h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We all have defining moments in our lives. This morning an old friend and I were discussing the early 60s and the civil rights movement. I started telling her the story of a visit I made to my uncle and his family in Georgia during the summer of 1964, a visit that became one of my defining moments. I began and then stopped and changed the subject. In order to honestly tell this story, I have to be blunt, crude and politically incorrect. It would be almost impossible for me to write up a truthful account of things I witnessed, remarks made and conclusions drawn without being moderated.

So, you ask, why not write up a sanitized version? Thing is, the events weren’t sanitized. If they had been, they wouldn’t have made such an impression. I’ve made attempts in the past to relate a whitewashed account, but it loses so much. It’s sad that our society is more concerned with not offending the sensibilities of people who weren’t there than in telling the truth. How can we make people understand events that shaped history if we are aren’t allowed to describe them warts and all?

I had a completely different sort of defining moment many years later and even farther south. There’s no way I could accurately relate those events either without calling attention to people who were performing humanitarian acts that happened to also be illegal. I’ve made more than one attempt to fictionalize this particular story, but it never suits me. Turning it into fiction seems ti trivialize it somehow.

It’s frustrating to have stories you consider important that you aren’t able to tell, things that make you the person you are, that shape your attitudes and beliefs that you know you’ll never divulge. Sometimes I feel isolated inside my own head, knowing that so many memories will die with me because I don’t have the courage to bring them out into the light.

just go for it ! if it needs to be said, says it

Can't you write them down on paper?
Could you just change names? and publish anonymously somewhere?
I am so intrigued now, it must have been a very deep experience.

Have you considered doing a Blog Hyp and just post a link to it? You can always post a brief description on what its about. That way you don't fall foul of any rules or mods. Just a thought.

That isolation is tough, so is feeling silenced.

Can you tell the story leaving it unsaid whether you're recounting fact or fiction? Putting your experience into the third person ... you will have thought of this. I don't know what to say except to offer sympathy and that you've never struck me as lacking courage.

I think I get it, Hyp, at least if I remember the time period right.

Part of my problem with sharing things on h2g2 is that I know some of you well enough to feel comfortable sharing things, really deep things, but would be very uncomfortable with many others. That would be the same thing with a blog. I understand that there are many bloggers who open up this way and relate things they wouldn't be able to say elsewhere. I'm pleased that it works for them. I suspect thagt blogging is repolacing professional counseling for some people.

Not that my stories so traumatized me that I need counseling. But by their nature, I feel constricted. The first, the civil rights story, happened when I was 15 and very impressionable. The end result was that attitudes I had taken for granted because of the region where I was born and raised and the general prejudice I was exposed to were literally turned upside down and people I loved, trusted and admired became people I was ashamed of. The events of one particular night when I went out with a cousin and his friends -- they wanted to show me how they had fun -- are burned into my memory as few things seldom are. It was a lark to them, horrifying to me that what they were doing passed for 'normal' behavior.

The second story is also tragic but in a different way. It took place in the early 80s. I was in my early 30s, married, settled and active in an organization that helped shelter refugees. The legal part of this (for my group) concerned finding homes, jobs, medical care, etc. for Polish nationals who were caught up in the Solidarity movement. For example, one woman who stayed with us was on holiday in Vienna when the Polish border were closed. Because of her political activity she was literally barred from going home. She made contact in Vienna with our organization and was brought to the US, legally, I might add.

But there was another group of refugees, primarily Salvadorans, who were in the US illegally. Because of the State Department's position concerning the conflict in El Salvador, they would have been deported. This would have resulted in their deaths, pure and simple.

Anyway, what happened would, with some embellishment, actually make a hell of a movie. A political activist nun (now deceased), an unsuspecting foot soldier just trying to accomodate said pushy nun and assuming we were talking about a drive down to Corpus Christie (that would be me), a mother (now deceased) desperate to smuggle her young daughter (now deceased) out of El Salvador, forged passports, a trek through the jungle, and a tragic conclusion. Maybe Robbie is the one I need to talk to about this. We could set it on Magrathea.

border was closed.

In the first case, yup, I remember feeling like that in that era. Where you find yourself looking at someone and thinking, "I don't want to know you! I'm outta here."

The second? Wow. Just wow. Wish I'd been that involved. Good on you.