This morning’s bus ride provoked insight.  In a moment of ecstasy, I closed my eyes and let my inner voice posses the reins of my present by exclaiming, “I have the inheritance of Sarah Wafford.”  It was a crowded bus and I had to stand and endure 25 minutes of being jerked about and the heat and humidity embarrassingly resulted in uncontrollable drops of sweat beading around my embarrassed face. “Why is nobody else sweating?” As I prepared my next lament, that moment came and I was visited by the memory of my grandmother, Sarah Wafford who at one point in time would have been forbidden to occupy a seat on this very bus, let alone stand to head in the same direction I was.  I felt such gratitude. Sweat from a bus ride is nothing compared to sweat resulting from survival as a sharecropper.

I embraced the truth that it really doesn’t matter that I don’t have a seat on this bus.  Ultimately, I will arrive at the same destination as everyone else even if I have to stand and be jerked about.  I can endure as long as I have something to hold on to and anchor me.  Look at me! Standing on a bus while others have a seat; it’s not because I’m inferior, but rather it is the result of an inherited a privilege for which my ancestors paid with hope.  A dream deferred.