Thursday, December 29, 2016
Back to the Suburban Grind: Star dust and grief
Back to the Suburban Grind: Star dust and grief: I am crying for someone I've never met, that I have never known truly, someone known by everyone, and still feel crushed and lost and hu...
Star dust and grief
I am crying for someone I've never met, that I have never known truly, someone known by everyone, and still feel crushed and lost and hurt and angry like I knew them. It doesn't mean I've lost touch with reality or that I do not care in general for the suffering of the unnamed or that I love in a way that is unrealistic and fantastic. Sometimes we are just forced to confront our feelings of fear and loss in an immediate and direct way. Sometimes watching a supernova burn out reminds us that we are just hurtling through space on a rock warmed by the sun. Sometimes the comet that we tied our hearts to is disintegrating into the blackness and it stops our breath.
My house is eerily quiet, missing someone who was never there. The girls are asleep, snuggled up together across the hall from me. The night light plugged in for the seven year old, is slowly changing colors and throwing candy shadows against the wall. She'll be in my bed soon. I hear myself breathing. Not a good strong breath. I can't fill my lungs and exhale through my nose because only these shallow, choppy breaths keep me from bursting into tears again. I can feel my heart beating deeply in my chest. I cannot stop that. I listen to it and begin to count. The counting takes my mind away from the loss. It gives me something to do so that my idle mind does not visit what's missing. I've cried for every one of them, have been struck to the core.
News of the passing of someone that inspired me or showed me myself before I'd even considered myself sucked the air from my lungs and stilled everything. It seemed to never stop. My heart would go deep into my chest and my chest to my knees. Before I could stop them, there would be tears. I'd feel the planet's atmospheric pressure change. I'd know it to be true that they were gone and I'd sit. Sit with the silence and the truth of the inevitable. I'd go to the tape or the film or the music or the words or the pictures and will their presence on this earth just a little longer. I'd recall a time, a place, a moment, a gesture. I'd hear the first note and feel my teenaged, awkward self rise from the couch in awe and disbelief.
I'd remember the first time. I'd remember myself from that moment, from that time. I'd feel the layers of myself, the ones at the bottom, the ones that built me, and I'd remember the voice or the music or the sound or the image. I'd sit in the darkness. I'd trace my racing thoughts through my brain. I'd feel loss. I'd mourn. I'd grieve. I'd miss them, desperately miss them, their presence, their shared place on this earth and I'd reach out to others who shared the same sense of loss and longing. We'd ask why. We'd wonder if anything could have been done. Could anything have saved them? Can anything save us?
I'm in my bed with just one light on. There is a saved side but I know that only my littlest will share the bed with me tonight. Eventually. The rest of the room is dark and still and I am alone. I cannot bear to watch TV or videos. Cannot bear to listen to the news. With each retelling of a life in past tense, I shrink smaller in my own in the present. We are living apart essentially no matter that I have saved a place for him here at his insistence. It hurts. This loss. This missing what I never had, what I never knew because he remained aloof and untouchable all this time. All my promises to live fuller, to follow my own path, to walk through darkness, to trailblaze are whispers in the face of this overwhelming malaise. I am in shock, scared, and startlingly aware of my own presence. I feel myself watching me and wondering what I intend to do with my life. I listen to my shallow breathing and wonder if I intend to pour the fullness of me into my children because I don't dare live the life I promised myself I'd try to seek, but insist they try to reach. I wonder if I even have it in me to dream anymore. I rub my eyes. Stardust. In my eyes.
This last time the girls catch me, see my face in the rear view mirror as I adjust it to back out. "Are you crying, Mommy?" And I am. I'd let myself believe that the fates would spare these people. Might spare us this grief. That they would not all be taken. I joked with others about the Rapture and end days and then in the silence asked aloud if there was something I was missing. It's like standing in the middle of the storm, at its eye where it seems calm, yet all around there is madness. And I am both the calm and the madness. There are so many tears that I tell the girls that the stardust swirling in the air has gotten into my eyes. I am aching to my core because everything I thought I knew is no more. With each passing, a part of my foundation crumbles. As my girls witness me crack and glue myself together. They attend my Spotify listening parties and watch YouTube videos. They hold hands with me while I read to them thinking of my youthful heroes fading. It is the three of us. They have no choice but to allow me my space to heal.
As a girl, I'd fixed myself to the stars even though I knew that if I could see them, they'd probably already burned out. I saw them in the sky twinkling, sparkling, showing me infinite possibility and waited for them, longed for them in that weightless forever. I was transported. So many who have passed this year were those stars for me. They gave me voice, spoke my pain and heartache, longing and desire, wit and humor. They were everywhere, some so much that I assumed I'd have them longer than they'd been promised to the world. After first denying that they were gone, my heart settled on the realization, on the truth, and the tears could not stop. A short, shallow breath can hold in the despair only so long and then you are whimpering on your knees.
And I am here again. Another loss. They came so fast this year that I could hardly catch my breath before the heartache came again. And yet, I almost welcomed the distraction. I am already grieving. Each day a new assault on my heart. Each day a crack to be reglued. I keep holding up the stars for my girls, offering them magic to believe in. I have tried to show them the very best of these people, the very best they've given. They are already supernovas, hardly seen as human in our eyes. Beyond. Magic. Heroic but also human. We all need our heroes. Theirs is their father. And when I met him, he was sprinkled in stardust. By the time I was looking directly at him, he was already gone. I knew it. But I couldn't believe it. The giant universe that shared with us all these wonderful people now seems oppressive and scary and cold. But I keep holding up the stars for my children though I mourn the loss of the magic and the stardust.
I cannot name them all, but they each left this world and exploded like supernovas into another without warning. The sense of being left behind by their meteor trail of magic, unable to catch the tail of that comet, triggered me in so many ways. Before I could get my bearings, it would happen again. And when he finally comes home, I'll have no choice but to look into that trail of stardust and confront the sadness.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
My house is eerily quiet, missing someone who was never there. The girls are asleep, snuggled up together across the hall from me. The night light plugged in for the seven year old, is slowly changing colors and throwing candy shadows against the wall. She'll be in my bed soon. I hear myself breathing. Not a good strong breath. I can't fill my lungs and exhale through my nose because only these shallow, choppy breaths keep me from bursting into tears again. I can feel my heart beating deeply in my chest. I cannot stop that. I listen to it and begin to count. The counting takes my mind away from the loss. It gives me something to do so that my idle mind does not visit what's missing. I've cried for every one of them, have been struck to the core.
News of the passing of someone that inspired me or showed me myself before I'd even considered myself sucked the air from my lungs and stilled everything. It seemed to never stop. My heart would go deep into my chest and my chest to my knees. Before I could stop them, there would be tears. I'd feel the planet's atmospheric pressure change. I'd know it to be true that they were gone and I'd sit. Sit with the silence and the truth of the inevitable. I'd go to the tape or the film or the music or the words or the pictures and will their presence on this earth just a little longer. I'd recall a time, a place, a moment, a gesture. I'd hear the first note and feel my teenaged, awkward self rise from the couch in awe and disbelief.
I'd remember the first time. I'd remember myself from that moment, from that time. I'd feel the layers of myself, the ones at the bottom, the ones that built me, and I'd remember the voice or the music or the sound or the image. I'd sit in the darkness. I'd trace my racing thoughts through my brain. I'd feel loss. I'd mourn. I'd grieve. I'd miss them, desperately miss them, their presence, their shared place on this earth and I'd reach out to others who shared the same sense of loss and longing. We'd ask why. We'd wonder if anything could have been done. Could anything have saved them? Can anything save us?
I'm in my bed with just one light on. There is a saved side but I know that only my littlest will share the bed with me tonight. Eventually. The rest of the room is dark and still and I am alone. I cannot bear to watch TV or videos. Cannot bear to listen to the news. With each retelling of a life in past tense, I shrink smaller in my own in the present. We are living apart essentially no matter that I have saved a place for him here at his insistence. It hurts. This loss. This missing what I never had, what I never knew because he remained aloof and untouchable all this time. All my promises to live fuller, to follow my own path, to walk through darkness, to trailblaze are whispers in the face of this overwhelming malaise. I am in shock, scared, and startlingly aware of my own presence. I feel myself watching me and wondering what I intend to do with my life. I listen to my shallow breathing and wonder if I intend to pour the fullness of me into my children because I don't dare live the life I promised myself I'd try to seek, but insist they try to reach. I wonder if I even have it in me to dream anymore. I rub my eyes. Stardust. In my eyes.
This last time the girls catch me, see my face in the rear view mirror as I adjust it to back out. "Are you crying, Mommy?" And I am. I'd let myself believe that the fates would spare these people. Might spare us this grief. That they would not all be taken. I joked with others about the Rapture and end days and then in the silence asked aloud if there was something I was missing. It's like standing in the middle of the storm, at its eye where it seems calm, yet all around there is madness. And I am both the calm and the madness. There are so many tears that I tell the girls that the stardust swirling in the air has gotten into my eyes. I am aching to my core because everything I thought I knew is no more. With each passing, a part of my foundation crumbles. As my girls witness me crack and glue myself together. They attend my Spotify listening parties and watch YouTube videos. They hold hands with me while I read to them thinking of my youthful heroes fading. It is the three of us. They have no choice but to allow me my space to heal.
As a girl, I'd fixed myself to the stars even though I knew that if I could see them, they'd probably already burned out. I saw them in the sky twinkling, sparkling, showing me infinite possibility and waited for them, longed for them in that weightless forever. I was transported. So many who have passed this year were those stars for me. They gave me voice, spoke my pain and heartache, longing and desire, wit and humor. They were everywhere, some so much that I assumed I'd have them longer than they'd been promised to the world. After first denying that they were gone, my heart settled on the realization, on the truth, and the tears could not stop. A short, shallow breath can hold in the despair only so long and then you are whimpering on your knees.
And I am here again. Another loss. They came so fast this year that I could hardly catch my breath before the heartache came again. And yet, I almost welcomed the distraction. I am already grieving. Each day a new assault on my heart. Each day a crack to be reglued. I keep holding up the stars for my girls, offering them magic to believe in. I have tried to show them the very best of these people, the very best they've given. They are already supernovas, hardly seen as human in our eyes. Beyond. Magic. Heroic but also human. We all need our heroes. Theirs is their father. And when I met him, he was sprinkled in stardust. By the time I was looking directly at him, he was already gone. I knew it. But I couldn't believe it. The giant universe that shared with us all these wonderful people now seems oppressive and scary and cold. But I keep holding up the stars for my children though I mourn the loss of the magic and the stardust.
I cannot name them all, but they each left this world and exploded like supernovas into another without warning. The sense of being left behind by their meteor trail of magic, unable to catch the tail of that comet, triggered me in so many ways. Before I could get my bearings, it would happen again. And when he finally comes home, I'll have no choice but to look into that trail of stardust and confront the sadness.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Monday, December 5, 2016
Back to the Suburban Grind: Hothouse flowers in bloom
Back to the Suburban Grind: Hothouse flowers in bloom: This is me talking from the wound. I know all about holding hands across the aisles and all the way we've come. I know that we want to...
Hothouse flowers in bloom
This is me talking from the wound. I know all about holding hands across the aisles and all the way we've come. I know that we want to be color-blind and cast the world open and diverse and accepting of all of our unique qualities. But I am often a bit player, the confided in best friend, the fringe, the exotic, the unreal. When I tell you that I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders, that I am tired of carrying this load and you ask, "Why do you feel like you are carrying the load? Don't you feel that all women do this?" then I know that you don't know.
I know y'all love Soul Train and Beyonce and Jay-Z, Oprah, Barack Obama, and Michelle. I know you would kill for Oprah's giveaways, love Neil Degrasse Tyson, Van Jones, and every and any ball player who does not take a knee. I know you had a cool, wicked best friend/roommate/co-worker who gave you fist bumps, maybe even hugs, and held your hair back when you went all the way in and hurt yourself with the alcohol or the weed that you smoked up and she did only in secret when she was around your other white friends. I know that you know that Naomi Campbell is beautiful and the fiercest walker we've ever known, and that Vanessa Williams was the best Miss America, probably the only one you remember, and that Misty Copeland inspires the hell out of you and all the little dancers who have to "overcome something." Black.
We are the Titubas to your flying around the room foolishness. Listening to your cries, your stories and tall tales, moving the earth to heal your wounds. Standing by you because we've had no other option. When you go to trial, we are there with you. We might even hang first before you get released on appeal. When we go to trial you might bring things to the jailhouse before the lynch mob shows up. You wonder if we might survive it, rise up, come out the other side stronger, more knowledgeable, and still compassionate, softened, kinder, more enlightened.
You've watched the film next to us, in the seventh grade, heads bent low, when you see them hosing down the black people. The black people. Marching peacefully and fighting for their basic rights. I'm struck dumb, maybe you were too, of the older, black church ladies in their pillbox hats and their short strap purses carried delicately on their arms, moving forward with dignity, self-respect, desire, trembling pride, hosed down with water meant to quell a raging fire. Raging. Hell yeah. Inside. Magic. Students, girls and boys, holding on to one another, twisting like vines, never letting go of each others' hands until the torrent is just more than a human body can bear.
You've watched the film next to us, in the seventh grade, heads bent low, when you see them hosing down the black people. The black people. Marching peacefully and fighting for their basic rights. I'm struck dumb, maybe you were too, of the older, black church ladies in their pillbox hats and their short strap purses carried delicately on their arms, moving forward with dignity, self-respect, desire, trembling pride, hosed down with water meant to quell a raging fire. Raging. Hell yeah. Inside. Magic. Students, girls and boys, holding on to one another, twisting like vines, never letting go of each others' hands until the torrent is just more than a human body can bear.
The shit has to seem like witchcraft because the tropes and assaults were meant to take us down and still we rise. I read on a site, in the comments where I should not have trudged, a young white woman demanding of the black hostess, "How are you so strong? Black women are so strong! I wish I could bottle some of your strength and face the world." Now God bless her heart, I know she hit the trip wire with that BS backhanded compliment, but no one on there was up for her tomfoolery or her games. To paraphrase, "Bitch, you kidding me? We been carrying this shit forever. You can't even see us we holding it down so hard. We went in and voted to save the world and y'all still undecided. Take a seat. Ask us how we are so strong....what choice did we have when everyone turned their backs and tried to ride ours, the niggers of the world." We've toiled. Our backs are splitting.
Heads high even when we have nothing or little or a lot, but someone just had to tell us they think we didn't deserve it or got it because of Affirmative Action or a quota system that would surely have seen the mediocre (white) pass but not the exceptional (black). Your mediocre calls out our great with no shame. Maybe you don't know the difference. Go low and we go high and say what you will but still we slay. Calling us ugly and monkeys, animals and devils, heathens, idiots, sexpots and studs. Before the power structure threatened to take the one tool that poor blacks and whites had to find their way to any chance at that American dream, there was education. My grandparents told all of their charges it was all they could give them. They could work the farm or the factory, or they could learn. And there were tests put before them each time they succeeded and excelled. They'd just take the test again. And again. And again until there was no denying their excellence.
The rebirth of cool and slick and funk and style with roots so deep they reach to the core of the earth and out the other sides. We recall that deep, dark, black soil from which we were conjured, all of us, where the seeds of our souls are planted, where we have grown in sealed cages, like hothouses. Outside you see the foggy windows but inside there is a rich world, to which you have little access until you know how to cultivate and grown the most delicate of plants. You may touch the surface, clear the glass outside and peak in and see a world of lush greenery, steamy and hot, ripe with hope and expectation, creativity, drive, a microcosm into which you have never been invited because we are afraid. We have been protective of that space. You must remember that pesticides have been sprayed all over our blooms.
Colorism breaks people in many countries of the diaspora (thank you, colonialism) and in the good old United States of America, just one drop of black blood made you black, a taint you could only hide if you were fair and could "pass" yourself off as white, giving up everything. My aunties recall walking with my great-grandmother and having white people see her with them and think they were her "girls," what might be delicately called, housemaids, were they white, something that burned her up. She held them up, gave them their place, and their names. She tended to their delicate souls.
Whether the hair in a natural, long or short, wig, weave, pressed, relaxed, braided, colored, shaved today and down the back tomorrow, don't touch it or any part of me if it is just to dissect, tear apart, explore and navigate like some unfamiliar planet. We are from here. Of this soil. Right here. And our feet touch the ground, wiggle deep. We can put our ear down to it and hear what's coming, taste the air and feel the storm, rub the soil between our palms and know that there will be harvest or famine. We are more than just our bodies, place holders, stand ins for your desires, your whims, your hopes, your gardens. You can't imagine how deep the roots go to the center of the earth. We are in front of you and we are deep down and we are in the air.
Everyone is down when the gettin's good and the get down is low and funky and directed by Baz Luhrmann, but when we're being called out in numbers for the televised firing squads or tell our own stories in our own words, the spoken word hits the white window panes and the anguish gets distorted in the patter of rainfall against the glass. You mouth the words, "I can't hear you," and don't dare open the window to get in as you turn back to familiar pastures. There is a deep patch of forest where everything grows wild and resilient. We are made of that stuff. It is beautiful and awe-inspiring, tenacious, dignified, regal, magical. It is from these roots that we have found our strength, healed ourselves when no doctor was present. Salved our own wounds when you hurt us. Made our own crutches when we were too tired to bear weight.
I'm weary. I've grown so hot and ripe in that hothouse. Angry and violent with vibrant color and personality, wit, humor, and pain. You must come to know this garden. You must come to know what lies in there, to have a curiosity, to learn, to walk silently, to listen. If you come into this garden, you will know why I feel like I have carried so much and want to lie down. In bloom. And for even just a few seconds know a moment of existing just because I am beautiful in my own world before being plucked and studied in yours.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Heads high even when we have nothing or little or a lot, but someone just had to tell us they think we didn't deserve it or got it because of Affirmative Action or a quota system that would surely have seen the mediocre (white) pass but not the exceptional (black). Your mediocre calls out our great with no shame. Maybe you don't know the difference. Go low and we go high and say what you will but still we slay. Calling us ugly and monkeys, animals and devils, heathens, idiots, sexpots and studs. Before the power structure threatened to take the one tool that poor blacks and whites had to find their way to any chance at that American dream, there was education. My grandparents told all of their charges it was all they could give them. They could work the farm or the factory, or they could learn. And there were tests put before them each time they succeeded and excelled. They'd just take the test again. And again. And again until there was no denying their excellence.
The rebirth of cool and slick and funk and style with roots so deep they reach to the core of the earth and out the other sides. We recall that deep, dark, black soil from which we were conjured, all of us, where the seeds of our souls are planted, where we have grown in sealed cages, like hothouses. Outside you see the foggy windows but inside there is a rich world, to which you have little access until you know how to cultivate and grown the most delicate of plants. You may touch the surface, clear the glass outside and peak in and see a world of lush greenery, steamy and hot, ripe with hope and expectation, creativity, drive, a microcosm into which you have never been invited because we are afraid. We have been protective of that space. You must remember that pesticides have been sprayed all over our blooms.
Colorism breaks people in many countries of the diaspora (thank you, colonialism) and in the good old United States of America, just one drop of black blood made you black, a taint you could only hide if you were fair and could "pass" yourself off as white, giving up everything. My aunties recall walking with my great-grandmother and having white people see her with them and think they were her "girls," what might be delicately called, housemaids, were they white, something that burned her up. She held them up, gave them their place, and their names. She tended to their delicate souls.
Whether the hair in a natural, long or short, wig, weave, pressed, relaxed, braided, colored, shaved today and down the back tomorrow, don't touch it or any part of me if it is just to dissect, tear apart, explore and navigate like some unfamiliar planet. We are from here. Of this soil. Right here. And our feet touch the ground, wiggle deep. We can put our ear down to it and hear what's coming, taste the air and feel the storm, rub the soil between our palms and know that there will be harvest or famine. We are more than just our bodies, place holders, stand ins for your desires, your whims, your hopes, your gardens. You can't imagine how deep the roots go to the center of the earth. We are in front of you and we are deep down and we are in the air.
Everyone is down when the gettin's good and the get down is low and funky and directed by Baz Luhrmann, but when we're being called out in numbers for the televised firing squads or tell our own stories in our own words, the spoken word hits the white window panes and the anguish gets distorted in the patter of rainfall against the glass. You mouth the words, "I can't hear you," and don't dare open the window to get in as you turn back to familiar pastures. There is a deep patch of forest where everything grows wild and resilient. We are made of that stuff. It is beautiful and awe-inspiring, tenacious, dignified, regal, magical. It is from these roots that we have found our strength, healed ourselves when no doctor was present. Salved our own wounds when you hurt us. Made our own crutches when we were too tired to bear weight.
I'm weary. I've grown so hot and ripe in that hothouse. Angry and violent with vibrant color and personality, wit, humor, and pain. You must come to know this garden. You must come to know what lies in there, to have a curiosity, to learn, to walk silently, to listen. If you come into this garden, you will know why I feel like I have carried so much and want to lie down. In bloom. And for even just a few seconds know a moment of existing just because I am beautiful in my own world before being plucked and studied in yours.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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