I like to talk to Cricket when she and I are out for a walk. How else will she learn our language. ? Last night ,my mind wandered to my childhood of segregation. I thought of the first time that I was embarassed about
what was an every day ,routine occurance. Up until that moment,I was comfortable going with our "colored" maid on the street car and sitting with her in the back, because it was OK for me to be with her there, but she couln't sit in front with the "white"people
with me. The incident was a new maid that my mother hired. I must have been 10 . The maid was following her military husband while he did his military service. She was from "up north". She spoke well, she seemed nice.She was a college graduate and she was
cleaning houses for a white woman .For the same white woman who saved the chipped or crack plate, so the shvatzah could use it. I just felt that this was so wrong. She should have been doing what her degree any place else, but in the deep south, would
have allowed her to do. She had a degree in education . She should have been teaching school, not ironing my fathers shorts. That was the first time that I was aware that there was a thing called segregation. I still can visualize that whole moment when
I knew that I would be different from then on. This must have been what would be my defining moment. I don't ever want to forget.