I’d like to take a break from 5:00 Fridays today. I’m going to take this opportunity to toast Nelson Mandela. Raise your glass and toast not just his words, but his actions. It’s easy to repeat quotes and create memes. The heart is in our actions.
A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.
I sat in awe when I came home from school and saw the news on all my social media feeds. Deal and I had just spent the afternoon delivering Backpack Buddies at school. It was a fitting act that preceded this news. Deal and I watched the news for a bit. We have read books to the boys about Mandela’s life since they were tiny. Both kids know about him, about Gandhi, and about the modern day struggle for civil rights that carries on in our own state. We talk to our sons about such things, in age appropriate terms, of course. They are enlightened boys.
I wiped away tears as I watched the news. I tend to be terribly teary anyway, but these were not cry-at-the-sad-plotline-of-a-movie tears. I told Deal that when he grows up and is my age one day, he will look back at this moment and remember. I told him that much like people remember the death of JFK, the Challenger disaster, or 9/11, this will be a newell post in his memory. He ever so faintly remarked, “Yes, Mommy. I will remember this. I don’t understand how anyone could be jailed just for fighting for freedom.”
That’s my boy.