Rosa Schwebel
It was 4:30PM Friday at McWane Science Center. As a volunteer, I had few visitors to entertain, so my eyes wandered to the art-deco entryways dating to the building’s former life: a department store in segregated downtown Birmingham. I knew those entryways welcomed some customers and barred others. The building’s history and the way it bridges past and present provoked thought about my own identity as a Jewish and Asian-American girl. People like me weren’t visible in 1960s Birmingham. The department store entryways weren’t built to consider welcoming - or barring - people like me, nor was the city. But today, I proudly call Birmingham home.
That quiet afternoon in the museum made me consider my place in the landscape of the city today, but I’m not always pondering such weighty questions. I have school, friends, and extracurriculars to worry about. My house is two miles from my neighborhood Woodlawn High School, listed as a failing public school, but every weekday I commute 18 miles the other direction toward the suburbs. I know exactly when I’ve left Birmingham when potholes vanish and manicured lawns appear. I know I’m near my exurban private school when Whole Foods gives way to sprawling farmland.
While my school commute traverses Birmingham suburbs, on weekends I drive downtown to teach piano at St. Paul United Methodist, across the street from 16th St. Baptist Church. I enjoy my younger students but a favorite is Maddison, a fellow high-schooler. We chat about school and I learn about the local universities and HBCUs she will apply to. Maddison does well learning classical pieces, but one day she wants help on hymns she chose to learn independently after singing them in church. I’ve never played hymns, learned pieces by improvisation, or played piano and sung simultaneously, but as her instructor, I want to help Maddison. I explain simple chord progressions and inversions relevant to the hymn. We discuss scales and arpeggios. After our lesson, Maddison’s aunt comments how she appreciates my instruction and admires my musical and teaching abilities. I thank her and respond truthfully: Maddison is talented as well and I look forward to our weekly lessons. We are teaching each other.
One Saturday, Maddison didn’t show up. I didn’t see her the next week, or the week after. I learned her father was sick and she couldn’t take piano lessons anymore. As her teacher, I did my best to share my musical knowledge, but as her peer, her sudden departure made me realize I will never be able to fully enter her world and I never had the chance to just see how she was doing. Although circumstances drove our lives apart, I hope the things we taught each other made as much of a difference for her as they did for me.
As I reflect upon my city, I can’t help but notice that no part of it was built for me: not the Asian-American community in Vestavia where I attend my own piano lessons, or the Jewish community in Mountain Brook where I sometimes play tennis, nor the formerly segregated downtown where I teach piano and volunteer at the science museum. But I know I’m not stuck at the art-deco entryway of a 1960s department store, unsure if I can enter. I know I belong here when I drive to the Asian market to buy bok-choy and the Chabad for challah to make my family’s nontraditional Shabbat dinner. I belong when teaching chords and scales to Maddison and when sharing science experiments with all of Birmingham’s children in the shadows of the museum’s past. My city was not designed for people like me, but the fact that I found a place to belong today is a testament to the people before me who changed our city. As I consider my own future, I want to be a part of building a place for others to belong.