Peacing it all Together

Peacing it all Together

"Any friend of Steven's is a friend of mine..." So begins the inscription inside a book written by Mimi that my college friend Steven had gifted me in 1987. I had never met the author, but I knew she was old enough to be my mom and that Steven was calling her by her first name. On the other hand, I had met Steven four years prior and knew him quite well. And nothing felt more satisfying than to be accepted into a community simply because a friend of a friend's had signed her book.

Steven and I met at college, the small program within the larger university. His individualized major included a study of feminism. I didn't know it at the time, but he was also embarking on a serious study of what today we know as privilege and intersectionality.

The program we were in allowed us to call all of our professors, administrators, and staff members by their first names. No, they didn't just "allow" this, it was standard procedure. Literally nobody used titles like "Dr.," "Mr.," or "Ms." Unless they were from main campus and didn't know any better. See, we had a reputation for talking to trees in our, well, neck of the woods.

At the time of the book signing, Steven and I were in that awkward mid 20's stage of life where we considered ourselves grownups even though our whole adult lives were stretched in front of us. Maybe there were a lot of trees on the horizon, serving as obstacles to our visibility, but these were also opportunities to keep on talking because it perpetuates oxygen which keeps the growth alive. 

And Steven, well, he worked through that awkwardness of young adulthood and actually befriended older adults, starting with his own parents, who he called by their first names. These were people who were actually old enough to be our parents, and actually did have kids our own age. These were people who did admirable things like write and publish books on teaching Language Arts creatively. These were people who, like Steven, had just walked across country on the Great Peace March to End Nuclear Disarmament.

Unfortunately, Steven's whole life is behind him now. He passed away a couple years ago, never reaching age 60. I learned from someone who might've been Steven that it is customary for Jewish people to honor the dead by saying something like, "May that deceased person's memory be a blessing."

The question hangs heavy. Can I pick up where Steven and I left off? Or at least where he left off--in his work with feminism, intersectionality, and privilege? As Mimi put it, after saying that any friend of Steven's is a friend of hers: "Especially a Sister in education, a fellow traveler." Then she went on to wish me Luck and Shalom. 

I draw strength from Mimi's words and Steven's work, and I know I will do what I can. I shall make it so. Steven's memory will be a blessing as I work with my allies to peace together the broken pieces of our shattered world.