The Stories Our Choices Write

I am in an interesting season of life. Maybe you reach a certain age when reunions and funerals begin teaching you some of the same lessons. You have known people long enough to remember who they were, see who they became, and recognize some of the choices that helped get them there.

Over the past two weekends, I went home to Kansas twice. The first trip was for my 55th high school reunion, where I was the only Black classmate attending and was asked to speak. I looked around that room at people I had known as teenagers and even younger, and realized that more than half a century of choices had been made since we walked those high school hallways together.

The following weekend, I flew back to Kansas for the funeral celebration of a longtime friend. As I boarded the plane, I learned that another brother in New Jersey had died. Then, as the funeral in Kansas was beginning, I learned that another close brother had died two years earlier, and somehow we were only now finding out.

That is a lot of life—and death—to absorb in two weekends, but death wasn't all I encountered. At the funeral, I reunited with a very good old friend who is battling pancreatic cancer, and I understood that we might be seeing each other for the last time. During the same trip, I spent precious time with my four-year-old great-niece, a little girl overflowing with energy whose story is just beginning.

One life was opening while other lives were closing, and I found myself somewhere in between, paying closer attention than I once did to what people do with the years they are given. Maybe that is one of the gifts of getting older. You have lived long enough to see what choices become.

When you have known people for five, six, or seven decades, you see friendships nurtured and friendships neglected, opportunities taken and opportunities missed, grudges carried and forgiveness offered. You realize that the stories of our lives aren't written only by the big moments everyone notices. They are also written by the small choices we keep making when nobody thinks they are particularly important.

And that realization reminded me of a man who lived more than 200 years ago.

His name was Paul Jennings, and he was born enslaved at James Madison's Montpelier plantation in 1799. As a young man, he became Madison's personal servant and eventually accompanied the fourth president to Washington. He lived close enough to power to watch American history being made while having almost no power over the direction of his own life.

Jennings dressed Madison, shaved him and cared for him. He was in Washington during the British attack in 1814 and later provided an important eyewitness account of what happened when the famous portrait of George Washington was saved from the White House. For decades, Jennings stood close to some of the most famous people in America while remaining legally somebody else's property.

After James Madison died, Jennings remained enslaved by Dolley Madison. At one point, she had indicated that he would eventually receive his freedom, but her financial situation deteriorated badly. Her son accumulated enormous debts, property was sold, Montpelier was sold, and eventually Jennings himself became something that could be sold.

In 1846, Dolley Madison sold Paul Jennings for $200. After decades of service, his loyalty, intelligence and character could not make him free. His character could determine how he lived, but another person's choices still determined whether he belonged to himself.

Eventually, Senator Daniel Webster acquired Jennings for $120 and allowed him to repay the amount at eight dollars a month. Jennings finally gained what should never have had a price attached to it—his freedom. And for perhaps the first time in his life, the choices that would write the rest of his story truly belonged to him.

Jennings worked, purchased property, reunited with family and became part of Washington's free Black community. He was connected with efforts to help other enslaved people escape bondage. In 1865, he published his memories of James Madison, allowing a man who had spent much of his life in the background to finally tell history in his own words.

But one of the choices Jennings made stays with me more than all the others.

Near the end of Dolley Madison's life, the former First Lady had fallen into severe financial hardship. Daniel Webster sometimes sent Jennings to her home with food and instructed him to see what else she needed. Jennings later revealed one remarkable additional detail: sometimes he gave Dolley Madison small amounts of money from his own pocket.

Think about the choice contained in that simple act. This was the woman who had owned him, the woman who had once indicated he would receive his freedom, and the woman who ultimately sold him for $200. Jennings had every reason to remember what had been done to him, and no one could have reasonably blamed him for deciding that her problems were no longer his concern.

Yet when Jennings stood at that door, something fundamental had changed. Dolley Madison could no longer command him, own him or sell him. For perhaps the first time in their relationship, Paul Jennings was the one who got to choose.

His choice does not excuse slavery, erase what Dolley did, or turn their relationship into something it wasn't. In fact, his generosity matters precisely because the past could not be erased. Jennings could not rewrite what had been done to him, but he could decide what he would write next.

That brings me back to these past two weekends.

At the reunion, I saw people near the far end of stories that began when we were teenagers. At the funeral, I listened as people told the story of a life that had ended. I embraced a friend whose remaining chapters may be few, and then I laughed and played with a four-year-old whose pages are almost entirely blank.

There is something about this season of life that allows me to see all of that differently. After you have known people for a lifetime, you understand that choices accumulate—the phone call made, the apology offered, the person forgiven, the relationship neglected, the kindness extended, the chance taken, the hand held, the door opened or the door passed by. Individually, those choices can seem small; together, they become a life.

Paul Jennings couldn't choose how his story began. My four-year-old great-niece cannot know where hers will lead, and none of us knows how many pages remain in our own. What we do know is that as long as another page remains, another choice remains with it.

Maybe that is the gift of this season of life. I have lived long enough to see what choices can become, but I am also blessed to still be here making them. Some parts of my story are finished, some I might write differently if I could, and some of the most important choices may still be waiting for me.

We cannot rewrite yesterday, and none of us has been promised tomorrow. But there is one page of our story still sitting in front of us, waiting to see what we will put on it.

Yesterday is already written.

Tomorrow is not promised.

So choose carefully what you write with today.