Last week, when I wrote about a French fry and band aid sculpture I made with my grandsons, I hit a chord with a lot of listeners. Readers texted me with personal stories about their experiences in art, ones that peeled back layers of hurt and frustration with former teachers, and even their own parents who were dismissive and discouraged them pursuing a path of creativity. As a result of those messages, many feelings from my own imaginative endeavors were flushed out.
If we consider investing in someone else’s future as valuable, encouragement in our everyday actions and speech is such a simple way to make that happen. With media available literally at our fingertips, a five-minute call to say hello, an extra lingering moment in a grocery line, or a thumbs-up text remind us that every single act of kindness, no matter how small, is never wasted.
Through your feedback, I was also reminded of some inspiring people who invested in my creative path, not only through encouragement but also by their example. They emerged at the right time to give me what everyone needs from time to time, encouraging words telling us that we are ok, that our direction is right, and that our efforts will yield results if we keep trying and not give up. Then, I saw them go out and take their own advice by trying and failing, then trying again.
This week it was purely coincidental that I found myself watching the Harlem Globetrotters on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday at the Ford Center in Evansville, Indiana. I looked around to see people of all races and ethnicities enjoying the dazzling talents of the brothers Harlem, drawing the crowd in with their athleticism and comic genius. Theirs is that rare gift of handling a basketball and making people laugh. Can you imagine them as children? You gotta know they were always cutting up, nailing three-pointers in the trashcan from the back of the classroom. Watching their antics reminded me that they were not always seven feet four inches tall, but were once small, like you and I, trying to figure out how in the world they could be of any use in the world with such a silly and ridiculous set of basketball skills, skills that were probably seen by their teachers as narrow or purposeless.
I laughed hysterically, watching a little person Globetrotter being chased by an opponent and sliding headlong across the referee table, then turn to see my grandson howling too, and knew he was probably going to try that stunt at home the first chance he got. Maybe it was the basketball game, maybe it was my grandson, but I suddenly recalled a detailed scene from my own childhood.
I was in the back yard at our old home where I grew up, watching a black man named Mitchell Kelley, who my parents hired to work in our yard. He was dependable to a tee, so much so, that mom and dad began to enlist him for all kinds of chores. If this sounds patronizing, it’s not. My dad tried to do the things Mitchell did, but he was constantly injuring his hands which stopped him from performing the surgeries his patients were depending on. Reaching up to clean the leaves out of the gutter, Dad sliced his hand wide open on a ragged edge of steel one fall and was out of work for a month.
Mitch not only cleaned gutters, but he also trimmed trees, prepared soil beds, repaired our shed, cleaned our carpets, and many other domestic tasks. Mitch did whatever was on the list that day, then went to his second job as mechanic at Sears. While my father was establishing his practice, Mitch was the one I saw during the day. I knew my dad, and I knew his rules, but Mitch was often there when I was lonely or longed for a father figure to hang out with.
Mitch’s showed his best skill through his kindness, which including cooking breakfast for me on Saturdays when I had risen earlier than I was supposed to. I had a habit of waking up the neighbors in my pj’s at six o’clock, and once erected a barricade at the end of our street in my Zorro outfit, declaring to a passing police cruiser that my street was not big enough for the both of us, and if he didn’t leave, I would be forced to put a Z on his chest. That incident grounded me from getting out of bed for about a month, so I found my way out to the kitchen instead, where I found Mitch cleaning.
“Jeffereeee!” He’d say and rub my head. “Want some eggs?”
“Ok, Mitch, how’d you get so big?” I’d say in my Pj’s and Zorro cape.
“You eat, that’s how! Breakfast little man, breakfast!” Mitch would say, then take an egg in each hand, cracking them perfectly into the pan with no shell. “In the army,” he’d say, “I had to learn to crack eggs one handed. When those officers come through, you bess have their meal ready!”
Standing next to this tall man, I saw only eggs and milk whirling in a pan, and his enormous hands mixing, and listened to Mitch’s army stories of soldiers marching through the Mess for a meal. Mitch’s powerful hands, hands that held greasy wrenches and pry bars, carefully corralled my meal on a plate with toast that somehow, magically, was already buttered. I watched an immovable man with a gentle skill set, who could deftly crack an egg in one hand for either a cranky general or a hungry toddler who wasn’t supposed to be out of bed yet.
As I began to go to school, Mitch was still there at our house, always working, never chit chatting, never speaking unless spoken to, always working, improving, cleaning up after our family, working to make our lives better. I wonder how many times he went to his second job irritated that he had to work so hard cleaning up after other people. The answer, seen in his character, is never. He was not a slave to anger or bitterness, but to something inside, something bigger than himself.
Mitch must have known I missed my dad’s company. If I saw Mitch’s car from down the block on my way home from school, I knew I could fly through the back gate and be scooped up by his big hands and lifted to the sky. Whirling and twirling, I looked down to the world below and saw a mountain and felt the rush of God’s love without knowing who God was, felt the loftiness of God’s heart before knowing how to read the Bible, and knew unequivocally that one person loved me enough to move the earth under my feet and surround me with the strong arms of acceptance.
“Jeffereeeee!”
It formed an image in my mind of a voice I could expect from every black person growing up. I believe it also formed a lasting image in the minds of my mom and dad, who as a medical team never turned down anyone that came in their office no matter what their condition, race, or status. The patients would be taken care of in the same way Mitch took care of my parents at home, without malice or prejudice.
Mitch was leading by example. He had it right, he had listened to the speech and was living and teaching the dream, one where a little white boy like me would grow up and be able to play with a little black boy, one where we both would be scooped up in each other’s back yards, lifted up by those big hands towards the sun, and there would see a new world big enough for both of our dreams.