I wanted to feel secure, to be carried, to at least be helped with the many things in my arms. I wanted my mom to hold me. But it didn’t happen that way. Mom said I needed to be a big girl and learn to do things myself. 

It was May and the end of school. The Oklahoma winds were blowing across the plains,  propelling my tiny kindergarten body forward. With my school projects in my arms, I walked toward my mom’s car.  I didn’t feel capable. It was as if the wind was going to use this poster board as a kite, pulling me upward into the sky.  I trapped it tighter between my elbows and ribcage. My skinny legs couldn’t hold my body to the earth. At any moment I knew I’d float away upward and my papers would be lost. Everything would be lost. But I kept stepping toward my mom, silently pleading for her to step forward. 

I’d like to say I grew confident in my strength, but no, I didn’t. Instead, the synapsis string of scarcity formed in my brain. I was not enough. And there was no one here for me. It left an emptiness in my stomach, like when you go down a hill too fast in a car. I couldn’t lean on my parents. It was obvious.

It wasn’t the first time. Hell, no. I remember many times before. Deep sadness and feeling alone. But you learn to shut it down. That was when my mind completed the circuitry of understanding. The lightbulb zapped. My parents were not capable of being The Brady Bunch parents.

They also were not anything like Marianne Williamson’s amazing parents.

When you have generations of people who have been deprived of love because of poverty, war, lack of education, The Great Depression, and families who have struggled to survive, the children of those generations won’t have strong support. They aren’t capable of loving with full hearts. They were not taught.

That kindergarten day,  the wind showed its face to me. It was the wind that has blown across the plains of our state for generations. It’s known our names and tasted the dust of our bones. It is lack. I don’t fear it. It is empty and dry because we have forgotten where we came from and who we are. We have forgotten to love our people. 

What if the wind took me away? Could I return?

If you like this, check out Catch Me