If it had not been for the poet Muriel Rukeyser, who was my teacher at Sarah Lawrence in 1965, I would never have met Langston Hughes. It was she who gave him my short story, To Hell With Dying; she who understood the trauma and insight that was at the root of it; she who—in her rather hearty, absent-minded friendliness—was determined to support me as a young writer. She also introduced me to her own agent, Monica McCall, and told me to send my first batch of poems from my book, Once, to The New Yorker, a magazine I'd never read.

Years afterwards she and I would come to a parting of the ways—inevitable, I now see, because we were so unequal: she was white, I was black; she was in her fifties, I was twenty; she had money, prestige as a poet and a teacher; I was poor, a student, and just recently up from the very painful South. At times I felt confused and somewhat smothered by her concern. Or, to put it another way, it was sometimes hard for me to act as grateful as I felt. In any event, she told me how annoyed she was that I chose to give Langston so much credit for publishing my first story. If it hadn't been for me, she said, he'd never have heard of you. Muriel said this with her usual friendly smile, but it hurt very much. I was sorry I had disappointed her, and besides, what she said was true. I think she was later to regret crushing my rather fragile feathers in this way—we made peace with each other shortly before she died—because she understood very well the isolation I endured as one of only three black girls at Sarah Lawrence at the time, and my longing for my racial, spiritual and political kin. In that rich enclave of white people and snow, any black face beaming on us for any reason, anywhere in the world, was likely to be perceived as the sun.

Langston, who accepted my story for an anthology on which he was working, became a good part of my sun that last year of college.

I remember going up to him after one of his plays had been performed in New York City. At this point I had only heard he was great. The only proof I had was that he'd loved my short story. It was when he turned to me with unconcealed delight—his face exactly like a human sun—that I felt deeply ashamed of my ignorance. I had read not one line of his work. Nor was I fully aware of why this was so. After all, I had been educated at Spelman and Sarah Lawrence, two of the best schools for women in the country.

Looking into his smiling eyes I thought: Ah, this is a good person! He is incapable of evil. It was a lovely moment, a lovely thought. And one I still believe. If I had known more about astrology I would have recognized Langston as a fellow Aquarian, constantly, and almost nonchalantly, filling up his private water jug and bringing it to the public square for people to share.

I understand the puzzlement that the gratitude felt by the people Langston helped seems out of proportion to the actual help received. When I think of the “things” Langston did to inspire the quite intense love I felt for him, they are few. He wished me happiness in my marriage to a non-black man. Well, this was a major act of grace at the time. I still have the card he sent. Exactly the kind a doting uncle would send: shaped like two enormous wedding bells, covered in white glittery stuff. His message, as always, scrawled in optimistic green ink. I think of the words of praise he wrote about my story; his suggestion, in his introduction, that I be given a subsidy; his comment to me that I had married my subsidy—which I did not fully understand, at the time; his understanding of me as a writer. A few letters. For the short story I believe I was paid ＄27.00.

But then, after our first meeting, and definitely after our second—when he reached behind him and swooped up a stack of his books, which he offered to counter my ignorance of his work—I had begun to study Langston Hughes. The man behind the smiling face. And I admired what I saw.

As much as I liked some of his poems and short stories, I liked even more his autobiography. I now understand that much of Langston's actual life is missing from The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander. That they could almost be viewed as Langston's fiction about his life. The pain in his life is not dwelled upon, certainly.

And yet, I felt it. Particularly in the sections where he wrote about his struggle with his parents. In Langston's father, cold, materialistic, contemptuous of black people and the people who love them, I recognized one of my grandfathers. It was the first realistic portrayal of a certain kind of puzzling black man I'd read—the man who has long since given up any belief in the race. I also learned from Langston that this man was wrong—or rather, pitiful—to have given up on us, and that it is quite impossible to harbor a healthy love for anyone who despises you. When Langston bluntly wrote “I hate my father,” I understood I was not alone in having some difficulties with my own, and that this hatred (which I had also felt at times) is an option for the child, and that the child is right, or more healthy, to refuse a parental “love” that doesn't see the child at all but rather what, in the father's image, can be made of him. Or of her.

The courage to demand a different self than the one insisted upon by one's parents or society is a major gift to the soul. And, through his writing, it was a gift Langston was able to share.

I think of Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes as literary parents, or guardians. I am always amazed when I read of their arguments and fallings out, and the eternal blame for their difficulties that is heaped on one of them or the other.

When I consider the ending of their friendship I am filled with sadness for them. It is so easy to see how and why they would love each other. Each was to the other an affirming example of what black people could be like: wild, crazy, creative, spontaneous, at ease with who they are, and funny. A lot of attention has been given to their breakup—which had lots of help from envious, misguided people who disliked both Langston and Zora—but very little to the pleasure Zora and Langston must have felt in each other's company. I like to think of them wandering about together in the early days, Zora showing Langston the close-up beauty of people in the deep South, and Langston returning the kindness, thoughtfulness and generosity that came easily to him with people he liked. I like to think of them telling each other jokes, eating fried chicken and watermelon, zooming about in Zora's little car, laughing. Which I figure was one of the main things they did.

In any event, I have drawn on these guardian spirits over the years, as I have drawn on those of my biological parents—who were also known to have a few fights and a royal falling out or two—and I have never felt that they were fundamentally at odds. Or that their characters were particularly flawed. If anything, again like one's parents, I feel that, spiritually, Langston and Zora resembled each other. And certainly as a black person, a woman, and a writer, I have felt nurtured and nourished by both of them.

When I started thinking about this piece on Langston I was surprised to find his presence so much further away than I imagined it ever could be. For Langston's spirit is one that stayed around, after his death, for many of us. Five years after he died I could still “feel” him, as if he were sitting in my living room or at the top of a tree in my yard. Even now, every once in a while, he floats quite vividly through my dreams, teaching me as a spirit in much the same way he did as a person. What, I sometimes wonder, does this mean?

I think it means that some of us, as we grow and suffer and struggle and age—turn into love. We may continue to be our ordinary selves, but in fact, a transformation occurs. I suspect we let go of everything that does not matter, even our own names, sometimes, so that when a bright hopeful face of anything greets us, we are ready to bestow a smile. The radiance of which lasts an entire life.

By the time I met him, Langston Hughes had turned into love. That is what I met. That is what continues to comfort me through various nights. That is what continues to be a sun. This is true, I believe, for many people.

And now the only question is: How can we honor this?

I think we can honor Langston's memory by remembering that in this life, the Christian church notwithstanding, we are not really required to attain perfection, which is impossible, but to learn to love, which is.

This is almost as hard as attaining perfection, but that is only because we are afraid. I like to think of something Mahatma Gandhi did, in pondering our situation. There was a Hindu man who had killed a Moslem child, and he came to Gandhi in his grief and asked what he could do to atone. Gandhi said: adopt a Moslem child, and raise him as a Moslem. This is a brilliant response, and becomes more profound the longer one studies it.

In this context, I think of a line in Langston's autobiography where he dismisses Zora Neale Hurston with the line: “Girls are funny creatures.” I am thankful that twenty-five years after writing that line Langston, on meeting me, showed no trace of thinking “Girls are funny creatures,” but rather responded to me as if I were his own child, my future as a person and a writer his own concern.

We grow and we change. That is our hope as human beings, and perhaps what we are all required to do is to adopt a Moslem child and raise it as a Moslem. Or, in other words, to make a decision to choose someone totally unlike ourselves about whom to be concerned. And to support them wholeheartedly as they continue to be who they are.

What other hope is there for our hate-filled world? A world in which everyone's children are imperiled.

So, in Langston's memory, this very night, think of a boy or girl, young woman or young man, unrelated to you—or so you think—and send her or him a card, preferably written in optimistic green ink. Ask about this person's well-being. Ask about their work and hopes. Ask about their dreams. Let it be known that you have reached whatever age you have attained and that you are still alive to life beyond yourself, and that you understand that we are each other's responsibility.

As much as I hate to bring up the unpleasant reality of the last presidential election, in which Jesse Jackson alone shone with his own light, I think it serves as an illustration of how much work we must do in order to preserve our own values and our own community. We are up against a hard game. But that is not the news. The news is our temptation to give up. The news is the fear, the lack of caring, the lack of respect among ourselves. The ease with which we think the worst about each other; the pleasure we take in exposing clay feet, the actual joy we take in attack. The way that some of our people have forgotten not only how to love, but how to smile.

Arrange to meet and talk to the young person to whom you've written. Dig up your love and bring it to this meeting. Dust off your smile and wear it. We are all our children have. And they are all our children.

Remember that love is more contagious than AIDS, and the radiance of one smile can last forever.