I brush the soft snow from the bench with a red mitten and take a seat on the ribbed, black steel. The memorial bench is not all that comfortable but, I suspect, it is much warmer when the calendar doesn’t say January.

I have come to this bench—to what? To connect spiritually with the late novelist and educator Toni Morrison?

To channel the Lorain native author?

To find solitude to better remember the novels of hers I have read?

To honor her?

To understand her?

A crow swoops down by my feet, but leaves quickly, creating footprints said to resemble tiny tridents in the white. I wonder if every day someone sits on this bench, feeds the birds.

The bench is one of 34 seats across the country (the total also includes one in Paris) provided by the “Bench By the Road Project.” Two more bench placements are scheduled for 2026—one in Texas and the other in Colorado.

Established in 2006 by The Toni Morrison Society, the project seeks to fulfill an obligation the author ignited.

In a 1989 interview with World Magazine, Morrison spoke of the absence of historical markers marking enslaved Africans and their stories:

“There is no suitable memorial, or plaque, or wreath, or wall, or park or skyscraper lobby. There’s no 300-foot tower, there’s no small bench by the road.”

Two benches and their unique plaques now exist in Ohio, marking the locations’ significant contributions and meaningful events. The benches cannot just be bought. They must have been earned by history, and often by tears and blood.

I sit still on this bench and close my eyes while Morrison’s characters parade before me. I see a former slave with a hideous, but almost horrifyingly artistic chokecherry tree scar on her back. An eccentric woman who slashes the face of her husband’s dead lover. A beautiful Black woman with eyes “the color of mink” who struggles with questions about values.

I see an 11-year-old Black girl who can’t understand why “all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl treasured.”

But she could “examine it to see what it was that all the world said was lovable.”

She could “remove the cold and stupid eyeball…take off the head…shake out the sawdust and crack the back against the brass bed rail.”

I shift my posture on the bench. I flashback to my own childhood. I was “mother” to several dolls, all of which were lined up every morning, fed from tiny empty spoons or miniature baby bottles, dressed and loved equally by me.

Then my family moved from Cleveland to a suburb when I was four and I introduced my dolls to my new friends. They played with all my dolls but one baby doll who was Black. It was my first introduction to discrimination.

I blink back to now. I sigh and signal with my arm for the parade to continue, one character fading into the snow showers that have begun again, another emerging from behind the falling curtain.

A ghost, inhumane slave owners, disloyal family members, women doing their best to survive sexual and physical abuse, poverty, despair.

The cast of characters is too much. Too overwhelming. I am shaking, but not from the outdoor temperature. I hold the arm of the bench and stand up slowly. I wonder how Morrison could create so many different personalities, both believable and also fantastical, throughout her writing career.

Maybe you “just” have to observe, listen, study the past, and give names and faces and voices to all the broken shadows you have encountered in your life or its legacy—a talent Morrison had like few other writers.

I touch the bench’s plaque and trace the words. I grip the back of the bench and hold tightly. I am not sure why. Part of me wants to apologize to Morrison, part of me wants to thank her. Part of me wants to say don’t blame me. Another part wants her to know she has caused me sorrow, cold and pain, but also moments of admiration for the human ability to fiercely love and protect.

What’s not up for discussion is Morrison’s influence on women writers, writers of all colors, lovers of powerful literature and perhaps, most importantly, any reader who takes her words as inspiration, hope, courage.

That effect is as hard and true as this steel bench before me. Morrison was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for her novel “Beloved,” and a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. But somehow those prestigious awards aren’t as important as seeing someone silently reading Morrison’s words with tears streaming down their face.

I make new tracks in the snow. The crow’s tracks long obliterated. I am not sure where I am going. But Morrison’s words have given me a path.

Bench by the Road projects in Ohio:
Cozad-Bates House Interpretive Center, 11508 Mayfield Road, Cleveland. Dedicated in 2016, this is the 19^th bench in the project and honors Cleveland’s abolitionist communities and the Underground Railroad.

Oberlin College, Tappan Square (North Main and Lorain Streets), Oberlin. Dedicated by Toni Morrison in 2009, this is the second bench placed by the Toni Morrison Society. It acknowledges the region’s role in the Underground Railroad.