One of my first memories takes me back to Yeadon, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia: The City of Brotherly Love. I was only four or five at the time. We lived in a duplex that shared a long back ally with about 10 other duplexes. I remember sitting on the back porch, watching as a couple of boys rode up to our public backyard and stole my only brother’s bike. The older boy, the one sitting on the bike, led the way and rode the bike right up to my brother’s coveted property while the smaller boy on the pegs jumped to his feet, grabbed the stolen treasure, and rode off on it. At the time it did not startle me in the least, but as early as I can remember, I witnessed inequality, the “have’s” and the “have not’s.”
Once we moved across the country to Bountiful, Utah the differences that divided the community faded from my view. Still in elementary school, I simply enjoyed having recess friends with whom I could swing from the Big Toy, race with during the annual Fun Run around the field, and discuss what our older siblings meant when they talked about the birds and the bees. My older sister, Malea, and I enjoyed our new small-town territory by regularly patrolling our street as self-appointed crossing guards. Mom worked part time for the school as a crossing guard and we found that her hand-held stop sign, orange cones, and reflective vest matched perfectly with Jack, our wooden scarecrow. Every autumn we dressed Jack up in a bright orange vest, propped up Jack’s wooden 2X4 body in the middle of the cone, and sat in the street in front of our house with a stop sign. Cars passed so infrequently that we put no one in danger – not even Jack the scarecrow.
Small town life was so simple. There was no railroad track to divide us. I remained oblivious to the sameness of that town – the fact that almost everyone was the same religion, almost everyone was Caucasian and almost everyone enjoyed the luxuries of the middle class – until we moved across the country again.
Bethesda, Maryland proved to be my favorite camping ground. Although I quickly lost the rose-colored glasses of equality, I absolutely loved and embraced my diverse community. I went to school with Gabriela Perazza who had arrived from Brazil just a week before, Keyetta Terrell who had been raised in a one-parent, African American apartment, Pooyan Rahimi from India, Shen-hui Lee from Korea, and many others. My elementary school alone had students from about 40 countries who spoke almost as many languages. My music class sang songs like “Hava Nagila,” a Jewish folk hymn used in cultural celebrations. Once I turned 13, I realized that that elementary music class saved my social life. Since the majority of my middle school was Jewish, I was invited to more than 100 bar and bat mitzvahs. At every single one we sang “Hava Nagila” to rejoice in the Lord and celebrate the coming of age of one of my peers.
Our differences were very apparent then, but they never bothered me. My friends attended youth church activities with me in the middle of the week while I attended synagogue with them after weekend sleepovers. It was at the inquisitive time between 10 and 15 that I really learned to love what my religious and familial heritage offered me. I was different, but so were the people that created my entire world! The inequality and “have’s and have not’s” didn’t matter in Maryland. Elected to be the freshman class secretary, I felt no one discriminated against me because I was the only Mormon they knew. Our differences made for a delicious, savory, bubbling melting pot and I bathed in it every day.
As a teenager in Salt Lake City I felt dirty and naked without my daily diversity bath. The absence of cultural savor made for a relatively boring few years. So boring in fact, they are almost worth skipping entirely. I dated, studied, tried to get involved and eventually graduated. It felt like a three year tumor had been growing in the small of my back, causing surmounting discomfort and crowding to the other organs. Once the tumor was removed through a two hour surgical process involving long lists of names and pockets of insincere applauses, the pain subsided and I could move on with a more healthy life.
I have taken the long road to college graduation. Now at age 24 I am able to claim 69 credit hours earned over seven years and from three schools. The monotony of Utah culture eventually won me over because I attended school at Brigham Young University first. I found that the moral and spiritual principles taught in the classroom created an environment much like what I call home. Stepping into a room where I called my professor and fellow students “brothers and sisters” taught me that Philadelphia cannot be the only place to claim the feelings of Brotherly Love.
But BYU was not good enough for me. I found an outside-the-classroom education suited my needs better at age 21. For 18 months I lived among the Mexican Americans in Arizona as a missionary, learning their mixed language, eating their spicy food, and carrying their personal burdens as if they were my own. Listening to their stories I lived a second life as if their experiences were mine. Once I hide in the tall grass just over the American-Mexican border with my three children scattered around me. The border patrol walked right past us waving his flash light speaking words I did not understand, but he never saw us. I attended English classes every night at the local church so I could get a better job that pays more than $5.15 an hour. My family back in Puebla needed the money more than me. These vicarious experiences changed the way I viewed those who have and those who do not have the privileges I take for granted every day. These people, too, were now my brothers and sisters and I could honestly look at them as such.
Now married and back in school, this time at Brigham Young University – Idaho, my husband and I enjoy our many differences just like I reveled in the melting pot of my youth. Perhaps he and I don’t study for exams the same way or arrange the furniture similarly, but we do come together in matters of familial love and acceptance. “Have’s or have not’s,” Mexican or American, big mouth or big heart, I have learned that equality can exist even among our differences.
