May 2018

In June 2010, I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Maya Angelou speak in Portland, and immediately went home and wrote about my experience. Dr. Angelou passed away today, and so I offer my thoughts here in tribute to this great woman whose words touch so many minds and changed so many lives.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with the Butterfly Effect – how even the smallest of actions have the potential to have infinite impact around the world, and in ways we cannot fully imagine.

I had the opportunity to consider this idea more fully when I was privileged to hear Dr. Maya Angelou speak in Portland. The truth is, I could listen to that woman read a cereal box and be enthralled, with her rich, full voice and commanding presence. But I when I attend any event, I go in hopes of taking something away that will make me think, or make me want to be a better person, or feed my soul. With Dr Angelou, I received all three. She spoke for about an hour and a half, sharing poetry, wisdom, and laughter – even health advice – and central to all her thoughts was the theme of sharing one’s light.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…

Dr. Angelou told us about how she came to be raised in the only “black-owned” store in the small Arkansas town of Stamps – by her grandmother, who she described with a smile as being “an old woman of at least fifty” and her crippled Uncle Willie, a man who taught her to “love learning.”

Uncle Willie taught me my multiplication tables. He stood me right up close in front of a pot-bellied stove – with a fire inside it! – and said, “Do your sixes, Sistuh. Do your nine’s, Sistuh.” Fearful that he might open it up and throw me in if I didn’t say them fast enough, I learned my multiplication tables exquisitely.

It was with the image of her Uncle Willie that Dr. Angelou framed our evening. Willie, she explained, was a man “so embarrassed by being crippled” that he would not leave his small town home to venture even five miles to the county seat. And yet, as she learned later in life, his dedication to education and helping others created a chain-reaction that still has far-reaching impact. It was this dedication that led him to take in another poor child – Charlie Bussey – and give him a job in his store, and teach him to “love learning” and “his multiplication tables.” Many years later, Dr. Angelou met Charles Bussey – then the first African-American mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas. He told her, “I am the man I am today because of your Uncle Willie.”

She went on to explain how Mayor Bussey then paid it forward, shining his light for a young white boy who would someday become a member of the Arkansas state legislature. That boy, in turn, lit the way for a future Arkansas congressional representative.

In my opinion, an astonishing footnote to Dr. Angelou’s story of her Uncle Willie is the fact that fate allowed her to meet in person each of the primary links in the chain of impact that her Uncle Willie had forged, so that she might be able to fully appreciate his broad reach.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…

I am sure that at the end of the evening, everyone in the audience that night left with the same thought: How am I affecting my world? Am I shining my light?

Ultimately we can never know the real depth and breadth of our impact, because it is woven inextricably into the future – to generations and places we cannot even imagine. “Uncle Willie was poor, black, crippled, and living back in the lynching times,” Dr. Angelou reminded us, and still his light had awe-inspiring impact. Concluding, she admonished us that we all have a light, and we all have not only an opportunity – but a responsibility – to let it shine.

My Uncle Willie stuttered, had one leg that was shorter than the other and he was a rainbow in my cloud. I am a rainbow in somebody’s cloud. Each of you has that possibility.

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

Thank you, Dr. Angelou, for sharing your light with us. We will do our best to keep it shining brightly.

{Originally published on The Good Hearted Woman, May 28, 2014}

I remember my first spring in the Annex, stepping through the heavy double doors and onto the slick linoleum tile, and the scent of fresh lilacs rising up the sloped hall to meet and carry me on heady velvet waves to Mrs Sturgis’ classroom.

If I close my eyes and breathe deep, I can still smell the memory’s lingering fragrance.

The elementary school I attended was composed of two major buildings. There were other outbuildings of course, but as a six-year old, the only ones that mattered to me were the Big Building, where the older kids had their classes; and the little building, or Annex, that held most of the primary grades. The kindergarteners had a classroom in the Big Building, but they had their own chain-linked play-yard and weren’t allowed out onto the blacktop where the jungle gym and the swings and the dodge-ball court were, so they didn’t count.

The Annex had six classrooms – three on each side of the hall, plus a girls’ lavatory, a boys’ lavatory, a custodian’s closet, and a classroom supply closet where they kept construction paper and paste and extra pencils. Five of the classrooms housed the first, second, and one of the third grade classes; and in the sixth was the music room, where wonderful Mrs Schnoor played guitar and taught us songs like “Drill, Ye Terriors, Drill” and “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor.”

By some unspoken custom, nearly every six- and seven- year old in my neighborhood brought at least one stem of lilacs to their teacher each spring. My guess is, at least half of those lilacs came from William Lake’s backyard.

William Lake lived two blocks away from me. (The short kind, not the long kind.) William’s backyard butted up to the park adjacent to our school, and when the long, thin limbs of the giant lilac bush in the Lake’s backyard grew heavy and bowed down over their fence and into the park… well, they were fair game. If you didn’t have lilacs of your own, you knew where to get some.

By the end of the first week of lilac season, every Annex teacher’s desk had a jar or a bottle or a vase bursting with thick clusters of the small lavender flowers, their fragrance infusing every book and breath.

Then, from late April until the middle of May, the lilacs would waft up to greet you every day when you arrived at school, and follow you out the door when you walked home. Over the years, the scent of lilacs became cool linoleum, and Mrs Sturgis, and Mrs Schnoor. It was sunshine, and field trips, and cherry-drops from the jungle gym. It was spring.

The scent of lilacs is a quiet memory. It offers no higher purpose. No lesson. No deep thought, save perhaps that it reminds that some memories endure, and bring pleasure and joy simply for being, long after their fragrance fades.

This Little Light {A Tribute to Dr Maya Angelou}

Lilacs

Archives for May 2018