Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Declan and I spent the morning at the Levine Museum of the New South.  His first time, not mine.  It was free which was a special enticement.  We went with some old preschool friends since we were all off of school.  There was a large exhibit on a family and community in South Carolina focusing on their fight against separate schools.  We talked throughout the exhibits about the inequities in schools, homes, rights, everything.  We have talked about this before so he wasn't new to it but I think he got a better perspective seeing pictures of real people who this happened to.  We saw pictures of a burned church and burned home and he read the quote about the firemen just watching the house burn.  We saw drinking fountains with signs above them and looked at them, really looked and he noticed how different even the drinking fountains were.  There are places in the museum where you answer questions, putting your answer up on a post it note.  We chose to answer "Do you think race matters?"  We talked about our family and does race matter to us.  He said, "Yes, because my family has different colors."  Shortly thereafter, an African American man said to me, "Your son is going to be a good man.  A really good man."  Not sure why...I am hoping it is because Declan knows in our family that race does matter.  It is part of who we are and makes us different.  There will be things that Terefech that encounters in her life that we can never understand, but we'll try to be there to support, listen, and be her family.