I got to play with my dad. I got to go to work with him. That's the biggest thing that ever happened to me other than the days my kids were born. That's bigger than any record I'll ever set.

Being a slave meant never having the stability of knowing your family would be together as many years as God designed it to be. It meant you could come back from picking cotton in a field to find that your children are gone, your husband's gone, your mother's gone.

You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't.

But to me, the most important page in my daughter's book is the last one - because it's blank. It says, "Your Hero's Photo Here," and, "Your Hero's Story Here."

All my life, up until that moment, I'd had a warm, protective blanket wrapped around me, knitted of aunts and uncles, purled of first and second and third cousins, knot-tied with grandmas and grandpas and greats. That blanket had just dropped from my shoulders. I felt cold, lost and alone.

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.