I have recently received email from different regular readers of this blog about the apparent turn to a more serious tone instead of the light hearted satire and snark it's known for. For this I apologize, and I will attempt in as short a way as possible to explain.
Every year I write a letter to my mother, a letter that will not be sent. She did not live long enough to see me grow to be a woman. The letter is cathartic for me, gives me time to reflect and ask myself "would she be proud of who I've become?"For those who do not know, I am a product of a wonderful Scottish musician father many of you over 40 might recognize the name, and birthed by an American mother. My father's work kept them in Europe most of the time and they chose to settled in a small quiet Belgian town for privacy. I was born in Brussels.
My earliest memories of childhood are of walking with my mother in the gently rolling hills above a WW1 Military Cemetery near where we lived. These grassy hills and shade trees became our favorite picnic spot, and where she taught me the things a mother teaches her daughter; why the sky is blue, how to braid your hair, and in my case, why those white crosses in the distance were in perfect rows.
She never let me forget the fact she was American, and so was I to be. She taught me the Pledge of Allegiance. She taught me and my friends the game of soft baseball. We had hamburgers and strawberry shortcake on 4th of July.
In the summer she would take my sister and I to the open air markets to buy fresh fruit and flowers she loved to filled the house with. I also remember many times dark haired, dark eyed men in the market, men who dressed and spoke differently than my father, watching me and sometime felt them touching my hair. One day, as a young teenager shopping with my mother, two of these dark haired men touched my sister inappropriately. My mother turned and slapped one of the men in the face. I heard yelling and words I did not understand, and my mother get pushed to the ground. It was while recuperating from that incident that doctors found the cancer that would eventually take her from us a little over a year later.
What I saw in those men’s faces that hurt my mother was evil rage that I had never seen and did not understand.
They were muslims. Immigrants from a nearby enclave.
The election here and events in Europe these past months have brought feelings to the surface I thought had passed and did not expect to return. I'm not proud of those feelings. The last letter to my mother has made my mood somber, yet angry. I have tried to write of lighter things here but find it difficult. That will pass. I have been somewhat consumed at times by the memory of what was done to my mother, and the growing concern for my childhood friends and their now young children I left behind.
I have seen many angry men. None like I saw that day. I was raised by my parents to be compassionate, and later by my aunt to be the proper Southern Belle I believe I've become. But when I see scenes of muslims men in the news, I recognize the same soulless evil I saw that day in the market.
I have a deep affinity for the European people that most Americans will not understand. I lived among them and was one of them as a child. I don’t expect anyone to understand. What we see happening in Europe now is no one's fault but their own. It's self inflicted. It is now up to us to make sure we don't place ourselves in evil’s way as they have.
It hurts me deeply to see it happening, and to put it into words to my mother……
