Moonbeam and Firefly

At Christmas this year my mother gave me a gift with a key chain taped to the wrapping paper. It made me smile. The little yellow canvas high top shoe reminded me of exactly who I am.

I remember the first time I saw the shoes. My dad and I were shoe shopping at a local store. I never expected to find them, but there they were and I knew they were destined to be mine. I was not accustomed to asking my dad for things. Growing up on a tight budget meant that us kids learned to do without or get a job to get the things we wanted. My brother wanted baseball cards and so he started a window cleaning business at the age of 8, the next year he bought a brood of chickens and started selling eggs. From then on he has worked non-stop, even two and three jobs at a time to pay for college. Today he co-owns a very successful company.

That's why I hesitated so long to ask my dad for the yellow canvas high-tops. He noticed and asked me what I wanted. I showed him the shoes. Dad smiled and nodded. "Get them." he said. I couldn't have been more surprised.

I named the yellow canvas high-tops Moonbeam and Firefly. Who names their shoes? Well, that would be me. I didn't know it then, but the shoes would come to mean a whole lot more that just a pair of sneakers.

I got the shoes the summer before my freshman year of high school. That fall I needed a pair of athletic shoes for gym class. Moonbeam and Firefly got drafted. My gym teacher was not amused. Mr. N felt that my shoes were a slap in the face to the very serious business of being physically fit. I wore them because I didn't want to bug my parents with getting traditional athletic shoes.

As the weeks wore on I quickly came to realize what Mr. N's real motives were all about. He turned out to be racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and conformist. Me and my shoes proved to be a complete affront to his beliefs. I, shy, blend-in-with-wallpaper me, found myself in the position where I could not stand by while he offended my friends and I. I started to stand up for myself, my beliefs and my friends. Much to my own amazement.

Moonbeam and Firefly were my way to flip him the bird without ending up suspended from school. They set me apart from the hordes and established my own uniqueness in a world where just about everyone wanted to fit in. I could care less about following the crowds and fitting in.

Chip off the old block, it turns out. My mom and dad have never been followers. They don't go out of their way to be different, they just are different and they make no apologies. I think it makes them better people.

My dad was a teacher for 33 years. In the last five years he took a job teaching at a charter high school. There he chose not to "teach to the test," as they say. Rather he taught his students how to think about history and their role in the world. What good are dates, names and places when you don't even know why things happen? What good is studying history when you have no connection to how it relates to you?

A history book that he sometimes used as a guide referred, in one small paragraph, to the Trail of Tears - the violent removal and forced walk of tens of thousands of Native Americans from their lands to reservations in Oklahoma - as a "migration." Angered, he threw the book across the room then turned to our personal library for help. There he found first hand accounts from individuals and observers who were there. He found reference material about what the Trail of Tears meant to America at that time ("Yea! More land! Contained savages!") and what the reservations meant to the future including Hitler, who used them as a model for his concentration camps.

Dad began the lesson by having a student read the "migration" description from the textbook. He separated the class into groups, then gave them each a source to read and report back on. One by one the groups read their sources and explained what they read. Finally the "migration" text was read again. The students were in tears, even sobbing. "They LIED to us!" they raged. "How could they lie to us!" They talked about why adults might lie, and why students might believe. Dad taught his students how to think.

As for teaching to the test? His students received many of the highest scores in the state. So much for that theory.

My mom found her place in the world as a community worker. She started off innocently enough teaching CPR back when that was brand new concept in the late 70s and early 80s. She took a job as the coordinator for the child abuse prevention council in our area, also a new concept. She worked a few jobs directly in intervention. (Very difficult.) Then started a Kinship Care program helping grandparents and other relatives raising children. She handed the reins over after several successful years and hit her stride facilitating a human services network, pulling people together from seemingly unrelated agencies and finding common ground to solve serious social problems like poverty, child abuse, and the prevention of child death.

Her innovative thinking changed our little patch of the universe. When funding was threatened for a newborn welcome program she took the team on field trip to the maternity ward of the hospital. There they met my niece, mom's newborn granddaughter. Funding stayed in place and that program is still operating nearly 19 years later. When funding for another vital program was on the chopping block in the state congress she went to the capital and met with every single legislator that she could and explained the program's importance with a view from the trenches. Funding passed thanks to her determination and sore feet.

She started a conference camp for Grandparents Raising Grandkids families. She humanized people who have stood in her path and turned them into friends. She spoke up, even when she wasn't supposed to and her voice changed minds and the outcomes of decisions that directly affected the people to whom she has dedicated her life. She changed people's lives, sometimes by the thousands, sometimes one person at a time.

Hero worship? Maybe. They are truly wonderful people. I pale in comparison, but the little yellow canvas shoe key chain reminded me of some aspects of myself that set me apart from my peers.

In high school, my locker sat next to the meanest, toughest bully in the school. Fights were a weekly, sometimes daily occurrence. She could have pounded me to dust if she wanted to, but she didn't. Why? Because every morning I said, "Hello. How are you?" I wasn't scared or sucking up. I wasn't just saying it to be nice. I was just being me. I could care less who hated her or who she hated. I treated her like I treated the jocks and the class clown and smart kids and the poor kids and the ones who looked funny. I treated her like a human, with respect.

The kid who looked funny had a harelip. We had the same gym class together. He was tall, shy and gawky. The day of the rope climb came as a dreaded moment for us all. With the exception of the jocks, we all struggled to get to the top except DS. I cheered him on, happy with his victory. Years later he told a mutual friend that he had nothing but respect for me because I was the only one to cheer him on as he climbed to the top of the rope. (I recall others cheering, too . . .)

One of the other girls from gym class also remembered me years later when we were out of school. She was poor and I could tell she had been sexually abused. Kids picked on her relentlessly. When we were in our junior year we had an American History class together. She and I sat next to each other at the front of the class. The teacher had to step out of the class for a moment and that's when the other kids really started in on TG, calling her names and asking her demeaning and inappropriate questions. She sat there and took it, tears rolling down her face. I had enough. They crossed the line.

I turned around and yelled, "Hey! Shut the F$%K up!"

Everyone sat there stunned. They had never heard me speak that way, or for that matter seen me angry and many had known me since kindergarten.

"What, are you her friend now?" one sneered.

"No," I answered, "she's a human being, just like you, and she deserves to be treated with respect. Leave. Her. Alone."

The teacher returned. He was greeted by a crying TG, a glowering me and a class shocked into silence.

Word spread about the incident. Even the bully next door asked me about it.

"If we pick on her again, what are you going to do? Kick our asses?"

"Probably not. You'll just get a good talkin' to." She thought that was the funniest thing ever. She also left TG alone and the bullying of TG lessened a great deal.

Six years later I ran into TG far from our hometown. I barely recognized her; she had changed a great deal. She gave me a big hug.

"Do you remember that day in history class?" she asked. I nodded, though it took me a moment to register to what exactly she was referring. "I just wanted to thank you for that. It was the first time anyone ever stood up for me."

I credit Moonbeam and Firefly. They taught me to be unique, to follow my own voice and my own heart. They taught me to stand up for what I believe in and to speak out.

I still have them in a closet somewhere. The rubber has cracked, the metal lace grommets missing, and the canvas frayed. They're a little bit of the best parts of me.