As the story goes, when my father was born, his grandmother wanted him to be named Stephen after her father. Though he'd already been named Jesse, he was called Steve or Stevie by everyone growing up. I know a childhood friend by whether they call him Steve or Jesse. I am called Stephanie after his secret name, a tiny, little seed planted at his roots in an alternative, dream landscape. He is a hearty and strong succulent perennial, only an occasional flower, low growing, sometimes called the liveforever or sempervivum. I am the flower.
We are so alike, my father and I. There is depth, order, control. We are protective, strong, and quick to anger. I love him. I always have. I respect the man he became and all that he has accomplished in this life. I know that if I am in danger he will come. If I am hurt he will come. If I need he will give. But in order to protect himself from the slings and arrows, knives in the back and punches to the gut, he has had to encase his heart in thorns and booby traps.
I woke up this morning at 5:30. That's too early for me. Though I tried to go back to sleep, as soon as my eyes are opened I find that nearly impossible. My racing mind started tracing lines to all the people I know who were probably awake. Many living abroad where the day was already in full swing, friends on the West Coast who may be having a bout of insomnia or a late night of excess, and my dad. Now that he is in his seventies, 5:30 is pretty early for him too, but the early mornings are a space where I always see my father. Walking the house in quiet, breathing in life in a space where no people means no mask, rising with the sun as he did as a boy when he had work to do. You can take the boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy. My dad is still a country boy.
A country boy whose parents told him and his four siblings how to survive, and gave them everything they had, which was not much materially but was full to bursting with love, guidance, and support. They told those beautiful, black children how to get out of the poverty they'd been born into and to keep marching forward despite the expectation of the America that they were born into, that they were 'less than.' Education, character, drive, ambition, and familial love and support would help each lift the others. Racism and segregation shaped my father's sense of himself and no matter his successes, he has remained haunted. I can only imagine how he endured the assaults on his character, his intelligence, and his basic rights. Like me, he is sensitive, easily wounded, and anxious. Like me, he hides and protects his heart. Unlike me, he has not found too many to share it with. And that includes me.
The love was tough, survivalist. It wasn't precious or adorable. It wasn't indulgent or demonstrative. There were few hugs and smothers of kisses and compliments and praise. There were high expectations. When one fears failure, when failure in a system set up for you to fail means life or death, there is little time for pleasantries. The hurt of his youth nourished ours and our blooms were sprinkled with his pain. But mine is a fragile bloom. My roots are strong, but the flower is so desperate for the light, desperate for the watering and the nutrients, seeking warmth from real and artificial light sources. I cannot always tell the difference.
My father is the first man for whom I was ever too much. I could tell by the way he looked at me since the beginning of time and shook his head. I wasn't easy because I'm not. I'm all of the things one has to work on, work towards. Work. I was compared to other girls who achieved better and far more than I. Girls who were poised and demure and knew the code and followed it. They were good girls. They weren't wild and didn't talk back or fight or question or practice magic. They were practical and organized and good. There is a part of me that is like that too. Remnants of my attempts to please.
My father is the first man whose love I could feel dangling in front of me but could never reach. My father loves me, but it sparks like an electrical short and cannot sustain itself long enough to provide light. I chase the falling embers, hope it will help me find my way through the tunnel but I I do a lot of feeling around in the dark.
My father is the first man I tried to impress by dancing all around him, literally dancing all around him, who was distracted and saw only a flash and felt a slight breeze from all my efforts, and wondered to himself, 'What was that?' as I whirled past. I still don't think he has ever seen me.
But I am not done with him. I am nothing if not persistent. I am the flower. And I continue to bloom in his face. I remind him that without our roots neither of us would thrive. That it does no good for the succulent to resist its flower. The plants are so gorgeous, have always been some of my favorites, whether they have a bloom or not. But the blossom is such a sweet surprise sometimes taking years to finally bloom. It is more. It is the hand to God, the reaching, the longing, the magic expressed. It is working through the fear and the shame of wanting and needing to be loved. It just is. And we both need it, the light and the love.
As the story goes, I was born so prematurely that I was so tiny you could hold me in one hand. There was a fear that I might not survive, that the cold winter and early arrival might be too much for my tiny body. But my roots dug in deep and I called on everything I knew. The sempervivum, I was going to live and he knew it. So he gave me his name, the one he should have had. I fulfilled the promise of this family name and we are tied. Liveforever.
Happy Father's Day to my dad.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
I have been working on another post, one that has, sadly, taken me over a month to produce thanks to my family's desperate need for all of my attention, but then this. Twice in one week commentary about three public figures, public women and their looks, has made its way to the top stories when the world is going to shit. First, Venus and Serena Williams were called out and humiliated by a full time ass named Shamil Tarpischev, a "Russian Olympic Committee official." who called them "the Williams brothers" and "scary to look at." And then dear Renee Zellweger, and to me she is dear having starred in some movies that dotted the landscape of my coming of age, dear because she is my contemporary, dear because no matter what you think of the role, she puts herself all the way in it, has appeared on a red carpet looking "different," "refreshed," and my personal favorite, "unrecognizable." I recognized her. In fact, I thought this story tried to surface a few months back, at least in the British papers, and the buzz was about her incredibly changed face! Oh my God! What happened? She's unrecognizable!
Oh, yes she is recognizable. I saw who she was immediately because she is just like me. She's really any and all of us women of a certain age, of any background, no matter our status, our sexual preference, our position, or station. Whether we are beauties or average or emphasize our other qualities instead of just our physical selves. Whether we are kind or cruel or sympathetic or selfish. Whether we give a damn or don't. No matter who we are, no matter what we are manifesting (or not), we have or will have to face the question of our unrecognizable selves, how we look to the outside world and how the world feels it is within its rights to judge or comment on how we look.
Being a world-famous movie star does nothing for her privacy. The world feels entitled to her, to some part of her. And while I feel that the conversation that quickly turned petty and ugly and aggressive and rude escalated due to her being a public figure, I fear that the presumption that anyone is owed an explanation regarding the change in her appearance, whatever it is and whatever the reason, is one that women face daily. The relentless and occasionally merciless judgment of one's appearance and the maintenance of that appearance is not only a cottage industry, but has given everyone and anyone license to denigrate, assault, insult, and humiliate.
The expectation and assumption that Ms. Zellweger and really anyone we know or think we know will somehow stay the same, exactly they way we remember, exactly the way we want them to is ludicrous and frankly, childish. To expect that the effects of time don't affect us all is as ridiculous as the belief that there is somehow one ideal, one type that has the claim on true beauty. Ms. Zellweger, perhaps giving in to some pressure to remain a member of that elite group--white, blond, lithe, young--may have had some surgery or may not have. I don't really care and it's none of my business. What I am making my business is that the escalation of the Monday morning quarterbacking about how she looks and what she's done reached a fever pitch that sends a message to the world that considering people, analyzing them, tearing them apart based on their physical attributes is acceptable, even celebrated behavior. Folks got a lot of action on that thread.
My girls are extremely curious and talkative about the way people look. Our youngest is still in the phase where the closer a woman looks to the standard Disney princess, Barbie, beauty pageant contestant, Victoria Secret model the "prettier" she is. She can be "of color" surely, but she has already gotten the message loud and clear just which ones are culturally considered "the best." I, in turn, show them my interpretation of what is beautiful, my ideas about beauty, everywhere I can. They see women of all complexions, sizes, body types, with long hair, short hair, no hair, with smooth skin, wrinkles, blemishes, scars, with tattoos, piercings, make up or none and I will comment on how striking, composed, lovely, or beautiful I find her. And when they ask why I believe someone is beautiful I often start with the energy or spirit that comes from within and then answer the questions about their outside characteristics, reminding them that our feelings about the way someone looks are really our own opinions and frankly, bear no value or importance to that person.
I answer all of these questions and hope that in doing so they see the full range of women's bodies, recognize how we really look, make their own discoveries and realizations about what they think of as beautiful, strong, capable, able and then let them go. How we look cannot be our priority, not when there is so much more we'd like to accomplish and achieve. At the end of the day, I want them to consider how able and capable they can be, to know that while they are gorgeous (and they are) it just cannot be enough to sustain them day to day. That what they look like is truly a function of genetics and timing and luck and that everybody, every body has something to be celebrated.
But in the quiet of my own room, staring into my own mirror, I recall a time when I could not be lead to believe in that all inclusive beauty. I wanted to believe and surely discovered examples that went beyond the all-American look that was popular when I was coming of age but they were few and far between, still considered exotic, other, separate. I was one of a very small group of Black kids at a predominantly white school and one of three black girls at my dance studio. As I progressed as a young dancer, my Russian teacher, who encouraged and promoted me in so many ways, began to obsess about my physique, namely my big thighs, my butt, and my pretty muscular frame. Dancers then were still expected to be petite and slim, strong with rubber band limbs. Of course there was Ailey and the Dance Theatre of Harlem and modern troupes, but the understanding was that, for a ballerina, the tiny physique was meant to mask the power and strength required to move. Mine could not do that. Any bit of exercise or physical activity gave me mass and definition. My body could not meet the accepted standard.
And this is where the age old bullshit about black women's bodies comes at me and threatens to crush. Come on, dear Russian fool, with your inexperience and big ol' mouth and platform. This is nothing new and nothing not said before. Regarding the black female body with contempt for its strength and/or over-sexualizing it for its exotic, "mysterious" qualities is such old school racism that although a fine was laid down, no one wants to touch the subject except for blogs and publications aimed specifically at Black women. It's been said so many times about Venus and Serena that the story about the incredibly racist, sexist, insensitive comments hardly made waves. These two women are strong and powerful elite athletes and their bodies show it. To me, their musculature, their incredible form, definition, and power is pretty amazing. They are beautiful and exceptional both physically and personally.
These three women who have reached the pinnacle of their fields, who are celebrated for their skill, talent, and prowess are still fair game to anyone and everyone who has something to say about how they look. There is even pride in the assault, thrill at the attack. Other than to hurt, to derail, to offend, what could be the reason for the name calling and the shock and awe? Why are we so comfortable dissecting the form, the body with no consideration as to how these women, any woman, any person would feel being broken down like that?
I have felt the shadow of whatever age it is that I can no longer hide the years of life's experiences, joys and sorrows, sleepless nights, burst out giggles, sleeping on my face, drinking or eating too much, hormonal midlife pimples and wrinkles creep up on me. I still stare into the mirror, hearing my former dance teachers discontent at my big ol' booty, breaking it down about the "ruined line" my pumped up rump made. I have giggled at the lyrics of "All About That Bass," though I also find it a little divisive in its exaltation of the fuller form and attack on the thinner, I know how challenging and difficult breaking the habits and lessons taught and reinforced through the culture at large and in our day to day will be. But I want to give my two girls, one straight as a board like her father and the other curvier like me, self-awareness, confidence, and inner strength that will protect them from the paparazzi-like flashing light assaults, comments, and judgments that are used to humiliate, undermine, and divide the sisterhood. It's not all about that bass or that body or that face. We are much more than that and I want them to know it.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
I have been away from the blog for nearly two months. Keeping up with any regularity, any true perspective during the crazy, heady summer months proved to be impossible for me. Both of my children are now enrolled in "big girl" school and save the early season calendar crunching, I have time to get back to me. I'd started this post months back when a friend on Facebook tagged me in a photo of a T-shirt that said, "Hold on, I'm taking a selfie." I do take them. Have for years before they were called "selfies" except then I was not using my iPhone or computer to take snaps, I was staring into my face in the mirror and drawing or painting. I did and continue to use self-portraiture as my medium of exploration. Whether in the visual arts, writing, acting/voice work, or dance, I have used myself in the work, sometimes as the work. I am searching, seeking, looking, longing. I don't mean it to be indulgent, snaps and right-back-atcha winks, or reverential. As an artist, I am trying to understand, define, relate, connect with the world.
I had two painting professors that I adored. One I not so secretly crushed on and the other was truly one of the best people in my life, a true, dear friend and mentor. They both guided me to portraits and self-portraiture in Western art, classical and academic as well as modern and post-modern. In both art history and my studio classes, I devoured the canon and sought answers in life painting, focusing on real life, true light, a strong degree of academic emphasis, still life, portraiture, figure drawing and painting, landscape. I admired work that was imaginative, imbued with fantasy, and whimsy but felt safer and more grounded (I am, indeed, a Capricorn) with the familiar. I can still recall the afternoon when the focus shifted and I saw myself as subject, not only as author.
These two wonderful teachers gave me permission, even demanded that I look for something in my own gaze, in the curves of my face, in the soft angles where light hit my skin, creating shadows and depth I'd never considered. I was a little embarrassed really to be staring at myself so long, gazing, demanding, imploring, seeking answers to all the questions, moving paint or charcoal, graphite or pastel to tell a story, maybe about me and maybe about something else, something more. But I did prove to be an always available subject, one whom I felt comfortable tearing to pieces, putting back together, pushing and pulling the paint in ways that were not always beautiful or safe or pleasant. I was less fearful making mistakes when using myself as model or subject, more willing to look past the surface and scratch for something else, something that transcended just that moment in time. When I failed to find what I was looking for, I could try again and again and again, the onion skin always peeling back to show me something else. I am always peeling back and looking for something else.
Other than adolescent punishing sessions of miserable inner dialogue in the bathroom mirror, I didn't like to gaze upon myself. As a teenager my skin was terrible, I wore braces for years, and frankly, any therapist of mine will tell you, it took me years (or until yesterday or the day has not yet come) to find myself appealing. Maybe it was the 80's aesthetic where I was surely not listed in the beauties table of contents or my developing self-deference to make myself smaller and more invisible, but regarding myself left me deflated. Only in dance, where I studied more the lines I was able to make with my body did I emotionally and spiritually connect with my body, my image, myself.
And now I am here. I take pictures of myself and make pictures of myself and reveal, little by little, something of myself in the writing--stories, blog posts, Things My French Husband Says About Me. To me, the portraits, the selfies, the posts, the stories, the scripts, interpretation of dance choreography helps me serve the muse. I am not the first to use the medium to explore, to discover, to share. Western art has a endless number of self-portraits and other portraits that reveal much more beyond the beautifully handled surfaces or even intentionally challenging ones. The cool part is being drawn by the image or the page into something greater than was expected. For both artist and audience there is a dialogue, language, challenge or confrontation, reassurance or connection. When I am looking, when I ask, when I cry, scream, yell, whisper to be seen or heard, it is not because I believe I am the only one to search. It is because I believe we all are. I don't believe, wouldn't dare think that only I have found myself in front of the mirror staring into my eyes, searching for my soul, marveling or mourning some experience in life. That's not my intention at all. I am saying use me. Use me to reassure yourself, to steady yourself, to believe yourself, to react, to assault, to doubt, to question, to challenge. To find solidarity or solitude. To be human in all its torment and glory.
It is humbling, sometimes crippling. It is challenging and sometimes sobering. It is lonely and sometimes isolating. It is uplifting and sometimes otherworldly. Looking at myself, in my study of just a life, mine, I hope I have found a way to connect to humanity and to the divine muse. If you cannot find a way in yourself, use me.
(c) 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
My 7 1/2 year old told me last night, after I'd begged her to stop Rainbow Looming and do her 30 minutes of reading and put in two cents on her project about Helen Keller, that I was unfair. Her exact words were shouted, "You are unfair, Mommy! Other moms are more fair than you!" To which I responded, without raising my voice, "Then go and check them out. See if you want to live with one of them. Because I can assure you that when you are over at their place for a play date they are giving you the fun, cool mommy. But I bet their own kids will tell you that they are just as unfair and uncool as Mommy. Now get to reading." She stormed out of the room and kicked around a bit in her own bedroom before coming back to her senses and picked up her book to read. She came to me and asked that I sit with her while she read to which I immediately obliged.
After we'd read and I was braiding her hair for bedtime, I told her that I'd been very hurt by her comments earlier and that while I did not like having to be a nag, it was my job to make sure that everyone in the family, little kids and Papa, were taking care of their responsibilities. I told her to imagine just how exhausting it was when no one listened to me but everyone yelled at me. I didn't have to say much else as she started crying and apologizing. While reassuring her that it was not my intention to have her cry but to consider how it must feel to have someone say cruel things, I also wanted her to understand that we would not communicate with each other in the house with outbursts and hurtful statements. The three of us, Lily and Virginie and myself, reviewed better ways to tell someone how you feel. Ways that did not involve shouting, pouting, and throwing tantrums.
I know this scenario plays out in so many households daily, maybe even hourly. And I have to think that the person who can change this kind of communication at my house is yours truly. When I was growing up, there wouldn't be much conversation about it, and when I say wouldn't be much, I mean ANY. My parents, like most others at that time, told us what to do and we did it. Often, "because I said so," was answer enough. I do go to that one from time to time, but I prefer to explain my actions; it's a personal choice. If I don't offer the answer "just because" when they ask a question about nature or math or art, I don't want to give that answer in regards to social situations and personal behavior.
"It's not fair!" means that I am asking them to do something that they not only don't want to do but are actually put out being asked. Or told to do it. We can argue, and we do, or I can tell them why I have asked, in this case, for Lily to do her homework. I can tell her about responsibility and expectations and her role and mine. She is welcome to tell me that she is tired or frustrated or disinterested or angry or sad, but she cannot just tell me that I am being unfair. My parents used to say, "Life is unfair." That's true. I have thrown that in there too and for good measure have even given examples. Rarely do those examples involve a first-world child with everything in front of her, coming home from a play date, eating her favorite foods, and snuggling in a blanket while she Rainbow looms. I guess this is my "kids in China/Africa/somewhere would love to eat your broccoli" argument.
When mine tell me, "that's not fair," I want to show them as delicately as I can when I am "Cool Mommy" and as snarky as I might when I am "Overworked/Put upon Mommy" that "that's not fair" often comes out of sounding like they believe themselves to be the most important persons in the whole wide world. From believing not that the sun rises and sets in them but that they are, in fact, the sun. I can imagine that letting them believe they are not the most important people in the world might go over badly with some parents. I imagine this because I see adults asking permission of their children for just about any decision they need to make. Mine ARE the most important people to ME and to my husband. But they are not the center of the universe. It would be awfully painful for them to discover this fact outside of the house when they were too old to still believe so. My grandma, Jessie Mae used to tell hers, "I'm always going to love you. It is my job to get others to like you." In other words, she taught her children, my father included, how to be good, kind, decent human beings, and not to think of themselves before everyone else.
Of course I do not want my children to be put upon or feel less than in anyone's eyes, and they have been fortified with feelings of adequacy and sprinklings of how special and important they are, have been celebrated for jobs well done, and tickled under their chins with giggles about how lovely they are. But learning about how to be part of a community, a family, a group is just as important to me as their developing self-love and pride in the things that make them special. What's not fair is allowing them, while they are cute and sweet and under my roof, to believe that the world will start and stop for them, revolve around them, that they have no responsibility to anyone but themselves, and that they will be accountable to nothing but their own desires. When they say, "that's not fair!" responding with the truth and my expectations and a little guidance, I am hoping to ensure that they are not unfair, unkind, and selfish towards others. Feeling like the bad guy? That's not fair. But I'll take it for the team.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
I haven't allowed my husband to see me cry in that ugly, snot-dripping, hyperventilating way since we left Barbados, where that sight was a common occurrence. As in most relationships I have had throughout my life, I am cautious and read the other person's reactions before I go on willy-nilly just expressing the hell out of myself. That's part of my raisin'. I know that my real feelings, the true strength of them, can blow the roof off the house and that, generally speaking, "nobody got time fuh dat." When I am all love and light, when I cannot give enough of myself, when I pour in and cannot see the space between myself and another person (most often my children, sometimes my husband), it is so good to be around me. I am mistaken for easy-going and good-natured and happy go lucky to those who have only experienced me this way. Oh, how I wish that I were.
When my husband told me last night that he would be leaving to work during the Thanksgiving holiday not on Wednesday as expected, but today, Monday, immediately, I just went silent. I wasn't even holding it in. I was stunned. I just slipped back behind myself, behind the knot in my heart, in my stomach, the knot that ran the cord of all my chakras from my coccyx to the crown of my head, and I disintegrated. I could not look him in the eye. Did not say a word to him. Suddenly, I was very, very busy. There was laundry to be done, knapsacks to be packed, lists to make and double check. I got to yelling at the girls to clean their playroom and mumbled on about how they would all be sorry if Mommy was not able to take care of everything like she does. But I did not cry.
I didn't cry because I always tell myself, as I have even written here many times, that so many others have it worse--soldiers' families, police officers, essential emergency personnel. They do not get to spend holidays together. They find ways to endure. But our situation is not like theirs. Because we, WE, we? chose this. Because he is a private chef, my husband makes much more money working the holidays than he does during his regular schedule. This is because I know, we know, everyone knows that taking a man away from his family during this time is a huge sacrifice and that he must be well compensated. For years I have accepted, even preached, the value of this package on our family's financial situation, have asked friends and neighbors to help me give the girls the best Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's possible, have sat up, without tears, putting toys together, writing notes from Santa, eating the cookies and carrots, then gone quietly to bed next to the girls hoping I've pulled it off again.
Without tears because if I let myself feel what I am really missing, I may never stop crying. I have spent the better part of our relationship longing for him, wanting him closer, wanting him to be with me. Long before there were children, the game of cat and mouse was being played. I chase and he runs or at least hides. He might hide behind work or his culture, his language or his accent. Before we were 'we' he hid behind his bad marriage, a miserable divorce, financial and professional fears, it doesn't matter. He is hiding. He does not want to be seen all the way and certainly does not want to see me for much the same reason as I cannot cry in front of him. And so I hide too. Hide behind the busy work, the busy-ness of being a mother and a wife, of hosting holidays without him, don't dare tell him I'd rather have him than the income, too afraid he will say "but we need it" which will make me second guess how important I am, we are, anyone is to anyone. And that is not the way I think. It cannot be.
When you have chased for love your entire life and it sits down in front of you to catch its breath and then runs off again, it is so easy to take up that game. I am playing again. It is so familiar. My experience of love in my youth is the reason I try so hard to show my children how to give it and receive it. I don't want them on the prowl for anything that looks like it, seems like it, but just isn't. I don't want them to suffer more than they have to for love and a peaceful heart. When they cry for their father, express how much they miss him, need him, want him, I support them but have not shown them how it hurts to be apart. I don't want to blow their minds. I don't want to blow my own. But if they never see how to love from us, if they learn only to hide, to camouflage, keep stony-faced when they are full to bursting, they will be doomed. They will disengage from their families, disconnect, and forget to tell the people they love just how much so and forget to beg them to stay.
Today was a bad day because Didier left this morning, a busy Monday morning that required too much attention to too much else, so I kissed him quickly and said goodbye. It is the first of too many goodbye kisses that signify he is gone for the holidays. We have done this for years and it never gets easier, but it looks the same every time. A fairly innocuous kiss goodbye and then days or weeks of separation where we pretend that being apart like this is normal. We ask how the other is doing without really wanting the answer, without really answering. The ugly, twisted face came hours later after school drop off and three stops at three different grocery stores. What I don't know, what I wonder, what I hope, is that somewhere he is making the ugly-crying face for me. That sometimes he is the cat and I am the mouse and that somewhere in the middle we can meet, hold on, and stop this vicious cycle.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
I remember when I was a little girl that the ringing phone sent everyone into motion. My little sister and I would jump up, racing our parents to answer. This was after rotary but before cordless and long before caller ID. Answering the phone was an adventure. Who is calling? Is it someone who wants to play with me or just someone for my parents who wants to talk about boring adult stuff? The phone was the social media and everyone learned how to do it. Little kids had play rotary phones even though they were no longer the fashion or little push button phones that they could pick up and talk into for hours. "Hello? Hello? Yes, this is So-and-so" or "Hold on just a minute please. Let me see if I can find him/her (presumably Mommy or Daddy)."
My parents did not forbid us to answer the phone, but there was a hierarchy to the phone tower. Mom and Dad on the top, kids on the bottom. Don't answer if there were no adults at home because they had to "run up the street for a minute and you don't want anyone to know you are home alone, do you?" We learned and we practiced. We just answered, "Hello?" But some of our friends were taught to answer, "So-and-so residence, who may I ask is calling?" I always got a kick out of those kids. They seemed so professional and formal, like they were Ricky Schroeder on Silver Spoons. But they knew how to answer the phone and they got the job done.
By the time I was a teenager, my parents had to install a second line in the house for my sister and me so that, even with call waiting in the house, they'd actually get a chance to talk to someone and not find a message about an important call three hours later when one of us had finally finished talking to a BFF about who the heck knows what or whispering repeated sweet absolutely nothings into the waiting ear of a paramour. We loved the phone. The phone was the life line. The phone was connection, communication, community, and it was direct. You had to pick up the phone if you wanted to know who was on the other side because there was no call waiting and much less phone solicitation. So other than teenaged prank callers or appointment confirmations, more than likely someone in the household wanted to talk to whomever was on the other end.
My kids aren't getting that practice. When Lily was in kindergarten, she was given an assignment to call someone on the telephone as part of a monthly activity log. I thought it would be fun for her to call up one of her classmates and talk to them about whatever it was they were doing at home and vice versa. I prearranged the call time with her friend's mother and we all, on both sides, geared up for the momentous occasion. The prep was as much for the adults as for the children. Because dinner time, the time scheduled for the call, has now become prime time for solicitous phone calls, fundraising efforts, surveys, and other robocalls, we had to avoid those landmines. At the appropriate time, the phone was to ring on one end and the child was supposed to answer with a greeting, the other would respond, and they'd get to chatting.
And so it went. The caller nervously dialed the phone number and started talking into the receiver before the call had even connected. "Let's try again. You have to wait for the call to connect, hon. Listen for the tone, dial, hear it ring and wait for someone to pick up."
"Hello?" someone answered shyly on the other end and *click,* our caller had gotten nervous and hung up. We tried again. Phone rings and Lily answers in a near whisper, "Hello?" Silence. "Hello?"
"Hi."
"Hi."
"It's me from your class."
"I know that."
"I am calling you."
"I know that."
"OK, bye."
*click*
Not much has changed since that exchange because, frankly, the kids don't get much opportunity to set up their own play dates and are too young to gab it up on the phone with their friends. Long before they've gotten off the bus, I've texted, emailed, maybe called, possibly seen the others' parent(s) and made the arrangements myself. I don't have the girls answer the phone when it rings because the caller ID tells us who it is and gives me the chance to decide whether or not I want contact with the outside world. The lurking danger of someone, anyone assuming that my children are home alone, a learned paranoia from my childhood, has stopped me from having them pick up (I mean, why would a child answer the phone in the middle of the afternoon?), as well as the fear of all the info they might divulge when prompted. (Oh, yeah, my mom is here. She is in the bathroom and waved her hands for me not to tell you that. She's so silly.)
Mine are still small and I have heard from their contemporaries' parents that theirs also don't get much phone time. My oldest had a friend/classmate who would frequently make her own robocalls using the school directory and reach out to every person in her class she might like to play with until someone finally answered and said yes. Thanks to caller ID, I would see the name come up and expect the caller to be the parent of said little girl and would answer. I regret to inform that I fell for this okey-doke far too many times. On the other end there would be stammering, whispering, and the question, "Can Lily and I have a playdate?" Depending on how quickly I recovered she'd either offer thanks and hang up, offer thanks and scream to her mother across the house that she'd connected and what time could they get together, or offer disappointment and ask me to call her back another time when Lily might be able to play! I should call her back?
Talking to this little girl on the phone made me batty, but I admired her gumption, and though I was not sure if her parents were intentionally teaching her the ropes of phone communique, I appreciated the effort, even remarked to a friend that in a time of crisis I'd hoped that Lily would stick with that one because she knew how to get her point across, wasn't afraid of adults, and would figure out the path to safety. She had no shyness, no fear, and complete confidence.
Thanks to FaceTime and SKYPE, my kids have the opportunity to talk to AND see my parents. I imaged the conversations would be easier since they are able to see them, almost like in a real conversation. Not so. They talk on FaceTime much like they do on the phone. In monosyllables, blips, blurps, and beeps. If they do indeed find something they like to talk about, they do so in a whisper. I can see their mouths moving, am even sitting right next to them, but can barely hear a word they are saying. My parents smile at them and nod, occasionally saying, "That's wonderful, " even when the girls are saying that the guppies in class have died. Everyone is just thrilled to see each other. I suppose the real talking will come later.
Or maybe not. Do people even talk on the phone anymore? So many people have just their smartphones, having said goodbye to landlines long ago. There is texting, emailing, FaceTiming, Skyping. It seems that long gone are the days of chatting up a storm or falling asleep on one end of the phone while your best friend does the same on the other. And yet, to me, the lessons learned on the phone, communicating when you have to rely on the words, the tone, the pauses, the cracks, the muffled sound of crying, giggling, listening, paying attention, considering appear to be less important. I am guilty too of preferring a text to a call, an email to a long drawn out explanation of what and where and when and how. But when I need comfort, human contact (yes, the phone now represents human contact!) I reach for the phone and if I am able, I settle in for a delicious conversation with a friend who will calm my soul, reassure me, reinvigorate me, set me back on course. And when I say settle in I mean walk around the house doing dishes, folding laundry, general cleaning, and checking texts on my cell while talking. But that "hello," that "what's up?", that "I'm here," is worth a thousand :-) or LOLs or :-/. Somehow I feel that we are together.
Sharing yourself can be challenging. Being vulnerable, nervous, afraid, reaching out and admitting the need to connect can be embarrassing especially now that even in highly emotional states we can emoticon and air quote and asterisk our feelings in text. But we need each other, might need to make the call, might need to receive one. So we soldier on, the girls and me, one *click*, one hang up, one awkward silence at a time until talking to one another, sharing with one another, listening to one another is easy.
(c) Copyrighted 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
