Faith, Grace, and Hope

"What kind of stranger are you?" The small black girl paused in her climb up the playground equipment and asked me that question. She was speeding around the playground with my white daughter and another little black girl. The three preschool age girls united in laughter, daredevilry, and energy were challenging each other to scrambling up, over, and under everything in sight.  I tried to be inconspicuous as a spotter as they climbed on the equipment, trying to eye all of them equally for potential falls. Halfway through scaling the wooden framework, one of the little girls turned and looked at me.  "Is that your daughter?" "Yes." "Can we play with her?" "Sure!" "Are you a stranger?" "Um, yes, I am a stranger to you, but not to her."  "What kind of stranger are you?" I froze for a moment, cutting my eyes away from hers. For a kindergarten aged black girl in Anchorag...

I loved Wonder Woman . I loved it so much that I didn't want to leave the theater. When I got up, I didn't want to talk about the movie. I wanted to stay in the bubble where it was accepted that women are badasses and to be treated as equals (or even more powerful when they are!). I wanted to linger and wallow in the place where the presented and accepted truth is that women can kick butt AND love babies AND speak multiple languages AND be sexually interesting AND be warriors AND be leaders AND grieve AND can be funny AND can read maps AND can be gracious AND can silence detractors. There was a whole lot of AND in the movie. Not so much OR. The world is wide enough for AND. Mostly, though, I gripped the armrests and wanted to cling to the place where I had seen something that was new to me in film. There was a shape. A shape I see all the time. A shape that literally and metaphorically  defines my life. I saw this shape in Wonder Woman  and, for the first time...