Personal Narrative: The Call Family

Initially, the Call family took us to church. In fact, that transplant family took us to church for the first two years of my membership. I also learned an important lesson from them. I do not remember their given names, but I remember the Calls were a young couple in their early twenties from Utah. They were very different from the Southern Mormons culturally, but the faith was the same. They had one kid, a boy. I went to their house once with Dexter for dinner. I noticed in their home there was hardly any furniture and that everything was high off the floor. The Calls explained to me the design was to keep things safe from the boy and the boy safe from the things. I thought it odd. I attributed it to them being White. I knew that if I had made a mess of things as a little boy my rear-end would have been nice and …show more content…
“He doesn’t’ have to do that. I am fine.” “He has to Rod,” said Sister Call. “He needs to know that he has to kiss the booboo and make it better after he hits.”
The baby boy kissed my knee and life went on for them, but it started something for me. I started to realize I am important too, not only to God, but also to the members of His church. The Calls, from Utah did not see me as a Black member of the church. They saw me as a brother. I liked that. I felt so sad to see them move away from Nashville. Visiting them was my first intimate exposure to the White side of Nashville.
I needed to know about other people that looked like me, Black people, even if I did not know it at the time. The identity issues took a head when I was seventeen-years-old and wanted to get my patriarchal blessing. I understood that getting such a blessing would aid me in my life as a follower of Christ and I desired to have all the help I could get. Though I did not understand it at the time, I realized that I would also find my lineage from the blessing. I anticipated that I would find out which one of the tribes of Israel from whence I