Happy "He was Almost my Father Day"

Happy He was Almost my Father Day
Martin Luther King Day has a special place in my heart. When I was a young girl growing up on the Upper West Side, my mother would tell me stories about the anti-war and civil rights movements in place of Mother Goose. I remember her telling me about hearing Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington D.C. Though I was a precocious, progressive child, who would start conversations off with adults by asking them what they thought of the Rosenbergs' execution, I didn't totally get what my mom was talking about. I envisioned that she had a friend--King Martin Luther is what I thought his name was--who lived in Washington D.C. One day she went to visit him and have a sleepover. The next morning King Martin Luther told my mother, "I had a dream," and then told her what was in it. That's really how I imagined it.

Of course, my mother never did have a sleepover with Martin Luther King. Although she did come close to having one with another civil rights leader. He doesn't have as much civil rights cred as Doctor King, but my mother did go on a date with... Marion Barry, who would later become the mayor of D.C. until he was forced to step down in the midst of a crack-cocaine scandal. They met at an event in New York for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). I always think, "Out of all the CORE meetings in all the towns in all the world... she had to walk into his" If only my mother had dated a nobler civil rights activist, like Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, or Malcolm X. Then, whenever I was mad at my dad I could have said: "I don't have to listen to you. You're not my father. Dr. King is my father." But "ex-mayor Barry is my father" doesn't have the same ring to it.