Elements of Life – Individuality
by Nia Peebles
Beauty is in it. Your best you is in it Believe it. Trust it. Never doubt it.
I want to share a little story with you about trusting in your individuality and uniqueness. It’s a story my father shared with me just before he passed away last year. He shared it with me because I had just begun recognizing some of the struggles he and my mother had come through as a couple of mixed race. You see, my father was a full on white guy from Mississippi; football player, popular, artistic, athletic and funny. He met and fell in love with my mother. She was this fiery flamenco dancer with dark skin and full lips. They married and started a family at a time when it was illegal for them to even hold hands in most states. He shared this story with me because as a child I never saw any of their adversity. All I knew was we were unique, but in a special, wonderful sort of way. Wonderful because my parents were proud rather than angry or embarrassed that we didn’t fit in. And so to give me a sense of how important it is to trust and honor your individuality, he told me this story:
While we were living in Waco Texas, we performed a Christmas show for the local orphanage, complete with dances from Tahiti, Russia, Japan. You see my mother taught all her daughters to dance while my father built a sound system and a light box for the show. Just one of those unique things we did. We labored for months to deliver a two-hour show with goodies to hand out afterward and a Santa to listen to their wishes.
The show was a huge success. The kids were ecstatic, having never had such a treat growing up in that little orphanage in the tiny town of Waco. After the show the well-meaning woman who was in charge of the orphanage thanked my father for the fantastic show and then told him in all sincerity that we made her sad because our being of mixed race meant we would never fit in. We would never succeed or be accepted. After all the joy we had provided for those children, she told my father it would have been better if he had never brought us into this world at all. That God never meant for it to be that way. My father chewed on this for a moment and responded “Lady, I hope I’m standing there at the pearly gates with God when she tells you what it’s really all about.” He turned on his heels and exited stage left. I can only imagine what that woman was thinking as she watched my perfect white father wonder off to his little dark family waiting outside beneath the canopy of stars placed in the sky by some she god never even contemplated before. Now as an adult, I wonder what dynamic, joyful woman lay dormant all those years inside that scared little lady who thought she was doing the right thing. And I wonder what wonderful bits of their mom her own children never had the pleasure of experiencing. Now that makes me sad.
