The Whisper of Dreams
The summer my eldest daughter left the sunny coasts of California for college in fast-paced Manhattan, I re-read Zora Neal Hurston's, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Whether it was the Fates acting in my best interest or simply the familiar colors on the spine of the worn book that caused the text to catch my eye that day, I may never know. Nonetheless, the life challenges and victories, the poignant, hard-fought life-lessons, and the rites of passage of womanhood were the words I read as I prepared to send my girl-child thousands of miles away. I have read the book so many times now, I can nearly quote the lines.
That summer, the words of Zora, brought to life by her protagonist Janie, caused my dreams to whisper...
“She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid”
~Zore Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937
In 1937, Zora Neale Hurston was a thirty-something year old Colored woman when she penned Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie Crawford, Hurston's central character in Their Eyes... has her sexuality awakened at age sixteen under a blossoming pear tree with only the bees, the breeze, and the grass she lies upon to bear witness to the fateful moment. Hurston writes with such eloquence, insight, and passion that the reader is humbled by the beautiful innocence of Janie's rite of passage into womanhood...I was – I am each and every time I have read the book.
Three quarters of a century later, as I, slightly older than Hurston was when she wrote this novel, read the seemingly perfect prose of this literary masterpiece, know that my daughters' dreams are not the only dreams that were whispering that fateful summer. Their Eyes Were Watching God, the book that somehow always has a message for me, was yet again working its magic and resonating so deeply - it was awakening my dreams.
Just as I slid easily into the poetic prose of Hurston's novel, I would offer up part of my story to you, my reader. I would ask that you allow your mind to ease into my words and hope that at the end of my sharing, you know a bit more about me - what drives me, what my passions are, and why service is my calling.
Simply put, service is my birthright! I come from a long line of women who, as maids, childcare providers, church founders, union leaders, community organizers, teachers, nurses, doctors, and midwives when hospital births were not an option for some women, lived their lives in service to others. The Honorable, Shirley Chisolm once famously said, "Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.” That is the legacy I come from...the voices of my ancestors are the whispered dreams that continue guiding my path toward service.
Last summer, when I re-read Their Eyes Were Watching God, I read for hours nonstop, and when I put the book down, the characters continued their lives with such vibrancy in my mind that when I turned the last page and read the final word, they still lived on...they still laughed and cried, lived and died. That's the impact I want to have...I want a legacy that touches the lives of people to their core.
We stand on the precipice of change…I feel it with every fiber of my being. My personal and intellectual power has no bounds as I hold fast to this journey of service.
My dreams are whispering to me that I am supposed to be a part of the change I want to see in the world...and I am listening to them.
