The Perfect Description

Reading this book called The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, I came across this beautiful dialogue and had to share.

It begins with a daughter asking her father the secret to staying married for a long time:

"Why did you marry mum?"

"Because she was a dish."

"The world is full of beautiful women. Why her?"

"She was for me."

"What do you mean?"

"Your mother filled up the frame. I couldnt see anyone else but her, no one around her or past her."

"Did that ever wear off?"

"No, it got worse."

"How?"

"Well, then love comes. You can fancy lots of other people. But the heart is small and fussy: it knows exactly who it wants. You only have room in it to love one or two people in a lifetime."




**maybe im just a sap...but i thought his answer was absolutely perfect. such a beautiful thing. ::sighs::

The Help

I urge all of my readers to go see (or even read) The Help.

Personally I love history. I love learning about my roots, I believe it gives me a stronger sense of self. But lately I realized a lot of Americans dont feel the same way. Black people dont want to talk about slavery, segregation, etc. because they believe pretend it doesnt exist anymore. That was all sooooo long ago. Lets just forget it happened. White people dont want to talk about those same issues because quite frankly...it makes them uncomfortable. They dont want to be blamed for views that their ancestors may or may not have had because they themselves may have very different views as children of the 21st century.

Let me throw this out there. Separate but equal was not that long ago. In fact Jim Crow laws were only declared unconstitutional about 50 years ago (even though some states didn't truly integrate their communities until years later), most of our parents were alive during this time. They lived our history.

Now back on topic, I think The Help did a wonderful job of portraying this taboo-like time in American history. Set in the 1960's the movie [and book] depicted certain relationships between Whites and their Negro help. What set this movie apart from other similar works was that not only did they show the brutal acts of racism so many of us are used to (and quite frankly tired of) seeing, but they showed that love and friendship were in fact able to transcend color boundaries during this period. Not all Whites who had Black maids were evil. Thats just the way things were done. In many situations the employer and the employee grew to love one another. They became family.

I think its crucial that we as Americans dont forget this part of our past. I think The Help is a movie that people of ALL races should see. Forgetting the past does not effectively allow us to move on as a nation. We need to accept it. It happened, we cant change it, but we can learn from it.

An older west indian neighbor of mine said she was urging her friends and family to see the movie. "We didnt have anything like that in Jamaica. A lot of times we dont understand exactly how bad things were here." I'd never thought of it like that. I didnt realize that just because I know a lot about something doesnt mean that other people do. Her comment opened my eyes.

So now I am urging ALL of my readers to go see the movie or buy the book. Just because something is uncomfortable doesnt mean you should ignore it. Just because you dont talk about it doesnt mean that it doesnt exist in 2011. Educate yourselves. Open your eyes to our history. Grow from the past, allow it to motivate your future.

"If you don't know where you come from, you wont know where you're going."