Finding Freedom (So young, so strong) friendship with freedom

Freedom always finds me. It for some reason I become detached from freedom, freedom always finds me. As I write this Finding Freedom thing my heart and soul joyfully continues to remind me of the countless number of times I have found freedom. So, today, I'm thinking of yet another point in time when freedom met me on a super warm day in my favorite place to be which is Tennessee. The year was 1971, I was eight years old. I was eight years old, when my Daddy's rambler, pulled up to the curb of the house on the ground, which ain't no thing but fair. I remember sitting still in my back seat position, waiting for the moment I could take my shoes off. As soon as the black on red rambler pulled to the curb, I silently bent over from my back seat position and I pulled them both off at once! Then, when it was time, I too tumbled quickly and quietly from my back seat position of the black on red rambler, to the street of the ground which ain't no thing but fair. My skinny, long brown feet, felt the warmth of the ground and free is what I be! Freedom always finds me. It for some reason I become detached from freedom, freedom always finds me in the heart of Tennessee. The summer of seventy-one was long hot days, plenty full of front porch sitting, hopscotch jumping and picking up sticks. The summer of seventy-one also held much back porch sitting, picking and stringing greens and corn from the family garden spot on some fair ground. Both of my Grand Mothers lived on the same street and we were no longer visitors but residents of some fair ground in the great state of Tennessee. 

One super hot summer day the black on red ramble was not in the way of hopscotch or picking up sticks and we soon all realized Daddy's retirement from the work force lasted but a little more than three days. Freedom always finds me. It for some reason I become detached from freedom, freedom always finds me in the heart of Tennessee.

My super close but necessary friendship with freedom was once again unexpectedly, sadly, cut short by this thing I knew no thing about, but Daddy, Momma, and everyone called it desegregation. I knew not of a segregated school! And, I write all about my experience with being different, desegregation and so much more in my book To Love A White Man. Freedom always and forever finds me. It for some reason I become untethered from freedom, freedom always finds me in the heart of Tennessee.

To be cont : Finding Freedom (The Book)