Taking care: the big whoop

I wake everyone in the house with my coughing except my husband.  The fits can be hysterical and leave me spent.  If she's around, my littlest continuously says "God bless you" and "I hope you feel better" until the coughing stops.  My eldest asks if I need a glass of water.  I always take it but it doesn't really help.  Then I try to get up and continue the day as though I do not have whooping cough, but a mild summer cold.  My husband is doing the same.

Sickness is weakness.  It is vulnerability and it is getting left behind whilst the pack proceeds.  It is side eyes and hands thrust on my warm head angry that I came down with whatever it is.  It is fear and loathing.  It is the frightening sense that I won't or can't be productive, that someone will find out I am not as strong as projected or promised.  That I am not invincible.  That I am not superhuman.  That I am human.  It is the stories of drowned Africans thrown overboard because they might infect the entire cargo.  It is sick slaves killed or left to die lest they not infect the tiny quarters of the others.  It is the infirm in a tribe left at the edge of camp to fend for himself or to find a place to slowly die in private or be attacked by ferocious animals.  It is the prisoner in an internment camp ravaged by disease and giving up his food for someone else to survive.  It is a Darwinian belief that I am not at the top of the human evolutionary chain and that I will die.  I will.

I used to joke that I didn't want to tell my father when I was sick because I was afraid that he'd be mad at me.  I knew he was hurt for my hurt and afraid but I couldn't do much to get better any faster and his pacing made me feel guilty and scared.  He couldn't talk to me.  I would try to will myself to good health as I drifted off in fevered dreams or try not to let it out when I felt my insides twist and threaten to force me to vomit or worse.  My mother would look in periodically but would stay at her usual distance.  She didn't talk to me.  It was when I was able to care for my own sick children, nurse them through colds and fevers and sore gums and teeth breaking through, and lay cold compresses on their heads and stroke their arms, snuggle them close as I wished their pain away, that I accepted that illness is just part of the human experience and that I surely didn't want them to feel a burden or a failure as I had.

Whooping cough is called the 100 days cough and though I can't tell exactly where I am on that timeline, it does feel like I have been coughing forever.  It came on like allergies or a summer cold and hit my oldest daughter first.  She coughed for weeks and at night she'd sometimes vomit from its force.  I'd get cross with her, certain she just wasn't trying hard enough to clear her throat, and would then spend the night by her side.  I asked her if she was sure it was as bad as all that and then rub her down with Vapor Rub.  She woke up in the morning OK and then it would start up again in the night.  That was as school was ending.  In June. 

I took her to the doctor as soon as school was out for summer.  After careful review of her body, her lungs, her eyes, ears, and nose, the doctor concluded that she had just a run of the mill upper respiratory infection.  He couldn't see anything and advised me to give her a cough medicine at night to ease the cough and encouraged me to continue with her daily Claritin.  Of course this didn't feel right to me but I left her to herself and followed the protocol.  And she didn't get better at all.  In fact, she got worse.  She coughed and gagged all night.  She fought to breathe.  She'd inhale and seem to stop breathing for a moment and I'd run to her rescue, always finding her in the middle of a massive inhale that stilled the room.  A week before we left for Barbados, I sent her back to the doctor and demanded antibiotics.

She never developed the whoop, the curlicued bark at the end of that desperate choke of a cough and though her symptoms matched the basic description of pertussis or whooping cough, this diagnosis never crossed the minds of either doctor.  Children are vaccinated for pertussis as part of the DTaP and then Tdap booster.  There are five doses of the DTaP that are given from 2 months until some time between the ages of 4 and 6 and the Tdap is recommended for people between the ages of 11 and 64 and what comes next will alert you to why.

The DTaP decreases in effectiveness as children get close to the age of 11 when the Tdap is administered.  But because whooping cough has been out of the general health conversation for so long due to these vaccines, very few have memory of it or expectation of seeing it which allows it to spread quickly and silently.  One week before my daughter returned to the doctor for a course of antibiotics, one of her best friends developed a cough so severe and violent that she too nearly threw up each time she coughed.  And then the big whoop.  The big whoop is a big deal because with the whoop there is no denying.  With the whoop there is concern and there is testing.  Her friend was tested first with a swab that was negative.  After meeting with a pulmonologist, her mother decided to follow up with the more precise blood test.  The blood test confirmed that it was pertussis.

Immediately I began trying to solve the puzzle to which, until moments earlier, I'd not realized I'd held so many pieces.  My daughter had been coughing for months.  So many around us described a cough that could not go away, bruised ribs, vomiting, and tears.  There were the endless nights of kids getting up coughing and having difficulty breathing.  It seemed like just a terrible allergy season.  So many diagnoses of bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses that seemed not to go away with multiple rounds of antibiotics.  Without a rash or telltale sign to certify its presence (not everyone develops the whoop), whooping cough was weaving through the community without a batted eyelash.

Fortunately, my daughter was treated with the antibiotic prescribed to render pertussis no longer communicable and her symptoms lessened.  We went on vacation.  Our friends were treated and, as is necessary when a positive diagnosis is made, were contacted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to whom they'd reported their symptoms, contacts, and treatment.  

My cough came and went so I felt confident that it was caused by my allergies.  I got back on my allergy medication even though it made me drowsy when it wasn't supposed to.  I continued to cough.  While on vacation I'd cough and occasionally find myself short of breath but I was sure it was my excess "vacationing" and thought nothing of it.  I was tired, I figured, and my body was letting me know that I was too old for these shenanigans.  When I was back home and taking a dance class, I noted that I felt short of breath again but assumed it was due to my sluggish, sunbed-and-cocktail lifestyle over the past week and change.  And then the cough that dropped me to the floor.  I couldn't breathe at all.  Heaved and then vomited and then continued coughing.  I was crying on the floor in the bathroom and couldn't catch a breath.  I just kept coughing and coughing and coughing and coughing.  My children were terrified and I could not reassure them because whenever I opened my mouth to speak I'd immediately start another fit.  My husband stood in the doorway and felt terribly sorry for me and very afraid and did not come any closer.

I was not comforted by his presence and he made no attempt to comfort me.  He wanted to know what 'pertussis' was called in French so he could better understand what was wrong with me.  I told him I felt terrible that I had doubted our girl when she couldn't stop coughing.  I cried on the floor next to the toilet because I'd asked my girl to stop coughing so much and I knew in this moment that she couldn't have.  He looked up the word 'pertussis' on Wikipedia and changed the language to French to find 'coqueluche.'  He read and cross-checked references.  He understood, he said.  He gave me details and statistics.  He told me it was what he thought it was.  He said, "poor Honeybee" as I coughed and coughed on the floor.  I held up my hands and asked him to pull me up so I could get in the bed and he walked me there and went to his office.  I called the doctor in the morning and was given a morning appointment.

Without a nasal swab or a blood test, it is not easy to determine pertussis in an adult.  I didn't whoop.  But I did have a consistent dry cough, no mucus or phlegm in the lungs like bronchitis.  That was ruled out.  I had no fever and no ear infection.  My throat was raw but there was very little drip.  When the doctor listened to my chest and my lungs she didn't hear much.  I told her I'd been exposed to whooping cough and that I suspected that my daughter had had it because she'd had all the symptoms before her friend developed the disease.  Whooping cough.  WHOOPING cough.  She listened for the whoop. 

"You don't have the telltale sound at the end of your cough," she'd said.  "I know you've had some exposure."

"Yes, I know. Look, I don't want to have whooping cough.  I spent last night on the floor in the bathroom coughing so hard I had to throw up.  I can't sleep from coughing."

"What did you throw up?"

"It's not a gastro issue.  I threw up because my cough was so hysterical."

"It doesn't seem like bronchitis."

"It's not.  I've had bronchitis.  This is not it."

"I can give you a cough suppressant with codeine and let's see if we can get you some sleep and if it doesn't do better for you then please call and I'll get you the antibiotic.   I'm just not sure of your exposure time and if it's bronchitis you'll definitely get some comfort and some rest."

"I've taken two different cough suppressants that have done nothing but I know that codeine will knock me out.  Let's see." 

And I coughed for hours until I finally passed out around 2:30 in the morning.  I called her the next morning and left a message with a receptionist that I wanted to be treated for pertussis, needed the correct antibiotic, and asked that she consider a blood test so that I could be sure that I would not infect anyone else.  She gave me the prescription and accepted that I could have pertussis but since my children had been recently vaccinated, she did not think there was reason enough to have me tested.  I'd be treated and if need be would revisit with her when the antibiotic course had run if I didn't feel better.  I sensed her dismissal but didn't push.  I knew that no one wanted to summon the CDC on their watch.

I hate being sick.  Sickness is being in my bed upstairs listening to the sounds my family one flight below and wondering if they've already forgotten me.  It is a profoundly lonely feeling of being left behind.  It is the last person out the door forgetting to shout goodbye and then hearing the silence of the house and my imagining what everyone is doing at school.  It is Love American Style before having to drift off, afraid to fall asleep alone in the house but too exhausted to watch any more programs.  It is needing to prove that I feel badly, that my body needs healing, that I need this rest, this sleep, this healing.  It is saying that I am broken, that I am hurt, and that I need fixing.  It is asking for help and feeling like a burden.  It is needing and it is terrifying.

My course of antibiotics is finished and though I continue to have wicked coughing spells, there are fewer than when it started.  My body is tired and my throat and rib cage are sore.  I have held myself up during this week so that I can be a support to my children who are dealing with transitions in their lives--the start of school, a fractured elbow for the little one, encroaching puberty for the eldest, but I have also claimed my space when it is needed.  There were many afternoons in the bed when the previous night's coughing jags kept me up wandering the house.  There were cuddles and forehead kisses so that possibly contagious mommy would not infect anyone else.  

Once when I was a teenager my mother and father both fell ill within days of one another.  Scar tissue from an earlier surgery in his intestines had caused some kind of blockage and dropped my father to the ground.  I remember visiting with him in the hospital and finding him so small.  I cannot remember if I am confusing this visit with another time, but I recall that he had a tube that passed through his nose and down his throat and that he and everyone who saw me watching it assured me that it caused him no pain.  He'd been sedated, so he was very drowsy and kind of sweetly childlike, like I'd never seen him before.  His voice was a whisper as though he were telling me the secret about how human he was while also hypnotizing me to forget.

My mother suffered from an ulcer and had been driven to the hospital by a neighbor.  I don't think we'd been able to see her so immediately and there were some warnings about not overreacting or agitating her more than she'd been.  She was also very small and so quiet.  I knew they had to let me in to see them but that they were not prepared for me to see them like that.  I was their child.  Sickness was weakness.  It was a threat to our shared mythology.  It was startlingly human and smelled like body, sweat and tears, mucus and saliva.  It drained from your nose to your stomach.  It was a dry mouth filled with cotton.  It was coughing fits and jags that shattered the silence and the pristine walls of our modern life.  It was dry hands, days unwashed, sweaty foreheads, and unkempt hair.  It was untidy and it was wild and it was needy and it was human.

When I close my eyes each night and try to relax into my pillow, I cough.  I am bolted upright, heaving and seizing from fits of coughs that empty my lungs of all the air until I gasp.  Then I try again to lie back.  Next to me, my husband snores himself to sleep having drawn the invisible line around me where the heaving, sighing, coughing, sweaty, teary sickness cannot touch him.  The girls are asleep in their beds.  Sickness is lying in the bed listening to the sounds of my family wondering if they know how hard it has been to carry this physical burden alone.  It is being physically tired and emotionally spent but pulling out one last trick for my children because I am the parent who will do that.  It is the profoundly lonely feeling of being important in how you are able to hold up the world for everyone else and watching them let you drop it when you just can't anymore.  It is lying in bed next to someone snoring while you cough so much you are afraid you might die and they don't move.  It is shame and fear and loneliness, and as a healer friend once said to me, it is a change of consciousness.

Pertussis or something like it is leaving my body though the cough may linger for months.  I'll probably get the booster when I am well so that I don't meet its symptoms again.  It has been a big deal, a big whoop, and extremely revelatory.  When I am sick, I need to be loved and cared for, to have my wounds salved, my soul rested.  It cannot be that at my most vulnerable I should be denied this kindness.  I have, myself, done this.  I have punished myself for being the most human being, for succumbing to nature's traps and pitfalls, pranks and sinister jokes.  Instead of kissing my own knees and suturing my own torn heart, I have punished myself before another would be able.  I have allowed a circle to be drawn around me to keep me out.  It has been incredibly hard being this sick and loving with all my breath when I could not breathe but I have learned again.  

My ribs no longer ache and my jags come mostly in the morning, last gasps of this crazy disease.  I'd rather it be me than the girls, rather I'd endure this pain that allow them preventable suffering.  That curlicued gasp at the end is when I realized that I haven't been well cared for.  That will change.





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

Hair raising

I cut my hair down to the quick because it was getting on my nerves.  This week.  A few weeks ago I cut it down to the skull because some new product that promised to strengthen the short hair I did have on my head not only did not strengthen it but caused it to become brittle and dry.  I sheared it off to start over.  I'd been threatening this all summer, a massive cut, because I just could not find myself in the style that my slow-growing coif was presenting, and I wanted edgy, androgynous, strong and felt more like Dorothy Hamill mushroom or short-haired newscaster safety helmet.

I've given up on long hair. For me.  When we lived in Barbados, my hair grew like a wacky weed due to the climate, moisture, water, and raging hormones I produced due to the recent arrival of my second babe.  I wore it long and loose, top-knotted, with braids, shells, twists and left in the sand, conditioner, salt water (rinsing only the chlorine), and let the sun bleach it out.  This was a me I never imaged.  Super feminine, sexy, and girly.  Only now can I admit that I was gorgeous--sun-kissed, toned, long-haired.  I had headbands and rubber bands, barrettes and buns.  I put flowers behind my ears and looked so demure and precious that I felt like a character.  It was fun, truly.  But when we got back to the States, all that hair threatened my time management and the style (mostly a bun or a ponytail) made me feel undefined and misdirected. 

Since I was in seventh grade and a beauty school fuck-up destroyed my hair, my confidence, and my life in one afternoon's attempt at the ill-thought but insanely popular Jheri Curl, my hair has been short.  I want to say that I took to it effortlessly, but that would be a flat out lie.  I cried my face off for months as my pimply, awkward, pre-teen chubby face was forced to take center stage at just the moment that I wanted to wait in the wings.  I wore a headband for years, afraid to let the hair just be, hopeful that it would grow long and full and I'd be able to poof it to heaven like all the other 80's vixens (black and white).  It never dawned on me to wear a weave or a wig, they'd never have suited me, but I endured my wide open face on display with a tortured, simmering hurt.

My girls have hair down to their shoulders.  The oldest has the most beautiful mane of auburn, blond, and chestnut hair that coils and twists and extends from her skull out into the world.  When she wears it down, which is not often, she stuns.  She has no idea of the power that head holds, and not just because of the hair.  She struggles with the kinks and the knots and the fullness, but I have promised her that she will come to love it.  She's a Leo and I've told her that she will walk the world like a lion one day and will love her unruly curls.  For now, she wears it pulled back in a ponytail or bun.  My youngest has dark brown hair with auburn highlights.  Hers is wavier, thinner, and she loves it in side ponytails and topknots.  Her cascading locks makes her look older than her six years.  She's glamorous and girly and sweet.  She often wonders aloud if I want longer hair, if I want to wear ponytails, or if I "like" my hair short "like a boy."

I do.  Like it short like a boy.  This is my familiar style.  But it gives me no protection.  There is nowhere to hide and nothing to make me beautiful on days that I am not.  When my hair is short, super short like it is now, I have doubts and cannot slink under my bangs or wipe my hair back behind my ears.  When it is short like this I have to hope that a wriggle of my nose or a twitching of the corners of my mouth or a flutter of my eyelashes doesn't give me away.  With my hair short like this, anything and everything can be betrayed.  It was once just my feelings but now it's my wrinkles, my changing hormones, my sprinkling of greys which seem to show up better when my hair is worn close to the skull.

As soon as my hair is cut, I begin the process of starting to grow it back.  More as an exercise in its ability to still do that, grow, than in hoping I get locks flowing to my shoulders.  The truth is that it just doesn't grow like that.  There are people whose hair grows like weeds, a little water and light and the garden flourishes.  Not mine.  This is a black girl's story, and one that I will not tell with any fresher perspective than it has been previously told.  My hair, because of the way it grows, because it is coarse and kinky, does not grown like silken threads, returning in months to pre-cut lengths.  Mine can take years and breaks with frequency.  The growing out sometimes leaves me frustrated and I run to the scissors.  I can't wait.  I have no judgment or loathing of myself because of this truth; I have resigned myself to it.  The struggle is real.

The girls' hair, both some combination of my kinky, scrappy, nappy curls and my husband's fine, sweeping curls (of yesterday as he is now suffering from some level of hair loss that only occasionally strikes him as a horror) grows just fine.  Mine has always needed coaxing.  Oils and creams and potions.  Wraps, conditioners, and special combs or brushes.  It takes its time.  And I wait.  Until I can't.

Little girls with short pixie or asymmetricals, tight Afros or blunted bobs make me smile.  The gender specific styles really influence the littles and anything that runs counter to that makes me beam.  A friend has a daughter who brings her short cut, gold earrings, Star Wars, long shorts game every day and I call her my avatar.  To bring it like that, as a baby boo, is so epic.  The amount of judgment and projection that goes onto the shorn head of a woman or girl is pretty massive.  Sometimes even I can't bear the weight.  Yet she's all the way in and wondering what's wrong the folks who don't get her vibe, her style, not the other way around.

My crowning glory has to be my aura and not my hair.  My halo is in the ether and not on my head.  And though I sometimes have to shore myself up for each morning, each moment I pass the mirror, each time I reach to push my hair out of my face, and while I like my hair short, and have grown to love it over the past 30 years, I have never felt so seen and so naked.  I imagine that people can see through my skin into my heart, can read behind my eyes, can see my thoughts, so I run my hand over my head...but it's still gone.  I know it's not the hair.  The hair doesn't really supply the power.  It doesn't really protect or shield and it doesn't really make me more beautiful or more feminine.  I don't even really look like a boy.  But I have wanted to hide, to disappear, to go away, be invisible and unseen.  I've seen my youth and my wide-eyed wonder recede under that skull cap of a style.  I've seen my face loom larger, my eyes keener, my lines and wrinkles lightly tracing where I laughed and smiled and cried and picked.  I've seen my face lurch forward with something I'd not realized was there before.  Experience and wisdom.

I know things and I will not hide it.  I can't.  Because my hair is cut short to the quick and the truth is written all over my face.


(c) Copyright 2015.  Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.


Addendum:  This is my journey with my hair.  There is no judgment-stated or implied-for how others choose to wear their hair.  It has been a lifelong process for me, dealing with this hair, and what the styles say to society at large, but I am at peace with it.  Except for when I'm not.

Mother's Day: broken and fixed

Delicious treats dreamed up by my love, fabulous gifts, and the comfort of family makes Mother's Day special or at least appropriately celebrated in the eyes of our everyday-is-a-party culture.  I don't need pomp and circumstance and surely don't stand on ceremony, not for this made up day.  Mother's Day is always a strange one for me.  My husband, who is a private chef, almost always works so that the lady of the house can celebrate with her family in grand fashion.  THAT is her Mother's Day.  

Mine, at least for the past few years, looks more like this:  my husband leaves for a beautiful destination of the rich and famous by private jet or souped up, tinted-window SUV to prepare luxury meals and treats for his clients, and I finish out the week of school, activities, play dates, grocery shopping, story reading (now listening since the 6 year old is thrilled to show off her reading), and socializing on my own.  It's our rhythm and save the early school drop off on Friday when both girls need to be ready early enough to drop by 8 am, I can and do handle it.

I am too keenly aware of how quickly my children are growing up.  Little chubby hands and fat, yummy fingers have become strong and elegant, rolly-poly bodies have elongated into graceful torsos, arms and legs for days, and beautiful faces resting on long necks.  I measure time by these changes, recall real life events by growing and falling teeth, short or long hair, training wheels or riding free.  In a mother's calendar there are also injuries and ailments as mile markers, moments that stop one's heart, and shore up strengths one did not know were there.

I remember when Lily broke her finger one summer when her cousin was visiting and recall her saying with pride after she'd been X-rayed and splinted, "I can't believe I broke a bone!"  She was beaming and proud of her ability to hurt, to suffer, and to endure.  She was so human in that moment and she brought my fantasy of being able to protect them, live the hurts for them, take the force of the blow, crashing to the ground.  And months later when Virginie, walking with some friends along the creek that either trickles or rages through our town depending on the season, tripped and cut her chin requiring three stitches, I regretted the choice I made to allow her the opportunity to explore and court danger.

It's the delusion I have of shielding my children from life's pains and ills and woes, and physical safety seems a good place to practice.  How many times a day do I say, "Be careful!  Watch out!  Don't touch that!  Don't slip!  Don't fall!  Look out!  Why would you do that?  You are going to hurt yourself!"  And hurt sucks.  The iconic images of motherhood show women cuddling and comforting their children, holding them close, wiping tears and touching boo-boo's.  The urban mythology of mothers lifting cars, running into burning buildings, staring down wild animals or humans to keep their babes safe only emphasizes this expectation.

When I arrived to a screaming Virginie, hurt on an after-school play date, her middle toe on her left foot smashed by a falling board, I immediately knew it was bad.  She was screaming bloody murder.  There was blood everywhere.  Her tears were fat, her fear palpable, and I needed to make it right.  Though I hate driving, especially on any road with more than 2 cars, I packed up my peanut in the car with her favorite things and some warm clothes and raced her to the ER.  I carried her in and though I did not scream like Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment", I would have if the staff wasn't so efficient.  I hadn't taken the time to truly look at her little toe because I'd gone into autopilot, but now we had time to be together...and I peeked.  

She looked at me with those longing, big, brown eyes, eyelashes glued together with tears, and asked, "Is it bad?  Is it bad, Mama?"

"It's alright, Peanut.  We are going to get you better.  These people here are going to help us.  Just hold onto Mommy if you feel scared."  And she squeezed.  And I squeezed back.  Also the tears.  Her toe looked so, so terrible and it was.  I wondered how this tiny thing had suffered, what she must have felt and thought, when pain, pain like that is still relatively new.  I thought about all the hurts I'd ever had, all the hurts from which I will need to shield her, all the shoring up, all the armor, and I wished that I could take the hit.  I silently prayed, "Why didn't you let it happen to me?  Why did it have to be her?"  And I became steely because we had hours to go and I was angry and hurt for her and I could only be by her side and bombard her with love and comfort.  (Broken)

She was wheeled into a room for an X-ray to make sure that her toe wasn't broken.  It was cold in the room and made heavy by the lead aprons we wore to shield our organs from the radiation.  Hers was a ladybug.  Mine was blue.  She lay there on that table, following directions and holding still, tiny tears falling to her ears, balling her hands into fists.  She was pulling it together.  She looked at me and I smiled and she at me.  She got to wheel herself back in a wheelchair (a wheelchair!) to our triage curtain and she beamed.  Though she could "feel her heartbeat in her toe" we were coming to the other side of this ordeal.  When she was back on her bed, I got on with her and we cuddled.  She asked me if it was okay for me to be on the bed with her to which I replied, "Mommy makes her own rules when it comes to her babies.  If you need me here, then YES, it's more than okay."  

After a long afternoon into evening, Virginie ended up losing her toenail and getting five stitches to close her toe.  A piece of antibiotic gauze was put in place to hopefully facilitate regrowth of her nail.  She will have to get a boot to walk and is taking antibiotics to protect against infection.  Sutures, rather than stitches, were used to close her toe because, as the doctor said, "This is not like the stitches in her chin that we put in to allow minimal scarring.  This is her toe and it needs more time to heal.  If it scars, it's in a place where no one can see it...unless she is wearing sandals."  She'll have her tiny scars tucked on her foot, shared only with those she allows close.  

And so will I.  Teeny, tiny little scars made each time I see them hurt, whether on accident or on purpose, lacerate my heart.  I will see the stitching, the jagged lines where the skin came back together.  Those are for the physical ouches.  And of the psychological tears?  The emotional punctures? Hidden wounds?  As she lay on the suturing table, wrapped in the cocoon to prevent her from moving, fear, frustration, pain on her face, I put my nose to hers, felt her eyelashes on my cheek, and whispered to her about the unicorns and sweets we think about before we dream.  We talked about how we were together and how I would never leave her, would always be nose to nose, eyelashes to cheek, butterfly kisses, even when I wasn't really there.  She quieted herself, went inside, and she believed me.  She trusted me.  Even in her hurt she believed that I would give her everything I had, that I was somehow feeling her pain or that I would at least walk with her through it.  Comfort.

My husband is not here and we are not having a crazy display of elegant foods.  I won't drink a mimosa in bed, nor will I sit with my feet up or even sleep past 6:45 am.  I won't play queen for a day or do "something special for myself," at least not the kind of special that many believe moms are looking for.  I am relieved that my girl is alright.  I am proud of myself for getting in the car and driving her to the hospital and keeping a cool head.  I am grateful for the people in my life who know what an accomplishment that is for me.  

While sitting in the emergency room before Virginie was seen by a doctor I thought, "My baby will be scarred.  She's only six years old and something is already broken.  Her perfect little feet, her tiny toenails are gone."  Yes, I know it's ridiculous.  When they are those cute, little cherubs, smooth-skinned and innocent, we try so desperately to keep them clean of wounds, bruises, hurts.  They are the best of us, the good in us, the pure.  Each fall, scrape, tumble left me holding my breath, hoping it wouldn't be too bad, that it would heal quickly and leave no trace on their bodies or in their hearts.  

Two days after she was hurt, Virginie is hopping on one foot through the house, laughing and smiling and chatting as she always has.  Her foot is wrapped and the gauze is looking worse for the wear even after just two days.  She's been fixed, is on the mend, will come out unscathed if not unscarred.  But it's me, Mommy, who is taking a little longer to heal.  Being a mom (for me) means going all the way in.  Into the pain, into the hurt, into the past, into the joy, into a depth of love that frankly, nothing in my life before ever prepared me for.  It's breaking and putting myself back together all the time.  Its carrying the hurt with them and for them.  It is doing my best to keep them from being broken.

We're together this morning and we are whole.

Happy Mother's Day.


(c) 2015.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

1/2 full

When my husband goes away for work, he usually fills the gas tank for me.  Even if he knows that I won't drive more than a few blocks, he knows I will feel better seeing that needle on F(ull).This morning, I went out in the frigid cold, ran to Trader Joe's and CVS, to get the handful of things on our needed list, though I knew that four more packs of seaweed snacks and a new roll of aluminum foil were not urgent and that missing them in the house would not put us on empty.  At Trader Joe's, I bought three and four of everything we needed though we already had more than one of each at home.  We're stocked. 

My husband left for a long weekend (It's Winter Break in our school district.) one day before he'd been scheduled and had to rush to get himself properly packed and prepared for 5 days in Florida.  I took him to the train station with plenty of time to spare when I looked to the odometer to find our needle underneath the picture of the gas pump and on its way to E(mpty).  I mentioned its position nearly inaudibly because I did not want him to worry about the state of affairs when he left and a tank nearly on empty might tilt the board.  He muttered something about having enough and being able to make it wherever I needed to go but avoided my eye because he knew it was turning crazy.

I think so much about the question, that one wherein others try to determine your stance, your position on facing obstacles in life, "Is the glass 1/2 full or is it 1/2 empty?" and I try very hard to meet them with 1/2 full.  I try to look on the bright side, make lemonade out of lemons, accept that everything happens for a reason, and that as one door closes another opens.  But all this comes after the scream, audible or silent, the kicked can, the certainty that my glass is nearly done.  I feel hopelessly out of control, sure that whatever it is I desire, whatever it is I long for is out of reach.

In that hollow where love fills up, I have not been able to get enough.  All my life.  When it comes in, I scramble for things to protect me from feeling so much, for wanting to be connected, loved, seen, cared for.  Just in case it won't happen, I prepare.  Prepare for having to do it all alone.  I've stockpiled, barricaded, trapped myself in.  Paralyzed, afraid to move the line on that glass.

I'd probably have no reason to stop getting so bothered by my 1/2 empty glass were it not for the watching eyes of the girls.  In a culture of consumption and with the desire for things to feel secure and valuable part of the American way, it is important that I show the girls how to work with what they have, how to make it work no matter their circumstances.  When I fear my glass is 1/2 empty, there is still hope that I can use my reserve, that I have something instead of nothing.  Having even a 1/2 empty glass is privileged.  I've at least got something. 

It is fear that leads me to want the safety of complete fullness, that wants the buffer, the cushion should I fall or should I fail.  I used to say that I was an optimist preparing for the worst outcome, bracing myself for disappointment.  That may very well still be true.  Failure, disappointment, and losing hurt so much, and adding a spot of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment on top of that can make it all unbearable.  But it also holds me back.  There is hesitation, avoidance, missed chances and opportunities because I long to be promised that I will always be safe, that nothing can hurt me.  I suppose it's a survival tactic.  I cannot be hurt or wounded if I don't try, but I also cannot have surprising and wonderful experiences, can't discover something unexpected, cannot be inspired by something new, see something precious, hear my inner voice and learn to trust it from the comfort of my cushy perch.

I took my cash to the gas station (I get a better rate for paying in cash than with a credit card.) and asked the attendant to fill it up.  I was sweating a little, nervous about getting out of my comfort zone, changing the routine.  The attendant asked if I'd like to have my oil checked and cleaned the windshield.  I said, "Sure," and he checked.  Everything was fine.  I thanked him and he told me to take care.  The little one asked, "Why did that man do those things for you?" to which I replied, "Well, it's his job...but he also wanted to be helpful and be sure we were safe.  People have to look out for each other.  I am glad he was looking out for us.  The people in our neighborhood."

Long ago when I was the age of my little one now, I used to love the People in Your Neighborhood segment of Sesame Street.  We kids were introduced to all types of folks who lived and worked in our neighborhood.  We learned about their jobs, what they did, where we might find them.  Every one of them was smiling and happy and proud of their work and gave us a sense of community, of connection and belonging that I often miss.  A friend posted on Facebook the other day about shoveling her driveway all by herself while her neighbors, all with snow blowers, all men, buzzed around her, never offering to help her.  She finished the job on her own, knowing she was fully capable of the task, but missing that neighborly kindness.  She wondered on her page just what might prevent them from coming to her aid, even speaking to her, a friend, a neighbor, while she toiled away in the frigid cold.

When our glasses are 1/2 empty, we spend more time trying not to spill what's left, rather than share ourselves and our joys and fears and loves and hurt.  We give up on our connection.  Living in a state of lack rather than abundance teaches us to distrust, to hoard, to close rather than open and share.  I have my suspicions about my fear of not having enough, not being enough.  It's my work to do, my issue to overcome.  But I don't want to send my girls out into the world full of fear, hesitation, with closed hearts and minds.  We are privileged, all of us, and a glass 1/2 empty or 1/2 full has at least something.  The state in which we view it, our perception of just how much we have can be changed, strengthened or weakened, by our sense of connection and belonging.

We have enough food, enough toys, enough clothes, enough gas in the car, enough things.  That it hasn't been enough tells me there is something more to share.  Ourselves.  And then the cup will runneth over and won't stop.  I just have to get to the place where I don't mind spilling and I don't mind taking a sip.


(c) Copyright 2015.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

The Lost Black Girls

I always have something to say. Even when I am not saying anything I still have something to say.  But there are times, like now, when the thought of opening my mouth threatens to release the hiccuping, sniveling, water running in the mouth torrent of tears and screams that I hear only in my dream state because I don't dare care or feel as much as all that in my real life. Not if I can help it.  Not if I want to survive.

I am a woman of color (WOC) until I am black, really black.  A little black girl does not often find herself with a voice, with the protection of everything and everyone.  A little black girl is scared and only sometimes believes that anyone gives a damn.  At least this little black girl.  We know that very early on.  Even when the people who love us tell us we are important and special and valuable (and that does not always happen), we can see.  We can hear.  We listen.  We sense.  We're low on the totem pole.  A woman of color gets to talk about her perspective, share the stories of her time as a little black or brown or yellow girl, as she developed into a woman who took control of her destiny or found herself crushed by the weight of its reality.  When I am a woman of color, people who want to, who dare to, listen to my perspective, want to know what I think or believe, hope they want to know my story, what I have lived, what I experience.  As a woman of color I feel expert in my experience, strong, protective, prepared.  But deep down, I am still a little black girl.  Scared, tired, fragile, strong, endlessly hopeful, and both shamelessly fearful and fearless.  

I have been unable to write or speak or even utter a gasp about the girls, kidnapped, stolen in Nigeria by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram.  I knew, even as a young girl, that if I went missing, no one would come looking for me.  And every time I tried to disappear, ran away, hid in the closet or the attic, even my parents did not stop what they were doing to find me.  Everything I have ever known about my status did nothing to reinforce my sense of worth or value. Little black girls were not searched for, missed when they were gone. Yes, this was a child's perspective, and yes, they, we are valuable to many, but consider that the stories that really got the public moved to action were those of pretty little white girls stolen in the night.  Rarely did I see a story about a small black child that raised everyone's consciousness, concern, pulled the community together to talk about the sanctity of childhood or innocence.  I knew inside, just knew that the general population was not concerned for my virtue, my safety, or my innocence.  No one who looked like me starred in the rescue story.

So when I learned they were gone, my heart sank.  I felt as if I'd been kicked in the gut.  And then my thoughts turned to them.  Taken in the dark, scared to death, wondering what would become of them, how would the people who loved them find them, where were they going.  I imagined them looking for clues on the path, a way to remember to find their way back, probably knowing they would not go back.  At least not the way they came.  I thought of the fucking cowardice it took to punish people, communities by raging assaults on young girls and women.  I thought of the absolutely sickness of that kind of power play and how the eyes of those girls and their minds and their hearts and their bodies will be changed forever.  And then I learned that I was late to the Intel.  They'd been gone days when I first heard about the abduction.  Many tuned in later to find that the girls had been missing for weeks.

I could not conjure up in the recesses of my mind, the most horrible fear, most alienating, soul crushing, dream stealing terror that is happening right now. They were gone for days before the world got enraged, got upset, was called to action.  Taken in the night at their school by a group that rejects Westernization and education of girls and women.  Their response to this affront was to kidnap the girls and, depending on who you are asking, sell them into marriage, lead them through the brutal terrain of the forest, or torment and repeatedly rape them, traumatizing and terrorizing them and leaving their families in complete anguish. Each possibility more horrifying than the next.  That the possibilities are more than likely probabilities has left me supremely enraged.

Their mothers and families left to imagine the unimaginable, crying in the night, feeling the psychic pull of their children and having no idea how or where to find them.  There is talk of international aid, perhaps a trade with Boko Haram for militants being held as prisoners. There are rallies and writing campaigns, and calls for action.  I support those.  But what I cannot get out of my mind, even when I close my eyes, are the faces I have conjured of those girls, their eyes staring at me, making our connection real.  It is so easy, especially in the modern world, when the threats are not immediate or put one in imminent danger, to turn one's head.  But I feel their presence and their fear and their life force.

There but by the grace of God go I.  I see myself in their faces.  Read my own name next to theirs.  The horror lies in the absolute randomness of being unfortunate to be chosen for such violence and assault.  A girl in the world learns these things.  That upon her body and to her mind will be done great damage and violence in the name of anything and nothing.  How I wish I could make them feel safe, secure, complete after this.  Some have escaped and I have read that some may have died on the journey but many will have an "after this."  What that is, where that is, how that is, we don't yet know.  What serves as a metaphor for so many of us, girls in the world, lost in the dark, stolen innocence, is the reality for many more. 

Hiding in the closet or in the attic, I remember my pounding heart.  Its steady thunder keeping me tethered to the present, kept me from fleeing to my mind, my dreams, my outer space, disappearing place.  I feel their hearts beat.  All of ours.  And I hope these girls are reunited with their families and brought home soon.  Say their names out loud so you believe that they are as real as you are.  Call out to them so they feel your hope and your rage and their strength and your love.  The little black girl inside of me is screaming out, clawing at the walls, begging to be heard, to be rescued, to be healed.  The WOC is prepared to be steely and strong enough to support others, to hold them up in body and spirit, to live in a place where being a girl in the world, a black girl in the world can again be wondrous and awesome, not dangerous and threatening. 

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

I don't want to go to ______________ practice/game/class.

Jumping off the bus into my arms, a head of bouncy curls tucked under her black, hooded, quilted jacket, my seven and a 1/2 year old was a sight for sore eyes.  Her tiny, pink-lipped smile and shy glance took me right back to her sweet, baby-cake toddler years.  She is a little beauty and as sweet and kind as Little Mary Sunshine or some other such character.  Imagine my surprise then, when I reminded her that her Dance Fusion class, a combination of modern, ballet, lyrical dance for the young set, was in about 30 minutes and that we'd need to have a quick snack before heading over.  (We generally walk over as it's very close to home.)

*Falling to the floor, crinkling up her nose, grabbing her head in a "Woe/Whoa is me" grip*

"But Mommy, I don't want to go to Dance Fusion!  You are not being fair!  [insert neighbor child's name] gets to have play dates all the time!  I NEVER get to have play dates. (Though she'd had two that weekend) All I ever have to do is go to Dance Fusion.  I just don't want to go.  Is this the last week?"

"It's not. Next week is the last week.  When that class is over, you do not have to commit to dance again, but we started this and we are going to finish it.  You are a wonderful dancer.  Why don't you want to go?"

"You forced me!  You know I don't like dancing in front of other people--"

"What other people?  The kids in the class?  You have been going all term.  This is crazy.  You have to go."

"I don't want to!  It's not fair.  You force me to do things.  I don't want you to ever force me ever again to do anything."

"I did not force you, small girl, and I will not make you go in the future, but we are going to honor our commitments and be respectful of our teacher and our responsibilities.  Please get your dance clothes on so we can go.  It's getting late."

"I won't."

"I'll say this much.  If you do not go to class, you are not having a play date.  You will be reading for your reading log for the full hour."

"One hour of reading?"

"Yes.  And you will take French next term if you do not want to dance."

"OK."

This went on longer than I care to admit and so I won't.  Let's just say that there is a lot more "dialogue" to include here.  I texted my friend part of the way through the argument and asked/demanded what I should do.  I have a tough time with this stuff.  The girls are so young and I know how kids are fickle and cannot always commit to things they set out to do, but we did sign up for a certain number of weeks.  And frankly, she is so talented and such a beautiful dancer I feel like I must guide and direct her towards her "calling."  And then I stop myself.  Am I forcing her? 

I regret having been allowed to quit piano when I was nine years old, though I do recall just how miserable I made my mother as I begged and pleaded and then just gave up practicing altogether.  Sitting in front of the keys with Rick, a kind, bearded music teacher from the local music school, I'd plink away having just looked at the music moments before his arrival.  I could not see how these scales and little exercises were going to take me to a place where I could actually play and possibly create beautiful music.  The same went for the flute (which I at least played into high school but then gave up when other interests called), the guitar, Girl Scouts, Spanish lessons, gymnastics (Though that I'd quit because my dance teacher told me it was giving me too muscular a butt.  Little did she realize that I was a black girl.  It was gonna be that way ANYWAY.)  Now as an adult, I wish I could play the piano or the guitar, that I could tie more than the square knot and didn't get less than a thrill from camping.

Kids start and quit activities all the time.  We have them signed up for so many things so early to give them exposure and get them out of our hair for an hour or so.  When Lily wanted to quit soccer, a sport where she showed promise, I made her finish the season but allowed her to stop.  In our town, the teams were co-ed until the kids turned eight and though Lily loved the drills and the practices, the games were often wild free-for-all's, and they did not appeal to her at all.  I also didn't care for the Saturday morning early wake up, but if she'd loved it, I would have continued.  With dance, an art that carried me through my young life, that gave me joy and discipline and passion and commitment and love, I am struggling to let her let go.  I have been reminded by so many that stopping does not mean quitting.  Perhaps she will come back to it.  And maybe she won't.  Maybe, for all her talent it just does not inspire her in the way it did me.  Maybe (with a wink) I do not get to determine her "calling" after all. 

But what's a mother to do when confronted with the shift, the change in the middle of a session?  When disinterest creeps in after the fees are paid and the place in class has been saved?  I made her go.  I let her cry it out, kick things, beg.  I let her wear her jeans to class instead of dance clothes and I gave her a snack to take with her.  She danced.  She enjoyed it and she will, sadly, not sign up for the next term.  It is here where I must let go.  Let her be her own girl and develop interests and dreams and desires that I cannot control.  That evening, we ordered dinner from the local pizza place that she loves and we sat, the three of us (little sister too) and talked about discipline and passion and commitment.  I explained why it is important for me that they find something to offer them guidance and discipline and teaches respect and responsibility. That the arts and other activities bring joy and meaning to life.  I told them I would allow them to participate in choosing whatever it is, but that I would not allow them to give up on everything. 

There are so many more choices and options now than I when I was a little girl.  I danced from four until my teen years and continued to come back to it in my twenties, thirties, and now forties.  I speak the language, know the vocabulary, and feel a comfort when I return.  All the choices now mean so many starts and often not enough time to let the love for something germinate and grow.  It is that I fear most.  That they try everything and give in to nothing.  I want to help lead them to their passion without forcing them to do as I have done or what I'd like them to.

The little one still loves her ballet class and is desperate to start Dance Fusion when she is old enough.  She loves art and wants to learn how to ride her bike.  Lily is older and has already tried so many things.  We will next look for an instrument and possibly tap and everyone will have to take French.  It's with a firm hand and an unwavering voice that I insist when they want to give up without a real attempt at understanding.  I introduce them to the arts by taking them to performances and concerts and galleries; sports by taking them to games and pick up games; life's surprises by waking them up for the sunset, showing them cool experiments, planting, baking, cooking, living.  It's alright if they flip and freak and act a fool while they sort out their feelings as long as they get back on that horse and finish the race.  Finish what they started. 

So yes, you have to go to class.  I hope you will be better for it.


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

Sleeping over

A sleep over used to be the crown jewel in the birthday party court with a bowling party, roller skating party, and ice cream sundae making at ZIPZ, a local ice cream chain, ranking pretty high up there as well.  I believe I went to my first in 4th grade as a nine to ten year old (DOUBLE DIGITS!) celebration.  Sleeping over involved so many things, milestones, and were exceptional events.  Girls got giddy with excitement thinking about staying up late with their girlfriends, eating lots of junk food all at once, usually with pizza for dinner as a starter and rolling quickly downhill to peanut M&Ms and Doritos as the cramming-to-stay-up-past-1 am treat.  There was lots of dancing, shouting, singing, and crib games.  Secrets told under the sleeping bags about boys kissed or wished for, bust-enlarging exercises ("We must!  We must!  We must increase our bust!") though more for play than actually hoping on my part.  Even then I knew that the parents who hosted these parties were gods, better than mere mortals, because no way on Earth my parents were going to have a bunch of wild-assed banshees over at ours mucking up the place and acting a fool.  (We did actually have one sleepover party and my parents/mom handled it for realz.)

This weekend Lily has two sleepovers.  She is seven years old and I forced her to take a nap after gymnastics this afternoon so she would make it to the second without acting like a monkey.  She didn't want to nap, almost burst into tears at the suggestion which is how I knew she needed to take a nap (that and the confession of a 12:13 am lights out).  She moved all over the room, trying to read and rainbow loom, playing with her hair, and trying to make shadow puppets, when I forced her to climb up on the bed next to her sleeping sister (I'll get to that in a minute).  I lay down behind her with a soft, fuzzy blanket over us and squeezed her little body and pet her hair.  She was out in two minutes.  Glad to see that technique from her toddlerhood still works nicely.  It is Saturday afternoon at 3:30 pm and my entire family is napping in preparation for the sleepover that follows the sleepover.

The parents of both of Lily's sleepover pals are good friends, people I trust and know well.  When she leaves me to be with them, I don't give her safety another thought.  I am confident, comfortable, and thankful.  Lily gets to relax a little from Mommy's strict rules and have a little space from her baby sister's crawling up her back.  She gets to feel like a teenager...oh, wait.  Well, she thinks she does.  She feels punk rock and I want her to.

Virginie and her best girl are prepping for a sleepover of their own.  Not quite a sleepover as they are both 4 1/2 years old and I believe that that is just too early for a sleepover. (I was happy to confirm that her pal's mother was completely in agreement and "on principle" could not permit her baby to stay the night and eat whipped crème from the spray can into her mouth...another time.)  They will wear pajamas and get to play and stay up late and lie down in a little bed and watch movies, read bedtime stories and then, later than usual, Mommy will come and pick up her worn out princess and both 4 1/2 year olds will get to sleep in their own beds.  Kind of like a regular play date for these two just later.

Lily went to her first sleepover when she was six years old and I cried almost the entire time.  I did it in silence, not wanting her or her little sister to see that I was just freaked out beyond what was necessary.  I knew my anxiety was getting the best of me, thoughts of kidnappings and hazings weaving through my brain threatening my sleep and  my ability to breathe.  Then I realized that the parents who hosted were as conscientious as I, nervous about having all these wiggly girls in their care, and basically planned to stay up all night dealing with the pre-tween set and their totally bizarre humor and girl power chants.  I love a girl Lord of the Flies, except for the killing at the end.  Love girl power and energy and pride.  Just not sure I am totes ready for it at mine.

Baby steps.  Two 4 1/2 year olds bugging out in their PJ's? Into it.  I am thinking of cool stuff for them to do.  Fort building, coloring, playing with Barbies, Monster Highs, and Little Ponies.  Lily will be off on her own with her best girl and her cool ass parents living it up, feeling that freedom, knowing that she can come home to Mommy who will take care of her and put her to bed by wrapping her legs around her and boa-constricting her to sleep.  What was once the prize of upper elementary school party time is now a common occurrence, a fun escape from home, a break in the crazy cycle of this aggressively structured childhood.  But they can always come home to Mommy after their little adventures and regal me with dirty-haired, unbrushed-teeth, late-night tales and antics that in the retelling are surely (surely?) wilder than they were when they really happened...on run of the mill, rollin' with the homies-sleepover.


(c)  Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.

Lady Bits: Bounce your boobies, Part 2.

Please.  Take your time.  I am just waiting on this news feeling like hearing it out loud could pull down the poll of the circus tent of my life and cause everything to collapse, hurting, maiming, maybe even killing some of the performers.  Was it two to three business days you told me?  Was Monday a holiday?  I checked the cell every few minutes thinking maybe the phone was still on vibrate.  Answered lots of solicitations on the home phone just in case, somehow, the call from Arizona was the lab, knowing full well that the lab was up the street and that it would, in fact, be from my doctor's office that the call came.  But it didn't come.  Not for two, three, four, five, or six days.  I waited and let myself be convinced and reassured by friends that no news was good news.  "They would want you to know right away if it was indeed C," still no one wanted to say it and I surely did not want to hear the letters that follow 'c' in that word.

My dear husband, seven plus years older than I am, always (so sweetly) reminds me that I am young.  "You are still young and beautiful." And this not only when he is feeling frisky.  Nowadays when we say things like this, it is often in relation to how much more of life there is to live, that yes I CAN still wear a short skirt if I like, do something crazy to my hair, start a new career, try new things.  But when it comes to health issues--aches, pains, pinches, twists, tears, and pulls, age has slowly crept up with us.  When I see pictures of some of my childhood mates, I see their parents' faces staring back at me.  I read posts about injuries from doing things that were once facile, part of every day movement until just the wrong thing slipped or "went."  We laugh about those pains.  "Getting old," we say.  But aging also brings more serious health concerns and a need to make at least annual trips to a physician.  The laissez-faire attitude of our youth has given way to consideration of each new freckle, rising cholesterol, too much sugar in the blood, lack of time for exercise or sleep, lack of time for anything really as a sign that we are creeping over that hill.  We feel young inside but our bodies demand us to acknowledge that time has passed and that we need to be tender with them.

My dance classes and my meditation practice, my family and my love for them gave me the physical and psychic strength to prepare for the worst news but really expect the best.  I, full to the brim with anxiety and too much nervous energy, found ways to distract myself from the waiting for results.  My house is now spotless and that includes all closets, drawers, cabinets, and the attic.  I danced my brains out and allowed people to love me, care for me, bring me food, invite me to parties, looked them back in their eyes to thank them, and just breathed in and out every single day.  I breathed to the top of my head and down to my toes.

On the fifth day I started calling and leaving messages.  I felt embarrassed to be calling as though it was expected that I'd wait patiently for the news.  I wondered, in all the prep I was given for the biopsy, had anyone in the medical profession thought about my feelings, fears, hopes, anxiety.  While I'd been warned not to take aspirin 48 hours prior, and been told how the procedure would happen (ultrasound, cleaning of the breast, numbing local anesthetic followed by a tugging or pulling sensation that would collect the cells to be examined, then days of soreness, bruising, swelling, a little pain, and a tiny scar underneath), very little was said about the shallow breaths I was taking, the tears that came to my eyes when I thought of having to tell the girls that something was wrong with Mommy.  When they kicked or pulled or tugged at me and accidentally hit my ailing breast, I'd wince and then smile.  I didn't want to give them anything to worry about. I was reminded only once to go back to my life as usual.  I felt, and I could be wrong about it but it felt this way, that no one wanted to say what it was they knew I was afraid of.  One does not go in for a biopsy the way one might for a new retinol cream for wrinkles.  The biopsy signifies there is something in there that is unknown and the big unknown, the one that sets most of us on edge, is fucking cancer.  I was scared shitless that I might have breast cancer.

For every day that I waited and meditated and danced and wore a brave face, I was scared, humbled, awed by the life I'd managed to make for myself.  For people who loved me, for a community I belonged to, for friends, family, strangers, humankind that had the urge to live, to be part of this carnival called life.  It had never been called into question for me in such high resolution.  Yes, I was full of anxiety in Barbados and did fear losing it there and once there was some crazy turbulence on a plane where we dropped a few feet and I grabbed the girls and cried my face off, telling them how much I loved them over and over again until we steadied, but I never put myself, allowed myself to see myself as old enough, ready spiritually, to imagine the end of my life.  Breathe in.  Breathe out. This I would tell myself every moment that I drifted to those thoughts.  Because that was what scared me the most.  I went all the way there every time.

A rogue nurse in the office sent me a secret text to tell me that the results of my biopsy were negative two days before my doctor's office gave me the official word.  I want to say that I danced on the ceiling, but I instead sat quietly on the floor, complete silence all around me, save the ticking of the clock in another room and the hum from the fridge.   I felt relief for myself and compassion for those, many of whom are my friends or family or acquaintances, whose tales don't or have not ended on this note.  I can still not touch the bullet resting on the inside corner pocket of my left breast.  The bruising and soreness has proven a longer healing period than expected, but I know my little lump is there.  I want to remove it.  It is no talisman and I am not brave enough to carry it.  Even knowing that it is benign, it presses at everything dear to me and threatens to pull the tent down.  I'd prefer a scar where it once made itself cozy, an 'X' to mark the spot where my fears were released and my dreams held tight in a deep inhale were released.

Do your self exams and get a mammogram, ultrasound, MRI, or thermal scan if you are over 40 or have a history of breast cancer. 


(c) Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.

Bleeding Heart

My children are small.  Very small.  Small enough that outside of rules about recycling and energy conservation, stories about the holidays that cover just the basic "facts" and themes, news about the weather, and public interest stories about animals and the pool opening for summer, they are blissfully ignorant and detached from news of the world.  I am thankful for that today.  Though we talk casually about children in the world who are not as fortunate as they, who do not have the freedoms, rights, and more specifically (and frequently), toys and birthday parties that they have, their minds are not burdened with the state of the world.  They will learn soon enough.  I will lead them to a place of understanding, of compassion, and as important, what I think is often missing in the lessons that we parents offer our children, that none of us is more important or more valuable or more special than anyone else.  Truly.

But this lesson is easily taught by me to my children.  It was taught to me by my parents in as much what they did as what they said.  And it was surely taught to them by their parents.  When you are black in America, that message comes in loud and clear.  We were taught that we had to be twice as good, told to mind our p's and q's, to watch and wait before entering a group, take the temperature, find out if the members of that group were amenable to our presence.  Even if we knew that what we would bring to that group--talent, intelligence, humor, compassion, kindness--would greatly benefit, we entered with caution.  We were, clichéd as it sounds, outsiders.  Without being told this directly, I took it also to mean that I was never enough, didn't quite measure up, and probably never would.

My children know their gifts and know they are special to me.  I try to instill it in them every day,  but they surely do not believe that they deserve more in this world than anyone else.  They are learning that we must lift each other up to rise, that we must all rise together, not climb on others' backs or blindly soar while others are pedaling or flapping their wings underfoot.  The wind beneath their wings is my love and support, not a system that propels them to the top while others languish in the decks below.  They know this because I am teaching this to them. 

My parents, I can see it now, are insanely intelligent and exceptional people.  They are both smart and funny and witty and caring and giving, having been raised by fierce, God-loving, trusting, good people.  They are exceptional, but are not the exception.  We knew so many other black families like ours.  Saw success and drive, intelligence and creativity, humor and wit.  When we were all together, everyone could breathe a little easier, relax into our true selves, let our spirits soar, because the defining character of ourselves outside that group, our race, could be ignored.  We could be real, three-dimensional people with hopes and dreams and desires that could be acknowledged and considered.  But outside of that group, of that safety net, we just weren't sure where we stood with people.  We had so many wonderful friends from different backgrounds, people who shared themselves with us and allowed us to do the same.  Who truly judged us and all minorities by the content of our character.  But there were also others with whom we spent time at church or school or on sports teams or dance classes who wouldn't acknowledge us outside of our activities or used derogatory language about blacks and other minorities in our presence with the disclaimer, "but I don't mean you."

Oh, but you do.  And they did even if they'd convinced themselves that there was a different place for this black face, this black person.  They had a space for other and it was outside of their circle.  Sure there are criminals flaunted on the local news daily.  Those are people to be feared no matter their background (though a disproportionate number of those shown on local news are people of color as it helps to continue that narrative) but the rest of us are just normal citizens going about our daily lives.  We want what's best for our children, want to shape them to be the kind of people we want to be, want to see them have greater opportunity and success than we've had.  Verdicts like this one just handed down in the Trayvon Martin case remind us that we are still outside the circle.

My bleeding heart.  My "excessive" sympathy can, at times, leave me speechless, immobile, frozen in an emotional coma where the feelings rage inside the cocoon but on the outside I stand in fear.  I cannot do this and still take care of my children.  I have to get up and prepare breakfast and make beds and plan the day.  I still weep this morning for that young man being followed by a stranger in a neighborhood where he should have, like everyone else there, felt safe.  There was, after all, a neighborhood watch.  But the neighborhood watchman was watching him, checking for him, had written him outside the circle and pursued him, against police suggestion, and all of his hopes and dreams and desires died with him.  We won't even know them. 

None of us is more special, more important, more valuable than any other.  And none of us is less so.  In our spiritual core, in our hearts, in the part of us that is within our human selves but is not constrained by it, we know this.  But in the part where we are but mere human beings, in the part where we jockey for self-importance and relevancy, we don't believe it.  Can't.  In our keeping-up-with-the-Joneses/Kardashians/1% culture, where racism and discrimination burden the pursuit of happiness, where the "going for mine" and "doin' me" mentality reigns, teaching compassion and love and empathy is a serious endeavor but one we must all attempt or risk an epic failure. 

There is room enough for us all in the circle.  God I hope so.  And any loss suffered by any one of us should be felt by all.  The girls woke me this morning with kicks to the knees and ribs as they jockeyed for prime snuggling position.  They kissed my face even before I'd opened my eyes and whispered good morning before they knew whether I was asleep or awake.  They didn't know I'd cried all night and wouldn't.  It's not theirs to bear right now.  It is mine.  Though I stood up and was not able to clear the fog of the news of last night's verdict from my mind, my heart still fluttered for them.  It raged.  Their warm, little bodies jolted me back to my real life.  The life where I care for them and raise them and teach them how we must love one another.  My heart also bleeds for the mother who cannot hold her son, the mothers who cannot hold their children, cannot feel their warm bodies, be jolted out of bed by their promise, be comforted by the hope that their dreams and desires provide.  It bleeds because if we are all part of the same circle, what's mine is yours and we are one and the same.  And today I feel, again, that mother's emptiness.


RIP Trayvon Martin.


(c)  Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

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.