Hope’s Note: Today’s guest post comes from my Mom, the very talented Patricia Wild. Mom has a blog of her very own. Although she really ought to update more. Â What does it say about me that everyone has been writing about the fact that I never shut up. Well, I never shut up. So I suppose that this was to be expected.
Ever since Hope invited me to guest-blog (if that isn’t a verb, it should be), I’ve been wondering what to say. My (self-assigned) assignment: How to write something about my daughter, the ever-incredible Hope AND to say something, you know, insightful, Big Picture. Last night, as Trick or Treaters paraded up and down 25 School Street (Hope’s ancestral home), combined with a heated conversation I’d had Wednesday night, what to write came to me:
Last night a little girl walked by, maybe three or four, her young voice raised to an almost hysterical pitch. No doubt crazed by Halloween excitement, her costume (I didn’t actually see that little girl so I don’t know what she wore), the spookily decorated houses, and too much candy, her almost-shrieking words went on and on and on. And on.
“Hope,†I remembered. “That’s another Hope.†(Was it just my imagination or did I also hear a younger version of me in the background murmuring, “Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.�)
Since she began to talk, Hope’s been making meaning of this (often crazy) world around her by verbalizing. And verbalizing. And verbalizing. When she was younger, her voice was adorably high (yeah, I know, so sue me: I’m her proud mother) which gave an added intensity to her passionate process. Is it any surprise, therefore, that nowadays, her adult voice now sultry, Hope now writes and performs her own music and blogs? Â
When Hope was little, as her doting but often exhausted mother, sometimes the best I could do was to occasionally murmur “Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.†I used to feel terrible about my inadequate response. But after that aforementioned heated conversation Wednesday night—not as much.
On Wednesday, as I usually do on Wednesdays, I had dinner with a group of formerly incarcerated men. That particular night, there were three men; all of them are African American. As often happens, the dinner conversation centered on race. And got very heated. When David, my sweet and gentle Quakerly husband, asked the loudest and most quick-to-interrupt man to give others a chance to talk, this “Angry Black Man†eloquently and passionately reminded all of us how he and other African Americans have been told to shut up their whole life.
It’s a crazy and unjust world. We’re all trying to make meaning of it. And we want to be heard.
Those “uh huhs†were assuring Hope that I was (mostly) listening. That her words mattered. That Hope Elizabeth Roth matters.Â
Still does.
