Moving in Quick sand

I've voted for candidates who've not won before.  I have accepted defeat with a few tears and resolve.  I have felt ready to face it all again four years later because I have believed that even if everyone did not think as I did (and I have never been myopic enough to think they did so) that we, Americans, THAT WE, had agreed upon everyone's right to at least live in their own space in their own peace even if we (or I) longed for us to reach a greater love and understanding of one another.  I'd taken comfort that though I suspected/knew that behind closed doors there was a good deal of racist and sexist banter going on in the White House and cabinet of presidents in which I held little faith, I expected they'd at least try to hide their shameful behavior and policies with rhetoric and not come right out and assault us with hate.  And I wasn't afraid of them.

I can't lie.  I have always anticipated some level of racism from my fellow Americans, white Americans, and am always pleasantly surprised when someone shows me otherwise.  I listen to the stories they choose to tell, choose to share with me and the rest of the world and cull tiny messages, read the pinpoints on their maps to know if deep down or perhaps on the surface, they don't or can't fully respect me and my experience.  Somehow the shame was mine, that I suspected that I should do more, be more or less, convince them by contorting myself, my beliefs, my strong voice, my thick legs, my alarming sexuality, my very blackness, that I should be smaller in the world so that they might be able to live in a world that had me in it.  Even I allowed that the world, that America, did not belong to me and was thankful for every small mercy that showed me differently.

For every friend who told me of their racist auntie, of their schools where no people of color attended, of their churches, towns, teams, and other organizations in which they participated without ever seeing a black person, I winced and then offered some level of comfort to them.  Well, you are here now.  You are part of this diverse community.  That counts.  And sure.  It does.  It does.

When I was a girl, I saw the world through the low-res footage of the Polaroid camera and loved looking at the world in the black and white of my parents' and grandparents' "olden days."  Their pictures fascinated me because everyone looked so young and beautiful but the tales they told of the time, the parts of the tales that had to do with white people, were violent and bleak and terrifying.  The Civil Rights Era was not just part of history, tales made flat and two-dimensional by the textbook, but the stories told by my family, the young, beautiful family of a time that the United States of America was truly black and white and all shadows.  I lived among white people in a nearly completely white community and lived my life every day with a pinch of fear.  I knew that even in the face of good, kind, supportive white people, I'd better be sure that someone of color, someone who "knew" would have my back up front.

I was ashamed of this, ashamed that I distrusted, that I was not letting love in my heart, that I was not turning the other cheek.  I'd always felt that the burden was on me to prove myself open, easy-going, and cool.  I tried to let microaggressions and judgments roll off me, not let the blood rush to my cheeks.  Defused offenses with laughter, assault with excuses, ignorance with forgiveness -- "they know not what they do."

But I still held my breath.  I held my breath because I knew that it was just a matter of time before someone revealed that they weren't as down for my cause as they'd hoped.  Held my breath because I knew I might meet their mother/father/grandmother/auntie/cousin/friend/neighbor who said shit like, "that neighborhood is full of n****s not good black people like you," and I wouldn't know how to respond.  Because I was twelve.  Held my breath because someone would tell me that they didn't understand why all the other black kids were in different classes and not in the advanced classes with me.  Held my breath because someone wanted me to know that they just didn't find black girls attractive or black people attentive or able to swim or couldn't get lice or whatever it was they'd heard.  Held my breath when, though in the top ten percent of my class, lesser students dared tell me that I'd surely get into the college of my choice because of affirmative action and wanted me to agree to as much.  Held my breath because the cute boy told me that he really liked me but that his grandmother would roll over if he came home with a black girl and I felt badly for HIM.  Held my breath because sometimes it was all too much and the short breaths were all I could take in without letting my emotions seep out.

First there are tears and then there is rage!  And I learned that it was the rage, the rage that scared everyone off.  Even your allies couldn't stand for your rage.  Your family, your friends, the people who were trying to love you in their own way, to study you, understand you, who longed for whatever it was that being a black girl meant to them, turned from your rage.  It revealed too much.  Too much of the pain behind your forgiveness, behind your memories, behind your hope.  So you channeled it.  Made the world.  Held it up.  Shone the lights.  Held your breath.  Sucked it in with your head high, eyes focused, became a pillar, face tight with smiles but the heart pumping blood, veins and vessels pounding, eyes blinking, lashes fluttering, cool breaths sucked in and out through your lips.

Simmering, a slow boil and each assault or insult, each death called us from against the wall and whispered, "you'd better let it out or it'll blow."  Heat flushed our ears and our cheeks and we were at first embarrassed, humiliated, scared, and then the rage.  The rage came and poured like lava melting the glossy papered image of what we were expected to be into something harder to identify.  Our beautiful black friends staring past us, the invitation standing to join but no more asking or pleading.  Get on or get off.  And we wanted everyone on board.  We all did. WE did--the blacks, non-whites, immigrant, Muslim, LGBTQ, disabled, the intersected of all these groups--we want you on board.  Without you, your racist/sexist/bigoted/homophobic/cruel/apathetic mother/father/auntie/uncle/friend/cousin/neighbor will never hear another side to their fear-mongering, hateful rhetoric or their privileged denials and apathy.  They have already chosen not to believe me, not to believe us.  While I "may not be like the others,"  I still can't shake my otherness.  You must go in for me.

Listening at the foot of my grandmother in her front sitting room to the tales of a defiant great-granddad and seeing him in his black and white, youthful glory, seeing the uncles in their overalls who stood across the street from the little soda shop/cafeteria that was segregated while their nephews and sons attempted a sit in in white, short-sleeved button downs, and slacks.  Pouring over photos of our parents in large Afros and sideburns, wide collars, and short skirts.  Seeing our photos become clean and Kodakchromed and colored as our friendship barrettes and hoop earrings, lightening bolted enamel pins and designer jeans came into fashion.  Seeing the events of our nation unfold in real time in moving pictures in social media.  We are here.  You must go for us.

When I was a girl I was afraid of stray dogs because I didn't believe they'd listen to my command to stop.  I was afraid of quicksand because it looked like regular ground until you were deep in it and then it just might be too late.  I was afraid of someone disrespecting or challenging my family because I believed they'd already been through enough and didn't want to see them wounded or have them face me having been.  And I was terrified of someone calling me "nigger," "blackie," "brown sugar" in mixed company not only because it would burn my heart and rise up in my cheeks and my ears and force my tears, but because I was afraid to know just who would and would not stand for me.  

Those Kodak pictures from that time show me in my youth already navigating the world's mines and expecting that I might blow up first.  That little girl had hope but low expectations for others for whom supporting and loving her might be a burden, might even put them in harm's way.  That little girl learned to accept defeats that were altogether unfair, more than likely biased, and influenced by a society that valued her less than all the white children that surrounded her.  It is with shock but not complete surprise that a raging, narcissistic, racist, sexist, bigoted, misogynistic blowhard has been elected president.  It is the culmination of all my fears.  It is the ground made quick sand.  It is a stray dog jumping up and putting its paws on my shoulders looking like he might bite my face.  It is embarrassing the legacy of my hard-working, well-educated, dedicated, God-fearing, loving family and all the sacrifices they made to get me to my basic rights.  It is being called "nigger" or watching my friends cursed and assaulted because they are gay or Muslim or Hindi or Sikh (because please don't know the difference) or in a mixed relationship or disabled or a woman, strong or meek, or poor or uneducated or not quite what America had in mind when they narrowed their definition of "American."

When Al Gore and John Kerry conceded I felt deflated.  I'd had faith in their abilities to lead, to govern, to be fair and inclusive.  I felt that even if they could not ever meet or even understand the needs of my community and the communities of those I love, but I thought they might try.  I thought they wanted to understand, that they wanted to unify.  I was afraid of the machine that Ronald Reagan and the Bushes drove over communities I loved.  But what I feel now is terror.  Absolute fear.  I stare at my old class pictures, run my fingers over the old faces of friends, classmates, people who have said how much they love me, care for me, enjoyed our friendships who have voted against my very right to live as they'd like to live.  We are sinking.  That quicksand catches you and takes down slowly.  What happens is that we suffocate and drown and don't even know we've gone down.  And we all go down.


(c) Copyright 2016.  Repatriated Mama:  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 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.

Sempervivum: On Father's Day

As the story goes, when my father was born, his grandmother wanted him to be named Stephen after her father.  Though he'd already been named Jesse, he was called Steve or Stevie by everyone growing up.  I know a childhood friend by whether they call him Steve or Jesse.  I am called Stephanie after his secret name, a tiny, little seed planted at his roots in an alternative, dream landscape.  He is a hearty and strong succulent perennial, only an occasional flower, low growing, sometimes called the liveforever or sempervivum.  I am the flower.

We are so alike, my father and I.  There is depth, order, control.  We are protective, strong, and quick to anger.  I love him.  I always have.  I respect the man he became and all that he has accomplished in this life.  I know that if I am in danger he will come.  If I am hurt he will come.  If I need he will give.  But in order to protect himself from the slings and arrows, knives in the back and punches to the gut, he has had to encase his heart in thorns and booby traps.

I woke up this morning at 5:30.  That's too early for me.  Though I tried to go back to sleep, as soon as my eyes are opened I find that nearly impossible.  My racing mind started tracing lines to all the people I know who were probably awake.  Many living abroad where the day was already in full swing, friends on the West Coast who may be having a bout of insomnia or a late night of excess, and my dad.  Now that he is in his seventies, 5:30 is pretty early for him too, but the early mornings are a space where I always see my father.  Walking the house in quiet, breathing in life in a space where no people means no mask, rising with the sun as he did as a boy when he had work to do.  You can take the boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy.  My dad is still a country boy.

A country boy whose parents told him and his four siblings how to survive, and gave them everything they had, which was not much materially but was full to bursting with love, guidance, and support.  They told those beautiful, black children how to get out of the poverty they'd been born into and to keep marching forward despite the expectation of the America that they were born into, that they were 'less than.'  Education, character, drive, ambition, and familial love and support would help each lift the others.  Racism and segregation shaped my father's sense of himself and no matter his successes, he has remained haunted.  I can only imagine how he endured the assaults on his character, his intelligence, and his basic rights.  Like me, he is sensitive, easily wounded, and anxious.  Like me, he hides and protects his heart.  Unlike me, he has not found too many to share it with.  And that includes me.

The love was tough, survivalist.  It wasn't precious or adorable.  It wasn't indulgent or demonstrative.  There were few hugs and smothers of kisses and compliments and praise.  There were high expectations.  When one fears failure, when failure in a system set up for you to fail means life or death, there is little time for pleasantries.  The hurt of his youth nourished ours and our blooms were sprinkled with his pain.  But mine is a fragile bloom.  My roots are strong, but the flower is so desperate for the light, desperate for the watering and the nutrients, seeking warmth from real and artificial light sources.  I cannot always tell the difference.  

My father is the first man for whom I was ever too much.  I could tell by the way he looked at me since the beginning of time and shook his head.  I wasn't easy because I'm not.  I'm all of the things one has to work on, work towards.  Work.  I was compared to other girls who achieved better and far more than I.  Girls who were poised and demure and knew the code and followed it.  They were good girls.  They weren't wild and didn't talk back or fight or question or practice magic.  They were practical and organized and good.  There is a part of me that is like that too.  Remnants of my attempts to please.

My father is the first man whose love I could feel dangling in front of me but could never reach.  My father loves me, but it sparks like an electrical short and cannot sustain itself long enough to provide light.  I chase the falling embers, hope it will help me find my way through the tunnel but I I do a lot of feeling around in the dark.

My father is the first man I tried to impress by dancing all around him, literally dancing all around him, who was distracted and saw only a flash and felt a slight breeze from all my efforts, and wondered to himself, 'What was that?' as I whirled past.  I still don't think he has ever seen me.

But I am not done with him.  I am nothing if not persistent.  I am the flower.  And I continue to bloom in his face.  I remind him that without our roots neither of us would thrive.  That it does no good for the succulent to resist its flower.  The plants are so gorgeous, have always been some of my favorites, whether they have a bloom or not.  But the blossom is such a sweet surprise sometimes taking years to finally bloom.  It is more.  It is the hand to God, the reaching, the longing, the magic expressed.  It is working through the fear and the shame of wanting and needing to be loved.  It just is.  And we both need it, the light and the love.

As the story goes, I was born so prematurely that I was so tiny you could hold me in one hand.  There was a fear that I might not survive, that the cold winter and early arrival might be too much for my tiny body.  But my roots dug in deep and I called on everything I knew.  The sempervivum, I was going to live and he knew it.  So he gave me his name, the one he should have had.  I fulfilled the promise of this family name and we are tied.  Liveforever.

Happy Father's Day to my dad.


(c) Copyright 2016.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Struggling not to fall

When I was a little girl, my family went on a trip to an ice skating rink.  I'd never been before, but as I was a young dancer and pretty proficient on the roller skates, I took to it pretty quickly.  I remember the cold and the sound of the blades on the ice and the whoosh-whoosh of the wind as I picked up speed.  It should have been such a freeing experience.  Here was something that felt a little like flying, where I could feel the air in my lungs clear and crisp, where I could whiz around the rink passing people, turning, and where feeling that special magic of being encapsulated in my own energy bubble should have brought me joy... and I was riddled with anxiety. 

My parents, who'd both come from humble beginnings, had not had the opportunities or privilege to participate in frivolous activities like skating and skiing and tennis or any of the extracurriculars my brother and sister and I were afforded.  Their after school activities were often connected to their schools or churches and they still had to make time for work and help around the home or farm.  That day at the rink, my dad was up on skates for the first time too but was thrown off balance, resting on the thin blades did not come naturally.  My father was and is a very solid guy.  He stands firmly on the ground and gives the appearance of such physical strength that I was well into adulthood when I realized that he was not as enormous as John Henry the steel driving man.  For him, skating was a challenge, but one he did not give up on.  I watched him make his way slowly around the rink, staying close to the side, shuffling along trying to get the hang of it.  I have always been sensitive and empathetic to others' struggles and have always beamed with pride at anyone's attempt at something new, something dangerous, something just beyond their reach.  But this was too much for my tiny, little heart.  To see my dad, probably the person I loved the most at that time, certainly looked up to (despite our incredible differences), working so hard, struggling, broke me and I cried and cried at his humanness.  My world turned upside down when I discovered that he was just a man.

I have not posted for a very long time because again I have been crying and crying.  Seriously.  I am in a state of absolute pain at my core.  The very real humanness of this struggle has poked and prodded at my heart and at my gut so that I just can't get much of a handle on what I believe anymore.  I feel the same sensation that I felt watching my father, my hero, struggle around that rink.  We are wobbling and tumbling and falling flat trying to get around this fucking rink. 

I am hurt and angered and saddened by the outcomes of every case involving a black person--man, woman, or child--being killed by the police.   I am insulted by the imagery being used to describe black boys and men--animals, monsters, overpowering, aggressive.  I cannot believe that the victims and their communities are being told that it is their lack of respect that has brought the pox on their houses.  I am hurt that the trigger is pulled so quickly and that the victim is then blamed for his past or the figure he cut on surveillance video as though those were reasons enough to kill an unarmed person.   But I have been destroyed, truly cut deep, by the efforts of friends and neighbors quick to explain to me either the absolute necessity of handling black people this way or in deflection about the tough, brave, good folks in law enforcement out there.  Of course there are good cops and good public servants.  We are not talking about that and you know it.  I never said, "Fuck the police," but I hear in the tone, in the explanation, and in the crazy, blue-cold silence, "Fuck that.  Their lives got nothing to do with me."

 I can see how easy it is for people, white people, to look at these all black communities, see their upset, their anger, their feelings and disassociate.  I know you don't know any of those people.  Truth be told, I don't either.  Not personally nor tangentially.  It's easy to imagine that somehow they don't want the same as you want for yours, that they are willing to destroy themselves and their communities because they "just don't care about themselves or their families or their communities" the same way you do.  It is easy to say if they'd done nothing wrong, they'd have nothing to feel guilty about.  It is easy to look at someone in a moment of terror or pain or frustration and read them all the way wrong. It is easy to apply your experience to the actions of people you don't know, to expect that they had every opportunity that you did and assume they are just making bad choices or are somehow deserving of the incredibly strict, harsh punishment (death) handed down for being #alivewhileblack.  But the most infuriating thing is how easy it is for you to just look away.

I grew up in your community.  There were a handful of brown and black faces and all the rest were white and your right to be there no matter your efforts, your intelligence, how clean, good, big your family was, your lawn, your car, your station, you knew the place was yours.  That you were free to skate.  There was judgment, there were microaggressions every day against my family and me.  There were assaults on my psyche if not on my physical self.  The same folks I saw in church would not even acknowledge me in the Pathmark.  A good friend's mother would rather he put himself in harm's way than possibly end up in my arms (He was gay, but there'd be a little time for her to discover that.).  A teacher at school told me that my white boyfriend and I were disgusting.  A popular student told me I was pretty but that his mother would kill him if he came home with someone black.   Going below the speed limit, friends and I were pulled over and though I was not driving, the officer told me to watch myself.  We were held up as the proof of diversity in your community, shown as a symbol to how open and available and post-racial we were despite all that. 

And you know what?  I did try.  I danced and shimmied at the parties, deflected when way off color jokes were told, kindly shot down hideous come-ons conjured by images of hot black chicks who can't get enough.  I put the rage and anger and fear in my art, moved to spiritualism and meditation and the quest for a higher power, for the sacred because being just human, a black, female human navigating life in this country that believed itself to be post-racial, post-Civil Rights movement was exhausting and lonely and frustrating.  I struggled to get my footing when, even though I was full of promise, I truly just could not find my way.  Even now, I still listen to people who want to tell me how they see my experience.  How they feel about what I am talking about.  How they think I am getting it all wrong, that I did not even grow up in "those communities."  How I am a different kind of black person.  I'm not.

I never feared for my life but was raised to be prepared for it.  Though my father did not know we knew, we'd seen the rifle given him by his father before we moved "up north."  The weapon that was to protect us in case "those white people got crazy."  We knew the stories of the South, knew that my dad and his brothers and cousins and uncles and all the men before them knew to cross the street if a white woman was walking on the same side of the sidewalk lest folks get the wrong idea and come after the.  Knew that they would not look white folks directly in the eye, that they would try to keep their tone down so as not to rile or rifle or scare white folks into craziness.  It wasn't my story but I knew it well enough.  It's in my DNA.  I knew that they endured all that and moved to this neighborhood, this town for a good job, good schools, greater opportunity, and a chance to skate around the fucking rink.

And when I say this hurts and it's bad and we have to change it, I am called to task for rushing to judgment about the police, about the policies in this country that have tied the arms and bound the legs of black people and black communities.  Yes, this is a class issue, the impossible gap between the very wealthy and the working poor is staggering, but there is no denying, no matter how hard one tries, that this is a racial issue.  That black people, whether they grew up in their own communities or interspersed with yours, whether they grew up poor, rich, middle class, went to college or did not, whether they sell cigarettes on the street corner or are ivy league professors or lawyers or ball players or scientists or students are viewed with fear and prejudice.  And even when you ask the people around you, more than likely also white and as inexperienced as you are, if it is at all possible that what "they" say is true, you are going to get back the answer you want, the one you expect, the one that let's you go to sleep at night while some of us are still awake and in tears watching vigilantly. 

I went to school with you, to dance class, to church.  I trick or treated with you and sang carols.  I took the SATS next to you and lent you a pencil.  If you don't believe people you don't know, trust me.  Slow your judgment of black people and black communities.  Sure there are bad apples.  But since you've never really exposed yourself to those communities, you cannot see the people who are working their tails off to succeed in a system that is set up to fail them. Even those of us who grew up in your affluent communities don't have your advantages.  And before you try to hold a mirror up to our successes, our achievements, let me tell you that nothing, nothing at all came easy and the road was paved not only with obstacles and sacrifices but hellishly racist shit that would spin your head.

When we are frustrated, all of us, all human beings, and we need to let off steam, to vent, we do the same things.  Scream, yell, vent, kick stuff.  I know it.  Now imagine in your frustration, in your pain, in your rage at injustice and disproportionately unfair treatment, there is little to no release.  You are locked in.  No one will feel your pain, no one will comfort you, no one will even acknowledge you.  No one will cradle your head, no one will even address how much you hurt but rather that you kicked the door in.  Imagine that your outrage, that your expression is met with judgment and lectures and invalidation.  Imagine that what you know is true is argued about and disputed and negated to your face by someone who has no idea about what you are speaking. 

All of us, all human beings want the same things.  We want to give all we can to our families, to see them do better than we have, to give them more, to leave the earth, to leave society, the world better than we found it.  There are little girls and boys all around the country watching their fathers skate around the rink, stumble, struggle.  They are beaming with pride, falling in love with their heroes, cluelessly believing that if their fathers could just make it around the rink that all will be right with the world, completely blissful in their ignorance, as open and trusting and hopeful as every one of you.  They are willing their fathers and mothers and families and communities to succeed, to make it around, to get better at it, to progress.  

I was a little black girl with big dreams.  I believed my dad could do anything.  To see him struggle, to see him fall, to see him in fear, to witness injustice, unfair treatment, judgment reserved for him only because he was black, hindrances and obstacles placed in his way, when I knew he'd worked so hard, climbed such heights, done so much, threatened to halt my conviction.  I could glide and spin and soar only when I knew he was safe.  That he could get to a place where he trusted himself too.  That he could falter and get up again.  We must find a way to talk about race, privilege, injustice or our only future is dystopian. There must be fundamental changes in policy, better training of police and civil servants.  But most importantly, we must see each other.

What frightened me most going around that rink was not that my father was so inexperienced.  It was that the really good skaters, the fast ones who'd been skating all their lives might knock him down and that he wouldn't get up.  That they'd zoom by so quickly they might rush over his fingers on the ice as he tried to right himself.  I was afraid for him, as I am afraid for us now, that he would just give up and never try again.  And he did.  And I hope we can too.


(c)  Copyright 2014.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.