Gone with the Wind

by Elizabeth Grace Wolf (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find USA

There's something to be said for the sheltered upbringing offered by a quiet, American suburb in the early 1990s. It was a life of safety and comfort, where anything seemed possible if you put your mind to it. Bad things happened to someone else, somewhere else and there was no internet or twenty-four-hour news cycle to remind me otherwise. I tossed my parents' weekly TIME magazine, unexamined, into the junk drawer of my childhood. I want to raise my son the same way. Of course, the difficult aspect of this kind of upbringing is the shock you can experience when you begin to understand the more brutal reality of the world. It can unmoor your foundation, the very way you organised your understanding of things. Some might say this is simply the process of growing up--lost idealism is a byproduct of ageing. This would be the moment when my almost three-year-old son would say, “Ecuse me, MaMa. Why you talking about?” “Well, sweetie, when we were in Charleston, I took you to visit the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens; its trees and flowers are beautiful to look at, but I can’t figure out how to explain what happened at these old plantation houses and why they’re important.” “Oh.” There is a story in my family about my great-great grandparents on my mother’s side I can’t shake out of my head. A friend of my great-great grandfather made an untold amount of money in the slave trade. I don’t know if he was in a dire position--if he NEEDED that money to survive--or if he saw it as a way to make extra cash. When my great-great grandmother found out, she was beside herself. They all came to America to make a better life. How could anyone in their circle make money off the backs of people who almost certainly did NOT choose to come to America, but were brought for a life of servitude and subordination? We all tell ourselves whatever we need to believe in order to sleep at night--it’s part of human nature. Every time I turn on my iPad I think about how it was made, what the lives of people are like in places of forced labor. I turn it on anyway. In fact, I don’t think about it every time I turn on my iPad, that’s just how much I’ve convinced myself I do. Maybe my great-great grandfather’s friend thought, “Well if I don’t do it, someone else will. I might as well be the one who makes that money and uses it for my family.” That's not an illogical argument, it's not an untruth. It's a skill we humans have to ensure our survival. In order to survive in the wilderness we might have to step on one of our own. We can if we have the innate ability to rationalise our behaviour. It’s an uncomfortable reality of life. Though, I wonder if this tool humans have--this innate ability--is supposed to be utilised for survival, or once you have enough to survive, is it supposed to be used to allow the individual and those closest to him the ability to thrive? Some say yes, again, if you don’t, someone else will. My great-great grandmother, however, didn’t seem to think so. When she found out what her husband’s friend did, she put their security at risk and made their home in Ohio part of the underground railroad. It was a crime punishable by a government who had not yet amended its Constitution. The barn of their house was one of many stops along the complex, word of mouth path to freedom for escaped slaves. It was also a path for bounty hunters and Federal Marshals. I love this story. I want my son to be brave like his great-great-great grandmother, to move forward in life with unwavering integrity. The paradox of parenting is I also want him to survive--and thrive. While I grapple with this, I'll toss the Magnolia Plantation into his childhood junk drawer. I'll dust it off when we visit our grandmother's barn with the plaque that reads: This was the last stop on the underground railroad.