I am back in Portland.  Three weeks, now.  Shortly after my return I receive email with the subject line:  yes-youmadeit/Dr. Dapo!  My dear and long-time friend, Dr. Dapo Sobomehin (voice 90 in 100 Voices – Americans Talk about Change), wanted to get together for coffee.  This morning we finally made it to the corner of Hawthorne and SE 37th for a few hours of catching up.

Every time we meet, I am compelled in one way or another, to share what I learn from this teacher of mine (e.g., EX:Change blogs — What’s in a Name and Do You Know Where You Are?).  Today is no different.  Since getting back to the computer this morning, the obvious most important next thing has been writing these things down, contacting Dr. Dapo for permission, and forwarding them to you this way.

When we met back in April of 2009 for the original 100 Voices interview, Dr Dapo began this way:

I’m a Yoruba from Nigeria, West Africa.  My name is Dr. Dapo.

Word, w-o-r-d, means a lot to the Yoruba.  We live by the word.

Dapo Sobomehin indeed lives his word.  ”And you know what that word is, Mary?” he asked this morning.  ”That word is love.  L O V E.  Love.”

Read on.  You’ll see.  This man has many questions of us and he lives many of the answers.

Last night I got to have a long phone conversation with my friend Barbara Gutkin.  Barbara and Terry have known me more than half my life.  They also happen to be two of the Americans in 100 Voices – Americans Talk about Change.

Barbara and Terry are experimenting with retirement.  Barbara retired for a while, then decided to go back to work a few days a week because she missed being active as a speech therapist.  Terry was my major professor when I did my doctoral work.  He’s been at the well-earned distinction of awesome scholar for a while and lately has started cutting down slowly from full-time faculty work.  That means these two inspiring people are doing things like writing songs that become inspirations (and e-transmissions) of Move On  and participating in more public demonstrations in support of truth in democracy.

Barbara was speaking about one such demonstration in opposition to the seeing corporations as people and money as free speech as supported by the now infamous US Supreme Court Decision of 2010 (Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission).   There was conviction and energy in her voice.  I felt the passion of her words and the ultimate kindness of her intent.  I found myself, as I often do these days, speaking about my experiences on the road.

“This idea started coming to me at the end of the trip,” I said.  “The only phrase I have for it doesn’t feel adequate, but it’s something like ‘Turn Around.’”  I went on to tell Barbara about mentioning this in my classes and with friends over tea. 

My youngest sister just posted this on facebook.

Every single person in the picture is a mother now – a fact both astonishing and not.  In this photo the mom is my mom, our mom.  Here, somewhere in a field in south central Texas, she sits forever 33 with her four little girls, lined up by age.  I’m the oldest, the one in all yellow.

Also in that forever way, I know each of these small people.  I know the woman and her mothering. Because this moment endures as an image, I get the deep pleasure of remembering these things I know each time I see it.  Entered now onto the world wide web it becomes electronic legacy – our mother’s legacy and each of ours.

Today the five of us greet the day as daughters and as mothers at five different addresses in four different states.  We look one generational direction and see the seven young souls we daughters have birthed and raised. We look the other way and see our grandmothers, their mothers and theirs.

This is change.  From an image to a Sunday morning in May.

Its progression is as natural as the whirling of the planets around the sun.  As miraculous as well.  Through the change motherhood, this role we all five share now, continues no matter the weather or wars, or even the government and its legislation.  Like the bluebonnets in the Texas spring, we bloom and seed new lives that grow to seed their own.  And so on and so on.

The whirling of planets, the reliability of spring, the progression of girls to mothers – these are ingredients and assurances of change because of the way they endure.

My love to my MAma.
My love to my Sara.
And to mamas and their children everywhere.

On we go.

Here are some things I have come to know:

The land of the United States remains vast and more beautiful than any imagining.  The people of the United States remain more capable of wisdom, kindness and cooperation than our media and leadership lead us to believe.

GPS systems can get you almost anywhere – sometimes by incessant nagging, sometime with astonishing grace. I hear there may be an annoyingly breathy replacement coming for the current drill sergeant voice.  I think I prefer the drill sergeant.

It takes longer to drive across the six states between Wisconsin and Portland than to drive the nine states between Jackson, Mississippi and Manhattan even taking the long way through Atlanta.

There are vastly more toll booths between Jackson and Manhattan.

A few days ago, a poet in Colorado Springs said to me, “I’m really not interested in theory.  There is far more that is real in art.  I like keeping my work close to life itself.”

Later in the afternoon, a first year student at Colorado College said, “It’s been amazing to me to see how much we aren’t told about history in public school.  Unless someone tells you, you never really have the chance to realize that most of the people involved would have different stories than what shows up in mainstream American text books – and that a huge number of important events are just left out.”

The next evening, a 77 year old man in Salt Lake said, “It’s being quite jarring, this retirement thing.”  Come June, he is stepping away from his profession of 55 years.  “I’m finding that I must work in ways I never anticipated to find out who I am now.”

Yesterday, a Boise State University senior in attendance at May Day Occupy Boise events said, “The problem with talking about change is that the word is an abstraction. That’s why we each need to say what we mean – what it looks like.”

As a part of the May Day demonstrations, two men, one tall with a shaved blonde head and the second also tall but with a beard of black and gray ringlets carried a sign for the 8^th Annual Global Love Day.  They were giving away flowers.

Nearby a couple spoke with me.  Twirling the flower in her hand, the woman said, “We’re both over 80 and we’re natives of Idaho.  We’re here to give and receive courage because we know there is no reason for any of us to be treated as irrelevant.  That goes for the government and the way it treats us and it goes for the way we treat one another here in our community.”

A young man in a black hoodie with a black bandana covering his nose and mouth stood with a sign, also black.  It’s painted white letters read, “Revolution saves lives.”  “There’s a difference between change and revolution,” he said. “Change can be used to name things that shift superficially, but really stay the same.  Transformation means real change – change that is so complete that it would be unrecognizable to the ways that are left behind.”

Later last night, my cousin who was giving me a place to sleep for the night said, “Listening is sort of like a trick.  It’s not a trick done on someone, not really a manipulation, but it tricks people who think they are in complete disagreement into seeing their common ground.  Things can be built from that.”

Yesterday I drove through rain at the end of 8 hours on the highway.  I drove I-80W again — through what this time I learned is the National Silos and Smokestacks Historic Area. I hadn’t noticed this three years ago and found myself tweeting ( a behavior I still can’t quite square with my sense of self), “Who knew?”

Beyond the rain was Council Bluffs, Iowa and a family of four — people who are kin to me in my adult-made family.  I’ve known the dad since graduate school, the mom since they married, the kids since birth.  Dearer than dear.  And the dad and kids are three of the 100 VOICES.

We were to meet at the ball field — baseball.   It was Friday night in middle America — it was lovely and green and too cold and windy.  Adults cheered, kids teamed in the way all of us have done these things for centuries.  I walked under the bright lights between three soggy diamonds looking for the signs — black uniforms, red Ms on caps.  I was too enchanted to notice the cold, the wind.  I was also early.

I finally found my beloved family just in time for a new storm to hit, the games cancelled seconds before the enormous and icy drops began hurling themselves against every available surface.

I’ve been on a rest stop 9000 miles down the road since March 3.  Whitewater, Wisconsin – a rural community between Milwaukee and Madison where the Sweet Spot Coffee Shoppe greets the morning; farms, families, schools, businesses (conventional and cyber) and a university fill the day; and the newly opened Black Sheep Restaurant brings culinary art to the evening.    In the two turns of winter to spring that I’ve spent here (last year and this), the fine people of this place have only welcomed and included me.

Yesterday, I sat in dappled sunlight on a sofa generous with pillows.  In a chair across the room was a man who has lived in this area nearly 50 years, a career athlete and former coach with the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater. “I read your book,” he said.  I thanked him, said I certainly do appreciate it.  He went on, “I took it with me when I went out in the woods for a while this month. I enjoyed it.  Read it all the way through, a little bit every day.  I think the voice I liked the most was Daniela (Voice 074), the young lady in middle school on Long Island.  Her philosophy says it all for me.  Wake up in the morning and ask yourself what you can do to make the world better for someone else.  I like that.”  The man went on to speak of Daniela’s stories about the way the kids in her school separate themselves into cliques and about how difficult but important it is to dare to cross those boundaries to listen and to talk. 

It is early morning in the middle of April.  I am on a bus leaving Oxford, UK.  I have kissed my daughter on the cheek more than twice.  We have hugged one another many more times than that.  Each embrace as if it were the actual goodbye – the one that would leave our parting fully signified and safe.  All through, we smile into each other’s eyes to fill the gaps between whatever small words we can find for amazement and gratitude.

My daughter is, of course, the reason I am here on this bus and leaving Oxford – a place I had never thought to imagine visiting – rarefied and steeped in esteem as this small section of earth and architecture has become.

I am sure many have written of leaving Oxford.  Perhaps another writer has taken a seat in the fourth row next to the window on the driver’s side, pulled out a pen, and offered words to the tenderness of parting. 

Yesterday I came into the Oxford University offices for public health.  I was there to meet up with a friend and colleague.  A slight woman greeted me.  In contrast to the reserved decorum I have come to expect, this Oxford official nearly skipped up to meet me, smiling young and radiant above a cascade of pearls.  Josephina was curious about my accent, about Oregon.  She brought me water.

I asked how long she had been in Oxford.  These are some of the things she said, speaking with her entire body as we stood together in the office suite’s foyer.

Alongside what changes is what endures.  Each is finally contained in the other.  Many times, what remains most reliable does so because of its capacity to change.

Here I am, visiting the UK because of one of those enduring things — family — more specifically, my beloved expat daughter.

Today is Easter.  That means many on the islands are following the tradition of gathering with families over meals  –  elaborate and larger than usual.  It’s alot like the way many families in the US acknowledge Thanksgiving.

The post-feast walk that often follows our late November celebrations was much in evidence this afternoon along the banks of the River Thames where it flows through Oxford.

Many words have and will be said about what changes and what endures.  But today a walk along the river said it best.

Sometimes I turn to internet sources for news updates.  Huffington Post, NYT, stories posted to facebook, local papers’ websites for learning about where I am along the road.  Often there are stories with photos of crowd scenes.  Some are international, but I’m thinking today of domestic stories – Occupy, Tea Party, vigils, protests on the National Mall or at statehouses across the country.  In the case of crowd photos from the U.S., I might linger on one of those photos to consider the people in it.   I find myself noticing how often there are fewer people of color in a photo than would be representative of the makeup of our country.  In fact I am very often struck by how predominantly white most public gatherings are.

Of course, that’s me looking.  But check this out for yourself.  See what you see.

Then there was this morning.  I scrolled through the headlines and saw a photo of a crowd in Miami on Sunday – people gathered to honor Trayvon Martin’s life and to call for justice.

I am a white woman looking at these photos this morning and I have some questions.

No, Geraldo.  It’s not the clothing.
It’s about looking under the hoodie.
mc

By now, most Americans are aware of the death of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old young man who was visiting his father’s home in a gated community of Sanford, Florida.  Trayvon lost his life to a single gunshot fired by a man who lived in the same community.  At the time the fatal shot fired, it was dark.  Trayvon, who had gone out to the corner store, was talking on his cell phone with his girlfriend back home in Miami.  When he wasn’t with his dad, Trayvon lived most of the year there with his mother.

Trayvon died wearing a hoodie.  There was a package of Skittles candy in his pocket.  He had pulled his hood onto his head when he noticed he was being followed by a man shouting out – questioning what Trayvon Martin was doing.

What was Trayvon doing?  For one thing, he was being 17 after dark.  He was on a walk to and from 7/11 to get candy.  He was talking on his cell phone to his girlfriend.  He was duly intimidated by the man following and shouting at him.

Trayvon was being in his life under that hood – a young black man living his life as if his skin color and clothing didn’t matter.  He was being a young black, a son, a friend, a person who mattered to all the people who so desperately miss him today.  That’s what Trayvon Martin was doing.