Parabola Readers Forum - Winter 2002

Nations battle nations, terrorists strike, and individuals struggle against fear and despair. What does "War" say to you?

When I was a teenager in Mississippi there was a war going on in Southeast Asia, student protests blaring across the news stations, and the sermons in church were about the right of democracy to rule the world. During those times, I would drive the family car at night round and round on country roads with the windows down and the radio blaring "Hey Jude." The wind would smooth the confusion from the surface of my skin, but the deep need of unformed passion lingered, waiting for the right moment to jump out, but at what?

I grew up in a house of silence where things were assumed, not spoken, not done in front of the eyes of children. I'm sure that it was generational; my parents were simply passing on what they learned from their parents. Yet I was on the threshold of a culture revolution that broke many barriers and many silences.

When I was around seventeen, my wayward brother brought a thin hippy guy to my parent's house for dinner and to spend the night. My parents tried so hard to be open minded. They stayed up hours and hours listening, asking questions, and debating the issues of appearances with this young man. He tried to explain to them that it was the metaphor of his dress, hair, beard, and apparent lack of conforming that was a symbol of the culture revolution. He was an active member of the Students for Democratic Society, SDS, which was a radical and frightening organization apparently started up North far away from the safety of the sultry heat of the South, but was moving down through the youth like locusts on crops or so my parents saw it. I had no opinion. I thought he was cute.

That night the conversation was civil and coherent and smart. He expressed his ideals eloquently and my conservative father and equally conservative mother did not rebut his views. Nothing that raggedy skinny kid said was against the good of the Constitution, but took another look at the bare facts with an eye, two eyes toward the future of the U.S. It was the first time in my life that I heard that our Constitution was an experiment. I thought it was a fixed holy thing that could not be tampered with. It was the first time in my life that I learned that one could ratify and amend for the good of some and the detriment of many "if we the people" allowed that to happen.

He wrote for an underground newspaper called the Kudzu, which like the roadside vine was growing across the south. These new ideas were covering the minds of the youth about sexual revolution and unknown facts, true or not, about the Vietnam War. Facts that were not so far off from what the regional papers were printing, but with a different point of view and much more detailed information and photographs about what was really going on in Southeast Asia. He had a hot story he was taking to New Orleans to send off to publish in the next edition. And he was traveling narrow roads to get it there.

My parents, without knowing it, had become part of an Underground Railroad network. Ironically, at that time I had just learned of the original Underground Railroad in school. But this time the fugitives were moving south, not north. This time they carried truths for freedom rather than people. And the messenger came in the guise of a thin raggedy, tired, but enlightened almost child that found his passion through a vision of a different kind of future. And so the next morning, washed, fed, and somewhat rested he went on his way to New Orleans.

A few weeks later on, my folks found out that young man was killed on his way to New Orleans. They say his car ran off the road. But the romantic story was he was pushed off. Maybe someone didn't like the look of him. It was a dangerous time for thinking and speaking, a dangerous time to dress differently, and to practice different ideas. It was not to be taken lightly to speak out against our government, especially during a war. It was literally putting your life on the line.

After I found out about that young man's death, I started dressing differently. And every time I put on my patched bell bottom jeans, my handmade leather headband, my tight shirt, choker and armbands, every time I took off my makeup, let my hair down, lost my bra, placed bells on my ankles and flowers in my hair, I was proud to be part of a change. I became the revolution. I experimented with love and new ideas. Music created the rhythm in my soul. Reading books, poetry, journals, became the elixir of imaginings. And my bare feet reminded me where the flowers grew.

Almost a half-century has passed since I wore a metaphor on my body. The Kudzu creeps across the world through the Internet. We see words of truth and half-truths in this new information revolution. There are still those waiting in the shadows of the road to push the messengers to their death. The face of war looms over us and the graveyards have "Gone to flowers, every one." But I can still write about those sultry summer nights with the wind on my arms and an unspoken passion in my heart, because I live within an experiment.

Michèle Raper Rittenhouse