Little girls. The hard part is raising them. The crazy part is having to search and scour and work through all the messages that are being sent at their little hearts and minds. The wicked part is trying to work through my own politics, my own feelings, my own shortcomings, fears, desires and lead them to their own paths.
I want to raise my girls stronger, more self-aware, and centered than I ever was. I want them to know their strengths--emotional, physical, and spiritual, their beauty, their wisdom, their intuition, intelligence, and their magic. But I also want them to use their powers for good and not evil. I, like so many parents of girls my age, love the fierce, young things out there, images of girl power that are not as obviously sexist, racist, misogynistic as images from the past. My girls believe they can do anything though they often need some coaxing to see the application of this mantra. All things new are met with a little apprehension and fear and some embarrassment about being made a fool of by their peers real and imagined. I sit with that part as it runs in me too, but as a woman, I am able to throw myself into the new, knowing the rewards often outweigh the risks.
I love almost anything that lets little girls and women high five themselves at the show of strength, power, and confidence, that shows the second sex flexing all its muscle--physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. I like girls in real life and fiction that challenge the status quo, that bring it, find themselves alienated because they are so misunderstood in their desire to march to the beat of their own damned beatbox. I believe that leadership comes with strength and compassion and I teach my girls how to lead themselves. I have told them to lead by example and others will follow but I do not know that that is true. Sometimes it seems like the sassy wheel gets the grease.
There are so many other reinforcements for an aggressive show of strength--girl bullying, the "I don't care," the blasé response to a life lived with just 6 or 7 years under the belt and parents' oblivious acceptance or ignorance of them. Mine see wonder in everything, Believe that every image seen will enhance the dreams in their minds, every experience had will feed the possibilities. They are open to the idea of everyone's joy and believe there is enough to go around for everyone. Sure, they fight like heck when they get locked in the house on a cold day or a boring morning where Mommy does not jump up and show them the fireworks, but they cut their teeth at home where the sparing is playful at best, chock full of Mommy-shouting, teachable moments at worst. Like two little lion cubs they spar and jab and resist and pounce and I call from the other room, "That's too much. Not like that. Don't say words just to be cruel, just to hurt. Say them to make your point."
Mine know the first of the Four Agreements because I say it so often. "Be impeccable with your word." It's kind of like "use your words" but with intention and conviction behind them. Know that what you say or do definitely has a reaction in the world and who the heck wants a reaction that hurts someone else. When little girls are cruel, abusive, short-tempered with others, I often wonder if their parents have goaded them on, cheered them, encouraged them by telling them that they are strong, singular, fierce. I wonder if the girls long for a tribe of like-minded chicas or if they believe that to be a strong girl or woman one must do it alone. I wonder why compassion gets taken out of the equation when one is being prepped for greatness.
Yesterday, after a dance class, I spent a good hour talking with some mommy-friends about raising children and girls in particular. My parents involved themselves very little in my social development and I navigated using clues from television, playground politics, and bearing witness to schoolyard hierarchies. I was nervous, but found that humor and revealing very little about my real feelings was helpful. Only I knew how trying it was to find my way through this maze and I grew a thick skin. I shored up and developed a hard shell to protect my gooey insides. But what for the girls who appear quiet, but really have a silent roar? Those that are nurturing a strong character, who are watching and mindful and intelligent and sharp? Who don't know how or won't fight for the top of the pyramid but could surely get there on their own strength.
The narcissistic side of me hopes that my girls are tiny avatars of all my good qualities with daring, commitment, and perseverance in extra measure. I hope that when they are doing something that makes them stand out, either because they are great or not so, that they keep doing it anyway because they love it. I hope that the voices--inside their heads and from other littles who have already taken in the sad, scary, tiny messages delivered on a pink tray to little girls--can be ignored and they can blaze hot, fiery paths of their own making. Or even lay tiny little stones, like Gretel and her brother Hansel, on their path to find their way. I don't care how they do it, just want it to be their very own.
My girls are sweet, easy playmates, sugary and gooey and lovey with enough character and drive to spice up all interaction with them. The fierceness will come as their confidence strengthens and they feel safer navigating knowing that I have their backs and support every effort they make towards self-discovery and self-improvement and self-love. I'm in it with them.
Those sassy, precocious, sophisticated, modern kids who call adults by their first names and treat children and adults alike with the same snarky attitude, who are already bored, unmoved by the real miracles of life, the joys, the highs, who hide the miserable, scary lows, who have even us fooled that "they got this" when they are way too young to GET this and just need to be parented, to be given limits, to have consequences to face, need guidance. They need us to help them find their way to their best selves, to their potential, and to do it without having to break others down to the quick. They run this town and they know it. We let them tell us what to do, talk back, assault us, call us names and then wonder why they just can't seem to connect with others.
Fierce is not mean or biting or cruel. It's not manipulative or controlling. It doesn't make others feel less than so that one can feel whole. We know this, but they may not. May not be able to read through the pages of confusing messages directed at them or lives lived vicariously through them. I don't want my children to be too heavy on the sugar, so sweet and kind and easy-going that they give up their strength. But the healthy snack to that meal is not snark or sassiness. It's the true power--self-reliance, self-love, intelligence, empathy, and compassion. Sugar and spice and everything nice? I don't know about that. But crystallizing that inner awesome, seeing it in others too, and letting everyone be led by their own star? I can get with that.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Showing posts with label growing up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label growing up. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Learning MLK
Black National Anthem
Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.
Written by James Weldon Johnson (1899), music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1900)
When I was a little girl, though I suspect younger than my two ladybugs, to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday and legacy, my family would spend the afternoon at a black church listening to people who'd lived the Civil Rights era, talking about about our history and the life of this man, and singing and clapping and dancing to some incredible church music and old Negro spirituals. We were meant to reflect, consider, uplift, and rise, rise, rise above what our people, African-American people had endured in our own country. A suffering that weighed heavily in the story of my immediate family. This was not the story of just my ancestors, but of my people, my family, my father and mother and uncles and grands and greats. It was not the past. It was the ever-fluid present.
The emotion was so visceral, so intense in those moments that I was often embarrassed and humiliated by the heaviness. I was "one of the only's," "the Cosby" at my school (calling it largely white would understate it). That my father and mother were well-educated and had good jobs and provided for us well above even the national average allowed others to define us as "past all that." But we weren't. We aren't. That our experience as middle class, educated, law abiding, good neighbors seemed beyond the norm was just the start of the misunderstanding. That Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday was still being debated as a national holiday confused the young me. That I celebrated in a church full of African-Americans and very few others hit it home. This was my cross to bear. Everyone else got to have the day off.
I supposed that my white friends were spending the day shopping or watching TV, hanging out, while the weight of my people and really the future of our nation, felt like it rested on my shoulders, or ours, as we endured to keep the memory, the truth, and the history alive. I wanted everyone to be considering Martin Luther King, Jr. in the same way I was. As a man, a true person, not just an idea, who lived and breathed among us, the same air I was breathing now, and who saw severe racism and institutional injustice and wanted it changed. I felt burdened in a way different than my parents and their parents had because, according to so many who "don't see color" I was not living the outright barbaric terrorism of the times before the Civil Rights era and was living in a nearly all white community, proof to so many that things had changed. But I still felt racism's sting in the subtlest of ways and much of it was internalized. I still felt that it was mine to prove that we were equal, alike, multidimensional and multifaceted.
It has been an interesting lesson for my husband and me as we teach our children who are biracial and bicultural about this very particular man from this very particular moment and then open up the discussion to the greater topics of racism and equality, tolerance and acceptance. They are so young and still at an age where they see the differences but do not have cultural references as to what those differences mean to some people. Because I experienced that sense of other, I have been both protective of their feelings as such and have also opened the dialogue before their questions about otherness have even arisen. Since they were very small, they have seen both of our families either in person or via Skype. My husband speaks French with them and they see him speaking with his friends and family only in French. We have looked at the map and the globe to discover just "how close and how far" we are to where Papa grew up. We have visited with my parents and family full of aunts, uncles, and cousins down South in Virginia, Washington, DC, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. When we lived in Barbados, they saw what looked to them like a thriving nation where black and white people worked along side one another, where they saw many more people of color in positions of power, where racism was, of course, in play, as it is everywhere, but where they were not isolated because of their racial make up, where they were, in fact, part of the majority. They learned there about the East Indians and Chinese in the Caribbean through the friendships they made, and though they certainly asked questions about where folks came from, it was more a curiosity of geography than fear or confusion about race.
We have made it clear through our friendships and relations and the way we speak about all people that intolerance based on color, creed, religion, or sexual orientation will not be accepted in our home. They have never said they wished they were not black. Have never said they don't believe themselves to be beautiful. Have never said that boys are smarter than girls, that white is better than black, that something is a girl game or a boy color or only for one group or another. We talk about other peoples' customs and religions, even practicing some of the holiday customs and going to services when we can to demonstrate how all people are just striving for the same goals for their families. And yet, when the specifics of the pre-Civil Rights era come up, I am taken back to that pain.
As they have begun to learn the very cursory history and stories they are shocked. If the separate water fountains and segregated schools are enough to burn their cheeks and hurt their hearts, imagine how they were brought to silence, sucking the insides of their cheeks, when I told them that Grandma and Grandpa had grown up, been little kids, just as they were now, and had lived this abject racism and in the case of my parents, poverty. That Grandma and Grandpa and their brothers and sisters and so many other families and children just like them could not look away from it, rather had to live it and breathe it every day of their lives. That their lives, in the minds of many, institutionalized in the country they called home, were not as valuable as the lives of others. They see the absolute injustice right away and struggle and fumble for words. It is not an abstraction talked about as if a bygone era, but a tangible truth for people they love and hold dear. Because they still see us all as equal, they are just unable to comprehend. This is how it hurts. As the true terror and violence of that time comes to light for them, they will need the strength to endure and to forgive and to continue the legacy of a real, live man who gave his life in that struggle. For them, a real, live man who looks like Grandpa, for whom their eyes sparkle and who is loved infinitely.
Both girls are extremely empathic and feel for others so deeply and compassionately. I feel so lucky that we are the same in that way. But they, as I long ago, cannot define how it hurts, just feel the lumps in their throats, the flush of their cheeks, the knot in their hearts and they weep. They have cried for friends that "would not be our friends if the brown and the white could not be together." The oldest has a dear girlfriend who said she'd just have to be in jail because she loved her friend so and would not put up with that nonsense. I loved this comment more than I realized because it keeps returning to me, to my heart. I love it because during those MLK celebrations of my youth, I would have loved a professing of love and commitment such as that from someone who "didn't have to," was able to choose her commitment to the rights of others when the privilege was hers.
I was a young person and am now a grown woman. What I shared is not shame but the real visceral pain of that history, of what separation, exclusion, divisiveness of any kind does not only to us on a global scale, but what it does just to our own individual selves. We miss the true evolution of ourselves--physically, emotionally, spiritually, nationally, internationally, globally. We miss transcendence if we cannot "lift every voice and sing." I am working hard to keep that love in mine. I hope as we celebrate the man and his actions, we each make a commitment to ourselves and our actions.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.
Written by James Weldon Johnson (1899), music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1900)
When I was a little girl, though I suspect younger than my two ladybugs, to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday and legacy, my family would spend the afternoon at a black church listening to people who'd lived the Civil Rights era, talking about about our history and the life of this man, and singing and clapping and dancing to some incredible church music and old Negro spirituals. We were meant to reflect, consider, uplift, and rise, rise, rise above what our people, African-American people had endured in our own country. A suffering that weighed heavily in the story of my immediate family. This was not the story of just my ancestors, but of my people, my family, my father and mother and uncles and grands and greats. It was not the past. It was the ever-fluid present.
The emotion was so visceral, so intense in those moments that I was often embarrassed and humiliated by the heaviness. I was "one of the only's," "the Cosby" at my school (calling it largely white would understate it). That my father and mother were well-educated and had good jobs and provided for us well above even the national average allowed others to define us as "past all that." But we weren't. We aren't. That our experience as middle class, educated, law abiding, good neighbors seemed beyond the norm was just the start of the misunderstanding. That Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday was still being debated as a national holiday confused the young me. That I celebrated in a church full of African-Americans and very few others hit it home. This was my cross to bear. Everyone else got to have the day off.
I supposed that my white friends were spending the day shopping or watching TV, hanging out, while the weight of my people and really the future of our nation, felt like it rested on my shoulders, or ours, as we endured to keep the memory, the truth, and the history alive. I wanted everyone to be considering Martin Luther King, Jr. in the same way I was. As a man, a true person, not just an idea, who lived and breathed among us, the same air I was breathing now, and who saw severe racism and institutional injustice and wanted it changed. I felt burdened in a way different than my parents and their parents had because, according to so many who "don't see color" I was not living the outright barbaric terrorism of the times before the Civil Rights era and was living in a nearly all white community, proof to so many that things had changed. But I still felt racism's sting in the subtlest of ways and much of it was internalized. I still felt that it was mine to prove that we were equal, alike, multidimensional and multifaceted.
It has been an interesting lesson for my husband and me as we teach our children who are biracial and bicultural about this very particular man from this very particular moment and then open up the discussion to the greater topics of racism and equality, tolerance and acceptance. They are so young and still at an age where they see the differences but do not have cultural references as to what those differences mean to some people. Because I experienced that sense of other, I have been both protective of their feelings as such and have also opened the dialogue before their questions about otherness have even arisen. Since they were very small, they have seen both of our families either in person or via Skype. My husband speaks French with them and they see him speaking with his friends and family only in French. We have looked at the map and the globe to discover just "how close and how far" we are to where Papa grew up. We have visited with my parents and family full of aunts, uncles, and cousins down South in Virginia, Washington, DC, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. When we lived in Barbados, they saw what looked to them like a thriving nation where black and white people worked along side one another, where they saw many more people of color in positions of power, where racism was, of course, in play, as it is everywhere, but where they were not isolated because of their racial make up, where they were, in fact, part of the majority. They learned there about the East Indians and Chinese in the Caribbean through the friendships they made, and though they certainly asked questions about where folks came from, it was more a curiosity of geography than fear or confusion about race.
We have made it clear through our friendships and relations and the way we speak about all people that intolerance based on color, creed, religion, or sexual orientation will not be accepted in our home. They have never said they wished they were not black. Have never said they don't believe themselves to be beautiful. Have never said that boys are smarter than girls, that white is better than black, that something is a girl game or a boy color or only for one group or another. We talk about other peoples' customs and religions, even practicing some of the holiday customs and going to services when we can to demonstrate how all people are just striving for the same goals for their families. And yet, when the specifics of the pre-Civil Rights era come up, I am taken back to that pain.
As they have begun to learn the very cursory history and stories they are shocked. If the separate water fountains and segregated schools are enough to burn their cheeks and hurt their hearts, imagine how they were brought to silence, sucking the insides of their cheeks, when I told them that Grandma and Grandpa had grown up, been little kids, just as they were now, and had lived this abject racism and in the case of my parents, poverty. That Grandma and Grandpa and their brothers and sisters and so many other families and children just like them could not look away from it, rather had to live it and breathe it every day of their lives. That their lives, in the minds of many, institutionalized in the country they called home, were not as valuable as the lives of others. They see the absolute injustice right away and struggle and fumble for words. It is not an abstraction talked about as if a bygone era, but a tangible truth for people they love and hold dear. Because they still see us all as equal, they are just unable to comprehend. This is how it hurts. As the true terror and violence of that time comes to light for them, they will need the strength to endure and to forgive and to continue the legacy of a real, live man who gave his life in that struggle. For them, a real, live man who looks like Grandpa, for whom their eyes sparkle and who is loved infinitely.
Both girls are extremely empathic and feel for others so deeply and compassionately. I feel so lucky that we are the same in that way. But they, as I long ago, cannot define how it hurts, just feel the lumps in their throats, the flush of their cheeks, the knot in their hearts and they weep. They have cried for friends that "would not be our friends if the brown and the white could not be together." The oldest has a dear girlfriend who said she'd just have to be in jail because she loved her friend so and would not put up with that nonsense. I loved this comment more than I realized because it keeps returning to me, to my heart. I love it because during those MLK celebrations of my youth, I would have loved a professing of love and commitment such as that from someone who "didn't have to," was able to choose her commitment to the rights of others when the privilege was hers.
I was a young person and am now a grown woman. What I shared is not shame but the real visceral pain of that history, of what separation, exclusion, divisiveness of any kind does not only to us on a global scale, but what it does just to our own individual selves. We miss the true evolution of ourselves--physically, emotionally, spiritually, nationally, internationally, globally. We miss transcendence if we cannot "lift every voice and sing." I am working hard to keep that love in mine. I hope as we celebrate the man and his actions, we each make a commitment to ourselves and our actions.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Story time
I have spent the entire summer with my girls. Their father is working full time, often six days a week, and we decided long ago, after the years in Barbados had me traipsing from Miami to Bim with the girls and all kinds of stuff alone (A-LONE), that we should take trips together from here forward. We have had an epic Mommy Camp summer with more iPad and less study binder than I'd hoped for but also gardening and visiting and swimming and playing and talking. I know that we will all look back on these dog days with joy and easy smiles. At present it can be rather tough.
When we get ready for bed at night, I try to have a pile of library books on hand. Because I have a new efficient and excited reader, we often get through the stack before I expected we would and find ourselves with time. I turn off the lights in their room and we stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars around the room, listen to the hamsters running amok, and hear ourselves breathing. These past few nights, the girls have started asking for "stories that come from my mouth" instead of books. How did they know they had the right mommy?
I can spin a yarn, tell a tale, work some magic. But with the stories that I tell my girls, there is something more. The tales are not tall. Have no wizards and fairies. They are instead, opportunities I have taken to impart feelings of self-worth, relevance, value, intuition, connection, and divinity within. In the last story I told last night there were three sisters. The first sister wanted to see the world and put on her backpack and hiking boots, took a map, and a tent and went off to see what nature had to offer. She walked through the jungle, climbed mountains, scaled walls, drank from clear rivers, and watched herds of animals as they interacted with one another. The second sister wanted to see the world and all that man had made, so she packed up her fancy suitcases, beautiful clothes and traveled to the world's best cities. She ate delicious food, stayed in amazing hotel suites, looked at art, listened to live music, saw live theatre, and was inspired by architecture and the built world. The third sister stayed behind. She crossed her legs and sat in meditation. She did yoga. She searched for the invisible string that connected her heart to all the hearts in the world. She concentrated on love and light, opened herself to being compassionate and available to all people and all things. She listened and watched and learned so that she could understand people and what made them do the things they did.
Before I could finish my story, my four year old called out, "I'm like her! I'm like her! The third girl is me."
I asked, "Are you sure? You don't want to travel the world and see those beautiful things?"
To which she replied, "She already knows those beautiful things. They are in her heart."
As I finished my story with the return of the two sisters to home where they regaled each other with wild tales and stories of impressive sights and sites, I closed with "all three found their way to the truth about the marvel of all things." Both girls lay quietly, slowly breathing, eyes blinking to close. I kissed them both on their foreheads and slithered out of the bed.
Each night there is a story like this. Each night I heal the wound, the emptiness, the hurt and longing of my nights in my bedroom alone. Each night I hope they do not feel those same fears. I have no idea if these stories will be important, if they will stick in their minds, rest gently in their psyches to be recalled when compassion, love, connection, empathy need to be called up. But in the darkness, after a long, arduous day spent in the company of chatty, little babes, I hope I am giving them stories that will take root in their minds and in their hearts when they no longer want to snuggle up to me and be told stories "from my mouth."
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
When we get ready for bed at night, I try to have a pile of library books on hand. Because I have a new efficient and excited reader, we often get through the stack before I expected we would and find ourselves with time. I turn off the lights in their room and we stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars around the room, listen to the hamsters running amok, and hear ourselves breathing. These past few nights, the girls have started asking for "stories that come from my mouth" instead of books. How did they know they had the right mommy?
I can spin a yarn, tell a tale, work some magic. But with the stories that I tell my girls, there is something more. The tales are not tall. Have no wizards and fairies. They are instead, opportunities I have taken to impart feelings of self-worth, relevance, value, intuition, connection, and divinity within. In the last story I told last night there were three sisters. The first sister wanted to see the world and put on her backpack and hiking boots, took a map, and a tent and went off to see what nature had to offer. She walked through the jungle, climbed mountains, scaled walls, drank from clear rivers, and watched herds of animals as they interacted with one another. The second sister wanted to see the world and all that man had made, so she packed up her fancy suitcases, beautiful clothes and traveled to the world's best cities. She ate delicious food, stayed in amazing hotel suites, looked at art, listened to live music, saw live theatre, and was inspired by architecture and the built world. The third sister stayed behind. She crossed her legs and sat in meditation. She did yoga. She searched for the invisible string that connected her heart to all the hearts in the world. She concentrated on love and light, opened herself to being compassionate and available to all people and all things. She listened and watched and learned so that she could understand people and what made them do the things they did.
Before I could finish my story, my four year old called out, "I'm like her! I'm like her! The third girl is me."
I asked, "Are you sure? You don't want to travel the world and see those beautiful things?"
To which she replied, "She already knows those beautiful things. They are in her heart."
As I finished my story with the return of the two sisters to home where they regaled each other with wild tales and stories of impressive sights and sites, I closed with "all three found their way to the truth about the marvel of all things." Both girls lay quietly, slowly breathing, eyes blinking to close. I kissed them both on their foreheads and slithered out of the bed.
Each night there is a story like this. Each night I heal the wound, the emptiness, the hurt and longing of my nights in my bedroom alone. Each night I hope they do not feel those same fears. I have no idea if these stories will be important, if they will stick in their minds, rest gently in their psyches to be recalled when compassion, love, connection, empathy need to be called up. But in the darkness, after a long, arduous day spent in the company of chatty, little babes, I hope I am giving them stories that will take root in their minds and in their hearts when they no longer want to snuggle up to me and be told stories "from my mouth."
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Father's Day
I have to confess that no matter how hard I've tried to distance myself from some of my dad's behavior, there is no denying it. My mom is as cool as a cucumber, but my dad, all moist-eyed and sensitive, all curious and excitable, all passion and rage and angst and joy, is me. A girlfriend of mine has told me repeatedly to cherish the time with my parents, to celebrate and relish who we are to each other while we can as both of her parents are no longer living. I have listened, though often not heard her because I am all moist-eyed and sensitive, all passion and rage and angst and joy. I am, in so many ways, the Mini to his Me.
He and my mother visited this Father's Day, stayed in our home for the first time (not including Barbados which was not actually ever our home), spent real adult time, played with the girls, went on our errands, meandered through our town, and enjoyed ourselves together. We visited with family friends and I felt adult and grown and proud to be with them. I am not sure if it is my midlife crisis which looks more like actualization than crushing breakdown, my recent interest in meditation and reiki, my return to dance, or the shifting of our collective consciousness, but I have found acceptance of who and what I am and therefore in who and what everyone around me is. I have found the desperate need to hold on to past hurts and wounds to be exhausting and have forgiven them, though more than likely not forgotten them. (I am, after all, a Penn.)
I have spent much of my life recognizing my role as a member of my family and feeling that I was failing miserably. No matter how this thinking came about, I felt overwhelming pressure at being "the daughter of/big sister of/first grandchild of." The burden of carrying on the line of two incredible families, the credits, achievements, and successes of which are extraordinary by any standard, but given that they were done by those poor and black, largely undereducated, during the dark days of our country's history, made them mythic, epic, heroic. I felt like a straight up fraud. Middle class, indulged, allowed my mood swings and artistic tendencies. I didn't have to give up my dreams, whatever they were, in order to put food on the table or a roof over my head. The fight over outright racist and sexist policy was fought on their backs while they were striving for the promised American dream. I had a kind of survivor's guilt because I did not struggle to achieve what was seemingly handed to me, because the racism, sexism, and white privilege that I faced was more subtle, because I had been walked to third base by a family that persevered in getting into the stadium and onto the field. Though I know now that I did not need to apologize for myself, I was then so sorry and ashamed.
Under the weight of that, my father and I would look at each other, mirror to reflection, reflection to mirror and declare, under our breaths, "What?" There was so much expectation, so much want, so much need and no real way to express it. So there was moist-eyed, sensitive, curious, and excitable passion, rage, angst, and joy. I would cower in his presence, hold my breath, not feel safe expressing myself as I did when "away from home." I was miserable to be around, was either pulled in and tense or exploded when provoked(like someone I know), hated family get-togethers because I did not feel like I could be myself, because what I reflected back to Mr. Penn was too much for him to see. It might even still be.
But there are new facets to this diamond. The glittering, fascinating shine of my children. And in my children and how they are being raised and how they behave and love and give, I believe that my dad and I can share something, love something together. We can see that part of each other that loves, that cares, that is all moist-eyed and longing. Like two shy, nervous baby birds we just might dare to fly, helping each other do so but also concentrating on our own flight. As I see him soar, I feel joy. He might not tell me, but he feels the same for me. We have this story to tell, this epic tale in which to contribute. Like that game where one person starts the story and another picks it up where he leaves off and then another picks up and so on and so forth until an incredible tale is told, we are living and weaving our lives.
We are much alike, but not entirely the same. My father wanted to be a journalist but that gig did not pay well enough for a young man who had the obligation to help put his younger siblings through school as his older siblings had done for him. He has something to say but often chooses his words carefully, sparingly, and certainly does not express his feelings or wear his heart on his sleeve. I, on the other hand, did not have that financial responsibility, did not make a choice based on monetary need, cry, laugh, love, freak, and respond to every stimulus, and even when I might keep my mouth shut, cannot do so! I want to say something; I have to, come what may. I respect his choices, his sacrifices, and know that he loves us. I hope, hope, hope that he feels the same for me because this Father's Day, I allowed myself to love him like I did as a girl. With wonder, curiosity, awe, and the first twinkling of autonomy that a toddler shows when she realizes that she and her parents are not indeed the same entity. It was truly a great day to celebrate having and being a father.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
He and my mother visited this Father's Day, stayed in our home for the first time (not including Barbados which was not actually ever our home), spent real adult time, played with the girls, went on our errands, meandered through our town, and enjoyed ourselves together. We visited with family friends and I felt adult and grown and proud to be with them. I am not sure if it is my midlife crisis which looks more like actualization than crushing breakdown, my recent interest in meditation and reiki, my return to dance, or the shifting of our collective consciousness, but I have found acceptance of who and what I am and therefore in who and what everyone around me is. I have found the desperate need to hold on to past hurts and wounds to be exhausting and have forgiven them, though more than likely not forgotten them. (I am, after all, a Penn.)
I have spent much of my life recognizing my role as a member of my family and feeling that I was failing miserably. No matter how this thinking came about, I felt overwhelming pressure at being "the daughter of/big sister of/first grandchild of." The burden of carrying on the line of two incredible families, the credits, achievements, and successes of which are extraordinary by any standard, but given that they were done by those poor and black, largely undereducated, during the dark days of our country's history, made them mythic, epic, heroic. I felt like a straight up fraud. Middle class, indulged, allowed my mood swings and artistic tendencies. I didn't have to give up my dreams, whatever they were, in order to put food on the table or a roof over my head. The fight over outright racist and sexist policy was fought on their backs while they were striving for the promised American dream. I had a kind of survivor's guilt because I did not struggle to achieve what was seemingly handed to me, because the racism, sexism, and white privilege that I faced was more subtle, because I had been walked to third base by a family that persevered in getting into the stadium and onto the field. Though I know now that I did not need to apologize for myself, I was then so sorry and ashamed.
Under the weight of that, my father and I would look at each other, mirror to reflection, reflection to mirror and declare, under our breaths, "What?" There was so much expectation, so much want, so much need and no real way to express it. So there was moist-eyed, sensitive, curious, and excitable passion, rage, angst, and joy. I would cower in his presence, hold my breath, not feel safe expressing myself as I did when "away from home." I was miserable to be around, was either pulled in and tense or exploded when provoked(like someone I know), hated family get-togethers because I did not feel like I could be myself, because what I reflected back to Mr. Penn was too much for him to see. It might even still be.
But there are new facets to this diamond. The glittering, fascinating shine of my children. And in my children and how they are being raised and how they behave and love and give, I believe that my dad and I can share something, love something together. We can see that part of each other that loves, that cares, that is all moist-eyed and longing. Like two shy, nervous baby birds we just might dare to fly, helping each other do so but also concentrating on our own flight. As I see him soar, I feel joy. He might not tell me, but he feels the same for me. We have this story to tell, this epic tale in which to contribute. Like that game where one person starts the story and another picks it up where he leaves off and then another picks up and so on and so forth until an incredible tale is told, we are living and weaving our lives.
We are much alike, but not entirely the same. My father wanted to be a journalist but that gig did not pay well enough for a young man who had the obligation to help put his younger siblings through school as his older siblings had done for him. He has something to say but often chooses his words carefully, sparingly, and certainly does not express his feelings or wear his heart on his sleeve. I, on the other hand, did not have that financial responsibility, did not make a choice based on monetary need, cry, laugh, love, freak, and respond to every stimulus, and even when I might keep my mouth shut, cannot do so! I want to say something; I have to, come what may. I respect his choices, his sacrifices, and know that he loves us. I hope, hope, hope that he feels the same for me because this Father's Day, I allowed myself to love him like I did as a girl. With wonder, curiosity, awe, and the first twinkling of autonomy that a toddler shows when she realizes that she and her parents are not indeed the same entity. It was truly a great day to celebrate having and being a father.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Brother Man
I am almost six years older than my brother which was just enough distance to see him as a cute and cuddly threat when he was born and a strange, little brainiac as he grew into a viciously smart kid and I into a miserable, brooding teenager. I was always so curious about him, intrigued and fascinated. He was a boy and did boy things and was sensitive, inquisitive, and obviously bright. It was understood that he was bright. He "got" things easily, skipped second grade, had a memory for all kinds of information, facts, dates, concepts, and loved exploring them, sometimes talking, talking, talking about them out loud in order to process them. His role in the family was son and heir and "the smart one." Nevermind that he was also a talented musician, it seemed a "shame" for him to go in the direction of the arts when he was clearly gifted with this brain for "something more."
I can only imagine how being my little brother must have traumatized the poor soul. I was all arts and smarts--dance, visual arts, music, then acting later in life-- though the smarts did not reveal itself until years later when intelligence was no longer measured in test taking ability, memorization, and advanced algebra and trigonometry. I foolishly committed the rules to memory and existed only to serve them. Until I became that tortured teen, I ignored my own thoughts and cries and pleas for expression and did what I was told. My bro watched in the shadows of the Speak N-Spell, adding numbers on the calculator to turn it upside down and make funny words, spinning the globe and pouring through maps and Encyclopedia Britannica volumes while I went from people pleaser to sad, angry worm. My sister, two years younger than I am, buffered him from my angst and anxiety, teaching him about hip hop and teenage partying, relationships, and navigating the grey landscape that was our childhood home.
And then I was gone. As I watched from the dorm rooms I inhabited in Boston, my brother became a very cool, super hip, politically passionate dude. I wanted to know him but was long gone and fast disconnecting from the mothership. We'd move in and out of the circle, a little do-see-do, but never quite got to know each other or find ourselves completely comfy in each others' presence. I blamed myself for this. My brooding, emotional, artistic self saw ribbons of energy pushing and pulling and twisting around each other and I could never get my bearings. I recalled bad times where he'd existed only on the periphery, moments that did not sit with the same thud for him as they did for me. I was melancholy, mourning, dark and he was still searching, reaching, seeking. Though we were both artistic, creative, thinkers, though we were both inquisitive, longing,questing, I couldn't see in his success, his hopefulness, how it was that we'd come out of the same house, that he remembered too.
As soon as I saw the trotting horses in the park, I collected myself and got my bearings. I looked down and saw that I was pushing Virginie in our Peg Perego stroller that has survived international travel, beach dunes, and took comfort in seeing my hands gripping the carriage handles. I searched for Lily, looking for her red jacket through the trees and other colored parkas in the park and saw that she was close. Close to me and to the trotting horses. I didn't have to say anything because before I could figure out just what I would shout out about now, my brother rounded up the girls (his and mine) and got them well out of "harm's" way. I looked over at my sister-in-law and said, "He has it too, huh? The Penn panic. The horses aren't bothering you at all, are they?" They weren't. At all. Nor were they bothering my husband.
A smile came to my face and I took comfort in this commonality. My brother is all those wonderful things and he was freaked by the possibility of the "charging," yes, now charging (in my mind) horses. He was prepared for danger, ready. He believed in love and life, had found the most incredible place with his gorgeous wife and girls, successful career, nice home, spoils of a well-lived, well-guided life, and still flashed panicked eyes at obstacles on the road. As I watched him, looked at his face, I saw my baby brother, the little one, and I wanted to reassure him, even though I was pretty on guard myself. Even though, when we were younger, I had no tools to guide or protect or reassure.
Even if this guy wasn't my brother, I would think he was pretty awesome. In the second act, I get to know him for whom he probably always was, but I had no idea, and for the person he continues to develop into. The man, the dad, the husband, and the friend. The artist, the lawyer, the thinker. I can only hope that he recognizes that the broody, moody, emotional girl he witnessed has transformed into a still emotional, spiritual, hopeful, still a bit fearful, caring, creative woman with partially exorcised demons and a map with room for more experiences and destinations. We've been through some of the same places and I now hope we can show each other something new.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
I can only imagine how being my little brother must have traumatized the poor soul. I was all arts and smarts--dance, visual arts, music, then acting later in life-- though the smarts did not reveal itself until years later when intelligence was no longer measured in test taking ability, memorization, and advanced algebra and trigonometry. I foolishly committed the rules to memory and existed only to serve them. Until I became that tortured teen, I ignored my own thoughts and cries and pleas for expression and did what I was told. My bro watched in the shadows of the Speak N-Spell, adding numbers on the calculator to turn it upside down and make funny words, spinning the globe and pouring through maps and Encyclopedia Britannica volumes while I went from people pleaser to sad, angry worm. My sister, two years younger than I am, buffered him from my angst and anxiety, teaching him about hip hop and teenage partying, relationships, and navigating the grey landscape that was our childhood home.
And then I was gone. As I watched from the dorm rooms I inhabited in Boston, my brother became a very cool, super hip, politically passionate dude. I wanted to know him but was long gone and fast disconnecting from the mothership. We'd move in and out of the circle, a little do-see-do, but never quite got to know each other or find ourselves completely comfy in each others' presence. I blamed myself for this. My brooding, emotional, artistic self saw ribbons of energy pushing and pulling and twisting around each other and I could never get my bearings. I recalled bad times where he'd existed only on the periphery, moments that did not sit with the same thud for him as they did for me. I was melancholy, mourning, dark and he was still searching, reaching, seeking. Though we were both artistic, creative, thinkers, though we were both inquisitive, longing,questing, I couldn't see in his success, his hopefulness, how it was that we'd come out of the same house, that he remembered too.
As soon as I saw the trotting horses in the park, I collected myself and got my bearings. I looked down and saw that I was pushing Virginie in our Peg Perego stroller that has survived international travel, beach dunes, and took comfort in seeing my hands gripping the carriage handles. I searched for Lily, looking for her red jacket through the trees and other colored parkas in the park and saw that she was close. Close to me and to the trotting horses. I didn't have to say anything because before I could figure out just what I would shout out about now, my brother rounded up the girls (his and mine) and got them well out of "harm's" way. I looked over at my sister-in-law and said, "He has it too, huh? The Penn panic. The horses aren't bothering you at all, are they?" They weren't. At all. Nor were they bothering my husband.
A smile came to my face and I took comfort in this commonality. My brother is all those wonderful things and he was freaked by the possibility of the "charging," yes, now charging (in my mind) horses. He was prepared for danger, ready. He believed in love and life, had found the most incredible place with his gorgeous wife and girls, successful career, nice home, spoils of a well-lived, well-guided life, and still flashed panicked eyes at obstacles on the road. As I watched him, looked at his face, I saw my baby brother, the little one, and I wanted to reassure him, even though I was pretty on guard myself. Even though, when we were younger, I had no tools to guide or protect or reassure.
Even if this guy wasn't my brother, I would think he was pretty awesome. In the second act, I get to know him for whom he probably always was, but I had no idea, and for the person he continues to develop into. The man, the dad, the husband, and the friend. The artist, the lawyer, the thinker. I can only hope that he recognizes that the broody, moody, emotional girl he witnessed has transformed into a still emotional, spiritual, hopeful, still a bit fearful, caring, creative woman with partially exorcised demons and a map with room for more experiences and destinations. We've been through some of the same places and I now hope we can show each other something new.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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