...and some prefab houses too. Also in my immediate surroundings were the school, health clinic, and administration buildings. I lived close to the post office and would walk over everyday to check my mail. Across the highway from the neighborhood, was a gas station that was also the grocery store and the laundromat. I usually walked there once a week, usually Sunday afternoons.

I liked to go for a walk every day, with my little dog Mdogo. When I first moved there, I stuck to the paved streets, and before long I knew my way around the village with my eyes closed. Then I started walking further out, on the dusty parallel breaks in the grass that were the roads, my little dog running in the vast open. I got pretty comfortable walking out there. As I got further out, I saw more houses, made of earth and sticks, and fences, made of sticks and tumbleweeds, miraculously from my perspective, holding in sheep. And then I noticed some totally odd houses, spaced out at random distances and directions, mostly painted sky blue, but some were tan too. They were houses you would find in a planned suburb in Denver, all the same, probably 2 bedroom/1 bath houses. They were up on cinder blocks. Strange I thought, way out here.

One Sunday afternoon, I got to talking to the person who was working at the grocery/gas/laundromat and I asked him about those houses. He told me that some group had wanted to help the community and donated the houses. He explained how they were built with wiring and plumbing. He laughed, laughed at the fact that there was no electricity and no water anywhere except in the area of the village where I lived. Laughed at the fact that people just used the houses to store their stuff in, and still lived in their real houses right beside the sky blue houses.

- ar, 57

I was happy to go to the new school. It reminded me of pictures I had seen in encyclopedia books. After 6 weeks, everyone at the new school started talking about the fall carnival. It would be inside the gym.

On Saturday, my nieces, nephew and I walked through our neighborhood, and through the adjacent white neighborhood. We took the same route as we did every day when we walked to school. We arrived at the school carnival. It was beautiful. Everybody was happy. If we stuck out because we were the only black kids, I didn’t notice. I was too busy enjoying everything around me. Mama had been clear about what time we had to be back home. It was time to go.

On the way home, a group of teenage white boys in a car chased us. Two boys jumped out, one had a knife. They were screaming, shouting, and calling us the “N” word. Somehow my nephew, George, the only boy in our group got separated from us. We arrived home without George. Mama and two of my adult sisters grabbed a shotgun from the closet, jumped in the truck and went looking for George. George arrived home shortly after they left. He had taken a short cut through an old abandoned graveyard with few headstones, many of them damaged, holes in the ground and an awful smell. It was the part of the neighborhood that separated the blacks from the whites, the black part.

Mama and my sisters returned. Everybody was ok, safe. Everything changed that day. I learned that being black meant you could be attacked and get hurt. I became a realist. I accepted that experiences have, and can alter a person’s humanity forever. I was changed, but thank God it did not alter my inquisitive nature or adventurous spirit. That’s still intact.

- A.D.W.

On the way, my very old two-wheel-drive, gold Toyota truck stopped working! Because we - “Bambi” and I - were driving downhill, I pulled over. Shortly after, a kind realtor stopped. He offered to push my car all the way to Ignacio because, “There was a mechanic there on the corner.”

Coming from the East Coast, I was not used to all of this, but with limited choices, the adventure ensued. Yes, there was a mechanic, but the part wasn't available until the following day. So, where would I sleep?

There didn't appear to be any motels nearby, and a room was not in my budget nor wallet. Night was quickly approaching piggy-backed with some fear. Sleeping with “Bambi” in a strange mechanic's garage didn't feel like a comfortable choice. So, what to do?

Nothing but to be still until a better choice made itself known... and it did, so I walked to the police station.

There was a kind officer there who listened to my situation. He then asked, “Are you a Native American?” The question made me wonder. Although my hair was long, straight, and dark; my skin was tanned by this beautiful Colorado sun; and others had asked the same question (“What tribe are you from?”), I answered, “No. Why?” Kindly, he told me that if I had been Native American, I could have slept in the jail (which had been my request), but, since I wasn't, he couldn't help me. Ouch!

Now, with darkness of night, fear, and pain, I walked the backstreets of Ignacio until I found a church meeting ending. I had to prove I was an okay person, and they let me sleep on some chairs. My former husband came in a dream to tell me that I was safe and okay.

I know that this was a tiny bit of discrimination. It served to deepen how separation, even when polite, is hurtful. So, may awakening continue to grow.

- Zhéna

My dad’s sister had polio, so she could not move from her neck down. Her helper’s name was Arteil who cared for her, her two children (5 and 3) and who cooked for the family.

One Sunday, our family - of five, then - was invited for supper. The kitchen was warm and odiferous. She set the table and when we were seated at the dining room table, she brought out several piping hot dishes. My aunt and uncle (from Peru) were Jewish, my family was half Jewish, half Catholic. There was no grace recited, but we were all quiet and happy as we anticipated a delicious dinner.

That is, we were all happy until I notices that Arteil didn’t have a chair! Leaning over to my mom, I asked where Arteil was. The response was that she was having her supper in the kitchen! As a 5-year-old, that didn’t make sense, so I rebuked saying, “But Arteil made all of us this delicious food. WHY is she alone in the kitchen?” Quietly and in French, my mom whispered that we/the adults needed to talk about family things. My response was, “But Arteil IS family.” There was silence, and I did not understand why Arteil had to eat alone, so I asked if I could eat my dinner with her.

The nod allowed me to take my full dinner plate to the kitchen where Arteil was sitting head and eyes down, not looking very happy. When she noticed me, she asked if I needed something? I replied, “No, I want to eat my dinner WITH you.” Arteil perked up. Both of us were happy now.

It wasn’t until years later that I understood that Arteil was a loved, appreciated, and discriminated against, silent Black employed woman. Understanding never made it right for me. It caused me to question my family and to be true to my heart. Thank you, Arteil.

- Zhéna

I passed two boys in the aisle and one called me a "Chinese bitch". I was completely blown away by his aggression and did not respond. In fact, it took me a few minutes to comprehend what had happened. I am not Chinese and while I can be a "b", there was absolutely no excuse for his behavior.

This occurred early on in the pandemic and everyone was wearing masks and behaving weirdly. I like to think this boy was not a Pagosa resident but an out of the area visitor, but that really doesn't make it any better.

- KOB, 60

I got a phone call from my neighbor, who was in charge of the Archuleta "Bus Barn", saying there was a disturbance on the school bus because of my boys. The bus driver told her that the white boy had kicked the Hispanic boy in the face. She was concerned for the Hispanic child. Later at work, I was called by the principal of the Pagosa Springs Elementary School (at that time). I was told that the Hispanic boy had gotten in trouble on the bus and was on in-school suspension all day, never making it to class. He would not be put on the bus, but instead I had to leave work to go pick him up. When I went to pick him up, I asked why he had in-school suspension and why the other child in my household had not. The other child went home on the bus. She told me that the boys had gotten into a fight on the bus. She told me the Hispanic child would not admit to kicking the other child in the face until she asked him five times. So, as a result, he had in-school suspension for lying. She looked at him and said, "You have to tell the truth, right?". She did not have a long conversation with me and there was no opportunity for a discussion. The Hispanic child cried the whole way home. What I remember him saying the most was, "You get in trouble for telling the truth. Then you tell them what they want to hear and you still get in trouble." He also cried because his nose hurt. Everyone in our household new that his nose was sore because had been broken seven months before, so it was a very unfair target. He was six years old and in first grade.

- C, 40

That land belonged to my great grandmother who was called Bahbahtsoh in Navajo. She grew up on it, my father grew up on it, our whole family on my father’s side grew up on it.

There were big piñon trees, sagebrush, juniper, cedar and different rock formations that all had names. There was this huge rock that looked like an ice cream cone. They called it Siclheh Tseh which in Navajo means soupy-kind-of-dough stone.

The land was where we farmed, where our ancestors were buried, tucked inside these cliffs. There were lots of medicinal plants up there so that when the medicine people came to collect them they would put a rock aside as an offering, making an homage to the mountain and how it held life for everything. That land was home.

We had a farm of 1,000 acres where we grew all our own food and had livestock from sheep, cattle, chicken, turkeys and 5 Clydesdale horses that pulled my grandfather’s wagon. There were no modern conveniences: no running water or electricity. My grandparents got up real early in the morning and said their prayers and set out to working.

The first thing we noticed was that these vehicles were parked up there with men drilling bore holes the size of plates. We would find those holes and throw rocks in them. My grandfather asked these men what they were doing. But they didn’t say any more than, “We were just told to go out and bore holes.”

When my great grandmother passed away the land went to my grandmother, Hazbah, the oldest female in the family. That is how it works in a Matriarchy. One day, the BLM came with interpreters. They told my grandmother that the Navajo nation had signed a lease to strip mine the land and that my family was going to be relocated 6 miles down to where the old coal mine was with a post office. We would get 1 acre of a homesite lease in exchange for our 1,000 acres. There was nothing they could do because the BLM owned the land. If the federal government decides to lease the land for mining they can.

My grandparents moved. The tribe built them a house, a small, cheap house. They were only allowed to keep a few sheep and a couple horses. All the others they had to sell or give away. They were given a royalty of 3 cents on the dollar on the proceeds for all the coal found on their land. It was a real low amount. I don’t think they were honest about the amount of coal they found on my family’s land.

When the land was taken, we lost our ability to live on the land and our own subsistence. With the land we could live on our own without any assistance.

All our farmland was strip mined. The trees were gone, the farmland was all gone. The rocks with the names: gone. My grandfather had planted a big red pine -- gone. Nothing up there was recognizable. They had signs up there: intruding on private property, but we went up there one time and it was horrible.

The mine eventually took as much as they could out of the land and then moved to another place. The land was left there so that whatever they unearthed could just dissipate. For 10-15 years they tried to regrade, no one was allowed up there. They planted grasses but nothing grew up there. There are a few bushes there now but you can’t trust your livestock to eat anything up there.

- Red Woman

...wrote an article titled "The Perfect Native American Memorial Day." It was shared anonymously to Saying the Unsaid by a resident of Archuleta County. You can read it here.

- anonymous

I was taught that ignorance is bliss, or often witnessed the coined phrase “not in my back yard” Which exhibits the carelessness of people’s actions or accountability. It’s difficult to explain the feeling of being disliked for the color of your skin, as if its one’s choice. It’s simply something that can’t be understood unless you’re a walking example of it. I’ve been called plenty of names, a handful of those being back-handed compliments resulting in the phrase “for a black girl.” I am tired of code switching to make my peers at work feel comfortable, and I am tired of making excuses people who look at me and my brothers and see a threat.

- anonymous, 26

I was in the middle of building my house, with every bit of my time and energy going into it. What the hell am I doing here? What kind of place is this? A few questions clarified there had been some people using our subdivision roads to time running trials. I told him that was the Japanese Olympic women’s running team; they did their high elevation training in Pagosa Springs. “Chinese, Japanese, what’s the difference,” he said. One of the more genteel residents glanced at me. Maybe she had an inkling that I might be “one of those people.” Maybe she was just trying to show her more cultured knowledge. She started trying to explain the difference. It wasn’t until five years later, ten years later, twenty years later, relating this story to other neighbors and hearing their shocked and outraged reaction, that I felt more comfortable here.

Over the years I’ve experienced inconsistent covenant enforcement in my subdivision, I had to wonder, like how I wondered, years later, why I was pushed down in the school yard in elementary school, was I getting picked on because of my race or where I was from, or was that incidental?

- L

When we decided to move to Pagosa, we never had to ask whether we’d be accepted, whether we’d fit in, or whether we might somehow be considered second-class citizens.

So we moved to Pagosa and I noticed something that makes this area different from other places I’ve lived in the United States. I see many—or most—people with pale skin like my own. I see some with light brown skin, characteristic of those with Native American or Hispanic ancestry. But I see very few people with the very dark brown skin of African ancestry.

A person of color in this community once told me that she could count—on two hands—the number of black people living in Archuleta County. If our county had folks of different skin colors close to the national distribution, then one in ten folks would be black. Why doesn’t Pagosa, a town to which people flock from all over the south and southwest, mirror the national character?

I have listened to one person tell the story of being refused the opportunity to buy a house in Pagosa because of this person’s skin color. Really? Here in Pagosa? Folks are turned away from living in our neighborhoods because their skin is dark brown? It seems to be true, even here.

I suppose I was surprised not because I don’t think humans are capable of such evil, but instead because I don’t have to face it. Discrimination, racism, does not confront me in stark ways because of the color of my skin.

I am left with the question: What can I do to make Pagosa a place where everyone is welcome? How can I help these mountains and streams and wildlife become accessible to folks who are still being left out? How can we make it so that everyone feels it is possible to go wherever God is calling them to live?

- Emrys

He was killed by police when they came to investigate. The horrific incidence was caught on camera, evidence for the world to see: a person being held down by police while he begged for his life and while others stood by, helpless to do anything about it. Because this police violence is inarguably wrong, and I know our country can do better, I decided I wanted to be involved, doing what I can to help. But what is it I can do? The solution is big and complicated, and includes learning about racism and policing in our country.

- Anna Ramirez, age 56

When I went to High School, it was about 5 miles away, so we rode the bus when weather didn't permit bike riding. It was a city bus - there was no designated school bus. She was holding onto the pole next to my seat. (I think she didn't want to go toward the back because she was afraid.) I knew she must have been cleaning house for someone. It seemed awful that I was sitting and she was standing. I guessed she was around 50. I was really nervous about asking her to take my seat, because I had never come across an opportunity to do that for a black person. But I did ask her to. She seemed shocked and just shook her head no. I said, "Please take it. I know you're tired." She seemed absolutely horrified and shook her head again. Everyone was looking at us. I then realized she was scared to take a white girl's seat, in a bus full of teenage white kids, in the south. I was so mortified - first because she couldn't allow herself to sit, and second because I had put her in a position that might have been dangerous for her. It was intensely sad. I will say, not a single kid riding on that bus ever said a word to me then or later about it, which surprised me in retrospect. I kind of found that a hopeful sign.

- Jane, age 75

...(no plantations, but all the same, slave owners), I've felt guilty since I was very young, probably around 2nd grade and could read the colored-only signs. My feelings were not shared then because of my family. Once I was brave enough to speak to it and to my parents' ongoing quiet racism (about 12 years old), I began letting it out and my anxiety grew. So I have no history of being oppressed. Well, a few reverse racist situations but I felt way too much familial guilt to not assume that was deserved.

I did also have a very uncomfortable reverse discrimination situation in Tierra Amarilla, back in 1972. Jon Verploegh drove me up there, where we (the Design Center, Vista volunteers) were working with the locals (specifically Reies Tijerina's brother - Reies was then in jail) to build the new health clinic there. John left me alone there for 3-4 days and went back to ABQ. I was to help lay blocks on the wall (since I spent 10 years of my childhood doing the same in TN). Mr. Tijerina, his wife and ALL the Hispanic women were very offended by my presence. Which was not the first time I'd experienced reverse racism, but the first from Hispanics.

The Hispanic folks I met in ABQ seemed to be fine with me - more than one said "the bull jumped the fence" when my Mom got pregnant with me. Anyway, it was hell, and I can say I had a brief experience of what they experienced routinely outside of T.A. I had to spend 3 nights at the Tijerina's home, where there were several adult women apparently living. Not a one spoke to me the entire time, and some snarled. I sat on a short stool by the wood stove and ate what they handed to me. It was awful, and I did actually feel unsafe. And then, after having me lay about 25 cinderblocks, Mr. Tijerina promptly tore them all down. I was never so totally alone. But it was a good learning experience for me.

- Jane, age 75

It’s a story of delusion, hatred, and ignorance. There’s a person I know, not well, but a person in my community. They’ve fallen into the QAnon conspiracy theory rabbit hole. I see their postings on Facebook. This has caused so much distress in me and has made me ask why does it upset me so. It’s because through their eyes I see the great magnitude of the problems facing our country and the world. Through them, I see how people become so deluded into following a cause. Through them I see how much damage one person can do to the minds and psyche of others. Through them I see hatred. This cause only has one aim. To maintain the status, the privilege, of white folks, of people like them. There has to be an enemy because people hate themselves so much they need a place to land that hatred. This person espouses love and light, superiority over others, thinking they’re awake while others still are asleep, while cheering on the destruction of the enemy, all those different than them -a spiritual bypass of the highest magnitude. They’re waiting for this thing to happen, that never happens, because it’s a lie, it’s not real. They worship a “leader” with no morality, no decency, no truth, no qualities of value. How did we get here? This is a person who speaks for many, who is not that different than many, maybe not that different than me. That’s the scary part. We’re here because our system, our government, has failed us. Our basic needs aren’t being met. People are desperate and in despair. The delusion is, benefitting some people at the expense of others, doesn’t work. Until there is equity for all, there will be misery for all. I can’t see a way out. And that leaves me very distraught.

“Where are you from?”

(I was born here. This is my home town.)

“But where are you from really?”

(You want the neighbourhood I grew up in? Where I live now?)

“What’s your background?”

(I have a Bachelor’s degree? You want my work experience, maybe I should send you my resume?)

“Where are your parents from?”

(sigh Never really figured a clever response to that one.)

“Wow, that’s really interesting. How did they meet?”

(I don’t know.)

“Well, I knew there was something.”

(I suppose I should be glad you think I am something?)

- L

My elementary school was white, my middle school was white and it wasn’t until high school that I had a more diverse set of classmates. The High School of Music and Art was a magnet school that drew kids from all parts of the city. For the first time I had a group of friends who shared my passionate interests. Two of the kids in my group of friends were Tommie and Ronnie. They were black and gay and participated in everything we did from going to Carnegie Hall concerts to playing our instruments and folk dancing in Washington Square on Sunday afternoons. They came to my house many times, and once, when we were sitting out on the stoop, my parents told us to go inside because “what will the neighbors think?”

Recently we watched a documentary about James Baldwin and talking about his white friends in high school he said he always went to their houses but they never came to his and had no idea about what his life was like. That was the first time I realized that I had never visited either Tommie or Ronnie’s houses and had absolutely no idea of what their lives were like.

- NJ

He had years of time to bring closure to his life, but instead he spent those years in denial. My father was raised by an abusive man. The relationship was so bad that he did not attend his father’s funeral. Instead of responding to the unfair treatment he received as a child, my father lived a life filled with self-medication through alcohol, willful ignorance of the countless venues for help and healing available around him, and pursuit of an empty vision of the American dream fueled by greed and debt. Rather than seeking to make amends for the long list of irresponsible and hurtful things he had done to others, he stayed silent about them. One of the hardest for me was his hate. It had cooled considerably in his last decade or two, but when I was a small child, he made pronouncements about race so hateful that they traumatized me, and I just thank God I lived in a different household.

I believe there is a connection between the toxic lessons he learned about success and the racist history of our country. My father was taught to not value his true self at all. His father before him had learned the same lesson from a father who completely neglected him, while continuing to live in the same town. Like most men, my father still sought to live up to his father’s expectations, the expectations of a man who was living up to the expectations of a man who hated him.

I wonder whether, for a white man living through a legacy of self-hatred, hating others “beneath you” could provide a temporary balm for the pain or a hiding place from the haunting feelings of failure. As far as I know, my father never developed the wisdom or the courage to speak to anyone in an effort to correct his inexcusable racist behavior. I feel intense ambivalence because I never forced him to confront the impact his racism had, and now that is his legacy to me.

- T, age 37

He was shopping in a store like Target or Walmart. When he got to the register, he was delayed because a family of Indian people were haggling with the cashier over the price of an item. The way he told it, he always said, “Some f*****g dot,” meaning an Indian person, referring to the bindi women wear on their forehead. He channeled vitriol into his voice when he said that.

Even when I was young, I could tell that I didn’t want any part of it because of how angry and negative he sounded. His words felt hateful, so I knew I wouldn’t want to treat someone else that way. As I got older, I realized that these people were likely to have come from India recently where it is customary to bargain over prices. It seemed like a grave sin in my father’s telling, but all that it cost him was five minutes of his day. The way he always told the exact same story in the same way implied that nothing like the incident had ever happened to him again. Five minutes of one day of his life. I was afraid of my father, but I always wished that I had said something to disagree with him.

Over the past five years, my father has undergone a change of perspective due to tuning in constantly to MSNBC. I haven’t heard him use the kind of discriminatory words he used to use often about Indians, blacks or hispanics who he used to call “wetbacks.” Over the same time period, he has been in a long struggle with cancer, and he has spent months hospitalized of late. A month or two back, he had the misfortune of being transferred to a rehab facility where his condition actually worsened due to neglect and lack of competent care. He was transferred back to the hospital where he still is. I was caught off guard several weeks ago when, recalling this bad experience, he blamed it on the fact that the nursing staff was “all black.” I still didn’t say anything.

- T, age 37

The man on the phone walked me through appropriate attire. Then I asked for directions. He asked me if I was ‘native’. When I said: no, he said: Drive to Ignacio & look for signs.

In Ignacio there were no signs but l found a native man who was willing to show me the way. At the camp grounds I found a semi-circular structure made of branches. In the center were the dancers, a drummer & a tall pole which they danced toward. It was very hot & they had been fasting for days.

When it was time to leave I waited until the drummer had stopped, crossed the dirt path & walked to the port-o-potties to the right. The inside were scrupulously clean, the toilet paper rolls still with outside wrappers stacked in rows. I realized then that these were reserved just for the all male, native dancers. That my entering & using them was a desecration of the Ute’s most sacred ritual.

Shocked & upset I jumped out & ran back to my spot. I was disoriented & hadn’t noticed the drumming had started again as I crossed the dirt path. An older native man signaled me to come to him. He said: you crossed the path when they were drumming. I apologized. I tried to talk to him but he brushed me aside with disgust.

- L.A., age 63

Certainly not one of extreme verbal abuse or violence. I’ve never been a witness to either of those. I grew up in an upper middle class family in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, went to a private school which was entirely white, and on to predominantly white ivy league colleges. So my direct experience with blacks was with the women who were servants for my parents and grandparents.

In our house, by the time I was a teenager, it was Bessie, a quiet, hard-working woman who lived in a little room on the third floor of our house and did all the cooking and cleaning. Looking back, I would say the relationship was hierarchical. The assumption was that she was there to serve, and I have no memories of any personal communication with her at all. There was no scorn or hatred that I was aware of, it was simply as if she were a member of another species. There was no feeling of having anything in common beyond the functional interdependence.

I don’t remember ever hearing any discussion in my household, or in my school, or among my friends about racial inequity as I was growing up. The reality I was experiencing in my home was a given, there were no questions raised about it. When my parents divorced and sold the family home as my sister and I went on to college, I can still see clearly my sister and me standing outside with our mother, saying goodby to Bessie. I remember it as a polite farewell. I know now that some part of me wondered how we could have spent several years with this woman in our house and be expressing no emotion at the idea of never seeing her again. I don’t think that became a conscious thought, there was just an emptiness to that moment that felt very strange to me.

That experience with Bessie took on a new meaning sometime later when I was visiting my grandparents. At their house, Melissa was the cook and housekeeper and had been part of the household since the children were very small. When one afternoon I watched my aunt Edith laugh with Melissa and hug her, I was amazed at the warmth I saw being expressed in that relationship. I knew then that there was something I had been missing my whole life, but I had no words or remedy for it.

- anonymous

It was a relaxed, sunny afternoon and we were having a few beers and shooting the breeze. The topic at the moment was bottle deposits. He said he didn’t think California had them, and I said, “Shit, nigger, why do you think it says 5 cent return here on the bottle?” Either he didn’t hear it, or chose not to respond, but either way the epithet went unremarked, and we just continued the conversation. It was meant in the way of “dude,” and in the way that we are just very good friends. But even at that moment I was surprised I said it. It was embarrassing. I didn’t know if I stepped over a line, and even though he didn’t call me on it, I was, and am somewhat ashamed. Maybe one day I will ask him about it.

- Dave, age 60

...although it hurts me to say so. Can’t I just say, she was ignorant? She was fearful? She was a product of her time?

My grandmother was born in Nashville Tennessee in 1906. Yes, my southern family owned slaves. Yes, my grandmother was raised by a freed slave, called Mammy: a woman who didn’t know which year she was born in.

“Was Mammy sweet?” I would ask my grandmother when she had her sewing out. “No, Mammy was not sweet”, my grandmother would say, “she was quite - and she would pause - quite formidable”. ‘I is free’ - Mammy would say - ‘and I don’t gotta do nothing’. When my grandmother finished this story - which she told me many times - she would place her sewing needle back into the skirt of an Aunt Gemima needle holder.

I remember bringing my fiancé to meet my grandmother & her turning to me & saying: ‘You didn’t tell me he was a Jew.’ I only recently told my husband this. Too hurt to say anything I wrote my grandmother. And she wrote me back, un-ironically, saying that some of her best friends had been Jews. She once called to complain that a black girl was swimming in her compound’s private pool. She once contemplated buying the adjoining property lot. Arthur Ash, the only black tennis player to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open had expressed interest in buying it.

But before I point the finger at her let me turn that finger back on myself. When I went to my future in-law’s home I was shocked to find a menorah on their fridge thinking: These people are so Jewish. As a practicing Christian I was outraged that my non-religious Jewish mother in-law took offense that I wanted to get married in a church.

I too am a product of my time, used to the familiar, uncomfortable with what is foreign. But surely I can grow beyond it.

- Leslie, age 60