A Dream. . .But Not My Dream
Today we celebrate the Civil Rights martyr, Martin Luther King. Did you know his full title is the Reverand Doctor Martin Luther King Junior? He gave many speeches, but his most famous was delivered at the Lincoln Memorial on August 18, 1963. It’s often called the “I Have a Dream” speech. And while the speech covered many topics, the most memorable line was the iconic, “I have a dream.”
Perhaps no line was more remembered and quoted than
I have a dream that one day my four little children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
I wasn’t alive when Martin Luther King gave his speech. I came along about a year later. When my lovely wife and I were married we chose to build our family through adoption. I often looked around my dinner table and thought about King’s famous line. My family was a multi-cultural mix. Chinese, Indian, Columbian, Korean, Haitian; white, black and Asian.
When we first started adopting I asked my best friend, who was black, what advice he could give me about raising black kids. (My lovely wife and I are white, as are three of our children.) His advice was
Don’t teach them to be colorblind, because the world isn’t colorblind.
And we didn’t. It was a house full of love. With 13 children things were always busy. Our children eventually all grew up. The youngest just turned 21 last Fall. We now have 13 grandchildren. We all hope our children grow up to be better people than we are. We also hope that they will be people we can be friends with. We dream of going to soccer games to watch the next generation. We dream of being the “old folks” at the grandkids birthday parties.
Sometimes those dreams come true. But I doubt anyone has ever seen their dreams play out exactly as they imagined. Sometimes they are close.
Sometimes they aren’t.
Yeah, I’m being a little vague. Things are good. But this is not the dream I imagined.
Thank you Dr King. May we all strive to see your dream realized.
Stay safe
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren. Miscellany III A Collection of Holiday Short Stories, is an anthology that includes his latest short story, “You Can Call Me Dan”
Follow him on
X (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2024 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
