Unconditional Love Bridges Differences
All brides are beautiful, even from half a mile away.
We couldn’t hear the words being said as we watched you exchange rings and embrace your new husband, but even through binoculars we shared your joy. We’d been saddened not to be included in the small circle in the meadow. It hurt to open the envelope and see “reception” instead of “wedding” on the invitation. Perhaps we were excluded because we were white, perhaps because we were not family. No matter.
We’d watched you grow since you were 10. Through the generosity of his spirit, your father had set himself the task of trying to educate us about your culture, your people’s ancient ways. He’d tried to teach us why after two centuries of foreign assimilation and economic destitution there was a growing, militant ethnic pride.
He’d always insisted we be included in special events; the day he died we lost that inclusion that made us feel we weren’t just a couple of foreigners, “haoles.”
But we hung on to you through birthdays, Christmases, your college years. We wrote, we called, we came to visit. Letting go of you was unthinkable.
Wise beyond your years, you knew that our presence at your wedding would have been like putting a drop of iodine in a glass of water. It’s not that you didn’t want us there; it was that everybody else didn’t. We belong to a race that stole land, language and a way of life from your people.
No wonder we’re all confused. It’s emotional heavy lifting to keep on caring about one another as human beings in such an atmosphere of racial intolerance. But if we are to have any kind of relationship, we all know we have to keep reaching across that yawning, great divide between our history and yours.
We were excluded not just because we’re white, but also because we aren’t “family.” Your “family” isn’t just fifth cousins three times removed, it’s everybody claiming membership in your race, no matter how much of that blood flows through their veins.
Journalist Donna Britt, an African-American living in Washington, D.C., once asked seminar attendees to “hold up your hand if you think you’re a racist.” Few of the sophisticated participants did. How could she ask such a question of such a supposedly enlightened audience? Of course we weren’t racist.
“Oh yes you are,” Britt contradicted. “Everybody is. We’re all products of how we were raised.”
I used to believe a person could rise above racist conditioning through education alone. Now I know better; I live in a place where I am an interloper, a member of a resented minority.
Human beings who look different from us are different from us. Language, culture, community mores - even preferred foods - make us who we are. Mix in a couple of centuries of suspicion, repression and rage, and you’ve got an invitation to a reception instead of a wedding. I’m a Wonder Bread woman in a taro world, but I’m not unique. To one degree or another we’re all struggling with our differences, our prejudices. We just have to remember that, when cut, we all bleed the same.
Young beautiful bride, so dear to us, we wish you joy. As you embraced us we knew, without a doubt, that the effort we’d put forth to stay in your life had been worth it.
It’s true that when your “family” gets together we don’t understand the songs or the toasts as well as we should. It’s true your brothers avoid us. It’s true that our people hurt your people in the past; we can’t fix that. But we can extend to you the same unconditional love your father gave to us.
You asked us to come, and we did. What counts is that we feel like saying to one another: “Aloha nui loa” - we love you very much.