Like most classes in the beginning of January, Mia’s school included lesson plans around Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and achievements.  To my surprise, she was thoroughly enamored with him and talked about him constantly after school:

Dr. King is a man!
He is black!
He is nice!
He has a dream!
He lives in Atlanta!

Because we do live in Atlanta, we figured we would take the opportunity to show her the King Center and his home.  She was pretty excited, to say the very least. We walked around the Center’s exhibits and she looked at his pictures and listened to the words spoken from the videos playing in the background. We walked slowly around his funeral caisson, and then she started asking where Dr. King was.  I quietly explained that he had passed away and this was a place to remember him.  She was unhappy with my answer and impatiently asked when we would see him.

We walked over to his resting place in the fountain area and I told her that was where Dr. King was, next to his wife Coretta. She insisted that he was not there, and it broke my heart trying to explain to her something her young mind just didn’t (shouldn’t?) understand. He’s in the stone, honey, the one in the water.

We continued our walk in the Sweet Auburn Historic District to his birthplace, a two-story home on Auburn Avenue. She joyfully bounded up the steps and played on the porch. The tours were finished for the day, so we explained that the doors were locked and no one was home. She kept asking when he was going to come back, and there was just so much I wanted to tell her.  But all of that would have been confusing, so I could say was “I hope he will… soon.”