Question #2

From C...

What 3 things do you want to leave as a legacy for each child?

Wow....loaded question!

There are so many things I want for my kids.

One of the things that I think is important for me in instill in my kids is a sense of accountability and social justice. Living here in Montana, I’ve already had to have some conversations about race.

There just are not that many people of color here, and I’ve heard Small Son say things that are just not right, in a very innocent way, that he has picked up from his friends.

I remind him that his cousins are black. That one of my dearest friend, her kids and husband are black, that another one of my good friends is Chinese. I’ve tried to explain it to him like this. We are all the same on the inside, it’s our clothes that are different. We each have our own style of clothes, and with this comes our style of life. They are different colors, they are different flavors, but each style has it’s own delicious smells and tastes. I worry that living in a mostly white area will instill a sense of fear in them of people that are different from them.

That is why it is important to me to take trips to different cities and states so that they can be exposed to other cultures an ethnicity's.

The next thing I would like to leave them, is a sense of self-reliance. I hope that I can teach them to take care of themselves from an early age. I didn’t learn this, until my mid 30’s. I’m still not sure I’ve really learned it in a lot of ways.

I think the last thing I’d like to leave them, would just be the knowledge that I love them both with my whole heart, and I’ll never be sorry that I had them.

Peace,

OC