do you know about the dr. king?

" Mommy, do you know about the Dr. King?" Zibby asks, running into the kitchen...eyes wide.

"Dr. King?"

"Yes, Dr. Martin King?" her face uplifted, all seriousness.

"Oh, Dr. Martin Luther King! Oh, yes, amazing man right?" I answer, ready to hear her six year old heart express something...

special...

something...

important.

"Yes, mommy! Dr. Martin Luther King! Did you know about what used to happen a long, long, time ago?"  she's using her little hands to gesture at time passing behind her.

"What?" curiosity turns me from the stove...ready to let dinner burn for this one.

"Well, a long, long time ago when a person with dark skin would get on the bus they had to sit away far away from the people with white skin" her brow knits with concern and she continues,

"And if a white skinned person wanted to sit in a seat that a dark skinned person was sitting in, the dark skinned person had to move!" but she isn't finished...

"And if a dark skinned person was thirsty, they couldn't drink from just any water fountain...only a far away fountain!" searching my face she shares more...

"And dark skinned people did not go to church with white skinned people either!" clearly this was, to her, the cherry on top of a mountain of injustices.

"But, do you know what that Dr. Martin King said?"

"What did he say?"

 "This is not right!' We are all the same!" the wheels turning in that tiny, wondrous mind of hers.

"And what do you think Zibby?" I ask.

"God loves us all the same...in the skin He put on us. He likes my white skin (she touches her pearly arm) just as much as He likes black skin. He wants us to love each other. That's being neighbors."

And with that she's gone..

running out of the kitchen and on with her life as I turn back to my own thoughts and a boiling pot.

One day she will come to understand that Dr. King's dream was not so long, long ago.

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he shall not depart from it."

Proverbs 22:6