I just finished The Color of Water while my wife and son slept on the couch, all three of us huddled into a heap of legs and arms. I have to say this book has me thinking warm thoughts of family, those so-called small or insignificant moments between siblings that tie us together through the years. The single biggest part of the story that I could relate to (by virtue of being raised in a single parent household) was the “House rules” discussion in the McBride-Jordan home. The eldest child was deemed the “King or Queen” of the house, ruling in mom’s place when she was gone or otherwise “not there.” There were only three of us, as opposed to twelve in the McBride-Jordan home, but as the eldest I enjoyed a relationship with my mother that my brother or sister never had. Sort of a “co-captain” thing, in many ways similar to that experienced by “Helen” in the book.
What is most interesting to me the individual struggles that both James and his mother have with revisiting past places and relationships with people. For instance, Rachel (James’s mom) is essentially estranged from her home in Suffolk, Virginia all of her adult life (she first left home at age 15, a Orthodox Jew pregnant with a Black man’s child) and only returns at the behest of her son some 40 years later. The relationships with family and friends flowing from Suffolk are never really healed until very recently (a close childhood friend Frances, a cousin and her sister Dee Dee). Part of this was due to being stubborn, but I would say most of it was due to Jewish tradition and the abuse going on in her immediate family which when fused together brought an unusually cruel result.
Yet it is quite remarkable how these events shape who we are. The rejection allowed her to appreciate the deep love and concern for one another that was present in the black community and that spirit later in life lead to a conversion to Christianity. It was very much the “extended” black community that helped this white woman raise her children when her own family had essentially written her off. She and her first husband Andrew founded a church together that still stands today, built in part on her testimony which was tested many many times losing two husbands to illness and raising 12 kids essentially on her own. She remarks in the book that she never thought of dating much less marrying a white man, which when you read her story and understood her place in her community, makes a whole lot of sense even when you consider that she held this view in the 1950s!
Every time I visit my home town I drive by and look at my childhood home on Vialoux drive. The home is filled with my most cherished and hurtful memories. I am always drawn to it, always seeking some kind of closure. We lost it when my parents divorced over 20 years ago and to this day I think about it every once in awhile, especially when I think of my son. I took him and my wife to see it last fall and made an ass out of myself when I snuck a peek into the backyard, only to find the current residents sitting an eating at a picnic table. I jumped back into the car and sped off 
Anyway, I mention this because as I was reading about Suffolk I realized that I could not have gone that long without revisiting the past. This is a ever present feature of my being – once I move from a place I always feel compelled to keep in touch with old friends. It is true of the Vialoux home, all the various places I’ve lived in Utah, even with friends here in Minnesota that I met twelve years ago and reconnected with when I moved back here to attend law school. I have never really been able to explain why, in my mind it is just the respectful thing to do, even if the person has long since stopped caring about a phone call, email or letter. Perhaps it was my mom that taught me this? (As an adult I had a relationship with a family that help her out when she was in college), or perhaps it was just our local tradition. Not sure.
I am going to tell as many people as I can to read this book. I *might* read James McBride’s newest novel later this summer. You can check it out here.
