Race.
I’ll start with my brother, Joe Jr.
He was born with Down syndrome and in his youth, participated in the Special Olympics. Track and Field.
At the starting line, all the kids in bright colors jumped up and down in glee.
With the whistle, they were off and running. Yes, running in their own unique, slower and delighted kind of way. Including my brother Joe Jr. with his big grin.
Applause and cheers from the stands, smell of grass sweet, and then around the third minute, one racer tripped and fell. The crowd gasped. I imagined the other racers were feeling adrenaline, given that with one competitor down, each had a greater chance for victory.
But what happened is this: when the runner ahead saw that his competitor had fallen, he moaned what sounded like: “Man down.” All runners turned. When they saw their buddy on the track, fallen and rubbing his knee, they each stopped. They reversed direction, made their way back to the fallen competitor, helped him back up.
I can’t remember if the race continued.
Tears welled up in my eyes. Oh these retarded ones, that’s what Joe Jr was called when he was born. Retarded. Mongoloid. How my face would burn bright in embarrassment when I heard these words from my classmates. “You have no idea the love you’re missing out on!” I wanted to scream. But didn’t. Too shy. Too withdrawn. Feeling way too much.
How do we stand for the other after they’ve fallen and need a hand? So many distractions these days, who can focus, let alone shed a tear?
Other thoughts on race:
When I was 13 years of age, my uncle, an activist priest, was murdered. The intruder entered his rectory in Queens, NY to steal money after Mother’s Day Mass then shot my uncle in the heart. My uncle never locked his rectory door. This always worried his brother, my father, a special agent for the FBI, the agency headed by J. Edgar Hoover snooping in on Martin Luther King Jr.’s private life.
King’s dream for social justice inspired my NYC priest uncle. Perhaps the same with my father, but his job demanded silent obedience to the boss. My father adored Joe Jr. He knew the reality of disenfranchisement as witness to his son’s being relegated as outside the “normal” status quo. Those Special Olympians who stopped their race and helped the fallen one, yes, we have much to learn from them, the word “race” to be updated with new meaning.
The man who killed my uncle, Father John Conlon, was released from jail last year. He was one of New York’s longest serving prisoners, serving 50 years of a life sentence. Was he a Black man or a White man? Yes. One of the two. But we didn’t talk Race after this loss. Rumor is this young man knew my uncle and that’s why he shot him, fearing he’d be identified.
My uncle’s closest friend, Father O’Brien–who I met in New York decades later, after the publication of FBI Girl—recited the eulogy at my uncle’s packed funeral mass in 1973, attended by Mayor John Lindsay and other dignitaries. I have the recording on cassette tape, listened to all those years later. My eyes welled up hearing Father O’Brien say that my uncle forgave his killer even before his soul reached Heaven.
I fathom forgiveness, when someone breaks your heart, when someone takes a life.
For me, it was easier in the past to push emotion down.
I had my own dream the other night. Members of a cult were chasing after me, trying to recruit me. Strongmen ready to take me down. I escaped them all with my cunning then drove my vehicle right into the walls of my childhood Catholic Church in Los Alamitos, California, proclaiming: “This is the church of my origin.”
But there’s no turning back to that. Religion and race are both words asking for recall and updates regarding truth and compassion, especially regarding the invitation for strong women to speak wise voices into the tired void:
Resist the cult of the status quo.
Help the one who has fallen.
Start with the one who’s been silenced inside. That’s what I tell myself. And if your heart’s been broken, may tears well up and soften it with green rains that soak the thirsty hills.
The time is ripe.
The race is now.
(Written on January 15, in remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr.)
