August 20th, 2017
The thought-provoking words brought forth today by John Skipper deserve more than just recollection, they invite us to visit similar moments in each our lives. Hopefully for those of you who read these words I have written, your journey through life will be long and healthy. But know that it will also be arduous and fought with roadblocks you will later discover were built by yourself.
There will be accountings in your life that will remain indelible in your memory, instances that are deeply engraved as constant reminders of your environment and the landscape upon which you live. If you have gray hair and have never experienced occurrences such as I have described; then you’re living in a bubble.
Let me share one such assault perpetrated on me in a farmhouse kitchen. In every way, from every angle…… it was a verbal assault. I was in the early stages of a new relationship with a very bright and attractive girl. She radiated a sense of effervescence…..an exuberance for life surrounded her. Her father farmed North of Ventura and her mother taught school. When I would pick her up at the farm, I would always enter the house through a back door which led into the kitchen….there her mother would be cooking something, and once inside her father would come into the kitchen to greet me and tell me that he was Irish and he only drank Irish Whisky. I can remember always congratulating him on that fact.
This took place slightly over 60 years ago, but today on television we see riots by white supremacists marching against white people who fit my profile. So what’s changed?
Then came that fateful night……the night that would changes lives and engrave memories that would last to eternity. I entered the kitchen as always and there stood her mother as expected only this time was different….much different.
“I have some questions for you,” her mother exclaimed.
“Alright,” I replied.
“Do you speak a foreign language?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Do you eat foreign food in your home?” She asked.
“We buy the food right here, in this country,” I answered, wondering at the same time what constituted foreign food?
“Are you Orthodox?” was the last question….to which I answered yes.
By then I knew this was over. Her father never came into the kitchen….and her daughter remained upstairs. I never for a moment blamed her daughter for the actions of her mother, not even for a second.
Later her daughter married “the right guy”, had four children then divorced him for infidelity. But he did not speak a foreign language or eat garlic and olive oil…. He just cheated on the mother of his children. And he wasn’t Orthodox……
Words are innocent by themselves or damning in the wrong hands. They can be loving or hateful, kind or hurtful. Words are the stock and substance of our lives…and if you are reckless with them you shouldn’t be allowed a platform in which to use them……
My mother was born in Mason City as were I; this makes me second generation American.
Peter Children (Yankovich)
Mason City, Iowa
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