No Chalu2, I wasn't describing "Superman". I was describing MY life. Sorry, it was a trick question. :)
In 1962, my father died. The news of the day on TV was JFK talking something about "Cuber", and tension was high. I didn't quite understand why, but I vaguelely understood that we needed to duck and get under furniture if a bomb came. I figured we were OK, since we lived in a basement apartment.
My mother had a dilemma - she really couldn't afford to raise me. She had only a part-time job as a bookkeeper, and didn't know how to drive my father's red truck. (Indeed, she didn't have a driver's license, and never would.)
She could send me off to my grandparents (whom I already spent summers with), or to my aunt and uncle in Santa Monica, who were willing to take me, or to my aunt and uncle in Sarasota, who weren't sure.
The family was sure of one thing - that she'd be making a mistake to keep me. The grandparents were deemed the best choice, since they had raised my half-brother and half-sister when THEIR father died when they were about the same age.
Instead, my mother asked me what I wanted to do. I made a choice that was supported by nobody, but which my mother chose to honor.
My choice was to stay with her in Detroit - to stay with this woman who I hardly knew. Why, I don't know. Perhaps because I had friends. Perhaps, even though at the time I saw her as a bit of an ogre - "that mean woman" - (my father couldn't discipline me - I was his pride and joy, and so that job fell on her) she was the only parent I had.
I was one of a handful of white kids at Brady Elementary at Joy Road and Lawton. A classmate sought to reassure himself, "you're one of us, aren't you? You just have light skin, right?" I had to endure the stares and admonishment of neighbors, when I brought my best friend, Walker, to our apartment in an "all whites" building.
It was difficult. My mother went further in debt. She yelled at me a lot, and drank increasingly. But she always made sure I was well-fed, and had everything that I needed for school. My older sister made sure I got exposed to culture, taking me on outings to museums and the like. An "uncle" and "aunt" (really, friends of my mothers who didn't have children) took me on Saturday afternoons to give her a needed respite.
Five years later, in the summer of 1967, when I was 12, the commercial strip a block from our apartment was burned to the ground in one of the worst riots in American history. I'd gone to my grandparents for my usual summer retreat, to the little town of Milford, where armed volunteers partrolled the streets in case negros from Detroit came-a-gunnin. When I came back from my summer vacation, we lived in a different part of town.
I survived it, and, looking back, am a better person for the experience. It might have been an easy life living in Milford, or Santa Monica, or Sarasota, but growing up in Detroit in those days and under those conditions taught me independence of thought and action early. And it taught me to see through stereotypes and popular opinion.
If I could, I would not want to go back and change it.
The fact is, children survive - indeed, thrive, in the most adverse environments. It is amazing. They have little auto-pilots that allow them to make the most of whatever environment they are put in. That is why I am convinced that it's a toss-up as to where Elian lives.
Now, indeed, I made the choice that most people here would make for Elian - to go live with my remaining birth parent. Given that choice himself, it's quite likely that is the choice he would make. Or perhaps not. I don't know what choice Elian would make, because I am not Elian. Each situation is different.
But why not give him the choice? Don't give me this B.S. that a 6 year old can't understand, can't make such a choice, and can't choose responsibly. (I was given a lot of OTHER choices when I was a child, as well. I was largely allowed, for example, to choose my meals. Bubble-gum was NOT my top pick! Pork chops, I think, was my top dinner pick, and bacon and egg sandwiches for breakfast.)
You see, when I was 7, I made a choice similar to the one that you would deny Elian. If I was able to make that choice at 7, I think there's a good chance that Elian is prepared to make it at 6.
You can't say what Elian can or can't do until you've been in his shoes - I have.
It is appropriate that I'm making this post on Mother's Day. And that you had mistaken my story for that of Superman. All that is left is for me to dedicate this post to SuperMom - who gave ME the choice, and many more choices after that. |
