Save the Prouty Garden

A pearl in the oyster that is Boston Children's Hospital

"In many ways Prouty Garden saved us."

The Children’s Hospital in Boston will always be a special place for my family and me. The facility itself, the wonderful caring nurses and staff, dedicated doctors and residents are simply amazing. My daughter was treated there from the time she was six months old until she aged out at 22.

We were such regular visitors to the orthopedic clinic the nurses and doctors knew us all by name and the rotation of residents by reputation. Among the many procedures my daughter endured was a nine-hour surgery that enabled her to run, not fast, but steady. She spent weeks in the hospital.

Then when she became chronically ill as a teenager we spent the entire month of November at the hospital - even Thanksgiving Day - her favorite holiday. And like most parents of children who have to endure a hospital stay I was right there with her day and night.

Needless to say I became pretty well acclimated to the Longwood medical campus and all it has to offer from fast food to shops and galleries. Within the hospital I found the family lounge on every floor, the kitchen for a midnight snack, and the door to the stairwell for my daily cardio exercise running up and down nine or ten floors instead of taking the elevator.

But by far the greatest discovery I made was the day I found the Prouty Garden wandering in search of a family library. The halls that interconnect old and new sections of the hospital are well lit but still cavernous so when I saw sunlight splashing into the hall ahead of me I was intrigued.  The light led to a small but significant park encased in the concrete walls of the medical mecca. In the center a huge tree reached for the open sky as its web of roots clung to the earth. There were benches and a fountain, flowers and grass so inviting I removed my shoes and walked barefoot as if I were back at home in my own yard. There was sun on my face for the first time in days and I recovered a sense of calm lost amid the flashing lights, tweets and buzzing, and piercing alarms of a medical floor. It was indeed an oasis.

Established in 1956 by Olive Higgins Prouty in memory of two children she lost, the Prouty garden has been since dedicated as a memorial to all the children who have unfortunately died at the hospital. But it is so much more than that. It is a place as well for the living.

Trust me there is nothing more challenging in life than seeing your child suffer. It takes so much out of you both physically and emotionally. Finding that garden was like finding a little piece of heaven in my daily hell. I could hardly wait for my daughter to be well enough to leave her room so I could bring her there. While I can’t say enough about the great work of the medical staff, in many ways the Prouty Garden saved us, gave us medicine you can’t get from an IV bag or dispensed in pill form. To smell the flowers and fresh cut grass, to see birds and squirrels, feel the breeze and the warmth of the sun gave us a little peace in our daily battle. I remember thinking what an amazing gift it was.

So when I learned the administration has plans to bulldoze it to build an addition to hospital I could hardly believe it was true. Could they actually be so short sighted?! Historically, environmentally, and spiritually Prouty Garden is profoundly significant and should be preserved at all costs. It is the pearl in the oyster that is the Children’s Hospital in Boston.

So for what it’s worth I add my voice to the countless patients and parents, doctors and nurses, and families who lost children at that hospital, please don’t kill the one thing that gave me hope even in the darkest of times. Please keep the Prouty Garden.

*To learn more please go to SaveProuty.org and make a donation and please sign the online petition. 

Shedding some light on MLK Day

Was the Civil Rights Movement just a dream Baby Boomers like me have never woken up from? After getting into an inadvertent philosophical debate with my daughter, I had to pinch myself.

Yesterday I sent my daughter, a college junior, a link to a multi racial a cappella performance of “Shed a Little Light” in honor of Martin Luther King Day. The video made me nostalgic for the days when my children were young. Every year on the King holiday I would read to them from his letters, sermons and his epic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Sending the link was my way of connecting with my little girl over the miles that separate us on what I consider a pretty significant day.

“Thanks momma,” she texted me back as millennials do.

Then she went on to tell me, “. . . let's not forget that there's a reason this is MLK day and not Malcolm X day!! Mainstream America loves Martin Luther King because his activism was respectable (ie. palatable to middle class liberal white ppl) and fairly conservative. By all means take tomorrow to honor a man who did so much work to mobilize and empower black people but don't blindly accept him as the face of the civil rights movement.”

Then she added, “In conclusion, stay woke.”

Huh? Did I just get schooled by my 21-year-old?

Not so fast little girl.

“One raised consciousness with militancy, the other moved mountains with consciousness,” I answered her, “What would the world tolerate today?”

I grew up in Philadelphia just north of the Mason Dixon line in the 1960s where as a young girl I experienced a kind of racism my children will never know. There were stores and restaurants we simply couldn’t go to. There were children I wasn’t allowed to play with, names I was called that still hurt me to this day. Evaluating my daughter’s assertion through my lens of life experience I can assure you there was nothing palatable about King’s activism. More Gandhi than Genghis Khan, King was no less a warrior for social justice. I’m afraid this generation may never understand the kind of courage it took to wage the Birmingham campaign in the face of the most entrenched and defiant pool of racists in the country. But they might listen more openly to Malcolm X.

Both King and Malcolm X took a courageous stand against racial segregation and for social justice at great personal sacrifice and risk. And yes both men paid the ultimate price at the hands of an assassin.

The charismatic leader of the Nation of Islam began his campaign rejecting King’s nonviolence stance and featuring hateful rhetoric against the white race, Jews and even blacks that didn’t agree with him. Especially those who questioned whether black supremacy was a responsible answer to the Ku Klux Klan. He was, in a word, divisive.

But he was also a seeker of truth and unafraid to alter his thought process when he found it, even if that truth was in conflict with what he believed in before. His brilliance could not be contained in a place, a time or an ideology vulnerable to extinction. He grew to embrace multiculturalism as the answer to the racial woes of this nation and the world. He was indeed a great warrior for justice and deserves to be recognized.

Sadly, what the nation remembers of Malcolm X is his militancy, which was probably the biggest hurdle to a proposed act of Congress in 1993 to establish a national holiday in his name.

But in San Francisco, San Jose and Berkley in California they have marked the Malcolm X holiday each year on May 19 since 1979. Observances including conferences and heritage festivals are held throughout the country and at the Malcolm X Elementary School in Washington DC where the day is recognized as an annual day of peace.

I am awake now Savannah, and while you won’t likely convince me that MLK is any less worthy of this day, let us turn our thoughts today to Malcolm X.