Juneteenth 2021

 

It's our first Juneteenth national legal holiday. Until recent years I'd never been aware, but it's meaningful and commemorative, and I'm happy for people to have it. What will develop for it for future observance remains to become. 

When I was a boy, two cherished observances were George Washington's Birthday and Abraham Lincoln's Birthday, both in February, since cut to one ignominious Presidents' Day, I think to make room for MLK Day. For one, we cut out, pasted and put together on "construction paper" George's silhouette and cherry trees and the hatchet size axe that in national Heilsgeschichte he used to cut them down. For Abe, same composition, his silhouette in tall black hats, red black and white art posted above the blackboards 'round the wall.

It was a Time when February was a most welcome month after the long post-Christmas nightmare month back in school, plus Valentine's Day lifted February high, higher, highest. I never had the courage to give a special Valentine to whomever I had a crush on that school year. Nor did whoever she might have been in my dreams ever drop one for me into the huge, fancy box into which we stuffed our Valentines, mostly homemade during class. 

Like most other schoolboys, harboring my secrets silently and alone and hoping nobody opened my notebook and saw her name written with little hearts around and cupid's arrows drawn through! Those secrets were the essence of being a schoolboy. Secrets? Well, Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, an Episcopalian has no option but to trust Divine discretion. 

After the last February holiday - -

- - after February, Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here as the gates of Hell closed behind us for March, April, May. There was no "Spring Break" when I was a boy, only the agonizingly endless uphill Grind until the Last Day of School and Summer Vacation, and high anxiety hope against hope that my final report card would say "Promoted".