Mrs. Rivian Smith
It seemed not long ago when I recall no longer seeing this classmate of mine attend the same school I had found myself enrolled into one school year. I remember her distinctly for two significant memories: 1. she quietly would sell these beautiful homemade hair clips during recess 2. she and I were the only two girls who stood out during recess.
It may have dawned on me then that the latter memory suggested the color of our skin- I, brown; she, black. Nonetheless, I remained at that school to the very end of that school year. She, lasting only a few months before I saw her never again.
To this day, having stayed another year in that town where I experienced being left at a wrong bus stop to find my way back home, my Papa having chains around his neck while riding his bike and honking a horn at a South Gate of a fairground as the only job he could find at one time, and being told, “I’d play with you, but I’m not allowed to”, to name a few well-suppressed memories I have recently just embraced as journeys of my life for “strength training”, I can suggest to have experienced form of injustice.
I am married to a predominantly black man. This, I tell myself, does not excuse me nor give me permission to think I understand what it is like to BE black. I am not a black woman. While I have had my own path of experiences, seeing examples of what to be and what not to be exemplified by those around me who either clearly broke free from fear and ignorance to those who are entrapped and confined to such unfortunate walls, my black classmate’s family leaving that town before us suggested to me this: the darker, the more opposition.
One can always push for enlightenment and greater understanding of this world and the ongoing division. It is why I thought of nothing to hold me back when I was given the opportunity to interview Mrs. Rivian Smith, an active to this day bright, strong, mother, sister, grandmother, wife, and to add, black woman.
We were just in the end brink of seeing days of snow. The roads were still marked with plenty of snowfall. Mrs. Smith resides a city to the east from my home, about half an hour away. I had made the appointment to meet with her for the interview some time before the thoughts of snow trying to create interference. Though it crossed my mind due to the road conditions, there was not a backing down in me. Years of wisdom was waiting for me and although there were major precautionary road conditions I had to brace through- curvy roads, hills, freeways and residential streets, I gathered all I would need like a beachcomber ready to delve into the sandy beach to collect seashells of priceless wisdom.
You never know what you will gain from a gift of time you are given with a woman who has lived over eighty years. You set up your mic, lighting, prep your questions and go with the flow of the person being interviewed before you. It is Mrs. Smith’s forum to speak. This was her interview, not mine. While there were moments to interject and respectfully probe for more, anything she gave of her thoughts, through her many years of collectively having breathed, lived, loved, and every other emotion found in between, as a black woman were siphoned out from her mind, her heart, her spirit and her soul before me.
In this video, Thoughts on Black Lives Matter, I feel that even after a year of having heard her words spoken, certain parts still ring in my ear and pierce into my soul.
There are many messages to have gathered from this interview that helped me to see through the eyes of a strong, black woman. It doesn’t matter what you will have gathered as long as you accept the undeniable- Mrs. Rivian Smith spoke from her heart. There, lies unhindered truth.
