Chinese Food for Martin Luther King Day

Last year when my son Jack was eight-years' old, he came sliding across the hardwood kitchen floor Tom Cruise style and said, “Mom, let’s order Chinese food to celebrate Martin Luther King Day.” 

For as long as I can remember, Martin Luther King Day has been a special day for Jack. When he was four-years’ old, he announced on our walk home from preschool that Martin Luther King Day was his favorite holiday. Better than Christmas, better than Easter, better than his own birthday.  

When I asked him why, he said with great indignation, “Because Mom, if it wasn’t for Martin Luther King, Jr. we black people couldn’t be friends with any white people and we’d have to sit on the back of the bus!”  

I didn’t quite know how to break the news to him so I just dropped the cold hard truth. “Honey, we’re white.”

“We most certainly are not!” he shouted furiously. “How can you even say that?” 

Later that afternoon, he pulled from his Blue’s Clues backpack the crayon picture he had drawn of our family in school that day. He gave his father a 1970’s Don Cornelius Soul Train afro and raw umber skin. Jim was thrilled that Jack thought to give him hair--any hair. The raw umber tan was just an unexpected bonus to the only Italian man in the tri-state area who sunburns. Inwardly, I knew he was thrilled that Jack had made him look cool. And let’s face it, for a white man who can’t dance or tan, you really can’t get much cooler than Don Cornelius. 

Jack went in a different artistic direction with me. He colored me entirely brick red--hair, teeth, skin, clothes. He didn’t bother to give me any neck, but he did give me one ginormous cerulean eye, one foot and six Barney Rubble toes. He made my daughter Katie an odd combination of me and Jim which is to say that he gave her half an afro, three purple eyes and plaid skin. 

Jack was born with a keen rational eye. During the 2008 presidential election, when he was six-years’ old, he couldn’t understand why everyone was making such a big deal out of the color of Obama’s skin (“He’s just a man, after all!”) or the advanced age of McCain (“He's just a man, after all!”). Ultimately he cast his kitchen table vote for Obama simply because Obama likes to play basketball and basketball just happens to be Jack’s favorite sport. 

Jack had a harder time believing that there was no free-play in first grade than the fact that an African-American was elected president of the United States, and that is as it should be. That is the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream. From the pulpit of the Lincoln Memorial, he spoke of a time when his children will be “living in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Simply a wish of a father for his children. A wish I'm watching my son fulfill.

So, when Jack announced that he wanted to celebrate Martin Luther King Day with Chinese food I felt compelled to ask, “Why Chinese food?” 

“Well, my Jewish friends who don’t celebrate Christmas eat Chinese food on Christmas Day so I thought that since you don’t give gifts for Martin Luther King Day, or eat turkey, or watch the ball drop at midnight in the middle of New York City, let’s celebrate like my friends who don’t celebrate Christmas do—let’s eat Chinese!”

As he slid back out of the kitchen the same Tom Cruise way he slid in, I wondered where this little boy came from and wished, as I had never wished before, that I could stop time. 

As parents we get swept up in the moments that don’t matter but are powerful enough to continually consume us—school, work, the daily grind of living--that when the moments that matter come along, like this one, they hit us in the heart like a ton of bricks. 

That moment brought to the surface of conciousness a closely held memory. When I was eight months pregnant with Jack I was shopping at Burlington Coat Factory on Route 17 in Paramus. While browsing the baby section, an older saleswoman approached me. Around her neck she wore strings of silver chains with circular beads that sounded like wind chimes when they brushed against each other. She had thick wrinkled skin and an Eastern-European accent. She reminded me of a character from one of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. 

She placed her thin-fingered hand upon my bulging belly and said, “You are having a boy.” 

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s a girl,” I confidently replied.

“No. I tell you it’s a boy. I know this because a terrible war is coming. Your son will be called for this war. Your friends’ sons will be called for this war. You will lose your boy. I tell you truth.”

I dropped everything in my hands and ran as fast as I could from the store. As soon as I reached the safety of my car I sat and wept for my unborn child. 

A month later when I delivered my baby and the doctor said, “It’s a boy!” the haunting words of that woman clung heavy to my heart.

And on Martin Luther King Day as I watched my sweet, sweet boy slide out of the kitchen I knew, the way only a mother can, that this time I have with him is measured, like the slow beats of my heart. And so I savor these moments.

“So Mom,” he casually yelled from the living room. “Chinese food for Martin Luther King Day?”

I choked back my tears and whispered, “Yes, absolutely yes. Chinese food for Martin Luther King Day.”