Heritage

The other night, Mo came down the stairs in a new, sparkly black dress.  Her braids were stylishly cascading down to her left shoulder, a tangle of barely-contained chaos.  On her feet she wore a sensible pair of flats (rather than the high heels she had fought us over), and a little bit of lip gloss.  She stood grinning sheepishly at me, embodying the past 20 minutes of deal-making, heavy sighs, eye rolls, and grudging compromises. 

In other words, she’s a “tween.”  And she’s pretty.  And it freaks me out.

“Is this okay?” she asked in a high, tentative voice.

“Yeah, I guess.  You just…well, whatever.  I wish you wouldn’t fight me over this stuff.  You’re in fifth grade for God’s sake.  You’re still a little girl.”  Even as it came out of my mouth, I realized I was a living cliché.  I just said the most Dad thing a Dad could say to a daughter.  It isn’t like she’d asked to wear a low-cut shirt or a skirt with her butt hanging out.  She’s just growing so fast that the clothes which fit her four months ago look ridiculous on her now.  She’s getting taller

boobs

and more muscular

boobs

and…well “filling out”

boobs.

There are not enough clothes in the world for her to cover my anxiety.  She doesn’t understand why sometimes she comes downstairs and I shout, “Nuh-uh!  Upstairs!  That dress is going to the neighbor girl!”

But today she looks beautiful and appropriate and I grudgingly say as much.  Her eyes light up and she twirls.  She’s been nervous all afternoon but this makes her feel better.  She’s been chosen by her school to present a gift from her class to a school-board member during their meeting, and tonight was the night.  Apparently it’s some big honor, one that can only be earned with good grades and better behavior.  I’m ridiculously proud of her.

Amy tells her it’s time to go.  They load up into the car and drive off to the Amarillo ISD building on I-40.  Shay and I stay behind.  Shay has homework to do, and she ain’t happy about it.

As I’m helping Shay with fractions (which, for some reason, I’m TERRIBLE at), I get a text from Amy.  They’re safe at the AISD building, but Amy is mad.  Her text reads:

“There are a bunch of people on the Bell Street overpass waving Confederate flags.  They even have one of those huge Perkins-sized flags hanging over the side.  What’s going on today?  Is it some kind of rally?”

Garrison flag.  I think the size she’s talking about is a garrison-sized flag.

“Mo got upset at it, but not too bad.  She’s okay.  She presented the gift and did great.  Be home soon.”

This is Texas.  We see a lot of Confederate flags flying around…especially in this political climate.  Usually on the front of houses or flying from the back of trucks.  The girls notice every time.  And it isn’t like they notice simply because Amy and I are fairly liberal and make a stink about it.  Amy and I know where we live and realize that it’s part of the deal.  If you live in the South, you’re gonna see the Stars n’ Bars (yes I realize that the battle flag of Northern Virginia is different than the official flag of the Confederacy…semantics). 

But the girls are old enough to at least be confused by its significance.  They’ve learned about it in school (even under Texas’ revisionist history books, but I won’t go into that) and understand that it is the battle flag of the Confederacy.  And the Confederacy fought against the North and Abraham Lincoln.  And Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.  So people who fly that flag today hate black people and wish there was still slavery…right?

Since the girls have come to live with us, they’ve been embraced by both of our families.  They consider my mom and dad their “Mimi and Papa”.  They consider Amy’s parents “MaMa and Larry” (not sure why they haven’t come up with a name for Larry, but since everyone calls him that it stuck).  My grandmother is, thankfully, still with us and living with my parents.  She’s 91 years old, and they call her Nannie, just as I do.  Nannie can’t see very well anymore and doesn’t know which one of the girls is speaking to her, but she always hugs them and loves on them and the girls are always forgiving when she mixes up their names.

And let me be clear.  The girls are loved by everyone. 

The girls eat up every family story, hungry to be a part of it.  They don’t care that it isn’t “their” family by blood.  They want to hear about the time Uncle Cole put their dad in the dryer (“it was only for a second!”).  They want to hear about Aunt Meghan and how I spoke for her for the first four years of her life…especially if it involved asking for a cookie (“Meghan wants a cookie….and I guess I do too”).  They want to hear about my Grandpa Jack, Nannie’s husband who passed over 15 years ago, and how funny he was and how he used to ask 20-something waitresses out on dates for his chubby 13-year-old grandson sitting right there in front of him, staring into his plate, mortified (“You’re pretty cute for a girl!  This is my grandson.  We call him ‘Toad.’  He needs a date.  Whatdayasay?”).  They feel connected to us through these family stories, and they know they too are part of this family chronicle. 

Heritage.

One day, when on Christmas break, Shay, with her shimmering eyes, looked up at me and asked if Grandpa Jack would have liked her, and if he would have liked her being his great-granddaughter.

I tell her of course he would have liked her and that he would have been very proud of her.

She nodded, smiled, and walked away.

I sat down and thought about the question.  Grandpa Jack was wonderful.  He was funny for sure.  There are very few memories I have of him that don’t make me smile and laugh.  But he was far from progressive, especially when it came to race.  I never saw him be outwardly racist to anyone, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have considered himself a prejudiced person.  He would have loved the girls.  Who wouldn’t?

But he sure was fond of the “N” word.  I never knew if he used it simply to get a rise out of people or if he truly harbored racist beliefs.  A lot of things Jack did were merely for effect.  I never heard him discuss race.  Only heard him use the word, which was usually followed with immediate admonishment from my mother or grandmother.  Usually, "Not around the kids!"  But the fact that he used the word, even as a joke, showed a lack of sensitivity stunning even for the mid-1980's.

The realization of this is jarring.  I’d never thought of him in relation to my black children.  Perhaps I’d been so fond of Jack that his faults (which, like most of us, were many) never tainted my memory of him.  Through the retelling of stories about how ornery he was, Jack has transcended the man I’m sure he actually was and become a family folk hero.  A character in his own tall tales.  When we’re all together, someone invariably brings up a Jack-ism.  The dirtier, the better.  Most of the stories end with sweet Nannie flipping Jack the bird at Easter dinner, the sight at which Mom yells, “Mother!”

Heritage.

Each side of my family has some crazy aunt or uncle that has conducted an inordinate amount of perhaps-iffy genealogy, so I have the benefit of tracing family roots pretty far back.  The Welch side claims they have an ancestor that came over from Scotland with Braddock’s Army during the French and Indian Wars.  In those long intervening years, my part of the Welch clan became staunch Methodists and settled squarely on the plains of Kansas, where they farmed. 

Someone was born in a sod house or a dugout or some combination of the two, carved out of the hard southwestern prairie.  I think it was my Grandpa Ray.

My mother’s side of the family is a little less certain.  Old books, strange antiquated maps, worn antiques, and illegibly-scrawled notes and ledgers mark their diaspora.  I even have an old clock on my mantle that is said to be a wedding present from my great-great-great grandparents to my great-great grandmother, given to her on her wedding day before she traveled by covered wagon from West Virginia to Missouri, never to see her parents again.  The clock still works, and I wind that clock every few days to keep the chimes going.  Most of my mom’s side considers Blue Springs, Missouri their ancestral home.  It was where Nannie’s father, my great-grandfather “Spot,” ran a corner drug store.

So, one half of my family is set firmly in Kansas, while the other side is firmly in Missouri.

Ever hear of Bleeding Kansas during the Civil War?

My great grandmother “Tate,” Nannie’s mother, used to tell a story about how her grandfather or whoever had fought Kansas Jayhawkers during the Civil War and would not pledge allegiance to the Union.  As a result, most of their property was “appropriated” by the pro-Union militia.  Once the war was over, my great-something grandfather sat down to a picnic with his neighbors…and was served dinner on his own family china.  It had been stolen from his home.  According to the story, he had been the one “true to the Cause,” while his neighbors had pilfered his property when he was out fighting for the Confederacy.

Tate loved this story.  It was full of tragedy and romance and an affinity for Dixie.  She wore it like a badge of honor.  So much so, in fact, that when Nannie married Grandpa Jack, who himself hailed from Kansas, Tate disapproved of her marrying a “Yankee.”

One day, when I was in high school, my mother revealed to me with a great amount of sorrow that one of my ancestors had noted in some dusty, inscrutable, hand-scrawled book that had come to Missouri with him that he had brought a wife, a child…and a house slave.

I have at least one ancestor who owned slaves.

Heritage.

Now, enter my children.  Children who want to know anything and everything about my family, who they were and what they were like.  They want to know because they want to feel connected to me and to some traceable line that makes sense to them.  They want to know why I laugh when I talk about Grandpa Jack.  They want to know about that clock on the mantle.  They want to know about that long-distant uncle who had a peg leg because he got run over by a train.  They want feel a part of the long family chronicle.

Heritage?

January 19^th is Confederate Hero’s Day in Texas.  It was designated in 1973.

Not 1873.  1973.  And it is no accident that it sometimes coincides with Martin Luther King Day.  Some people get off of work to wave flags on an overpass.

Heritage.

Mo came home that night and was quiet.  When I was putting the girls to bed, she asked if those people on the overpass hated black people.

My first inclination was to start talking about how dumb those people are, whooping and hollering and waving that bright orange flag with the blue, star-spangled cross back and forth.  I wanted to start spitting about hillbillies and goatees and no teeth and diesel trucks and guns and cousin kissin’ and chew-backie spit.  I wanted to vomit up my own vitriol.  Because now I see these people through the eyes of my own kids.  Before I’d just ignored it, maybe made a “yeeeee-haaaawww!” joke or two, but in the end it wouldn’t have bothered me much. 

But it bothers me now.  A lot.

Instead of entering such a tirade, one that would only perpetuate stereotypes that aren’t very kind or universally true, I choked back my desire to vent.  It wouldn’t have helped anything, and it certainly wouldn’t have helped Mo in that moment.  Because it’s lazy to just assume the “other side” is stupid.  It’s lazy and honestly dangerous.  If you can’t or won’t understand it, you can’t or won’t fix it. 

“I think it’s more complicated than that,” I say.  “This is Texas.  It’s the South.  I think they believe they are celebrating their Southern heritage, not necessarily protesting against black people.”

“But you don’t have a Confederate flag!  Why do they like it so much?”

“Well, first off, I’m not Southern so it wouldn’t make any sense.  Your mom and I are from Kansas.”

“But you live here.  Aren’t you Texan now?”

“Sort of…but not by heritage.  I mean, I live here, but I don’t root for the Dallas Cowboys, do I?  I still root for the Chiefs and the Royals.”

“But I’m from here,” she says.

“Yeah, I know.”

“And I don’t like that flag.”

“Yeah, I know.  Me either.”

“So if it is just about being Southern or Texan, why do they wave a flag that most black people don’t like?  Are they trying to tell me that I’m not really Southern or Texan?”

It’s the million dollar question.  We hear “Heritage Not Hate” all the time from Confederate apologists.  But what “heritage” is being celebrated there? 

I think about the duality of my own heritage.  I think back on how funny Jack was, how much we all loved him and how kind he was, but that he used the “N” word with ease.  I think about the clock on my mantle, a prized heirloom, but that it might have been in the hands of a slave owner.  I think about a multi-great grandfather fighting Jayhawkers during the Border Wars.  And I think of that long ago infantryman from Scotland, setting foot on new shores to kill Frenchmen.  And Indians.

It’s hard to tease the shameful out from the noble.  I can understand the desire to gloss over the ugly parts, even deny them.  I can understand that now, when I look at my kids. 

“I doubt they’re actively thinking about that part Mo,” I sigh.  “They’re just proud, and today they celebrate their ancestors in the Civil War.”

Mo took my hand, and she looked at our intertwined fingers. 

“But it makes me so sad,” she said.  “Don’t they know that it makes me and Shay sad that they love something that was so mean?  If I had walked up there to those people with the flags, would they have been mean to me?”

“Probably not,” I said.  “I think they probably would have been very nice to you.  Because you’re likable and friendly.  I’m sure they would talk to you and hug you and ask you about school.  Most of them anyway.  They’d probably hand you a flag and ask you to wave it with them.”

“But I don’t like that flag and I wouldn’t wave it.  Now I’d wave a Texas flag or something.  That’s a flag I can like.”  Her eyes darted about in the dimness of her bedroom.  “I’m from Texas too,” she said.  “Don’t they think about that?  Don’t they care?  Do I get to have some heritage?”

Mo and Shay both say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning to the American flag.  Afterward, nearly in the same breath, they turn and say the Texas State Pledge (something I find incredibly bizarre as a Kansan).  They say the same pledge as the kids of the flag-wavers.  They love the same things and identify with the same earth.  They have the same home. 

But not always the same flag.

“Sure you do babe.  But mindless attachment to heritage only keeps us from growing,” I say.  “I think the people waving those flags ignore some of the bad parts of the past.  They ignore these bad parts because they love their grandparents, and their grandparents’ grandparents.  I think they’ve been told for so long not to forget where they came from, to be proud of their ancestors no matter what, that now they can’t admit there were things that were dark or shameful or wrong.“

“But they know slavery was wrong, right?  So why…”

“Well, sure they do.  I mean, most of them.  There were probably a few people up on that bridge who were white supremacists and who believe black people are inferior to whites. But I’m sure there were also people up on that bridge with good hearts and souls.  But they have trouble admitting to themselves that something they are so fond of fought to maintain something so awful.  They can’t admit it because to them, it would mean they would somehow have to personally apologize for themselves and for their entire lineage.  And that goes against everything they’ve been taught, so they get very defensive.” 

“So is heritage bad?” she asks.

“No babe, not bad.  But one has to be careful not to put too much stock in it.  What your ancestors did doesn’t run down to you through birth.  Good or bad.  And it's good to have reverence for your ancestors, to remember all the good things about them.  I know I would want to be remembered fondly.  But no one is perfect, and their sins aren’t yours to atone.  No one should be asking you to apologize for something in the past over which you had no control.  But what you are asked to do is care.  And pay attention.  And be honest.  And learn."

Mo looked at the wall.  “I don’t know anything about my ancestors.  Not really.”

I gently took her hand and said, “It’s out there.  You just have to find it if you want.  But realize it might not all be pretty.  Some of it will hurt.” 

She rolled back over and stared pensively at me.

“Do you have any bad things in your heritage?” she asked.

“Sure I do,” I said, thinking of what my great-something’s house slave might have looked like. 

Had she looked like Mo?  Or Shay?  Had she had a husband somewhere?  Kids? 

“We all do.  No one is perfect.  And neither are we.  But,” I said, pulling the blanket up over her.  “We’re making new heritage.  You and Mom and me and Shay.  We can be proud of that.  That can be our story.  And your grandkids and their grandkids can read about it in old records and tell stories about how our family came to be.  I hope that one day something of ours is on their mantle, and that they are proud of it.  Proud of us.”

It was quiet for a few moments, and I thought Mo had gone to sleep.  When I got up to leave Mo mumbled, “I love you Daddy.”

“I love you too.  See you in the morning.”

Heritage.