She, Who Could Say How It Was

Daily writing prompt

If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?

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Harriet Tubman, an enslaved person who escaped slavery and then helped seventy other people do the same – that’s who I’d want to meet.

I’d sit on a chair on her porch and keep my quiet, wait for her to tell me what she thought I should know. I wouldn’t ask questions. I’d keep my hands folded in my lap and wait for her to speak. Patience. Everything she had endured, all the people she’d saved, the minds she changed required my silence. If she was rocking in a chair on the porch, I’d just listen to the rocking on the wood. Like I had all the time in the world.

When I first saw this question, I thought of men I would want to meet. Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt. And then I realized they wouldn’t have talked to me, not in a serious way. They would save their seriousness for other men. So, why would I go back in history to sit with a man so likely comfortable with waving me off as unserious?

I would hope, sitting there on the porch, that Harriet Tubman would give me hints to her courage, how she was ready to take off in the night, trust her sense of direction, wrap her arms around the frightened people with her. How does a person like that emerge from the barbarity of slavery?

Yes. That’s who I’d want to meet. Harriet Tubman. I wouldn’t say a word. I would just listen.