In my Freshman year in high school, I entered the guidance counselor's office and experienced a trans-formative moment. I was asked, in preparation for choosing my high school curriculum, what I wanted to do with my life. No, I take that back. That was not the question. I was there to choose between typing, shorthand and cooking classes. I was the youngest in my family and in that small town, we were not considered "college material." Our majors were in "shop", and secretarial skills. But that day, I asked about courses that would prepare me for college. "Just in case" I said. A little taken back, the counselor said, "But your brothers and sisters are in non-regents classes. Wouldn't you be better off there?" She knew my parents did not graduate from high school and with the exception of my oldest sister, my siblings were not exactly stellar students. I don't know why I said what I said but I would learn, it would not be the last time I reached beyond the boundaries already in place for my gender and economic class.
I remember this encounter clearly because it was a defining moment. Many years later at a high school reunion, I learned that the guidance counselor also remembered it clearly.
What makes some of us go beyond limitations or expectations? All of us know someone who rises above what their siblings and friends achieve, who excel in spite of poverty, drawbacks, race, gender, dysfunction, and class. What makes the difference? We all know the success stories of kids with talent whose light shines through, and the families and friends who supported them. But what about the others? The ones without the assistance of society who still lift themselves to a much higher level than anyone dreamed, even themselves.
As a Family Court Judge, I often saw kids in front of me without hope, one after another literally by the hundreds, and then one would be standing there who very simply turned the page from an impossible situation with no hope of a future to a path of purpose and contribution. I never knew why but I understood.
Recently, I was watching a recording of the TV series, Friday Night Lights which has such moments of genius underneath its typical TV soap-opera narrative. I watch for those moments and one surfaced from the character Tyra who is born into a lower class trashy drunk of a family and at 13 was well on her way to the strip-bar, a life of depressing poverty and too many unwanted pregnancies. Somewhere on her way to adulthood, she transforms very simply and not all at once. In a letter supporting her application for college she writes:
Two years ago, I was afraid of wanting anything.
I figured wanting would lead to trying
And trying would lead to failure,
But now I've found I can't stop wanting.
I want to fly somewhere in first class,
I want to travel to Europe on a business trip,
I want to get invited to the White House,
I want to learn about the world,
I want to surprise myself,
I want to be important,
I want to be the best person I can be.
I want to define myself instead of having others define me.
I want to win and have people be happy for me.
I want to lose and get over it,
I want to not be afraid of the unknown,
I want to grow up to be generous and big-hearted the way that people have been for me.
I want an interesting, surprising life.
It's not that I think I am going to get all these things,
But I just want the possibility of getting them.
College represents the possibility,
The possibility that things are going to change.
I can't wait.
Those words expressed my thoughts when I was fourteen. And I think the key to that life-changing moment was me taking charge of my life. The child who does that in face of all odds is the child in the song written by Arthur Herzog, Jr and sung by Billie Holiday .....
Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own
Yes, the strong gets more
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets don't ever make the grade
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own...
So, congratulations graduates and "hello world" to those "that's got his/her own."
2 comments:
This made me think of the Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor who grew up in the projects in the Bronx, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was a young girl...
"Sotomayor's father was a factory worker with a third-grade education who didn't speak English. He died when Sotomayor was 9, and her mother worked six days a week as a nurse to provide for her two children.
Sotomayor grew up in the Bronxdale Houses, a sprawling, 26-building low-income project of seven-story apartment buildings in Soundview just north of the Bruckner Expressway.
"Sonia's mom bought the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood," Obama said. "[She] sent her children to a Catholic school called Cardinal Spellman, out of the belief that with a good education, here in America, all things are possible."
The family's pride was shared by people still living in the Bronxdale Houses, where drugs and gangs ruled in meaner times."
It is always amazing and encouraging to read about people who have overcome the inevitable and taken the road less traveled.
Thanks for this. Some of us take several decades to fully grasp what you grasped at 14.
(A small spelling correction, out of regard for her memory; it's Billie Holiday.)
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