Privileged

Privilege, according to dictionary.com, is a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people. Phoenix Calida describes it like this: “Privilege simply means that under the exact same set of circumstances you’re in, life would be harder without your privilege.”

I am a woman of privilege. I am white. I am well-educated. I have adequate income to purchase what I need, take the family out to eat from time to time, and go on vacation. My husband and I own our home (technically, about 85% of our home, sharing the rest of that privilege with the bank). About the only strike against me in terms of the world’s sense of power and privilege is that I am female, not male.

In my seventh decade (how can that possibly be?) I am grateful for the privilege I have. As Roxane Gay, author of “Bad Feminist: Essays,” suggests, “You don’t necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don’t have to apologize for it. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about.” Or, as Nicole Graffeo explains, “White privilege isn’t saying we’re all rich kids with rich perfect parents spending our summers without a care in the world. On an individual scale, it is not cancelling out our everyday struggles. It doesn’t say that white people do not have problems or bad lives.”

While I could devote an entire column to the topic of privilege as it has come to be culturally understood in recent years, that’s all I’m going to say about it today. Because I want to write about a different kind of privilege, the one with a capital “P,” the kind of right and advantage that’s only available to a particular group of people: the bona fide grandmothers!

I am grateful for the privilege of family, and while I enjoy the adults and older kids in my family, I am especially blessed to have the lovely Madelyn Simone and the delightful Elizabeth Holiday in my life. We (Larry, myself, and the girls’ Aunt Becky and Unkie Dan) took the two darlings, ages seven and two, on a mini-vacation to my hometown, and because of the high beds in the hotel room, we began the night with E.H. sleeping between Madelyn and me (or is it myself?). About 3 a.m., I awoke to the touch of Elizabeth kissing and patting my cheeks, while Madelyn was positioned diagonally across the bed, legs draped across mine. After my initial irritation at being awake in a hotel room in the middle of the night, my heart overruled my mind almost immediately, shifting to a profound sense of gratitude at how privileged I am to be a grandmother. Even as Elizabeth said the dreaded word, “ba-ba,” even as I stumbled in the dark to get her a drink of water, even as I hoped I wouldn’t trip or she wouldn’t spill water in the bed, even as it took her a while to go back to sleep, the word kept coming: I am so privileged.

As we strolled along Canalside in downtown Buffalo, privileged. As the buzzing bees and the raucous seagulls crashed our impromptu lunch on the shore of the Niagara River; privileged. As nine of us crowded into a hotel room for Chinese take-out at 10 p.m.; privileged. As little hands reached for mine while walking, jumping into the pool, or drifting off to sleep; privileged.

I acknowledge the privilege. I know many grandparents who are hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from their precious grandbabies. I know of the pain of estrangement and the pain of loss. I know the ebb and flow of Ecclesiastes 3, with its promised seasons and time for everything. I am soaking up every touch, every kiss, every splash, and yes, even every middle-of-the night, “Nana, ba-ba.” For as Brené Brown understands so well, “What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.” I am one grateful Nana today.

Only if we remember . . .

One of the highlights of summers in our community is the Ashland Chautauqua event, held primarily at the Guy C. Myers Memorial Band Shell, featuring a series of performances and workshops with characters from various segments of our nation’s history. This year, under the banner of Voices of Freedom, scholar-actors portrayed Rosa Parks, Bessie Coleman, Mother Jones, Maria von Trapp, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., twentieth century figures whose courage spoke forth from the battleground for civil rights (Parks and King), the world of union organizing (Jones), the challenging skies of early aviation (Coleman), and life as a refugee from Nazi oppression (von Trapp).

Like most Chautauqua series, some of the characters are more familiar than others, but by the end of each evening, the audience has either met a new hero or discovered a new facet of the personality of an iconic figure. The latter was the case for me with Marvin Jefferson’s portrayal of the man born as Michael King, known to us as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

King was a complicated figure, best known for his civil rights leadership, but also standing firmly against the war in Viet Nam. As King expressed to the Saturday night audience, “I don’t know about you, but I ain’t gonna study war no more.” No doubt about it, the prophetic voice of Martin King married his courage to his convictions.

As I listened to the portrayal of Dr. King, and then later as Jefferson responded to questions from the audience both in character and from a scholar’s perspective, I did some quick math computations. King, born in 1929, died in 1968 at the age of thirty-nine. His assassination, less than four years after President Kennedy’s death, was followed a year later by the slaying of Robert Kennedy Jr. I remember Mr. Hurley’s knock on the door of Miss Kramer’s third grade class on November 22, 1963, and the subsequent reporting on the deaths of King and RFK. But I remember these events from the perspectives of an eight-year-old child, and then a young teenager of thirteen and fourteen. I was there. I bore witness to the history developing before my eyes. Yet I wept the tears of grief over these larger-than-life figures with little understanding of the complexity of their characters or the way the loss of their voices through early death would mold our country in the years ahead.

King claimed the movement was sustained by singing; he was also remembered through song in Richard Holler’s words about Abraham (Lincoln), Martin, and John (and brother Robert): “He freed lotta people, but it seems the good they die young, I just looked around and he’s gone.” My adolescent heart and mind wondered: would this public rampage of death ever stop? Even as I dredge up these thoughts from the perspective of almost fifty years, I am gripped by the courage that was modeled by so many in those turbulent times.  

What I realized as I listened to Jefferson bring MLK Jr. to life is that within another generation, within the next few decades, the memories and the voices of those of us who bore witness will be silenced. Soon, those who fought the battles of World War II, who bore witness to the atrocities of the concentration camps, those who vowed, “never again,” will all be gone. Soon, those who marched at Selma, those who dreamed of a country where the civil rights of an individual weren’t dependent on skin color, will be gone. Who will remember?

Yet we must remember, we must repeat the stories, we must continue to hear the voices of freedom. Because of von Trapp, we gather the courage to climb the mountains before us. Because of Mary (Mother) Jones, we are challenged to “pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.” Because of Bessie Coleman, “we have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream” (William J. Powell). Because of Rosa Parks and Dr. King, we can claim the dream that the content of character overcomes the color of skin. But only if we remember . . .

Downtown

Walking through the mall in Strongsville to meet a Cleveland friend this week, I was humming a song learned in my preteen years, released by singer Petula Clark in 1964. “. . . so go downtown, things’ll be great when you’re downtown.”

Composer Tony Hatch was inspired to write the tune and the words when, he explained, “I wandered down to Broadway and Times Square [in New York City] and, naively, I thought I was downtown. . . I loved the whole atmosphere there and the [music] came to me very, very quickly.”

New Yorkers know that Times Square really isn’t downtown, but it made for a great song, one of the first I owned on a 45 record. More than fifty years later, I still can sing most of the words, especially the do-so of the title phrase. Music sticks with us, often more deeply than we know.

Was I subconsciously humming this in the mall, yearning instead for the eclectic charm of a true downtown? Over the course of my lifetime, the malls of America have attempted to replace the downtowns of our cities, both large and small. For many years, our downtowns crumbled, even as the unrealized promise of Urban Renewal claimed to be their salvation. While the mall in Strongsville appears to be flourishing, the curse some of the early malls bestowed on Main Street USA has now overtaken their own corridors, and like the Canton Centre Mall, Akron’s Rolling Acres Mall, and the Summit Park Mall of my childhood, they are gasping for life – or beyond resurrection.

Yet little by little, the downtowns of our communities, both large and small, are finding new life through people who are seeking out an alternative to the uniformity of big box stores and malls. It’s happening in Wooster and Medina, Ohio, where the streets surrounding the town squares offer a variety of shopping choices, food options, and entertainment possibilities. It’s happening in downtown Mansfield, as the music of the Carousel wafts on the breeze, and folks of all ages check out what’s happening in town. In Loudonville, some wonderfully restored buildings offer an alternative to the outdoor fun of the Mohican area, the old-fashioned ice cream parlor my favorite. A similar rebirth has been quietly happening in downtown Ashland, where nearly all the storefronts are filled, ready for Ashlanders (and visitors) to seek out the treasures of Main Street and its side streets (no surprise I’m partial to the new book store at 2^nd and Orange Streets).

It’s obvious there has been an ebb and flow to the life cycles of our downtowns. In Ashland, Gilbert’s Furniture Store stood as the venerable anchor to retail business in the downtown for many years. When it closed its doors shortly after we immigrated to Ashland in 2006, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth by its faithful furniture customers. Those in the downtown business arena worried that its closure was a sign they should pull in their awnings and leave town as well. For those wondering whatever might be done with the building, the wheels of progress have turned slowly, but with the upcoming opening of the Uniontown Brewing Company and the other small businesses already opened, the Gilbert’s building will have successfully claimed a new lease on life.

It’s taken a lot of hard work, a strong dose of perseverance, and a vision of what Medina, Wooster, Mansfield, Loudonville, and Ashland could be, even if that identity didn’t mean a return to their glory days. Local merchants have stayed even when financially strapped because they’re committed to our downtowns. Main Street organizations and Chambers of Commerce have provided invaluable support. And new investors and entrepreneurs have taken a risk as they recognize how it’s possible to earn a living in a way that builds community, not mall monotony and internet isolation.

Petula Clark wasn’t singing directly about the downtowns of mid-Ohio in 2017 when she crooned, “Downtown, everything’s waiting for you,” but I’m excited for what awaits us in Ashland and our mid-Ohio sister cities when we take the time “to go Downtown.” Hope to run into you soon.