Historical Fiction…

Some how, in my rather nomadic youth, I managed to miss a whole lot of history.

Wherever we moved, in the elementary school years, it was New Place State History year and I guess I didn’t feel enough of a connection to soak much of it up.

Middle School did not bring much of an improvement. I did well at Geography because coloring counted. (Back in the day, I was good at staying in the lines!) And I spent much of my time in American history reading library books under my desk.

I suspect I just didn’t have the perspective to understand why it might have mattered.

Among my real history teachers were Irving Stone, who covered both US and World history, Leon Uris on the Middle East, and a couple of guys named Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone who created the Broadway musical, 1776.

More recently, I’ve become one of Aaron Sorkin’s biggest fans.

I’ll admit it. Sometimes I like what I learn watching The West Wing better than what I learn watching CNN.

Well, lots of the time!

And, yes, I know all of that is, technically, fiction.

I can’t help but notice lately, with the help of friends like Dr. William Barber at the Poor People’s Crusade, and the organizers of National Hispanic Heritage Month, and Indigenous Heritage Month, and Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands…, that much of the stuff I didn’t learn in school might be termed fiction, too.

We’ll leave nursing school and church history for another day!

There are probably a whole lot of reasons for the things I missed. Reasons related to environmental input and human coping filters. Not to mention developmentally appropriate self-involvement and sketchy abstract thought skills.

There was one time in my early journey, though, that I remember learning a whole lot of unfolding history. A time that messed with assumptions I didn’t even realize I had.

We lived in a Chicago bedroom community from the summer of 1967 to December of 1968. My dad worked out of town most of the time we were there which I suspect, in hindsight, left me promoted to Mom’s unofficial buddy.

I remember sitting up late with her, glued to the news when Bobby Kennedy was killed. When the riots broke out at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. When Dr. King was killed.

And I remember knowing, at some level of consciousness, even then, that she and I were reacting very differently to all that news.

I suspect my “defection” to the blue side of the political aisle began in those days.

Which, not surprisingly, brings us back to The West Wing.

Here’s Friday night’s path to this place…

And, these days, like my friend Matt Santos, I have claimed the freedom to choose my own stories. Many of mine told by women…

ps… like Alice Hoffman, Alice Walker, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Elsie Hannah Royce Boardman, Gwen Marston, Hildegard, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Julian of Norwich, Mary Elizabeth Blanford Algren, Mary Magdalene, Me!, Shiloh Sophia McCloud, Sue Monk Kidd, Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, The women of Gee’s Bend, Toni Morrison…

pps… the art is drippy under-layers of my Artifact painting, from the night Rep. John Lewis passed on. Tears and Hope. My truth in that moment.