Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  For many kids it is a holiday from school.  My first years in school, it was not just a holiday, but also the first part of a week or so spent learning about the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King as a leader.  I did not realize until I grew up that was not how the holiday was celebrated everywhere in the United States.  My schooling kindergarten through second grade was a bit unusual in that it took place entirely on military bases in Germany and then in Missouri.  I had no idea that while the schools I attended spent multiple days talking about the holiday and its historical importance that only 27 states and Washington DC (along with military base schools all over the world) were actually celebrating it.  It was a federal holiday, but many states decided not to observe it.  I also had no idea that the holiday had only first been celebrated the January before my fifth birthday.  Mine was only the second kindergarten class, ever, to celebrate it.  When my mother had started kindergarten in 1967, a federal holiday revering Martin Luther King, Jr. would have seemed impossible.

How could I have known all this?  Even if someone had told me, I wouldn't have cared that it was so new.  I was only a child and, to me, everything was new.  So, to me, it was completely normal that a conservative president had signed into law a federal holiday celebrating a civil rights leader that had been investigated by the FBI just over twenty years before.  It was how things should be, had always been, would always be.  That's how things are with us, aren't they?  We see progress as it has led up to today as inevitable and immutable.  Even the most cynical among us who would never dream of the future being better than today, often look upon the past as a stepping stone to today.  What we have now is always "normal" and is always better than what came before.

We don't realize how fragile "normal" is or how quickly progress can slip from our fingers until it starts happening.  The same pen that signs a federal holiday like MLK into law can change the holiday to "Great Americans Day" in Biloxi, Mississippi.  In other words, nothing is permanent or assured.  Steps forward do not prevent steps backward.  I feel foolish now for putting so much trust in progress that can still easily be stripped away.  If I had known how quickly our government would be attempting to repeal the little healthcare progress we've made, women's rights, and LGTBQ rights, would I have fought harder with my loved ones who disagreed?  I knew enough to not assume that all candidates were equal in the election, but did I really understand the fragility upon which my children's definition of  "normal" was balanced?  Those who keep telling me not to worry, that it will be okay and that transitions happen all the time, and I should "get over" this election,  they don't seem to recognize the precipice we now find ourselves standing on.  They still assume that "normal" will hold us "safe," but just as we can take steps forward, we can also take them backwards.  Assuredly, we will find ourselves in a new "backwards" stage of normal, if we do not remind ourselves with every breath that we have to keep moving forward.  As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told us decades ago, "[h]uman progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals."  Too many of us were content to let others do most of the work for us.  We trusted our votes, our representatives, and our fellow citizens to do the work that was always, only ours, but not anymore. 

The fragility of "normal" is also its promise.  While progress may be stripped at any time, it may also be regained and expanded upon.  We must become the people holding the pens that sign the laws.  We must become the voices that guide our politicians or we must find new politicians.  Hold fast.  Be strong.  What was unthinkable yesterday, is the "normal" of today.  We must "think" new thoughts now that will create a new future.  We have that power.  In November, we realized our own fragility and vulnerability. In January, we are realizing our power.  We will not win every battle, but we will not give up.  We will stand together and we will make our present and our future what we want it to be.  We define "normal."  We will no longer have that defined for us by anyone else.  Let's carry the message of the Civil Rights Movement, the promise embodied by John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Nina Simone, Maya Angelou, Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin, Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton, David Dennis, and countless others, forward.