Belonging

Issue One

Before I Knew What This Was, I Knew What It Felt Like

(Photo Credit: Laura Falk - My Aunt and Uncle’s Cottage - my mom’s favorite place to be)

I knew we were close when I heard the noise under the car change from a quiet hum to a crunchy sound. Gravel indicated that we were now in our safe spot. The one place where I saw my mother at her happiest. The one place where my siblings and I were free to roam for days without any adult supervision. The one place where my father could do one thing for him, and no one else. We made it to the cottage.

As we neared our dad’s family cottage, we also passed several of my mom’s family cottages. We would open the windows and breathe in the cool, clean air while looking for any evidence that our aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandpa were up at the lake at that time, too. We drove in from Chicago, a four-hour drive, intending to stay there for the entire summer. My mother’s side of the family was only 2 hours away, so they usually came up only on weekends. Since my mother worked at the same school we attended, we all had the summers off, and she would excitedly have that car packed when she picked us up on the last day of school, with us never having a chance to see the house before we headed up north.

Slowly over the next few days, this small circle of heaven would come alive. Cousins, Aunts, Uncles. Then Grandpa. The Cross family filled up Woodland Park, Michigan, the way they filled up every space they entered - completely, joyfully, loudly.

Back in the 1950s, land was being offered to Black families in the Manistee National Forest. Word traveled fast through the Cross family network. My grandfather - who owned a building company and spent his career constructing homes for Black families in Lansing - started by building his cottage, then his sister-in-law’s, which was next door. Then, finally, a cottage for his oldest daughter, who had a plot a few doors down. My father’s family also learned about this offer from a fellow parent at my father’s school. My grandmother immediately purchased a few plots to also build a cottage in order to keep my father and uncle away from the dangers that faced young Black men on the streets of Chicago in the summer. This is the location where my mother and father met. So, by the time I was old enough to make those four-hour trips, the gravel road was lined with family.

All summer long, we would run between cottages, looking for cousins, seeing if anyone was going out on the boat, or if someone could watch us as we swam in the lake. All the doors were always unlocked, as our elders were busy planning lunches and those big family dinners. At night, bells and triangles called us home for dinner - each family with their own sound, each sound meaning the same thing.

Come home. You are safe. We are here. Let’s come together. Family.

I watched my mother in that place and understood something I didn’t yet have words for. She was accepted there for all of her. Not the careful version. Not the professional version. Not the version that had learned to navigate white spaces that weren’t built for her.

All of her.

And I watched her exhale.

Years later, I would spend my career trying to build that feeling in classrooms, in empty rooms filled with unwanted classroom furniture and supplies, but built up to reflect family spaces, community, and belonging with a rule that anyone entering would come out knowing everyone’s name. I would research it, document it, and build a framework around it. Because I also knew what it felt like to belong to something.

Because I learned it first on a gravel road in Michigan.

From the sounds of tires hitting gravel.

From the true joy that crossed my mother’s face.

From a community that knew how to catch people completely.

We all deserve to feel this, don’t we?

Next month, I want to talk about what happens when we deliberately build that feeling - and what gets in the way.

Until then - welcome to this community.

You belong here.

- Dr. Laura L. Falk