Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Back to the Suburban Grind: Offline
Back to the Suburban Grind: Offline: It wasn't when people in my feed started explaining what Trayvon Martin did wrong (yeah, Trayvon). It wasn't when a former babysitt...
Offline
It wasn't when people in my feed started explaining what Trayvon Martin did wrong (yeah, Trayvon). It wasn't when a former babysitter typed, "Hey, black people" I suppose to get my attention and the attention of my black people friends as she explained our experience to us. It wasn't when one after another, black men, women, and children were shot and killed by police or sketchy white neighbors or strangers and were shown no justice, but I saw only posts about home renos and favorite cupcakes. It wasn't Colin Kaepernick and all he inspired on one knee getting character slandered and pummeled. It wasn't the endless reaction and outrage to every post begging the larger community to recognize that Black Lives Matter did not take anything away from them but that All Lives Matter spit in the faces of folks they called "friends." It wasn't that.
It wasn't when Brock Turner got away with a rape that everyone knew he'd committed or my revisited trauma when listening to the comments made about "the kinds of girls and women who are sexually assaulted" and the acknowledgment that a black girl or woman in such a predicament may as well keep that shit to herself since no one even gives a fuck about the white girl behind the dumpster. It wasn't one more post about the "gay agenda" and how proud some families feel about "kicking that no good kid out on his ass" because he was somehow born this way but-not-in-my-house-dammit.
It wasn't even watching the unfathomable rise of a straight up racist, misogynist, rotten to the core blowhard in the run up to a presidential election, or seeing friends with friends who support this horse's ass telling me there was nothing they could do about their friend's or family member's opinion and go on about their lives. The build up of racism, misogyny, rape culture, misogynoir, misguided, uneducated and under-educated thoughts and theories that were breaking my spirit. As one childhood friend or acquaintance after another showed themselves to be completely ignorant and unable to use any amount of reason, compassion, or empathy to the plight of peoples other than those that occupied their tiny American, suburban lives, I became discouraged, heartbroken, and wrecked.
I was keeping up with and reading too many articles that painted a bleak picture of our immediate future and I was internalizing the anguish of our collective souls. I was seeing my friends in pain, confusion, despair. Every single day. I'd always come here to find connection I didn't have off line and now on line was threatening my sense of peace, already tenuous, and sending me to the panicked dystopian hell where everyone who looked like me, loved like me, and felt like me would be on the run. Not even the hedgehogs and kitties and other cute things could save me.
When we got to Barbados my offline life was so unbearable that the retreat into the internets saved my life. I didn't want to admit that I was startlingly unhappy, suffering from postpartum depression, and realizing I actually knew very little about how to love and be loved and wasn't going to get it from my husband or distant family. My husband who'd seemed like a charm in New York was distant, unavailable, and overwhelmed in Barbados. He left me to the care and handling of the home and the children and retreated deeper into his own pathos. I did not know how to ask for care and comfort in all the ways it might have taken to get it, but I did know how to surround myself in a virtual world with people who would empathize with me, would root for me, pray for me, and wait for me to arrive every day to share. I needed that love and fought like hell for it no matter its imperfection and its empty promise.
Life off line is messy and beautiful, hysterical, passionate, and tormented. There are hours, days, weeks of high energy, high impact, live on stage business that exhaust, rip apart, and tear at the seams of everything. Whether I am dealing with my daily grind, my midlife struggles, or empathically feeling the torment of human existence, off line I often find myself gasping for air and trying to catch my breath as I see compassion and empathy exit the building. I've tried to share that on line--my hurts, my hopes, my fears, my anger even, but it often feels too tempered. I don't fight. I choose my words carefully. I listen and acquiesce. I am imploring, conveying, hoping, and posting about things I love. My children, fashion, decor, music, art, and all people and especially black people because I love us in our struggles, in our hopes, in our relentless pursuit in the face of unending trauma. I swear I hope I am convincing, showing, revealing who I am, who we are in every mundane, daily moment, but I don't know. I don't know anymore if I am succeeding in either space.
My life on line is beautiful, I'm not fronting. We are a photogenic family who take lots of photos of the major and minor adventures in our lives. There is witty banter and dry, in-the-know wit and humor. I have always been good with a comeback and can put together good images. In the face of the funk I can plant flowers and hope. I love a cute animal doing an insanely cute thing and am extremely passionate about the people, places, and things that I love. I am a well edited and curated catalog of incidents, moments, and images. But it is all edited. An artist edits her work, her writing, her paintings, her collection, her life to tell a more cohesive story. An unedited showing would be all over the place, full of contradictions, promises and lies and love and fear and darkness and light.
I hopped off line because I wanted to be in a private space to mourn and I didn't know what to say. I was hardly able to speak in real life and didn't want to flinch and wince and lie or rant and scream and plead in the place I'd come to seek like minds of the ether, people I know, I've met, and still have to meet. I ducked out when I wondered what more I had to give or contribute. When I thought I'd nothing else to share or say and that, as I have since I was a young girl begging my parents to see me, shouted myself to hoarseness to no avail. I bowed out and eventually watched from the sidelines. I am lonely sometimes. So lonely. I am scared and hurt and frustrated that we are not seeing or hearing each other. That people who have not lived outside of a world of privilege are still leading the conversation about whether or not our lives are even relevant, let alone how to heal all that separates and divides us. On line or off, I had to admit that I am still watching so much happen on the outside, feeling all of it, and screaming, screaming, screaming my head off in the most polite way. And I am not sure who can even hear me or gives a damn.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
It wasn't when Brock Turner got away with a rape that everyone knew he'd committed or my revisited trauma when listening to the comments made about "the kinds of girls and women who are sexually assaulted" and the acknowledgment that a black girl or woman in such a predicament may as well keep that shit to herself since no one even gives a fuck about the white girl behind the dumpster. It wasn't one more post about the "gay agenda" and how proud some families feel about "kicking that no good kid out on his ass" because he was somehow born this way but-not-in-my-house-dammit.
It wasn't even watching the unfathomable rise of a straight up racist, misogynist, rotten to the core blowhard in the run up to a presidential election, or seeing friends with friends who support this horse's ass telling me there was nothing they could do about their friend's or family member's opinion and go on about their lives. The build up of racism, misogyny, rape culture, misogynoir, misguided, uneducated and under-educated thoughts and theories that were breaking my spirit. As one childhood friend or acquaintance after another showed themselves to be completely ignorant and unable to use any amount of reason, compassion, or empathy to the plight of peoples other than those that occupied their tiny American, suburban lives, I became discouraged, heartbroken, and wrecked.
I was keeping up with and reading too many articles that painted a bleak picture of our immediate future and I was internalizing the anguish of our collective souls. I was seeing my friends in pain, confusion, despair. Every single day. I'd always come here to find connection I didn't have off line and now on line was threatening my sense of peace, already tenuous, and sending me to the panicked dystopian hell where everyone who looked like me, loved like me, and felt like me would be on the run. Not even the hedgehogs and kitties and other cute things could save me.
When we got to Barbados my offline life was so unbearable that the retreat into the internets saved my life. I didn't want to admit that I was startlingly unhappy, suffering from postpartum depression, and realizing I actually knew very little about how to love and be loved and wasn't going to get it from my husband or distant family. My husband who'd seemed like a charm in New York was distant, unavailable, and overwhelmed in Barbados. He left me to the care and handling of the home and the children and retreated deeper into his own pathos. I did not know how to ask for care and comfort in all the ways it might have taken to get it, but I did know how to surround myself in a virtual world with people who would empathize with me, would root for me, pray for me, and wait for me to arrive every day to share. I needed that love and fought like hell for it no matter its imperfection and its empty promise.
Life off line is messy and beautiful, hysterical, passionate, and tormented. There are hours, days, weeks of high energy, high impact, live on stage business that exhaust, rip apart, and tear at the seams of everything. Whether I am dealing with my daily grind, my midlife struggles, or empathically feeling the torment of human existence, off line I often find myself gasping for air and trying to catch my breath as I see compassion and empathy exit the building. I've tried to share that on line--my hurts, my hopes, my fears, my anger even, but it often feels too tempered. I don't fight. I choose my words carefully. I listen and acquiesce. I am imploring, conveying, hoping, and posting about things I love. My children, fashion, decor, music, art, and all people and especially black people because I love us in our struggles, in our hopes, in our relentless pursuit in the face of unending trauma. I swear I hope I am convincing, showing, revealing who I am, who we are in every mundane, daily moment, but I don't know. I don't know anymore if I am succeeding in either space.
My life on line is beautiful, I'm not fronting. We are a photogenic family who take lots of photos of the major and minor adventures in our lives. There is witty banter and dry, in-the-know wit and humor. I have always been good with a comeback and can put together good images. In the face of the funk I can plant flowers and hope. I love a cute animal doing an insanely cute thing and am extremely passionate about the people, places, and things that I love. I am a well edited and curated catalog of incidents, moments, and images. But it is all edited. An artist edits her work, her writing, her paintings, her collection, her life to tell a more cohesive story. An unedited showing would be all over the place, full of contradictions, promises and lies and love and fear and darkness and light.
I hopped off line because I wanted to be in a private space to mourn and I didn't know what to say. I was hardly able to speak in real life and didn't want to flinch and wince and lie or rant and scream and plead in the place I'd come to seek like minds of the ether, people I know, I've met, and still have to meet. I ducked out when I wondered what more I had to give or contribute. When I thought I'd nothing else to share or say and that, as I have since I was a young girl begging my parents to see me, shouted myself to hoarseness to no avail. I bowed out and eventually watched from the sidelines. I am lonely sometimes. So lonely. I am scared and hurt and frustrated that we are not seeing or hearing each other. That people who have not lived outside of a world of privilege are still leading the conversation about whether or not our lives are even relevant, let alone how to heal all that separates and divides us. On line or off, I had to admit that I am still watching so much happen on the outside, feeling all of it, and screaming, screaming, screaming my head off in the most polite way. And I am not sure who can even hear me or gives a damn.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Back to the Suburban Grind: 5th: The throwback
Back to the Suburban Grind: 5th: The throwback: And just like that, the summer is over and the girls are back in school. Sure, we will have a few more weeks of warm weather that will make...
5th: The throwback
And just like that, the summer is over and the girls are back in school. Sure, we will have a few more weeks of warm weather that will make getting up and spending the day at school complete torture, but the arrival of September means a new start and a season change to fall. As I got the girls ready for bed last night and for 5th and 2nd grades, the talk inevitably turned to my time in school, and specifically 5th grade as my rising ten year old expressed a little apprehension about it. Last year had been pure hell for her, and for me, as we tried to work our way through a difficult teacher and the anxiety being in her classroom produced. I'd stopped pretending 1/2 way through the year and told her that I agreed with her feelings about her teacher but that shit happens, for real, and that you can't stop striving because someone is trying to bring you down. I meant it. It is hard to learn that and as hard to teach.
What I remember about my fifth grade class are small fleeting moments. Memory is like that. I am not even sure that what I am remembering actually happened in fifth grade and is not an amalgamation of that heady late elementary-middle school block. My teacher, Mrs. S, was an old school, Southern, pinch-lipped, white biddy who wore skirt suits nearly every day. Drab colored skirt suits with skirts well below the knee and a mid-sized heel with pantyhose to make her legs look a beigy-tan. Her hair was coiffed like a cotton candy puff and sprayed so that not a hair moved. She spoke in that breathy, southern school marm tone that told you she had little time for your shenanigans, even if the shenanigans just meant asking to be excused to use the bathroom.
This woman brought little to no joy to my life (and I was still of the goody two shoes variety at that time). She seemed to revel in giving bad grades, marking papers in red, and sucking the life out of the room. I remember people getting in trouble, especially a boy named Derek who'd surely be diagnosed with ADHD today, and the creaky spot in the floor that I tried to avoid when I walked across the room to sharpen my pencil. My feet had grown so quickly that year that the only shoes that fit me were women's shoes and styles and I had this pair of wooden clogs with a heel that I wish to God I still had but don't. I remember that one girl in my class had reached puberty years ahead of the rest of us and that we all, boys and girls alike, obsessively watched her boobs doing what they do. I remember there were some fast booty girls that were rumored to have been caught kissing sixth and seventh grade boys and that I was both appalled and intrigued. There were combs in back pockets but I wore my hair in braids. And I remember for the first time that the school day seemed to go on forever. Mrs. S was no fun. In fact, she was as rigid and dry as her old pruney lips announced. I hated being in her class. And I hated her. After that year, thanks to puberty and beauty standards I couldn't meet and a sense of loneliness and isolation, I started to hate myself a little.
I watch my ten year old running up the hill to her elementary school with the other 3rd through 5th graders looking for signs of her sense of worth and value. I wonder if she pays attention to all the details that now seem my only memory of that time. All the kids look enthusiastic and eager and too young to think about any of the things I recall about fifth grade. My ten year old is all curiosity, rainbows, cute animal videos, and pop culture memes that seem to sometimes go over her head. She is still wearing ponytails and a tank top, no bra-lette. She is all legs and thanks to the crowning of the kids as king, she has age appropriate footwear and clothing even though her paws are getting big like a growing puppy. But she is also musical.ly and snapchat photos and silly little texts to her girlfriends on the phone we got her to stay in touch with us on her walk home. When I ask her if kids talk about love interests or care about their hair and clothing more than they used to, she rolls her eyes at me to tell me that my line of questioning is embarrassing and ridiculous because 'no' or more likely because she cannot imagine that I know how it goes.
Sometimes she tells me about something funny she has seen on line or an app her friends have shared with her. Other times she brings to me the most adorable, well-crafted stuffed animals that she knitted or sewed with no pattern or guide and I think about how amazing she is, about the talent she has that has absolutely nothing to do with me. At night, when her most anxious thoughts and fears creep in, she whimpers and whispers her self-doubt into my ear, tells me that she just doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up and asks if she really has to know right now. She wonders aloud why a girl in her class is wearing and wants to wear make up and stylish clothes "like an adult" and talks to everyone like she is grown. She tells me she feels woefully alone and is afraid not of the small details of her life but of the big picture. How we all got here. How do we discover what our role is to play on this planet? What if she just can't find her way?
And I answer. All of the questions to the best of my ability. And we talk about the anxiety and self-doubt that she is predisposed to thanks to me, and how she can best navigate it. I tell her that kids of her generation do things much sooner that we did and we laugh together and agree that yes, she got the teacher that nearly broke her spirit one year before I did. I tell her about Derek and the girl who developed early, about Mrs. S's sullen way of presenting almost everything. About how still and quiet and lonely that room felt to me. I tell her about the clicking of my adult sized clogs on the floor and the dreams I had staring out the window. I told her that I started to believe I couldn't be anything I dreamt of that year, that I started to believe I was not enough. That the way this teacher spoke of me to my parents and that they did not tell her to 'fuck off' made me wonder if I really needed to work that much harder or if they were just not "getting me." (At the time I went with work that much harder but now I am not so sure that was the right answer.)
This morning, though I'd offered to let her wear her mane of hair, now blond and brown from the sun, down, my 5th grader still chose ponytails. She wore high tops and a blouse-y purple top that has a built in tank top so she didn't have to sport an undergarment. Despite feeling a little under the weather, she decided not to miss the second day of school. Though she is a little shell-shocked from last year, she is willing to go forward feeling hopeful, accepting this new path and direction. She knows what she is ready for and what she is not quite yet. As I pulled up to our drop off spot, I wished her insight and guidance and goodness on this second day. I told her I'd tell her how I loved her from inside the car so she would not have to be mortified by my beaming pride once out in the real world. She grabbed her backpack and tightened her safety patrol belt and said, "I want everyone to know that you love me." She closed the door and got on her path. I watched as long as I could see her, hoping she would turn to look just one more time.
And she did.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
What I remember about my fifth grade class are small fleeting moments. Memory is like that. I am not even sure that what I am remembering actually happened in fifth grade and is not an amalgamation of that heady late elementary-middle school block. My teacher, Mrs. S, was an old school, Southern, pinch-lipped, white biddy who wore skirt suits nearly every day. Drab colored skirt suits with skirts well below the knee and a mid-sized heel with pantyhose to make her legs look a beigy-tan. Her hair was coiffed like a cotton candy puff and sprayed so that not a hair moved. She spoke in that breathy, southern school marm tone that told you she had little time for your shenanigans, even if the shenanigans just meant asking to be excused to use the bathroom.
This woman brought little to no joy to my life (and I was still of the goody two shoes variety at that time). She seemed to revel in giving bad grades, marking papers in red, and sucking the life out of the room. I remember people getting in trouble, especially a boy named Derek who'd surely be diagnosed with ADHD today, and the creaky spot in the floor that I tried to avoid when I walked across the room to sharpen my pencil. My feet had grown so quickly that year that the only shoes that fit me were women's shoes and styles and I had this pair of wooden clogs with a heel that I wish to God I still had but don't. I remember that one girl in my class had reached puberty years ahead of the rest of us and that we all, boys and girls alike, obsessively watched her boobs doing what they do. I remember there were some fast booty girls that were rumored to have been caught kissing sixth and seventh grade boys and that I was both appalled and intrigued. There were combs in back pockets but I wore my hair in braids. And I remember for the first time that the school day seemed to go on forever. Mrs. S was no fun. In fact, she was as rigid and dry as her old pruney lips announced. I hated being in her class. And I hated her. After that year, thanks to puberty and beauty standards I couldn't meet and a sense of loneliness and isolation, I started to hate myself a little.
I watch my ten year old running up the hill to her elementary school with the other 3rd through 5th graders looking for signs of her sense of worth and value. I wonder if she pays attention to all the details that now seem my only memory of that time. All the kids look enthusiastic and eager and too young to think about any of the things I recall about fifth grade. My ten year old is all curiosity, rainbows, cute animal videos, and pop culture memes that seem to sometimes go over her head. She is still wearing ponytails and a tank top, no bra-lette. She is all legs and thanks to the crowning of the kids as king, she has age appropriate footwear and clothing even though her paws are getting big like a growing puppy. But she is also musical.ly and snapchat photos and silly little texts to her girlfriends on the phone we got her to stay in touch with us on her walk home. When I ask her if kids talk about love interests or care about their hair and clothing more than they used to, she rolls her eyes at me to tell me that my line of questioning is embarrassing and ridiculous because 'no' or more likely because she cannot imagine that I know how it goes.
Sometimes she tells me about something funny she has seen on line or an app her friends have shared with her. Other times she brings to me the most adorable, well-crafted stuffed animals that she knitted or sewed with no pattern or guide and I think about how amazing she is, about the talent she has that has absolutely nothing to do with me. At night, when her most anxious thoughts and fears creep in, she whimpers and whispers her self-doubt into my ear, tells me that she just doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up and asks if she really has to know right now. She wonders aloud why a girl in her class is wearing and wants to wear make up and stylish clothes "like an adult" and talks to everyone like she is grown. She tells me she feels woefully alone and is afraid not of the small details of her life but of the big picture. How we all got here. How do we discover what our role is to play on this planet? What if she just can't find her way?
And I answer. All of the questions to the best of my ability. And we talk about the anxiety and self-doubt that she is predisposed to thanks to me, and how she can best navigate it. I tell her that kids of her generation do things much sooner that we did and we laugh together and agree that yes, she got the teacher that nearly broke her spirit one year before I did. I tell her about Derek and the girl who developed early, about Mrs. S's sullen way of presenting almost everything. About how still and quiet and lonely that room felt to me. I tell her about the clicking of my adult sized clogs on the floor and the dreams I had staring out the window. I told her that I started to believe I couldn't be anything I dreamt of that year, that I started to believe I was not enough. That the way this teacher spoke of me to my parents and that they did not tell her to 'fuck off' made me wonder if I really needed to work that much harder or if they were just not "getting me." (At the time I went with work that much harder but now I am not so sure that was the right answer.)
This morning, though I'd offered to let her wear her mane of hair, now blond and brown from the sun, down, my 5th grader still chose ponytails. She wore high tops and a blouse-y purple top that has a built in tank top so she didn't have to sport an undergarment. Despite feeling a little under the weather, she decided not to miss the second day of school. Though she is a little shell-shocked from last year, she is willing to go forward feeling hopeful, accepting this new path and direction. She knows what she is ready for and what she is not quite yet. As I pulled up to our drop off spot, I wished her insight and guidance and goodness on this second day. I told her I'd tell her how I loved her from inside the car so she would not have to be mortified by my beaming pride once out in the real world. She grabbed her backpack and tightened her safety patrol belt and said, "I want everyone to know that you love me." She closed the door and got on her path. I watched as long as I could see her, hoping she would turn to look just one more time.
And she did.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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