Back to the Suburban Grind: The very best words

Back to the Suburban Grind: The very best words: I've had nothing and everything to say.  In the movies when the aliens or the mermaids or angels arrive and meet human beings they oft...

The very best words

I've had nothing and everything to say.  In the movies when the aliens or the mermaids or angels arrive and meet human beings they often can't speak.  They don't know the language spoken where they've arrived on earth so they communicate with emotions, with touch, long gazes, and love. 

I haven't known how to write or speak this feeling in which I have been wading.  My vision blurry, I feel my way towards my allies and steel myself for our survival.  I don't want to use too much energy so that I don't spend my reserves.  It must look like depression or anxiety.  It must look like panic.  It feels noisy and chaotic and wordy though I've not spoken much at all.  I've shared on social media, I've advocated for the rights of everyone, and I wear my heart so open and unbuttoned that is screams out, you can see its beating outline on my chest.  I'm no mermaid, no angel, sometimes alien, but I don't know the words to speak here. 

I see messages from friend to other friends who don't believe this mess involves them.  White women who text other white women in the hopes that they have the same disdain for the disruption of their regularly scheduled privileged lives, only to find that the receiver of the message is active and hurt and organizing, and I am speechless.  It figures, I've thought.  And then gratitude washes over me for the friend who did respond in kind.  I read posts from people in my life from way back, way, way back, who say, "Stephanie, it's only been a week.  Give him a chance."  And I remember giving the bullies in my high school whose torment of me crushed moment to moment and being advised to either ignore them or ask them, sincerely ask them, why they've chosen me.  And I am stunned.

Sometimes people listen, really sit with you and listen, hold you in a space that they've generously given.  Sometimes when you aren't even there they are praying for you, hoping for you, holding you dear, sending you strength.  Sometimes, when you can hardly speak, they read between the lines and hear you.  Sometimes the very best words are expressed, barely spoken.


I have before felt lonely, afraid, ashamed.  I have before felt disconnected, excluded, outside.  This was something else.  In my spirit's journey for meaning, I'd assumed that deep down everyone was on a similar path, only to hear/see/read the most violent, hateful, racist, sexist, misogynistic, uninformed, terrified and terrifying rhetoric spewing like bile about almost everything and everyone I love and hold dear.  I have felt that all-consuming fear that makes people do the craziest things.  I have watched in shock, horror, and disbelief at what my black people would call the devil, take his place on a thrown right next to the people's god.  They look at the throne and can't tell the difference.  Angels, devils, mermaids, and aliens. 

I was sitting on a bench outside the bank on the corner of an intersection in my town.  I'd walked there to get out of the house where my husband was on day two and a half of man-flu and because I needed to take some fresh air into my lungs.  It was 33 degrees and windy.  It was perfect and it was quiet.  I talked to myself and to my angels.  These existential dialogues have been occurring with greater frequency, as soon as I've a free moment from the needs, desires, and demands of everything in the world.  It sounds like hysteria or panic, which it truly is not, but a real consideration of purpose, mine and everyone's, that I've not really had with this much intensity in my life.  This moment in history feels fraught. 

The wind hit my face and my hands as I tried to type on my phone to a friend.  It was so cold that I thought to just put the phone down for a while so I could just stop the sizzling in my brain that happens when I'm plugged in.  I put the phone in my pocket and turned my face to the sun trying to work her magic on that cold day.  When I opened my eyes, I made contact for a fleeting moment with a new friend, a woman I knew just briefly through shared friends and in our attendance at school functions, who was passing with a friend at just the moment I'd opened my eyes.  She doubled back and said, "Can I just give you a hug?  I want to hug you." 

I said, "Oh, yes.  Yes, please."  And we stood on the corner of at the crazy intersection in our little town and held each other.  When we let go I thanked her and we both wished each other a good day.  She walked on and I sat back on my bench and took in the air deeply, tears immediately coming.  Oh, my heart. 

Nothing and everything to say.  SHE had the very best words.

(c) Copyrighted 2017.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Drawing, work in progress.  Grace, 2017.  Stephanie Penn-Virot

Back to the Suburban Grind: Learning MLK

Back to the Suburban Grind: Learning MLK: Black National Anthem Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of liberty; Let our rejoicing rise,...

Back to the Suburban Grind: A legacy: Daydreaming, black and full of hope

Back to the Suburban Grind: A legacy: Daydreaming, black and full of hope:   Many mornings I will catch the girls staring off in to space, looking wistfully at nothing, and I will gently call out their names....

A legacy: Daydreaming, black and full of hope

 

Many mornings I will catch the girls staring off in to space, looking wistfully at nothing, and I will gently call out their names.  Their eyes focus on mine and they smile.  "Oops.  I was just daydreaming," they'll say.  The moments are so quiet and so lovely.  They know I will spare them a moment to dream, to hope, to wonder, to ponder before the sound and the fury of our lives sweeps us back up.  I envy them those moments.

Sometimes I dream of a life of excess, fame, riches, and wonder.  That's fantasy and it's fun.  Other times I dream of a life that is banal, no more exciting or charged than that of anyone else.  And then I wake up and remember that I am black.  That I am a black, sensitive, creative woman who, by nature of being black in America, cannot live an average life.  That my life is meant to define, describe, assuage, and calm the feelings of other citizens allowed to live their mundane lives. 

I did not grow up in poverty of any kind and I have my parents to thank for that.  Both of my parents went to college and got advanced degrees and had good, well paying jobs. And they will tell you that it was part hard work and part opportunity and part luck that got them there. They raised us in a community that had a good school system, new homes, nice parks, a community pool, after-school and recreational activities, and decent values.  There were not a lot of us (black folks) but there were some and save for the occasional asshole, we did not face full on, in-your-face-racist cross burnings, scrawled "nigger" or "blackie" on our home or property (though I was called "brown sugar" at 14 by a carload full of white teenaged boys when I walked home from a friend's house which scared the bee-jeezus out of me) like many of our friends in other communities did, and my parents were pin-pricked with microaggressions like having an asshole neighbor give their dog the same name as my father, and white ladies driving up to our corner lot asking my mother how "they" keep their landscaping so neat, implying that she was not one of the "they" who might live in that house.  I'd never been in a city except to see Broadway shows or visit an art museum or having lunch at Windows on the World at the top of the Twin Towers.  Only once do I recall going into Brooklyn as a young girl to see my grandfather's sister and being overwhelmed by all the electricity in the air and on the streets.  (It is funny to even say that now.)

I know the sensation of meandering through my neighborhood picking dandelions from my neighbors' lawns, riding my bike down the middle of the street to go play or spend an afternoon at the swim club.  I remember visits from the local police and fire departments at our school as fun and enlightening, seeing these civil servants as town celebrities.  My sister once won a contest at the Fun Fair and the mayor of our town delivered a pizza to our house while riding on the back of a fire engine.  I believe she got her picture in the paper.

The blessing of opportunity, of privilege, of wealth, and of achievement were often frayed on the ends by what I knew to be my history.  I knew that my paternal grandparents were not educated past 12 and that they married in their early teens and started a family at an age when I was stressing about pimples, boys (mostly how none of them seemed interested in me), and advanced algebra.  They'd lived in the Jim Crow, rural south in Virginia and their relations with white folks, though infrequent were strained and fraught with terror.  My grandmother told me often that she wanted better for me, for all of us, was grateful for what she'd seen us achieve in such a short amount of time, hoped that "white people were fair and good" to us.  There was palpable fear and doubt, but also hope.

It was the 70s and 80s.  I watched all the shows kids watched then--Saturday morning cartoons, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island.  We watched Good Times and What's Happening, All in the Family, The Jeffersons, The Muppet Show, Solid Gold.  I took my cues from television and movies, longed for the toys and games and new electronics that were advertised, put posters of Matt Dillon and then Duran Duran and Depeche Mode on my walls.  I walked the hallways of my school with a comb in my back pocket even though my hair was in French braids and then later too short to do much with.  I met with my guidance counselor about options for my future and took SAT prep.  I knew and understood all the cliques, high school groups and their status symbols, paid great attention to how each group defined itself and how it was seen or judged by the others.  I learned the spoken and code language of this society.  The symbols, signs, and words were all around me.  It was popular culture.  It was American life and it was all there was.

I didn't expect to see signs of me except maybe the one good dancer in a teen film or the one football player without dialogue standing in the crowd.  I didn't believe that I even really existed.  I didn't on film.  I didn't on television.  And I didn't in real life.  I didn't exist at home because I was being seen and not heard.  I was not being nurtured or caressed or prepared.  I knew I didn't see myself anywhere and I was not told I was meant for this world either.  It was all in shadow.  In secret.  I was invisible to my parents and unseen by the world.  When I took the time to daydream, I knew those dreams would never come true.  They couldn't because I could not figure out how to make them so on my own.

I put my girls to bed each night, climb in with them and whisper what I hope will be part of their inner dialogue when I am not with them, when I am gone.  They will not know that there was no space made for them on the screen because they will hear in their heads, feel it swirling in their hearts, that they are so crazy valuable and important that their wild, talented, loving, and gorgeous mother said it was so.  They will know it when everything else tells them that their hair and their skin and their butts and their nipples and their dreams and their desires and their needs and their ancestral pain and their fears and their massive, undulating auras are not quite right.  They will know that their mother's wounds are not theirs to bear but to know, to avoid.  They will know that things that I did not know.  Because in the middle of all this bullshit, if I cannot give them that, then I cannot do anything and my day dreams will not be true.

What I knew, what wove through my family tree, and ran through my veins was that it might not be with me, but with my children....or theirs.  The world was as crazy as it had been and each day it took more than it should have towards progress but there was my president.  There he was with his own story and his family tree, with roots as deep as ours and branches that reached toward hope.  He said we could.  He shared his family, his daughters, and let us watch a black family rise and dream and live a fantasy and the every day at once.  He is a good father, a good husband, a good man who did not ever let the slings and arrows, the insults and assaults from cruel and vicious fools lead him from his path.  He made me believe we could and that we were and that the daydreams, the hopes, and the tiny moments that draw my beautiful brown girls into outer space, into other dimensions for just a fleeting second before we get into the day, could come true.  That they can. 

And they will, as I have, and my ancestors before me, stare into space, daydream, about a life that is just for them.  Not a lesson, not an example or something to criticize, analyze, or discuss.  They will remember that they lived when Barack Obama was the President of these United States of America and that there was promise and there were possibilities and there was hope.  And when they come to and find that the pendulum has swung the other way, that they are back in a space where fear has weighted all of our dreams, stuck it in black tar, and threatened their flight, they'll remember that it has happened before and can happen again.  There'll be no going backwards, no matter how hard the shadows pull at their dreams ,no matter how much fear is stirred.  Their beautiful brown eyes have already seen the future.


(c)  Copyright 2017.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Drawing, charcoal on paper. Stephanie Penn-Virot.

Back to the Suburban Grind: New Year's Day: Black Eyed Peas and Collard Green...

Back to the Suburban Grind: New Year's Day: Black Eyed Peas and Collard Green...: There is promise and there are promises on the first day.  I'd promised the girls all break long that I would take them roller skating...

New Year's Day: Black Eyed Peas and Collard Greens (2)

There is promise and there are promises on the first day. 

I'd promised the girls all break long that I would take them roller skating at the rink.  Truth is, I love that place and it's not a big deal to go unless I am tired and frankly, a holiday break where I am alone with these two cherubs for the entire time is pretty damn tiring, no matter how cute and sweet they are, so heck yeah, I was tired.  Most graciously, my good friend agreed to go with her brood and we wrangled our teams to make it to a 1 o'clock session.  I'd left a pot of black eyed peas to soak in cold water on the stove and cut the collard greens the way I like them (in strips and with the large vein at the middle of the leaf removed, too tough for me).  I'd prepped just enough for me as no one in the house is going to go to town on them other than me, got everyone's gear in order, and locked us out.

We'd already let the new year's air into the house, saged ourselves and the house, thoroughly cleaned, and put away all of the Christmas.  I know my good Catholics and other Western Christians wait until Three Kings Day or Epiphany, the day of the feast that celebrates God's manifestation in human form of his son Jesus Christ, on January 6th, but we ain't doing that.  The falling needles and the wilting tree just weren't doing it anymore for me and I had to toss that tree out the window.  I awaited Janus, Roman god of dates, doorways, transitions, time, passages, and endings, and new beginnings to greet me and lead us into the new year.

After a good skate, I raced home to get that food on the stove.  Black eyed peas were drained and then put back in the pot with a ham hock and some seasoning, while the collard strips were put in a larger pot with some water, a little oil, seasoning, garlic, and a little onion.  I know some folks like the hock in that too, but not this year.  As everything began to heat up, that familiar fragrance began to rise.  I loved that scent.  I could hear the laughter of my grandmother and aunties in the kitchen.  Or my sister and cousins and friends in her kitchen, the party hovering close to the doorway of the kitchen, and then finally settling right in the center.  I vaguely recall our black neighbors coming through on New Year's to get some from my mother's stove or bringing their own to share.  Everyone filled with hope and laughter.  The year so new and full of promise.

I was always told that the black eyed peas and collards would mean good luck for me in the coming year but also learned from other Southern folks, that they also signified wealth.  The black eyed pea journeyed to the Americas with the Africans during slavery and has been connected to my black people and Southern cuisine for centuries.  While it hardly looks like a coin, like say, the lentil which is used in Italian good luck cooking, it is meant to signify the coins in the money equation.  I always thought they looked like googly eyes or funny cartoon faces. 

As with most if not all of traditional Southern cooking, this dish started in the kitchens where slaves and then domestic servants prepped food turning ordinary basics into delicious cuisine.  Black eyed peas were a cheap crop that held up well in winter.  Originally fed to farm animals, the black eyed pea became a staple for the Southern slaves who were often given cheap, scrap, and less desirable parts for their sustenance.  When General Sherman's Union army raided the Confederate food stores, they turned their noses at the black eyed peas and the Confederate troops were able to survive the harsh winter.  The peas became a symbol of luck and good fortune.

It is also said that in January, 1863, the newly freed slaves celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation ate black eyed peas, thus making the food a staple at any celebration of luck and prosperity for generations of Black Americans to follow.  Adding the collard greens to signify wealth or paper money and a side of pork, a rich, fatty cut of meat, promised blessings to come.  You had to eat them all together for the spell to work.  These Southern recipes are steeped in both tradition and superstition and I always loved starting off the year with a little magic.  There are plenty of Black folks who don't follow this tradition because of its connection to slavery and the images and metaphors of promises unkept from a cruel and blatantly racist, punishing system.  I ain't mad at that.

But I personally feel nostalgia for my childhood spent in and out of the kitchen of my Grandma, behind the house, on the farm, out front on the porch, making promises and plans for a future just generations out of slavery.  There was, for me, a real connection to my family tree and my ancestors, the pain and hope that coursed through their veins and now my mine, and blushed my cheeks when I was angry or excited or overjoyed.  This was connection to them. To us.  So I made them for just me after roller skating and gave the girls each one pea and one strip of the greens just to taste.  The little bit of luck, the spells from before they knew themselves or me myself.  Tradition and superstition.  New beginnings.



(c) Copyright 2017.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.