Greeting Card

*Note: This has been spinning around in my head since early June, and then, last night, I listened to brilliant artists speak at The Creative Collective around issues of discrimination, injustice, and equity. I listened to Mason families share horrifying experiences of being attacked and assaulted by racist terrorists, in my own town. This morning, I woke early, knowing it was past time to write this piece. It isn't much. It probably won't change the stock of options. It certainly hasn't erased the images evoked last night or from the card shopping, but writing is what I do, and it will lead to more. Change can't happen if we ignore the world around us.

Father's Day was approaching, as I 

stood before the cards.

Hundreds before me to choose from, I began

picking up one, skimming the words

briefly, knowing instantly if it was

right, for Dad,

from me, his

daughter.

Card after card, almost blindly

searching, and then one hit me, perfect

I thought, reading the inside again,

before closing it and noticing the

front.

A father sitting in a chair,

his daughter beside him,

laughing at something they'd read together.

It was beautiful.

It made me smile.

They were black.

I stood in the aisle of the store,

card in hand for one, two, three beats of time.

I thought of how many black daughters had searched for the perfect card, 

for the card that expressed what they wanted their fathers to feel.

How many black girls had played with white barbies and baby dolls.

How many black children had never seen themselves reflected in friends, teachers, doctors, movie stars, astronauts, cowboys, chefs, authors, characters in books they loved and read again and again.

I returned the perfect card.

I looked more carefully, scanning the choices, hundreds of options, one, two, three full aisles of greeting cards. 

Only one of color.

I thought of those black daughters as I walked away from the cards.

I've thought of those greeting cards every day, what they were telling me, and what they had spun.

Hundreds of years. One card.

In the midst of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and all that is happening, one card

seems insignificant.

Yet, poignant.

The perfect example,

glaring and subtly illuminating discrimination. 

One black representation in a sea of hundreds.

I cannot let go of my thoughts.

I do not know how to make things change, but

I know I have to do more.