. Although she really ought to update more. \u00c2\u00a0What 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.<\/em><\/p>\nEver since Hope invited me to guest-blog (if that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a verb, it should be), I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ancestral home), combined with a heated conversation I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had Wednesday night, what to write came to me:<\/span><\/p>\nLast 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually see that little girl so I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what she wore), the spookily decorated houses, and too much candy, her almost-shrieking words went on and on and on. And on.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hope,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I remembered. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another Hope.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Was it just my imagination or did I also hear a younger version of me in the background murmuring, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?)<\/span><\/p>\nSince she began to talk, Hope\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m 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?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWhen Hope was little, as her doting but often exhausted mother, sometimes the best I could do was to occasionally murmur \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I used to feel terrible about my inadequate response. But after that aforementioned heated conversation Wednesday night\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnot as much.<\/span><\/p>\nOn 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 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Angry Black Man\u00e2\u20ac\u009d eloquently and passionately reminded all of us how he and other African Americans have been told to shut up their whole life.<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a crazy and unjust world. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all trying to make meaning of it. And we want to be heard. <\/span><\/p>\nThose \u00e2\u20ac\u0153uh huhs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d were assuring Hope that I was (mostly) listening. That her words mattered. That Hope Elizabeth Roth matters.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nStill does.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. \u00c2\u00a0What…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-7x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":474,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions\/474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}