a people and identity that was larger than her hopes for what she thought would be a better life. She was successful in her aim for I am too far removed to make claim on her african tribe. My mother’s name is not found in her family’s bible, my name and my children are not written there either. Yet in my blood flows her genetic trace. My grandmother could lighten her skin and hair, she could lighten her name, but me and my children are weighed, we are anchored to her family – and to her past, by our bloodlines that belie her negation and denial of who she was. I remember her with a sadness that touches this day that she would not have believed possible.