Gunpowder and Tea Cakes: My Journey with Felicity

My feet start moving again, and I find myself running away from the garden and back to the street. I get lost in the crowd and hurry until I find a spot behind a big tree. I stare at the painted lady and wonder if she owned other people. I close my eyes, and am transported back to my grandmother’s shop. I return the miniature to the case and hurry up the stairs. Grandma asks if I’m okay, and I say yes even though I’m not. She gives me an all-knowing look. But I feel better just being in the kitchen with her.

I start thinking about Felicity, and how nice she was to me. It was awfully rude of me to leave without even saying goodbye. My feelings are all tangled up. I help Grandma make dinner, and when it’s ready, we sit and spaghetti and salad without saying much. By the time Dad comes home, I’m pretending to do my homework. Dad sits down across from me with a plate of microwaved spaghetti while Grandma goes downstairs to the shop. I close my math book and ask if we can talk about something. I say I started writing a story about a colonial girl who lives in Williamsburg. Her family isn’t super rich, but she has nice things. I ask him if, to be true to history, her parents would own slaves? And if they did, wouldn’t that make them… really bad people?

Dad leans back in his chair. He sighs, and says there’s no excuse for slavery. But that doesn’t mean the girl and her family can’t be nice people. I confess that trying to understand people that own slaves is really confusing. Dad agrees. He says that as historians, our job is to discover what happened long ago. So we must think about where our character grew up, and in what time. Life was very different back then. Many white parents taught their children that it was all right to own enslaved workers. I can’t think of my character, or judge her, as if she was raised in modern times. She can still help people and do good things.

That makes sense. I know Felicity has a good heart. Dad says he’s proud of me. Slavery is a difficult thing to think about. But we must think about it, and help others learn what happened. That’s one of the reasons he loves working at Colonial Williamsburg. I say that when I’m a junior interpreter, I want to help kids think about it, too.

Talking with my dad has made me feel better about some things. But I don’t feel better about leaving 1775 without saying goodbye to Felicity. I think the miniature painting is still downstairs in Grandma’s shop. I’m sure if I tell her how much I love it, she’ll let me keep it.

That settles it. Tonight, I have to write my persuasive essay about citizenship. After visiting 1775, I have some new ideas about it. But tomorrow, I’m going back in time. I can’t free Marcus, but I can apologize to Felicity for disappearing the way I did. I’m sure she’ll forgive me. And tomorrow, we’ll be on off on a new adventure.