I want you guys to understand how close we are to slavery and reconstruction. It's a little bit of a story. My mama is in her early 60s. She grew up on a farm in Central Missouri in a county that was populated more by slaves than white people at the beginning of the Civil War.
My family farm never had slaves because my grandfather during that time was an abolitionist. However, during reconstruction, we had a lot of sharecroppers. A lot. And when my mother was very small, she remembers my grandmother feeding them lunch every day.
They were not allowed to come into the house. My grandmother would cook a lot of food but they had to eat out in the backyard. In other words, Black sharecroppers couldn't sit at the same table with my grandmother's white children.
My mama was small enough that she just wander around the backyard in her saggy diaper and later her little skirts. She remembers the sharecroppers looking after her and making sure she didn't wander off too far. One old man in particular always called her Missy Lori or just Missy
So my mama finally started asking why he didn't just call her Lori because that was her name. He said, "Oh no, Missy. Wouldn't be right." She never once got any of those sharecroppers to address her in a non-enslaved tone.
So can you see how close we are to very old damage in America? My mother is a living breathing human being who remembers the grandchildren of slaves and the way they spoke to her as a toddler as if she was above them. She never understood.
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I treated myself to a Cameo from @jonathansfrakes, my Space Husband, and he did it in less than 24 hours. Not only that but I'm NOT a stranger to him. He remembers me. I'm so grateful. I feel like I want to get out of bed now (really tough surgery). #StarTrek
I have been saving up for my Cameo since @jonathansfrakes announced he was doing them, something like last year. The cost is really not that much but I'm a poor person and it takes a lot for me to save for it.
Also, @jonathansfrakes gets so many bonus points for pronouncing my last name right. Most people who are new to my name pronounce it like Jew-ETTE with way too much emphasis on the last part. The emphasis is on the front part. He's probably heard my name in Maine a lot.