As the Students Lead
Enacting their primary parental role of providing fodder for emotional growth, my mom and dad, in their later retirement, became crossing guards at a local school district near their Florida home. Working in two different elementary schools provided them a financial boost and, more importantly, connection and purpose. Through the almost-twenty-year fog of memory, I remember feeling both grateful for the community that accepted them and literally took them in, as well as feeling a bit abashed by my parents’ capacity to always show up differently than what I, at any moment of time, might expect of them. They did not merge with my mental construct of “retired parent”. In retrospect, I realize that I was slightly embarrassed by their humble jobs.
The school system was Parkland, Florida.
They were welcomed into the families and homes of these kind people.
The school system was Parkland, Florida.
This community made a vast difference in the quality of life for my mom and dad in their later years.
The school system was Parkland, Florida.
A few days after the shooting at the high school, driving to work with a shattered heart, I found an old CD by Sweet Honey in the Rock, the iconic acapella group, in my car. To quiet the nose in my head, I mindlessly turned it on. The first track, The Women Gather, blew me open with its relevancy and power. Although written in response to the acquittal of the police who shot and killed Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, in 1999, mistaking him for a rape suspect from the year before, the lyrics speak eerily and hauntingly of today. The song followed me through the week, repeating its message of sobering truth.
The lyrics are of today.
From Columbine to Sandy Hook to Parkland.
From Eric Gardner to Michael Brown to Philando Castile.
From the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church to the Pulse Nightclub to Route 91 Harvest Music Festival.
The Women Gather.
As the Students Lead.
Please listen, with lyrics below:
He was her only child, her baby boy
She was his second daughter, a father’s pride and joy
Somebody’s mother, brother, best friend, sister, lover
Maybe an A-1 student running, hiding, taking cover
The women gather crying tears that fill a million oceans
It doesn’t matter where you’re living
The women gather crying tears that fill a million oceans
It doesn’t matter where you’re living
The women gather
People say, “Not in this neighborhood!
It doesn’t happen here!
Our kids have everything
What do we have to fear?”
But what about the ones who say, “This happens every day;
Drugs and violence take our children
How much more death can come our way?”
The women gather crying tears that fill a million oceans
It doesn’t matter where you’re living
The women gather crying tears that fill a million oceans
It doesn’t matter where you’re living
The women gather
Don’t you know?
Some bullets find their targets
Bombs can take you right on cue
Some in the hands of babies
Or officials and their crew
Claimed the brother had a gun
She fit the profile in my book
Running, hiding, taking cover, didn’t take the time to look
Somebody’s mother, brother, best friend, sister, lover
The women gather crying tears that fill a million oceans
It doesn’t matter where you’re living
The women gather crying tears that fill a million oceans
It doesn’t matter where you’re living
The women gather crying tears that fill a million oceans
It doesn’t matter where you’re living
The women gather crying tears that fill a million oceans
It doesn’t matter where you’re living
It doesn’t matter
It doesn’t matter
It doesn’t matter where you’re living
Dear friends, with prayers, with love, with a sliver of possibility for reawakening and renewing, let us send our blessings to those whose hearts are broken with grief and senseless loss. We are in it together—that is the real blessing.
Please keep me posted—how are you out there? I am aruni@rnetworx.com.
All blessings,
Aruni
*song written by Carol Lynn Maillard, sung here by the Dartmouth Rockapellas