I fell in love with America in first grade.
I had not always loved America. It had seemed a scary place. Shortly before Mom and Dad and I visited it the fall I turned six, Mom had read me a story about a little American girl my age who had been kidnapped, and I had quietly concluded that America was a place where adults stole children.
Oh, sure! I had had plenty of scares at Kapanga—like the time I woke up from a Sunday afternoon nap and found the house surrounded by furious, machine-gun wielding soldiers. Or the times I had watched angry soldiers haranguing Dad about I knew not what. But Kapanga was home! And home was where Mom read stories to me twice daily. Home was where Dad told me stories and drew pictures for me in the evening. Home was where I played with our three dogs, our guinea pigs, rabbits, civet cat, and monkey. Where mornings broke fresh and clear and sunsets were symphonies in reds and oranges and yellows.
I didn’t want to return to the States. That quick visit—to see a grandparent facing a possible cancer diagnosis—had been enough. The trucks were huge! (I loved trucks! But there were so many! And they were so big! And they traveled so fast! It was overwhelming!) The city lights were dazzling, but I missed the stars. The toy stores were magical! But there were far too many toys to love well! Snow was beautiful, but it was painfully cold! And then, of course, there was the possibility that grown-ups would kidnap me and I would never see my family again. All in all, America was just way too much!
I don’t know if I ever expressed my misgivings to my folks. I tended to voice my joys and my interests quite freely, but for reasons still not completely clear to me, I kept pretty mum about my worries. Part of the reason, perhaps, was that my parents were enthusiastic people. They loved what they were doing and cheerfully shared their days with each other at the dinner table. Both of them delighted in the natural world and would point out flowers, birds, trees, skies, or landscapes that had caught their attention. Tasks and plans were analyzed and dissected in front of me. Concerns for others would surface during prayer time, but fears and worries…? If they were aired, it was not in my hearing. So perhaps I just decided one didn’t talk about such things? I don’t know.
But Mom unwittingly, I suspect, changed my views about America. When I was seven, she began working with me through Frances Cavanah’s Abe Got His Chance (Rand McNally, 1959). It was a children’s book about Abe Lincoln’s childhood, and I would haltingly and falteringly read until I was exhausted. Then Mom would finish out the chapter.
I LOVED the descriptions of frontier life. I LOVED the tales of life in a log cabin. I was taken by the boy who read every book he could get his hands on. I was tickled by the pranks he would play on his stepmother. Here was an America I could understand. Here was an American I could admire. But things got serious when we reached the chapter on nineteen-year-old Abe’s first visit to New Orleans. Here I learned about slavery and auction blocks and something too ugly and dreadful for words. Here I “witnessed” Abe’s own disgust and revulsion, and I realized there are things that “need doing.” That this world is filled with beauty and wonder and mystery and awe, but it is also filled with pain and suffering and tragedy and cruelty and need.
It was a painful realization, but it was a stirring one, too. And on that night, the night where Mom and I read Chapter 12, America ceased to be a place and became an ideal: The ideal that had moved the young Lincoln. The ideal we still express when we stand with right hands over our hearts and speak of liberty and justice for all!
LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!