I don't know if the confusion is because my husband is French or because he is older than I am, but this whole birthday party planning thing has blown his mind. The lengths we have gone to to celebrate the birth of these people with their peers in a way fit for a new millennium-born hurts the brain. I honestly cannot say when all this happened because other than roller skating and bowling parties, there was not much else, unless a trip to McDonald's or the local ice cream parlor was your thing, for a child of the 70s to do to celebrate his or her birthday. The cake was almost always made at home and looked like all the cakes at that time--lopsided, licked, amateurish (except for one friend whose mother was a cake decorator and her cakes looked like heaven). The gifts were straight from the Mattel catalog and wrapped with little attention or care. There was pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, 2 liter Cokes, Sprite, and orange or grape soda, and bowls of junk food to choke a horse. I recall lots of running around and games like Simon Sez, musical chairs, and too much balloon popping, none helium filled. Basically, birthday parties were chaos, cost was minimal, sugar was plentiful, and fun was guaranteed to be a bit Lord of Flies meets Super Friends. It didn't really involve the adults who were there just to keep everyone in the ring.
My husband recalls his birthdays celebrated with family. A favorite meal, a lovely cake or tarte. If there were others involved, there was lots of outdoor activity, enjoying nature and its beauty. Kids wore nice clothes and uncomfortable shoes. They were quiet, elegant affairs. Yeah, so...the French do everything in a more sophisticated way. Whatevs.
Our six year old peanut had us choose between a gambling establishment for littles and tweens, silly games and twee rides, jumping parlors and castles, roller skating (She's a novice and my anxiety can't take her and all her friends falling all over the rink.), and this adorable pottery painting place. With foresight that we could never have known was brilliant until the moment our wee one's toe was crushed, leaving her unable to participate in physical activities, we opted for pottery painting at Color Me Mine. We invited all the girls from her class and two other pals who do not go to school with her and pre-ordered the Party Animal package.
The Party Animal package offered a choice of five ceramic animals to paint--a unicorn, a dragon, a kitten, a puppy, and a dolphin. With the party scheduled for just an hour and a 1/2, I figured painting, cupcakes, singing, balloons, done. Ten minutes after all the girls were given their animals to paint, the first was finished. Our staff host, not missing a beat, handed out paper bags to color and design. These bags would be the packaging for the finished products, the carrying cases for the work that we, my husband and I (probably just I), would deliver once the pieces had been fired and collected.
The Party Animal package was also an apt title for our working performance art piece because once these girls were set free from their own parental confines and rules, they let it loose! No matter that we were in an establishment with other people trying to get their creativity on painting plates and cups and ceramic tchtotchkes that said LOVE or were shaped like Winnie the Pooh, these animals were here to party! We served carrots and strawberries and pretzels, had juice boxes and water, and at the end of the fete we all sang "happy birthday" to my daughter standing before a line of mini-cupcakes (vanilla with vanilla frosting) decorated with candles that spelled out "happy birthday." (How apropos.)
The goodie bags I'd put together a few days earlier had fun craft stuffs, stickers, sidewalk chalk, and just one piece of candy (I'm not crazy about sending kids off into the world hopped up on sugary BS but I have no problem searching for grape soda if my oldest says she wants to taste it. Go figure. Hypocrisies of parenting.) Our baby said that her special day, celebrated one month after her actual birthday because of our Spring Break travel, was the best day ever. She has lots of those. Best days ever. My work is done.
...and yet. It sits funny with me this way of celebrating a birthday. True, it was my choice to have the party outside of my home, to turn it into an event, to pay someone else to do what I was unable or unwilling to do. I have had many birthday parties in the house and all of them involved projects. There was a shoe decorating party, tie-dye t-shirt party, princess party with costumes and crown decorating. It has been incredibly difficult for me to let go of the reins and let someone else take over and not because I am a control freak (or not only because of that), but because I have a hard time giving myself permission to not be everything at all times to my children. To everyone really. When I am tired, when I say I am spent, when I say I can't go on, can't do it, I still do. When I say no about something, I try to find a way to surprise a yes. Letting someone else run the party, handle the details and the minutia, put out the fires, and clean up the mess means my role has to change. It means that I cannot hide in the rush of the activity but have to stand stock in the center of it all and just be.
There are so many parties, birthday and other celebrations that have so much fanfare. I recall fabulous birthday parties for the classmates of my girls in Barbados where there was swimming and grilling and clowns and music and open bar and balloons and face painting and jumping castles and costume changes and the presentation of the celebrated as king or queen for a day. It was like a circus or carnival. And now back in the States, there are trips to all sorts of places set up for kids' enjoyment--skating and jumping and driving and water sports and painting, creating, dressing up. Parents spare no expense in honoring the arrival of their little ones to the world. But I miss the chaos of a 70s birthday party, the accidentally marvelous moments as opposed to the orchestrated, manufactured fun. I miss the innocence and the surprise of celebration, the wonder of it all.
All the girl babies from the party will have a little something to remind them of their time celebrating Virginie's birthday, at least for as long as their parents choose to keep it. Our girls will add them to the rows of other memorabilia from their childhood thus far and they will rest with the satisfaction that we showed them how much we love them by feting them so marvelously. But really, the part I like best about the girls' birthdays is when I can recount for them the days they were born. They love to hear the small details, a super hot day with melting pavement and hours wrapped in blankets in the cold room for Lily and a rainy afternoon when I stared out the picture window of my hospital room knowing she was soon to arrive for Virginie. They know these parties with so many celebrants will not last much longer. They have been told that age 10 is our cut off and that we prefer smaller events with just special friends to massive, all out galas.
I'm not crazy about celebrating like that, fearful that using money and gifts and grand events to show how I love them diminishes the greater truth. I want them to feel honored by how we love one another, to know it no matter what I have to give or don't. I want the truth to be that we love each other, celebrate each other, honor each other, care for each other, and will show it with our feelings, our hearts, and our actions. I don't want to buy their happiness or let them think they are owed such extravagance at every milestone, achievement, or event. It can't be about the money. It's purpose and it's value already threatens our daily existence. It's about the love. I can dole that out and sprinkle it everywhere, everyday. And sometimes it has to be enough even on the special days.
The painted dolphin and dragon sit on the book shelf in the girls' room. They love them and had a great time at the party. Right before bed, Virginie said in the sleepiest voice, "I know you and Papa and Lily love me because you tell me every day. But also thank you for letting me have this party. It was the best day ever." And then I don't feel so bad.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Showing posts with label celebration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label celebration. Show all posts
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Thursday, January 23, 2014
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, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.
Written by James Weldon Johnson (1899), music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1900)
When I was a little girl, though I suspect younger than my two ladybugs, to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday and legacy, my family would spend the afternoon at a black church listening to people who'd lived the Civil Rights era, talking about about our history and the life of this man, and singing and clapping and dancing to some incredible church music and old Negro spirituals. We were meant to reflect, consider, uplift, and rise, rise, rise above what our people, African-American people had endured in our own country. A suffering that weighed heavily in the story of my immediate family. This was not the story of just my ancestors, but of my people, my family, my father and mother and uncles and grands and greats. It was not the past. It was the ever-fluid present.
The emotion was so visceral, so intense in those moments that I was often embarrassed and humiliated by the heaviness. I was "one of the only's," "the Cosby" at my school (calling it largely white would understate it). That my father and mother were well-educated and had good jobs and provided for us well above even the national average allowed others to define us as "past all that." But we weren't. We aren't. That our experience as middle class, educated, law abiding, good neighbors seemed beyond the norm was just the start of the misunderstanding. That Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday was still being debated as a national holiday confused the young me. That I celebrated in a church full of African-Americans and very few others hit it home. This was my cross to bear. Everyone else got to have the day off.
I supposed that my white friends were spending the day shopping or watching TV, hanging out, while the weight of my people and really the future of our nation, felt like it rested on my shoulders, or ours, as we endured to keep the memory, the truth, and the history alive. I wanted everyone to be considering Martin Luther King, Jr. in the same way I was. As a man, a true person, not just an idea, who lived and breathed among us, the same air I was breathing now, and who saw severe racism and institutional injustice and wanted it changed. I felt burdened in a way different than my parents and their parents had because, according to so many who "don't see color" I was not living the outright barbaric terrorism of the times before the Civil Rights era and was living in a nearly all white community, proof to so many that things had changed. But I still felt racism's sting in the subtlest of ways and much of it was internalized. I still felt that it was mine to prove that we were equal, alike, multidimensional and multifaceted.
It has been an interesting lesson for my husband and me as we teach our children who are biracial and bicultural about this very particular man from this very particular moment and then open up the discussion to the greater topics of racism and equality, tolerance and acceptance. They are so young and still at an age where they see the differences but do not have cultural references as to what those differences mean to some people. Because I experienced that sense of other, I have been both protective of their feelings as such and have also opened the dialogue before their questions about otherness have even arisen. Since they were very small, they have seen both of our families either in person or via Skype. My husband speaks French with them and they see him speaking with his friends and family only in French. We have looked at the map and the globe to discover just "how close and how far" we are to where Papa grew up. We have visited with my parents and family full of aunts, uncles, and cousins down South in Virginia, Washington, DC, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. When we lived in Barbados, they saw what looked to them like a thriving nation where black and white people worked along side one another, where they saw many more people of color in positions of power, where racism was, of course, in play, as it is everywhere, but where they were not isolated because of their racial make up, where they were, in fact, part of the majority. They learned there about the East Indians and Chinese in the Caribbean through the friendships they made, and though they certainly asked questions about where folks came from, it was more a curiosity of geography than fear or confusion about race.
We have made it clear through our friendships and relations and the way we speak about all people that intolerance based on color, creed, religion, or sexual orientation will not be accepted in our home. They have never said they wished they were not black. Have never said they don't believe themselves to be beautiful. Have never said that boys are smarter than girls, that white is better than black, that something is a girl game or a boy color or only for one group or another. We talk about other peoples' customs and religions, even practicing some of the holiday customs and going to services when we can to demonstrate how all people are just striving for the same goals for their families. And yet, when the specifics of the pre-Civil Rights era come up, I am taken back to that pain.
As they have begun to learn the very cursory history and stories they are shocked. If the separate water fountains and segregated schools are enough to burn their cheeks and hurt their hearts, imagine how they were brought to silence, sucking the insides of their cheeks, when I told them that Grandma and Grandpa had grown up, been little kids, just as they were now, and had lived this abject racism and in the case of my parents, poverty. That Grandma and Grandpa and their brothers and sisters and so many other families and children just like them could not look away from it, rather had to live it and breathe it every day of their lives. That their lives, in the minds of many, institutionalized in the country they called home, were not as valuable as the lives of others. They see the absolute injustice right away and struggle and fumble for words. It is not an abstraction talked about as if a bygone era, but a tangible truth for people they love and hold dear. Because they still see us all as equal, they are just unable to comprehend. This is how it hurts. As the true terror and violence of that time comes to light for them, they will need the strength to endure and to forgive and to continue the legacy of a real, live man who gave his life in that struggle. For them, a real, live man who looks like Grandpa, for whom their eyes sparkle and who is loved infinitely.
Both girls are extremely empathic and feel for others so deeply and compassionately. I feel so lucky that we are the same in that way. But they, as I long ago, cannot define how it hurts, just feel the lumps in their throats, the flush of their cheeks, the knot in their hearts and they weep. They have cried for friends that "would not be our friends if the brown and the white could not be together." The oldest has a dear girlfriend who said she'd just have to be in jail because she loved her friend so and would not put up with that nonsense. I loved this comment more than I realized because it keeps returning to me, to my heart. I love it because during those MLK celebrations of my youth, I would have loved a professing of love and commitment such as that from someone who "didn't have to," was able to choose her commitment to the rights of others when the privilege was hers.
I was a young person and am now a grown woman. What I shared is not shame but the real visceral pain of that history, of what separation, exclusion, divisiveness of any kind does not only to us on a global scale, but what it does just to our own individual selves. We miss the true evolution of ourselves--physically, emotionally, spiritually, nationally, internationally, globally. We miss transcendence if we cannot "lift every voice and sing." I am working hard to keep that love in mine. I hope as we celebrate the man and his actions, we each make a commitment to ourselves and our actions.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.
Written by James Weldon Johnson (1899), music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1900)
When I was a little girl, though I suspect younger than my two ladybugs, to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday and legacy, my family would spend the afternoon at a black church listening to people who'd lived the Civil Rights era, talking about about our history and the life of this man, and singing and clapping and dancing to some incredible church music and old Negro spirituals. We were meant to reflect, consider, uplift, and rise, rise, rise above what our people, African-American people had endured in our own country. A suffering that weighed heavily in the story of my immediate family. This was not the story of just my ancestors, but of my people, my family, my father and mother and uncles and grands and greats. It was not the past. It was the ever-fluid present.
The emotion was so visceral, so intense in those moments that I was often embarrassed and humiliated by the heaviness. I was "one of the only's," "the Cosby" at my school (calling it largely white would understate it). That my father and mother were well-educated and had good jobs and provided for us well above even the national average allowed others to define us as "past all that." But we weren't. We aren't. That our experience as middle class, educated, law abiding, good neighbors seemed beyond the norm was just the start of the misunderstanding. That Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday was still being debated as a national holiday confused the young me. That I celebrated in a church full of African-Americans and very few others hit it home. This was my cross to bear. Everyone else got to have the day off.
I supposed that my white friends were spending the day shopping or watching TV, hanging out, while the weight of my people and really the future of our nation, felt like it rested on my shoulders, or ours, as we endured to keep the memory, the truth, and the history alive. I wanted everyone to be considering Martin Luther King, Jr. in the same way I was. As a man, a true person, not just an idea, who lived and breathed among us, the same air I was breathing now, and who saw severe racism and institutional injustice and wanted it changed. I felt burdened in a way different than my parents and their parents had because, according to so many who "don't see color" I was not living the outright barbaric terrorism of the times before the Civil Rights era and was living in a nearly all white community, proof to so many that things had changed. But I still felt racism's sting in the subtlest of ways and much of it was internalized. I still felt that it was mine to prove that we were equal, alike, multidimensional and multifaceted.
It has been an interesting lesson for my husband and me as we teach our children who are biracial and bicultural about this very particular man from this very particular moment and then open up the discussion to the greater topics of racism and equality, tolerance and acceptance. They are so young and still at an age where they see the differences but do not have cultural references as to what those differences mean to some people. Because I experienced that sense of other, I have been both protective of their feelings as such and have also opened the dialogue before their questions about otherness have even arisen. Since they were very small, they have seen both of our families either in person or via Skype. My husband speaks French with them and they see him speaking with his friends and family only in French. We have looked at the map and the globe to discover just "how close and how far" we are to where Papa grew up. We have visited with my parents and family full of aunts, uncles, and cousins down South in Virginia, Washington, DC, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. When we lived in Barbados, they saw what looked to them like a thriving nation where black and white people worked along side one another, where they saw many more people of color in positions of power, where racism was, of course, in play, as it is everywhere, but where they were not isolated because of their racial make up, where they were, in fact, part of the majority. They learned there about the East Indians and Chinese in the Caribbean through the friendships they made, and though they certainly asked questions about where folks came from, it was more a curiosity of geography than fear or confusion about race.
We have made it clear through our friendships and relations and the way we speak about all people that intolerance based on color, creed, religion, or sexual orientation will not be accepted in our home. They have never said they wished they were not black. Have never said they don't believe themselves to be beautiful. Have never said that boys are smarter than girls, that white is better than black, that something is a girl game or a boy color or only for one group or another. We talk about other peoples' customs and religions, even practicing some of the holiday customs and going to services when we can to demonstrate how all people are just striving for the same goals for their families. And yet, when the specifics of the pre-Civil Rights era come up, I am taken back to that pain.
As they have begun to learn the very cursory history and stories they are shocked. If the separate water fountains and segregated schools are enough to burn their cheeks and hurt their hearts, imagine how they were brought to silence, sucking the insides of their cheeks, when I told them that Grandma and Grandpa had grown up, been little kids, just as they were now, and had lived this abject racism and in the case of my parents, poverty. That Grandma and Grandpa and their brothers and sisters and so many other families and children just like them could not look away from it, rather had to live it and breathe it every day of their lives. That their lives, in the minds of many, institutionalized in the country they called home, were not as valuable as the lives of others. They see the absolute injustice right away and struggle and fumble for words. It is not an abstraction talked about as if a bygone era, but a tangible truth for people they love and hold dear. Because they still see us all as equal, they are just unable to comprehend. This is how it hurts. As the true terror and violence of that time comes to light for them, they will need the strength to endure and to forgive and to continue the legacy of a real, live man who gave his life in that struggle. For them, a real, live man who looks like Grandpa, for whom their eyes sparkle and who is loved infinitely.
Both girls are extremely empathic and feel for others so deeply and compassionately. I feel so lucky that we are the same in that way. But they, as I long ago, cannot define how it hurts, just feel the lumps in their throats, the flush of their cheeks, the knot in their hearts and they weep. They have cried for friends that "would not be our friends if the brown and the white could not be together." The oldest has a dear girlfriend who said she'd just have to be in jail because she loved her friend so and would not put up with that nonsense. I loved this comment more than I realized because it keeps returning to me, to my heart. I love it because during those MLK celebrations of my youth, I would have loved a professing of love and commitment such as that from someone who "didn't have to," was able to choose her commitment to the rights of others when the privilege was hers.
I was a young person and am now a grown woman. What I shared is not shame but the real visceral pain of that history, of what separation, exclusion, divisiveness of any kind does not only to us on a global scale, but what it does just to our own individual selves. We miss the true evolution of ourselves--physically, emotionally, spiritually, nationally, internationally, globally. We miss transcendence if we cannot "lift every voice and sing." I am working hard to keep that love in mine. I hope as we celebrate the man and his actions, we each make a commitment to ourselves and our actions.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Winter birthday wishes
January 2nd usually marked the return to normalcy or a soft landing like the movie stuntmen made onto that huge pillow at the end of the holiday circus. Rather the celebration of the Christ child and the baby new year than me. While I didn't want to be forgotten completely, I was happy to get back to life as we knew it with a tiny secret tucked behind my ear, kissed there by the aliens who, in the dead of night, have always given me promises of a good future, not just resolutions but truths to which I was completely committed. I still believe in the probability of great achievement even in the face of total chaos and seemingly impossible obstacles. Though I have never been good at the holidays, what with all the celebrating and wide opened hearts on display, the arrival of the girls brought a chance for me to live them with different eyes, a more gracious heart, and a sense of wonder and hope.
Every year since I can remember, the arrival of the "winter holidays" has brought a little bit of tension, a little bit of the blues, and an eerie calm like the dead quiet of the first inches of a massive Nor'easter falling heavily on whichever sleeping town or block I was living. It feels somewhere between a whisper and the ringing in the air after a scream. I can hear my breathing. Sometimes I can see my breath. Always I am aware that I am alive even if I can't move from the cold or the fear, and am fully aware of my surroundings even if I want to run. Always I feel awkwardly alone even when surrounded by crowds of family and friends. Alone but not quite lonely. Here, but not quite here. I can't be lonely with the two people standing on my neck, whispering in my ear, chatterbugging to my face. Maybe that's why they came to me. To connect me to place, pry open my wintered heart.
2013 was hardly different from previous years--family ups and downs, community involvement, extracurriculars, doctors' visits, health checks and scares and reassurances, travel, work, parenting, craziness. I don't think I have counted my "best or worst" years since I was a child when the best or the worst was defined by gifts I received or didn't, skills I acquired or didn't, loves found or lost. Now, every year starts off full of promise, more than 1/2 full with the days firmly on one side, ahead of me. Every year I know that I will peel back the onion to find some other truth about myself, my soul's journey, my desire, and my fulfillment. I make no promises other than to try to remain open to whatever comes, to avoid (or try not to bring it all the way to insane clown posse meltdown) the panicked shut down when the world delivers what I expected but for which I had somehow been poorly prepared. At the beginning of every year I have promised myself, "This is the year for me. This is the year I will find the path, stay on it, actualize." I say this every year. I believe it every time. I don't write the directions, don't set the map in stone and quickly wander from the path...or perhaps discover the one worn in the ground, not paved.
I followed the breadcrumbs back to a language I'd almost forgotten I spoke. Many speak it more eloquently, some with grace and agility, others flexibility, but when I speak to them too, they understand. In 2013 I returned to dance. When I was a girl who hated her voice and was sure no one cared what I might have to say, there was dance. When I needed to free myself from the torment of the bad years and celebrate the joys of the good, there was dance. When I had a secret to keep, something that I needed to protect, I could dance around it, seal it in. And then I stopped, quit moving altogether, froze, and then allowed myself to believe that another form of exercise, maybe the machines at the gym, maybe an abs class, could suffice. They couldn't. Not yoga, even with all the breath and meditating and connection to the divine, warmed my soul. It was dance that first connected me to my own life force. Reclaiming it was so helpful to everything in my life.
When I was a little girl, my mother asked for the same things for her birthday, Christmas, and Mother's Day. Peace and quiet and for everyone to get along. We thought that was the craziest request on earth. "That's all she wanted?" I'd wonder. What a waste of a rub of the lamp. You can have anything three little cherubs and a workaholic husband can offer! I get it now. As I reanimate the creative back into my life, each day becomes mine to do with it what I will. I can ease myself out of the tepid pool of suburban monotony and feel passion burning me up again. I want that more than I want anything else.
I have, and have admitted, struggling with the daily expectations of raising children and running a household. I want to do them both well. Hell, I want to do everything well, but I believe that I bring more to everything in my life with the creative spirit and energy weaving throughout. At the start of every year, I remind myself of this. Somewhere along the way the priorities shift and I find myself making excuses, putting off making art, writing, dancing, and allow the minutiae of parenting and being married to be more important. I'm going to do better this year. At least I am going to try.
My husband was gone for Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years and my birthday. He has been for nearly every one of these holidays since we've been together. I have stopped allowing myself to suffer this and surely cannot let his absence during these days define the entire year. Or me. Or my life. I don't want to be defined by absence or by a "lack of." But when he returns and asks what I want for all the holidays I missed, it's not a necklace, a scarf, socks, or new boots that I am after. It is some of that quiet, some of that peace, some of the space where I can create or believe myself able again. It is solitude and my own communion with the end of the year and the start of my new one.
My birthday starts up the music, begins the lightly playing song that guides me through the year. It is wintry and quiet and moody and grey and cloudy followed by bursts of sun in a cerulean blue sky, cold as hell frozen over, that thaws into a promising spring. I've bundled up into it and survived the shortest day of the year and the longest parade of holiday celebrations. And on this day, I danced and wrote and drew a little sketch. Running head first, out the window, to the stunt man's pillow down below. To the new year. Mine.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Father's Day
I have to confess that no matter how hard I've tried to distance myself from some of my dad's behavior, there is no denying it. My mom is as cool as a cucumber, but my dad, all moist-eyed and sensitive, all curious and excitable, all passion and rage and angst and joy, is me. A girlfriend of mine has told me repeatedly to cherish the time with my parents, to celebrate and relish who we are to each other while we can as both of her parents are no longer living. I have listened, though often not heard her because I am all moist-eyed and sensitive, all passion and rage and angst and joy. I am, in so many ways, the Mini to his Me.
He and my mother visited this Father's Day, stayed in our home for the first time (not including Barbados which was not actually ever our home), spent real adult time, played with the girls, went on our errands, meandered through our town, and enjoyed ourselves together. We visited with family friends and I felt adult and grown and proud to be with them. I am not sure if it is my midlife crisis which looks more like actualization than crushing breakdown, my recent interest in meditation and reiki, my return to dance, or the shifting of our collective consciousness, but I have found acceptance of who and what I am and therefore in who and what everyone around me is. I have found the desperate need to hold on to past hurts and wounds to be exhausting and have forgiven them, though more than likely not forgotten them. (I am, after all, a Penn.)
I have spent much of my life recognizing my role as a member of my family and feeling that I was failing miserably. No matter how this thinking came about, I felt overwhelming pressure at being "the daughter of/big sister of/first grandchild of." The burden of carrying on the line of two incredible families, the credits, achievements, and successes of which are extraordinary by any standard, but given that they were done by those poor and black, largely undereducated, during the dark days of our country's history, made them mythic, epic, heroic. I felt like a straight up fraud. Middle class, indulged, allowed my mood swings and artistic tendencies. I didn't have to give up my dreams, whatever they were, in order to put food on the table or a roof over my head. The fight over outright racist and sexist policy was fought on their backs while they were striving for the promised American dream. I had a kind of survivor's guilt because I did not struggle to achieve what was seemingly handed to me, because the racism, sexism, and white privilege that I faced was more subtle, because I had been walked to third base by a family that persevered in getting into the stadium and onto the field. Though I know now that I did not need to apologize for myself, I was then so sorry and ashamed.
Under the weight of that, my father and I would look at each other, mirror to reflection, reflection to mirror and declare, under our breaths, "What?" There was so much expectation, so much want, so much need and no real way to express it. So there was moist-eyed, sensitive, curious, and excitable passion, rage, angst, and joy. I would cower in his presence, hold my breath, not feel safe expressing myself as I did when "away from home." I was miserable to be around, was either pulled in and tense or exploded when provoked(like someone I know), hated family get-togethers because I did not feel like I could be myself, because what I reflected back to Mr. Penn was too much for him to see. It might even still be.
But there are new facets to this diamond. The glittering, fascinating shine of my children. And in my children and how they are being raised and how they behave and love and give, I believe that my dad and I can share something, love something together. We can see that part of each other that loves, that cares, that is all moist-eyed and longing. Like two shy, nervous baby birds we just might dare to fly, helping each other do so but also concentrating on our own flight. As I see him soar, I feel joy. He might not tell me, but he feels the same for me. We have this story to tell, this epic tale in which to contribute. Like that game where one person starts the story and another picks it up where he leaves off and then another picks up and so on and so forth until an incredible tale is told, we are living and weaving our lives.
We are much alike, but not entirely the same. My father wanted to be a journalist but that gig did not pay well enough for a young man who had the obligation to help put his younger siblings through school as his older siblings had done for him. He has something to say but often chooses his words carefully, sparingly, and certainly does not express his feelings or wear his heart on his sleeve. I, on the other hand, did not have that financial responsibility, did not make a choice based on monetary need, cry, laugh, love, freak, and respond to every stimulus, and even when I might keep my mouth shut, cannot do so! I want to say something; I have to, come what may. I respect his choices, his sacrifices, and know that he loves us. I hope, hope, hope that he feels the same for me because this Father's Day, I allowed myself to love him like I did as a girl. With wonder, curiosity, awe, and the first twinkling of autonomy that a toddler shows when she realizes that she and her parents are not indeed the same entity. It was truly a great day to celebrate having and being a father.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
He and my mother visited this Father's Day, stayed in our home for the first time (not including Barbados which was not actually ever our home), spent real adult time, played with the girls, went on our errands, meandered through our town, and enjoyed ourselves together. We visited with family friends and I felt adult and grown and proud to be with them. I am not sure if it is my midlife crisis which looks more like actualization than crushing breakdown, my recent interest in meditation and reiki, my return to dance, or the shifting of our collective consciousness, but I have found acceptance of who and what I am and therefore in who and what everyone around me is. I have found the desperate need to hold on to past hurts and wounds to be exhausting and have forgiven them, though more than likely not forgotten them. (I am, after all, a Penn.)
I have spent much of my life recognizing my role as a member of my family and feeling that I was failing miserably. No matter how this thinking came about, I felt overwhelming pressure at being "the daughter of/big sister of/first grandchild of." The burden of carrying on the line of two incredible families, the credits, achievements, and successes of which are extraordinary by any standard, but given that they were done by those poor and black, largely undereducated, during the dark days of our country's history, made them mythic, epic, heroic. I felt like a straight up fraud. Middle class, indulged, allowed my mood swings and artistic tendencies. I didn't have to give up my dreams, whatever they were, in order to put food on the table or a roof over my head. The fight over outright racist and sexist policy was fought on their backs while they were striving for the promised American dream. I had a kind of survivor's guilt because I did not struggle to achieve what was seemingly handed to me, because the racism, sexism, and white privilege that I faced was more subtle, because I had been walked to third base by a family that persevered in getting into the stadium and onto the field. Though I know now that I did not need to apologize for myself, I was then so sorry and ashamed.
Under the weight of that, my father and I would look at each other, mirror to reflection, reflection to mirror and declare, under our breaths, "What?" There was so much expectation, so much want, so much need and no real way to express it. So there was moist-eyed, sensitive, curious, and excitable passion, rage, angst, and joy. I would cower in his presence, hold my breath, not feel safe expressing myself as I did when "away from home." I was miserable to be around, was either pulled in and tense or exploded when provoked(like someone I know), hated family get-togethers because I did not feel like I could be myself, because what I reflected back to Mr. Penn was too much for him to see. It might even still be.
But there are new facets to this diamond. The glittering, fascinating shine of my children. And in my children and how they are being raised and how they behave and love and give, I believe that my dad and I can share something, love something together. We can see that part of each other that loves, that cares, that is all moist-eyed and longing. Like two shy, nervous baby birds we just might dare to fly, helping each other do so but also concentrating on our own flight. As I see him soar, I feel joy. He might not tell me, but he feels the same for me. We have this story to tell, this epic tale in which to contribute. Like that game where one person starts the story and another picks it up where he leaves off and then another picks up and so on and so forth until an incredible tale is told, we are living and weaving our lives.
We are much alike, but not entirely the same. My father wanted to be a journalist but that gig did not pay well enough for a young man who had the obligation to help put his younger siblings through school as his older siblings had done for him. He has something to say but often chooses his words carefully, sparingly, and certainly does not express his feelings or wear his heart on his sleeve. I, on the other hand, did not have that financial responsibility, did not make a choice based on monetary need, cry, laugh, love, freak, and respond to every stimulus, and even when I might keep my mouth shut, cannot do so! I want to say something; I have to, come what may. I respect his choices, his sacrifices, and know that he loves us. I hope, hope, hope that he feels the same for me because this Father's Day, I allowed myself to love him like I did as a girl. With wonder, curiosity, awe, and the first twinkling of autonomy that a toddler shows when she realizes that she and her parents are not indeed the same entity. It was truly a great day to celebrate having and being a father.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
After Mother's Day
My friend A has been spending Mother's Day alone for the past couple of years. Mother's Day for her, and for many I've heard, is indeed a mother's day. A day to do with it what she will. A went into the city this year, New York City, and did a bit of shopping and visited a museum. I went to the city too on both Saturday and Sunday to visit with my parents, my sister, my brother, and their families. My parents and my sister were staying downtown in Battery Park City at a luxury hotel with gorgeous views of the Statue of Liberty. Both days were wonderful for everyone, truly. No real conflict, no stress, no heartache or heartbreak. When visits with my family are few and far between, a weekend as lovely as the one that passed is a treat.
And yet there is this. On the one day set aside for me, a mother, I was running. Taking the train in the early morning after dressing the girls, doing their hair, making sure they'd eaten enough and had snacks for the ride in, carrying asthma meds, sippy cups, changes of clothes, toys, crayons, and coloring books. Before 8:45 am, I'd done more than most would do all day. My husband, not one for pomp and circumstance, grabbed a rose plant and card on his trip back from Dunkin Donuts, where he snagged Mother's Day sweets for the girls to inspire them to be kind to Mommy and get a move on in the morning. I gave him the words I believed he meant to share and told him that honoring his mother with roses, her favorite flower, was a pleasure and an honor. This is not a lie. I truly loved that woman. She was selfless, giving, feisty, and loving. We gave in the same way. Completely, totally, quietly wishing there were more moments for just us. After she passed, I spoke with an incredible psychic who gave me a moment with dear Paulette that still leaves me breathless.
It seems a shame there is just this one day. Only one? One day to express gratitude for the countless ways the mother of the house holds it down and keeps it running wearing lipstick and cute shit, strutting her stuff and cleaning poop. It's not just the household tasks, the bills, the drop offs, boo boos and play dates. The mother's heart is the pulse of the family, regardless of whether she is home all day or working outside of the home. When she shines there is light everywhere and when she is down the house is less comforting, scarier. Moms know this. I do anyway and I fear a cold heart stealing from my girls' childhoods, even if it is mine, so I give to them, share with them, show them love, love, love. They are too young to show me with more than affection and insanely cute hand-mades. Too young to give me my space, my time, my "room of my own" without someone else to take care of them. They are still little and my presence assures and reassures, that all is right in the world. My smile, my kind words, my listening ear tells them that there is a place in the world for them reserved by their loving mother.
They sat with me, held my hands, kissed my cheeks, and told me how much they loved me. I knew it to be true. Thanked them and counted myself among the blessed. Not just blessed to have children, but to be loved by such wonderful humans. It is intoxicating, heady, chakra spinning, and sometimes exhausting. Sometimes the love I want is quiet. Is a place for just myself. A place for my thoughts, my heart, my dreams, my heartbeat resonating just for me. It is a place where I can rejuvenate so that I can keep doing what I do. On this day, Mother's Day, I never made it to my own room, to my own space.
And like that, Mother's Day was over. We were home in time for me to get those dirty, little birds in the tub, scrub them down, read a story, and have Didier pick up some take out for everyone. After clearing plates and trays, I got the people to brush their teeth, get ready for bed, and pass out. There are photos, proof of what a wonderful weekend it was. I know it was. But I missed the chance to honor myself and after Mother's Day, there are never very many of those. For me.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
And yet there is this. On the one day set aside for me, a mother, I was running. Taking the train in the early morning after dressing the girls, doing their hair, making sure they'd eaten enough and had snacks for the ride in, carrying asthma meds, sippy cups, changes of clothes, toys, crayons, and coloring books. Before 8:45 am, I'd done more than most would do all day. My husband, not one for pomp and circumstance, grabbed a rose plant and card on his trip back from Dunkin Donuts, where he snagged Mother's Day sweets for the girls to inspire them to be kind to Mommy and get a move on in the morning. I gave him the words I believed he meant to share and told him that honoring his mother with roses, her favorite flower, was a pleasure and an honor. This is not a lie. I truly loved that woman. She was selfless, giving, feisty, and loving. We gave in the same way. Completely, totally, quietly wishing there were more moments for just us. After she passed, I spoke with an incredible psychic who gave me a moment with dear Paulette that still leaves me breathless.
It seems a shame there is just this one day. Only one? One day to express gratitude for the countless ways the mother of the house holds it down and keeps it running wearing lipstick and cute shit, strutting her stuff and cleaning poop. It's not just the household tasks, the bills, the drop offs, boo boos and play dates. The mother's heart is the pulse of the family, regardless of whether she is home all day or working outside of the home. When she shines there is light everywhere and when she is down the house is less comforting, scarier. Moms know this. I do anyway and I fear a cold heart stealing from my girls' childhoods, even if it is mine, so I give to them, share with them, show them love, love, love. They are too young to show me with more than affection and insanely cute hand-mades. Too young to give me my space, my time, my "room of my own" without someone else to take care of them. They are still little and my presence assures and reassures, that all is right in the world. My smile, my kind words, my listening ear tells them that there is a place in the world for them reserved by their loving mother.
They sat with me, held my hands, kissed my cheeks, and told me how much they loved me. I knew it to be true. Thanked them and counted myself among the blessed. Not just blessed to have children, but to be loved by such wonderful humans. It is intoxicating, heady, chakra spinning, and sometimes exhausting. Sometimes the love I want is quiet. Is a place for just myself. A place for my thoughts, my heart, my dreams, my heartbeat resonating just for me. It is a place where I can rejuvenate so that I can keep doing what I do. On this day, Mother's Day, I never made it to my own room, to my own space.
And like that, Mother's Day was over. We were home in time for me to get those dirty, little birds in the tub, scrub them down, read a story, and have Didier pick up some take out for everyone. After clearing plates and trays, I got the people to brush their teeth, get ready for bed, and pass out. There are photos, proof of what a wonderful weekend it was. I know it was. But I missed the chance to honor myself and after Mother's Day, there are never very many of those. For me.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
The Piece of Paper
"We're all married, right? All of us. You, Papa, me, and Lily, right? Because we are a family." 3 1/2 year old Virginie
Four years ago today, my Honeypot and I ventured out in the pouring rain to City Hall in downtown Manhattan to make it official before the State of New York. We'd left our two and 1/2 year old with a sitter and met a small handful of friends and family who would be there to support us and bear witness. We'd applied for the marriage license with an eclectic mix of New Yorkers just a week earlier. Though we'd been warned and were well-prepared for crazy, DMV-style lines, the program at the Justice of the Peace was efficient if curt, and we were there for less than an hour and a 1/2. By the time we were finished, I was ravenous and had to pee. That was pretty much par for the course in those days. I was five and a 1/2 months pregnant.
I don't want to say that we were pressured to marry. Anyone who knew us back then could have told you that no fire burned hotter or brighter than we. I just didn't see the point. I'd seen successful, unsuccessful, sham, true love, high school sweetheart, known-each-other-three-month marriages and thought, "good for them." I just didn't think that the piece of paper was necessary to define who we were and what we were to each other. He'd been married previously and had had a pretty contentious divorce, one that I had suffered through with him, and frankly, we already had a child together that for us was the true symbol of our connection. We were committed, were in it to win it, and wanted to build our family, our union, our team without being told how it was meant to be done. No matter the piece of paper, I knew that my partner, the one I had chosen for life would never abandon me or my children. I had faith in the person that he showed himself to be and he had the same faith in me. I considered us a modern, honest, intellectual, artistic couple who could take it or leave it. The paper, I mean.
My parents had come for a visit in the early weeks of my pregnancy with Virginie and I was violently ill. Didier and I were proceeding with caution as I'd already suffered two miscarriages. I knew the sickness was a good sign, as they say, but we were not quite sure we were ready to disclose our condition. The problem was I couldn't hide it either. When you are one who almost never turns down a glass of wine, the refusal of one definitely raises a flag. If you find yourself suddenly running for the bathroom every few minutes and cannot chew anything without getting that dizzy, nauseous feeling, you begin to look suspect. I was nervous and jittery withholding a secret that made us giddy so in an ill-considered act of sharing, I told them the news. There was silence and then there was head shaking. There were averted eyes and sighs. Didier and I looked at each other across the room and wondered if perhaps they had not heard me correctly. So I said it again. "We are pregnant. It's just the early stages but we are coming to the end of the first trimester so I am nearly sure." Nothing.
A handful of miserably depressing phone calls later and the "you're an unmarried hussy-not a celebrity-what would the neighbors think-you will never be forgiven-find a faith" dialogue convinced me that my perspective was surely not the most popular out there. Our relationship had outlasted a sibling's marriage. We'd been together for years and had a child already. We were in love. It seemed a bit ridiculous to us to spend our money on a ceremony to appease my family when we were actually preparing for a new arrival. Sharing our plan was really a courtesy. We'd made no decision on when or where or how or why we should "make it official."
And then came the offer for a position in Barbados. Upon review of the culture of this tiny Caribbean island, we started to see the writing on the wall. We could live together, common-law, in New York, forever. Our kids could have a different last name from their father, and we could hang with our diverse group of friends, our community and feel safe, fit in, avoid definitions from outside. But in Barbados we didn't want to make waves. We didn't know anyone and didn't want to draw attention to ourselves by rolling in there to live, a French chef and his African-American girlfriend and their children. We choked and felt that the easiest way to make this transition smoothly was to get married. We'd go there as an easily recognizable family, without demanding an understanding of our own definition of ourselves. Witnessing a couple we spent a good amount of time with, a Canadian couple together longer than we, having to explain again and again that they were a couple, a family but common law partners, proved to us that we'd dodged one.
I love being married to Didier, love what we have become, love the evolution of us from lovers to parents to the team. Each night, as I put the girls to bed, the littlest one asks, "Papa is married to all of us, right? We are all married together, right?" And I tell her, every night, that we are. That without her and her big sister there would be no "married," that we saved being married for them. For them, making the commitment, putting it down on paper, rather than in a song, in a painting, in a poem, in a dance, in the way we live was worth it.
Being married, signing the love on that paper has meant that everyone understands that we have rights and privileges that were we just "together" we'd have to fight for. We'd have red tape to cut through. Folks to have to argue with so that we could see each other in the hospital, have access to accounts and funds and private information. In Barbados, being married served us well, especially during exhausting visits to the Immigration Department where having and showing our marriage license seemed to at least begin the process, was a key to the door with 1000 locks. My unmarried friends suffered endlessly the questions, the downright concern that they did not have that paper and did not share a common name. With all else I was dealing with there, that just might have put me over the edge.
I am married. And to a wonderful man. When it so moved us, we went downtown and just did it. But what of our friends and family who don't have the option to do this? Who might embrace it in a way that we didn't? Who love each other as we do? Who have every right to cut through the red tape, see their names on important documents, embrace and love their children as we do? Perhaps they want to wing it and commit in a ceremony less formal and maybe they just want the option to have that piece of paper, to be legitimized, to be included, counted, considered. Some of my gay and lesbian friends won the geographical lottery living in States where their marriage is legal, so they too could run downtown as we did and just do it. Let's see us all catch up. If I need the piece of paper to make people happy, then I wish that everyone can be so happy. Just sayin'.
Happy Anniversary to my love. I remember the first date with the same jelly-legged swoon. The first kiss as the seal to our connection. The first fight as proof of our freedom to be ourselves and continue to love one another. The years in Barbados as a big freakin' test. And the piece of paper as a dare to do it all forever.
(c) Copyright 2012. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Four years ago today, my Honeypot and I ventured out in the pouring rain to City Hall in downtown Manhattan to make it official before the State of New York. We'd left our two and 1/2 year old with a sitter and met a small handful of friends and family who would be there to support us and bear witness. We'd applied for the marriage license with an eclectic mix of New Yorkers just a week earlier. Though we'd been warned and were well-prepared for crazy, DMV-style lines, the program at the Justice of the Peace was efficient if curt, and we were there for less than an hour and a 1/2. By the time we were finished, I was ravenous and had to pee. That was pretty much par for the course in those days. I was five and a 1/2 months pregnant.
I don't want to say that we were pressured to marry. Anyone who knew us back then could have told you that no fire burned hotter or brighter than we. I just didn't see the point. I'd seen successful, unsuccessful, sham, true love, high school sweetheart, known-each-other-three-month marriages and thought, "good for them." I just didn't think that the piece of paper was necessary to define who we were and what we were to each other. He'd been married previously and had had a pretty contentious divorce, one that I had suffered through with him, and frankly, we already had a child together that for us was the true symbol of our connection. We were committed, were in it to win it, and wanted to build our family, our union, our team without being told how it was meant to be done. No matter the piece of paper, I knew that my partner, the one I had chosen for life would never abandon me or my children. I had faith in the person that he showed himself to be and he had the same faith in me. I considered us a modern, honest, intellectual, artistic couple who could take it or leave it. The paper, I mean.
My parents had come for a visit in the early weeks of my pregnancy with Virginie and I was violently ill. Didier and I were proceeding with caution as I'd already suffered two miscarriages. I knew the sickness was a good sign, as they say, but we were not quite sure we were ready to disclose our condition. The problem was I couldn't hide it either. When you are one who almost never turns down a glass of wine, the refusal of one definitely raises a flag. If you find yourself suddenly running for the bathroom every few minutes and cannot chew anything without getting that dizzy, nauseous feeling, you begin to look suspect. I was nervous and jittery withholding a secret that made us giddy so in an ill-considered act of sharing, I told them the news. There was silence and then there was head shaking. There were averted eyes and sighs. Didier and I looked at each other across the room and wondered if perhaps they had not heard me correctly. So I said it again. "We are pregnant. It's just the early stages but we are coming to the end of the first trimester so I am nearly sure." Nothing.
A handful of miserably depressing phone calls later and the "you're an unmarried hussy-not a celebrity-what would the neighbors think-you will never be forgiven-find a faith" dialogue convinced me that my perspective was surely not the most popular out there. Our relationship had outlasted a sibling's marriage. We'd been together for years and had a child already. We were in love. It seemed a bit ridiculous to us to spend our money on a ceremony to appease my family when we were actually preparing for a new arrival. Sharing our plan was really a courtesy. We'd made no decision on when or where or how or why we should "make it official."
And then came the offer for a position in Barbados. Upon review of the culture of this tiny Caribbean island, we started to see the writing on the wall. We could live together, common-law, in New York, forever. Our kids could have a different last name from their father, and we could hang with our diverse group of friends, our community and feel safe, fit in, avoid definitions from outside. But in Barbados we didn't want to make waves. We didn't know anyone and didn't want to draw attention to ourselves by rolling in there to live, a French chef and his African-American girlfriend and their children. We choked and felt that the easiest way to make this transition smoothly was to get married. We'd go there as an easily recognizable family, without demanding an understanding of our own definition of ourselves. Witnessing a couple we spent a good amount of time with, a Canadian couple together longer than we, having to explain again and again that they were a couple, a family but common law partners, proved to us that we'd dodged one.
I love being married to Didier, love what we have become, love the evolution of us from lovers to parents to the team. Each night, as I put the girls to bed, the littlest one asks, "Papa is married to all of us, right? We are all married together, right?" And I tell her, every night, that we are. That without her and her big sister there would be no "married," that we saved being married for them. For them, making the commitment, putting it down on paper, rather than in a song, in a painting, in a poem, in a dance, in the way we live was worth it.
Being married, signing the love on that paper has meant that everyone understands that we have rights and privileges that were we just "together" we'd have to fight for. We'd have red tape to cut through. Folks to have to argue with so that we could see each other in the hospital, have access to accounts and funds and private information. In Barbados, being married served us well, especially during exhausting visits to the Immigration Department where having and showing our marriage license seemed to at least begin the process, was a key to the door with 1000 locks. My unmarried friends suffered endlessly the questions, the downright concern that they did not have that paper and did not share a common name. With all else I was dealing with there, that just might have put me over the edge.
I am married. And to a wonderful man. When it so moved us, we went downtown and just did it. But what of our friends and family who don't have the option to do this? Who might embrace it in a way that we didn't? Who love each other as we do? Who have every right to cut through the red tape, see their names on important documents, embrace and love their children as we do? Perhaps they want to wing it and commit in a ceremony less formal and maybe they just want the option to have that piece of paper, to be legitimized, to be included, counted, considered. Some of my gay and lesbian friends won the geographical lottery living in States where their marriage is legal, so they too could run downtown as we did and just do it. Let's see us all catch up. If I need the piece of paper to make people happy, then I wish that everyone can be so happy. Just sayin'.
Happy Anniversary to my love. I remember the first date with the same jelly-legged swoon. The first kiss as the seal to our connection. The first fight as proof of our freedom to be ourselves and continue to love one another. The years in Barbados as a big freakin' test. And the piece of paper as a dare to do it all forever.
(c) Copyright 2012. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Things I love, I am thankful
I am thankful for Lily's shy smile, Virginie's eyelashes, watching Lily dance when she thinks I cannot see her, Virginie's inquisitive mind, both girls' constant conversation, Didier's eyes darting from one place to the next while he thinks. I love to watch my husband walking to the train from our window, his bouncy gait as enthusiastic and energetic as the little boy I imagine him to have been. I am thankful that each day, whether we drive each other mad or not, Didier and I have something more to discover about one another and thus far, still think that's pretty freakin' cool. That we adore and admire and support our children with the same intensity and joy. I love the curiosity, the drive, the charisma, and character of my children. I love that my people trust me when they look in my eyes and know that I'll always have their backs even if just moments before, I was yelling. I love that we come back to center after every argument, every tussle, every misunderstanding and love it out. We are a family and as it is the first bond, the first experience of community and strength, I want to give that to them hard, drill it in so they never forget and wander off or get lost.
I am thankful for the families that came together to produce me. Two incredibly strong, motivated, devoted, exceptional families that valued honesty, truth, love, wisdom, service, community, and compassion over the superficial and shallow. Two families whose matriarchs and patriarchs were willing to endure and suffer setbacks and slights so that their families, their progeny could go forward and soar. I am so grateful for this blessing and so often let myself forget the strength and guidance given to me by all these people, all these folks, both when they were with me and in spirit. I am thankful for my connection to the spirit, to the universe, to God without which I would surely have given up. I am thankful that even when things are difficult, exhausting, terrifying, I want to live and live long. I accept the responsibility of my lineage and feel blessed that it is mine. I am thankful that I get to pass this on to my children.
I am thankful for my education, for all that I have learned in school and in life, even when the lessons were damned hard and I thought they might kill me. I am blessed that the value of a good, proper education was given to me by my parents, their parents, and their parents' parents. I know that being able to learn, to think for myself, to consider has provided me with many incredible opportunities and allowed me to see the world through eager, inquisitive eyes. I am so happy to be able to share these wonders with the girls. I am happy that close-mindedness, shallow thinking, hate, and disdain have not been allowed to take root in my heart or my mind.
I am thankful that as I age it is still hard to tell just exactly how old I am (for others) and that my body continues to serve me well and that I am in good health. I pray that I am able to be with the girls and my husband for a long time, a long, healthy life. I am blessed that the early signs of middle age are creeping slowly and not coming quickly (though I'd love to spend a tiny bit more time in the gym working it all out.) I have my mother to thank for that, at least her incredible genes, because she looks about fifteen to twenty years younger than she is and has stayed as youthful in spirit (or maybe it's the early onset of the "whatevs.")
My friends and family who have supported me, cared for me, loved me, given to me when I didn't dare ask but certainly needed it have my thanks and gratitude forever. These gems have shaped my life, changed me and challenged me, begged me to get my lessons when I was violently opposed, blinded by my ego, hurt feelings, and fear. There are hardly words to describe how that invisible safety net of souls feels when it lifts me up and stands me back on my feet. Through the trials and tribulations of a life lived seeking the truth, these people are invaluable. Accepting their guidance and spirit has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. I am truly thankful.
The Thanksgiving brawls, physical, psychological, and emotional that must certainly attack more than just me, often try to steal my heart and turn it to coal, may try to threaten my sense of gratitude, may try to break my heart and render me thankless. But even that won't do. My life is blessed. My heart is still open. And I am thankful, thankful, thankful that I am able to continue to love.
Happy Thanksgiving.
(c) Copyright 2012. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
I am thankful for the families that came together to produce me. Two incredibly strong, motivated, devoted, exceptional families that valued honesty, truth, love, wisdom, service, community, and compassion over the superficial and shallow. Two families whose matriarchs and patriarchs were willing to endure and suffer setbacks and slights so that their families, their progeny could go forward and soar. I am so grateful for this blessing and so often let myself forget the strength and guidance given to me by all these people, all these folks, both when they were with me and in spirit. I am thankful for my connection to the spirit, to the universe, to God without which I would surely have given up. I am thankful that even when things are difficult, exhausting, terrifying, I want to live and live long. I accept the responsibility of my lineage and feel blessed that it is mine. I am thankful that I get to pass this on to my children.
I am thankful for my education, for all that I have learned in school and in life, even when the lessons were damned hard and I thought they might kill me. I am blessed that the value of a good, proper education was given to me by my parents, their parents, and their parents' parents. I know that being able to learn, to think for myself, to consider has provided me with many incredible opportunities and allowed me to see the world through eager, inquisitive eyes. I am so happy to be able to share these wonders with the girls. I am happy that close-mindedness, shallow thinking, hate, and disdain have not been allowed to take root in my heart or my mind.
I am thankful that as I age it is still hard to tell just exactly how old I am (for others) and that my body continues to serve me well and that I am in good health. I pray that I am able to be with the girls and my husband for a long time, a long, healthy life. I am blessed that the early signs of middle age are creeping slowly and not coming quickly (though I'd love to spend a tiny bit more time in the gym working it all out.) I have my mother to thank for that, at least her incredible genes, because she looks about fifteen to twenty years younger than she is and has stayed as youthful in spirit (or maybe it's the early onset of the "whatevs.")
My friends and family who have supported me, cared for me, loved me, given to me when I didn't dare ask but certainly needed it have my thanks and gratitude forever. These gems have shaped my life, changed me and challenged me, begged me to get my lessons when I was violently opposed, blinded by my ego, hurt feelings, and fear. There are hardly words to describe how that invisible safety net of souls feels when it lifts me up and stands me back on my feet. Through the trials and tribulations of a life lived seeking the truth, these people are invaluable. Accepting their guidance and spirit has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. I am truly thankful.
The Thanksgiving brawls, physical, psychological, and emotional that must certainly attack more than just me, often try to steal my heart and turn it to coal, may try to threaten my sense of gratitude, may try to break my heart and render me thankless. But even that won't do. My life is blessed. My heart is still open. And I am thankful, thankful, thankful that I am able to continue to love.
Happy Thanksgiving.
(c) Copyright 2012. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)