FREE -by taree Belardes

FREE- by taree Belardes 3/16/14

In the year or so since I’ve discovered the art of live story-telling, I’ve made some startling discoveries. First, live stories bring listeners together in common ground, second, it feels good to laugh at common denominators in a group of strangers, and third, there are stories out there that have a need to be told and retold and the mere reading of tales like this could never do them justice. Movies come close, but live stories are up close and personal. I was reminded of this last one, this afternoon at Tales by the Sea, a live story-telling event hosted by a local Malibu resident named Ann Buxie.

I didn’t know what to expect when a small, soft-spoken woman in a button-up blouse took the podium, especially since the theme for today’s passel of stores was “the unexpected”.  Every story served up today, had indeed offered the unexpected and this was no exception, but while others had brought up laughter, sympathy, and a host of other emotions, this one brought a real surprise for me.

Maybe because it has seemed to me in our “enlightened” age, that it was in a very distant past that certain historical events have taken place. When you think of them in terms of years, even a hundred  years seems like the dark ages, when it is actually, an approximate generation. So you can imagine my surprise, when this woman started to speak, to realize that we are only two, maybe three slim generations from the abolishment of slavery. Didn't that happen a really really long time ago? There are still people alive who have heard the story from the mouths of those who endured it. I found that stunning.

It’s one thing to think about it in years, but wholly another to think of it in terms of people. This small, soft-spoken woman told us, as told to her, at seven years old, in the words of her great grandmother, what had happened to her on the day the soldiers came to the plantation on which she and her mother lived, and set them free. Not just free, like you can get up today and do whatever you want, but FREE.

The soldiers didn’t just walk up and say, “You’re free. Now go do what you want.” The sergeant took them from the kitchen, asked them to call the field hands in from the field, had them walkout the back door and then back in the front door of this house... an entrance they had never, ever used, and sat them down at the dinner table they had just set for the plantation owners, and ordered the plantation owners at gunpoint, to serve them the meal their servants had just prepared for them. Then he sat down to eat with them and explained to them that they had come to them with the news that they were now free, and let them know of the variety of new options  open to them.  They could pack their bags and leave the next morning with the soldiers who would take them to the nearest town so they could start anew, they could stay there and be paid a wage for their services, or they could make their own choice and go where they pleased, beginning right now.  It was scary, and touching, and rousing, and heart wrenching and a host of other things all at the same time… and it got me to thinking about FREEDOM.  

Not freedom, the word glibly thrown around by those of us who have tried to make it a life’s priority to keep fighting for… but FREEDOM. With all the emotions and uncertainties and heartbreak, and loss, and horror and exhilaration that goes with it truly, in the flesh, in human terms. The kind of FREEDOM that those of us who grew up “free” and never knew otherwise, can only taste from the lips of someone who has felt the real thing, or it has been passed down to.  And I glimpsed it this afternoon, thanks to this soft-spoken woman in a pale button-up blouse, and it made me embarrassed, to have taken so much for granted, and it made me embarrassed to have been so apathetic, and it made me even more determined, in the face the insidious slipping away of our freedoms in the form of constitutional rights, to keep fighting the good fight. To protect and uphold OUR constitution so brilliantly written by our founding fathers, who also knew what FREEDOM as opposed to freedom felt like, and understood the many ways we could lose this precious gift, and especially, to whom.

I keep going back to a comment made to me by a naïve woman named Jennifer Ripley, in her furor over my argument against gun control. When I said to her that if she’d ever had the “experience” of someone taking her rights away, she might feel differently about losing this particular constitutional right.  I'd never experienced slavery, but back in the 60's, when "freak bashing" was taking place on every corner in my neck of the woods, by those "with the power" I came as close as I ever want to get.

She retorted, “Your argument is just ignorant and ridiculous, with your backwoods conspiracy theories. It’s not the same today as it was then.”

No Jennifer. It’s even worse. No longer is freedom taken from a single group or race, it’s taken from all.  Wake up America. It’s 1984. George Orwell’s nightmare scenario riding in on the back of a drone, with a tendril plugged into your food, your phone, your health, your paycheck, your pizza order, your email account, your Victoria’s Secrets purchase and your automobile.  Paul Revere would turn over in his grave. Betsy Ross, who lovingly stitched together the symbol of a grand nation would be using it today as a handkerchief to dry her tears. Why are we sitting here letting it all slip away? What are we waiting for? Are we so divided that we read the collective writing on the wall so differently?

A couple generations are only baby steps out of slavery. Mother May I, take 200 steps back?

As I walked out of the hall today, the soft-spoken woman was deeply engaged in conversation with another audience member. Not wanting to interrupt, as I walked by, I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek and whispered, “Thank you for telling me your story.”