I'd carried the box with me for almost thirty years because I'd never found the right moment to go to the post office and send it. As organized and efficient as I have always been, I'd just never found the time or the inclination to address it and send it. It came with me from Freehold to Boston, Boston to Atlanta, Atlanta to New York, New York to Barbados, and Barbados back to New Jersey.
I'd texted my mother two weeks ago and asked for his parents' address. She'd given it to me once before, another time I'd meant to send it and then didn't after getting heated about her having their new address and telephone number after all of these years. They'd moved again and she had the new address now. I've made my peace with their continued contact.
He'd been my first boyfriend, my very first at a time I was sure I'd never, ever have one. When we broke up, years later, after I'd followed him to university, his father had said some truly awful things about me. We were sixteen when we met. I'd long pined for him, a beautiful, shy, athletic boy. He was pretty, so, so pretty, with delicate features, long limbs, a kind heart, like the shy hero in the '80s teen romantic comedies. He was too sweet and lovely for me. His own father had said so once we broke up. I think he said something about "that kind of girl" and not being able to trust me.
I've held onto that comment as long as I'd had the box. Wondered just what kind of girl this man thought I was. Wondered how he'd found me to be untrustworthy after I'd dated his son for four years. Wondered how he could still be friendly with my parents and deem me "that kind of girl." I'd programmed myself to be a girlfriend, learned the tricks from television and movies. So desperate for any love and affection, I'd clung to this boy with all my strength and desire and need. I am sure I'd made promises I'd never be able to keep and promises for a future I could not quite visualize. I was sixteen and then seventeen and finally nineteen when we broke up. He'd been my first boyfriend and everything I was, I'd assigned to him.
The box contained a bracelet with his name on it, given to him by his parents when he was a small boy, some Cub Scout badges and pins, collectible pins and patches from various Olympics and soccer camps and teams. They'd been the most important things in his young teenage life and he'd gifted them to me. I believe in the magic of objects, the energy bestowed upon them by whomever possessed them. Always loved that psychics and mediums could make a greater connection with departed loved ones if they could hold something that was either symbolic or important to them. Even when I knew that this boy, now a man, could not forgive me my transgressions, had not yet found a way to incorporate our young love into his narrative, I could not bring myself to get rid of these special things.
When I stumbled upon the box looking for something else, I felt the immediate need to send it. I opened it to make sure that everything was secure and wrapped each item in tissue paper. Then I wrote a note on carefully chosen stationery to his parents explaining what was in the box. Inside the box, I placed a card, written to him, with an apology and a wish for him and his family. I told him I hoped that the box and its contents would be a welcomed surprise, something he could share with his children. I'd treated the items with the utmost respect and care and was happy to return them with love and gratitude. I walked to the post office and mailed the package and wandered back home through the park. I felt that I'd finally made peace, after all these years, with how I'd hurt someone that I loved.
First loves unleash this incredible energy and power. I never knew I could love or be loved as I'd loved him. It wasn't mature, I know, but my love for my parents felt unrequited, they very seldom reciprocated, and he was the first person to return my affections and my need. I loved in the most desperate way. We were so entangled, knotted, that the thought of losing him left me panicked. He'd been everything. He answered for me the nagging questions, Was I deserving of love? Was I lovable? Was I beautiful? Was I desirable? For the first time the answer to these questions was yes.
It was so heady as so much of the teenage experience was. I'd felt alone and then he was there. It cannot be understated what those first kisses, long, crazy make out sessions were like for this girl. I'd practiced on my pillow, certain it would NEVER happen for me in real life, completely unprepared for just how many people one might be able to kiss in a lifetime. With each barrier broken, greater intimacy and connection created, I began to hook into him. Could not bear to be without my well spring of love and affection.
When he went away to college the year before I did, I prided myself on my loyalty to our great love. I was stoic and steadfast. We wrote letters and made lots of expensive phone calls. I visited him at school and pined for the day we could be reunited. I followed him to the same university the next year. He was the only love I'd ever known. And then came life. And I became "that kind of girl," for which I'd apologized profusely to him. To his family. To my family. The shame, the betrayal was mine. I'd fucked up or I'd grown up and I'd hurt everyone. He'd returned a beautiful gold necklace I'd given him, swore he could not bear any reminders of me. He said he regretted our time together, that he'd made a horrible mistake, that he should never have trusted me, that I was a terrible person. And I could not disagree. What had I done with love?
When we stopped seeing each other on campus, stopped trying to be friends as it was just too painful, stopped allowing ourselves to acknowledge that we'd gotten each other to the next phase of our lives, stopped showing love, I found the box. He didn't want it, he'd said. Didn't want anything from me. So I put it away for safe keeping and promised myself I'd send it in time.
Yesterday I received a letter from his mother. I'd sent the box to her to forward to him, sure he still wanted nothing to do with me. I recognized her handwriting immediately. She'd always been so good and so kind to me, was one of the things I loved in his life, his amazing family. She assured me that the package was on its way to him. She too thought it would be a welcome surprise for his children and thanked me for taking such good care of it. I read and re-read the note. Nearly thirty years ago I'd been completely in love with her son and had made promises I couldn't keep. But I did still love. For all those years, through all that BS, I'd been so grateful that he loved me and had loved him no matter that he believed me to be cruel and heartless.
I don't expect to hear from him. I didn't even address the note to him, but I am relieved and thankful that he can have these mementos and whether he can deal with it or not, the energy of the person who touched him is still on those objects and I loved him so.
(c) Copyright 2017. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
I've voted for candidates who've not won before. I have accepted defeat with a few tears and resolve. I have felt ready to face it all again four years later because I have believed that even if everyone did not think as I did (and I have never been myopic enough to think they did so) that we, Americans, THAT WE, had agreed upon everyone's right to at least live in their own space in their own peace even if we (or I) longed for us to reach a greater love and understanding of one another. I'd taken comfort that though I suspected/knew that behind closed doors there was a good deal of racist and sexist banter going on in the White House and cabinet of presidents in which I held little faith, I expected they'd at least try to hide their shameful behavior and policies with rhetoric and not come right out and assault us with hate. And I wasn't afraid of them.
I can't lie. I have always anticipated some level of racism from my fellow Americans, white Americans, and am always pleasantly surprised when someone shows me otherwise. I listen to the stories they choose to tell, choose to share with me and the rest of the world and cull tiny messages, read the pinpoints on their maps to know if deep down or perhaps on the surface, they don't or can't fully respect me and my experience. Somehow the shame was mine, that I suspected that I should do more, be more or less, convince them by contorting myself, my beliefs, my strong voice, my thick legs, my alarming sexuality, my very blackness, that I should be smaller in the world so that they might be able to live in a world that had me in it. Even I allowed that the world, that America, did not belong to me and was thankful for every small mercy that showed me differently.
For every friend who told me of their racist auntie, of their schools where no people of color attended, of their churches, towns, teams, and other organizations in which they participated without ever seeing a black person, I winced and then offered some level of comfort to them. Well, you are here now. You are part of this diverse community. That counts. And sure. It does. It does.
When I was a girl, I saw the world through the low-res footage of the Polaroid camera and loved looking at the world in the black and white of my parents' and grandparents' "olden days." Their pictures fascinated me because everyone looked so young and beautiful but the tales they told of the time, the parts of the tales that had to do with white people, were violent and bleak and terrifying. The Civil Rights Era was not just part of history, tales made flat and two-dimensional by the textbook, but the stories told by my family, the young, beautiful family of a time that the United States of America was truly black and white and all shadows. I lived among white people in a nearly completely white community and lived my life every day with a pinch of fear. I knew that even in the face of good, kind, supportive white people, I'd better be sure that someone of color, someone who "knew" would have my back up front.
I was ashamed of this, ashamed that I distrusted, that I was not letting love in my heart, that I was not turning the other cheek. I'd always felt that the burden was on me to prove myself open, easy-going, and cool. I tried to let microaggressions and judgments roll off me, not let the blood rush to my cheeks. Defused offenses with laughter, assault with excuses, ignorance with forgiveness -- "they know not what they do."
But I still held my breath. I held my breath because I knew that it was just a matter of time before someone revealed that they weren't as down for my cause as they'd hoped. Held my breath because I knew I might meet their mother/father/grandmother/auntie/cousin/friend/neighbor who said shit like, "that neighborhood is full of n****s not good black people like you," and I wouldn't know how to respond. Because I was twelve. Held my breath because someone would tell me that they didn't understand why all the other black kids were in different classes and not in the advanced classes with me. Held my breath because someone wanted me to know that they just didn't find black girls attractive or black people attentive or able to swim or couldn't get lice or whatever it was they'd heard. Held my breath when, though in the top ten percent of my class, lesser students dared tell me that I'd surely get into the college of my choice because of affirmative action and wanted me to agree to as much. Held my breath because the cute boy told me that he really liked me but that his grandmother would roll over if he came home with a black girl and I felt badly for HIM. Held my breath because sometimes it was all too much and the short breaths were all I could take in without letting my emotions seep out.
First there are tears and then there is rage! And I learned that it was the rage, the rage that scared everyone off. Even your allies couldn't stand for your rage. Your family, your friends, the people who were trying to love you in their own way, to study you, understand you, who longed for whatever it was that being a black girl meant to them, turned from your rage. It revealed too much. Too much of the pain behind your forgiveness, behind your memories, behind your hope. So you channeled it. Made the world. Held it up. Shone the lights. Held your breath. Sucked it in with your head high, eyes focused, became a pillar, face tight with smiles but the heart pumping blood, veins and vessels pounding, eyes blinking, lashes fluttering, cool breaths sucked in and out through your lips.
Simmering, a slow boil and each assault or insult, each death called us from against the wall and whispered, "you'd better let it out or it'll blow." Heat flushed our ears and our cheeks and we were at first embarrassed, humiliated, scared, and then the rage. The rage came and poured like lava melting the glossy papered image of what we were expected to be into something harder to identify. Our beautiful black friends staring past us, the invitation standing to join but no more asking or pleading. Get on or get off. And we wanted everyone on board. We all did. WE did--the blacks, non-whites, immigrant, Muslim, LGBTQ, disabled, the intersected of all these groups--we want you on board. Without you, your racist/sexist/bigoted/homophobic/cruel/apathetic mother/father/auntie/uncle/friend/cousin/neighbor will never hear another side to their fear-mongering, hateful rhetoric or their privileged denials and apathy. They have already chosen not to believe me, not to believe us. While I "may not be like the others," I still can't shake my otherness. You must go in for me.
Listening at the foot of my grandmother in her front sitting room to the tales of a defiant great-granddad and seeing him in his black and white, youthful glory, seeing the uncles in their overalls who stood across the street from the little soda shop/cafeteria that was segregated while their nephews and sons attempted a sit in in white, short-sleeved button downs, and slacks. Pouring over photos of our parents in large Afros and sideburns, wide collars, and short skirts. Seeing our photos become clean and Kodakchromed and colored as our friendship barrettes and hoop earrings, lightening bolted enamel pins and designer jeans came into fashion. Seeing the events of our nation unfold in real time in moving pictures in social media. We are here. You must go for us.
When I was a girl I was afraid of stray dogs because I didn't believe they'd listen to my command to stop. I was afraid of quicksand because it looked like regular ground until you were deep in it and then it just might be too late. I was afraid of someone disrespecting or challenging my family because I believed they'd already been through enough and didn't want to see them wounded or have them face me having been. And I was terrified of someone calling me "nigger," "blackie," "brown sugar" in mixed company not only because it would burn my heart and rise up in my cheeks and my ears and force my tears, but because I was afraid to know just who would and would not stand for me.
Those Kodak pictures from that time show me in my youth already navigating the world's mines and expecting that I might blow up first. That little girl had hope but low expectations for others for whom supporting and loving her might be a burden, might even put them in harm's way. That little girl learned to accept defeats that were altogether unfair, more than likely biased, and influenced by a society that valued her less than all the white children that surrounded her. It is with shock but not complete surprise that a raging, narcissistic, racist, sexist, bigoted, misogynistic blowhard has been elected president. It is the culmination of all my fears. It is the ground made quick sand. It is a stray dog jumping up and putting its paws on my shoulders looking like he might bite my face. It is embarrassing the legacy of my hard-working, well-educated, dedicated, God-fearing, loving family and all the sacrifices they made to get me to my basic rights. It is being called "nigger" or watching my friends cursed and assaulted because they are gay or Muslim or Hindi or Sikh (because please don't know the difference) or in a mixed relationship or disabled or a woman, strong or meek, or poor or uneducated or not quite what America had in mind when they narrowed their definition of "American."
When Al Gore and John Kerry conceded I felt deflated. I'd had faith in their abilities to lead, to govern, to be fair and inclusive. I felt that even if they could not ever meet or even understand the needs of my community and the communities of those I love, but I thought they might try. I thought they wanted to understand, that they wanted to unify. I was afraid of the machine that Ronald Reagan and the Bushes drove over communities I loved. But what I feel now is terror. Absolute fear. I stare at my old class pictures, run my fingers over the old faces of friends, classmates, people who have said how much they love me, care for me, enjoyed our friendships who have voted against my very right to live as they'd like to live. We are sinking. That quicksand catches you and takes down slowly. What happens is that we suffocate and drown and don't even know we've gone down. And we all go down.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
And just like that, the summer is over and the girls are back in school. Sure, we will have a few more weeks of warm weather that will make getting up and spending the day at school complete torture, but the arrival of September means a new start and a season change to fall. As I got the girls ready for bed last night and for 5th and 2nd grades, the talk inevitably turned to my time in school, and specifically 5th grade as my rising ten year old expressed a little apprehension about it. Last year had been pure hell for her, and for me, as we tried to work our way through a difficult teacher and the anxiety being in her classroom produced. I'd stopped pretending 1/2 way through the year and told her that I agreed with her feelings about her teacher but that shit happens, for real, and that you can't stop striving because someone is trying to bring you down. I meant it. It is hard to learn that and as hard to teach.
What I remember about my fifth grade class are small fleeting moments. Memory is like that. I am not even sure that what I am remembering actually happened in fifth grade and is not an amalgamation of that heady late elementary-middle school block. My teacher, Mrs. S, was an old school, Southern, pinch-lipped, white biddy who wore skirt suits nearly every day. Drab colored skirt suits with skirts well below the knee and a mid-sized heel with pantyhose to make her legs look a beigy-tan. Her hair was coiffed like a cotton candy puff and sprayed so that not a hair moved. She spoke in that breathy, southern school marm tone that told you she had little time for your shenanigans, even if the shenanigans just meant asking to be excused to use the bathroom.
This woman brought little to no joy to my life (and I was still of the goody two shoes variety at that time). She seemed to revel in giving bad grades, marking papers in red, and sucking the life out of the room. I remember people getting in trouble, especially a boy named Derek who'd surely be diagnosed with ADHD today, and the creaky spot in the floor that I tried to avoid when I walked across the room to sharpen my pencil. My feet had grown so quickly that year that the only shoes that fit me were women's shoes and styles and I had this pair of wooden clogs with a heel that I wish to God I still had but don't. I remember that one girl in my class had reached puberty years ahead of the rest of us and that we all, boys and girls alike, obsessively watched her boobs doing what they do. I remember there were some fast booty girls that were rumored to have been caught kissing sixth and seventh grade boys and that I was both appalled and intrigued. There were combs in back pockets but I wore my hair in braids. And I remember for the first time that the school day seemed to go on forever. Mrs. S was no fun. In fact, she was as rigid and dry as her old pruney lips announced. I hated being in her class. And I hated her. After that year, thanks to puberty and beauty standards I couldn't meet and a sense of loneliness and isolation, I started to hate myself a little.
I watch my ten year old running up the hill to her elementary school with the other 3rd through 5th graders looking for signs of her sense of worth and value. I wonder if she pays attention to all the details that now seem my only memory of that time. All the kids look enthusiastic and eager and too young to think about any of the things I recall about fifth grade. My ten year old is all curiosity, rainbows, cute animal videos, and pop culture memes that seem to sometimes go over her head. She is still wearing ponytails and a tank top, no bra-lette. She is all legs and thanks to the crowning of the kids as king, she has age appropriate footwear and clothing even though her paws are getting big like a growing puppy. But she is also musical.ly and snapchat photos and silly little texts to her girlfriends on the phone we got her to stay in touch with us on her walk home. When I ask her if kids talk about love interests or care about their hair and clothing more than they used to, she rolls her eyes at me to tell me that my line of questioning is embarrassing and ridiculous because 'no' or more likely because she cannot imagine that I know how it goes.
Sometimes she tells me about something funny she has seen on line or an app her friends have shared with her. Other times she brings to me the most adorable, well-crafted stuffed animals that she knitted or sewed with no pattern or guide and I think about how amazing she is, about the talent she has that has absolutely nothing to do with me. At night, when her most anxious thoughts and fears creep in, she whimpers and whispers her self-doubt into my ear, tells me that she just doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up and asks if she really has to know right now. She wonders aloud why a girl in her class is wearing and wants to wear make up and stylish clothes "like an adult" and talks to everyone like she is grown. She tells me she feels woefully alone and is afraid not of the small details of her life but of the big picture. How we all got here. How do we discover what our role is to play on this planet? What if she just can't find her way?
And I answer. All of the questions to the best of my ability. And we talk about the anxiety and self-doubt that she is predisposed to thanks to me, and how she can best navigate it. I tell her that kids of her generation do things much sooner that we did and we laugh together and agree that yes, she got the teacher that nearly broke her spirit one year before I did. I tell her about Derek and the girl who developed early, about Mrs. S's sullen way of presenting almost everything. About how still and quiet and lonely that room felt to me. I tell her about the clicking of my adult sized clogs on the floor and the dreams I had staring out the window. I told her that I started to believe I couldn't be anything I dreamt of that year, that I started to believe I was not enough. That the way this teacher spoke of me to my parents and that they did not tell her to 'fuck off' made me wonder if I really needed to work that much harder or if they were just not "getting me." (At the time I went with work that much harder but now I am not so sure that was the right answer.)
This morning, though I'd offered to let her wear her mane of hair, now blond and brown from the sun, down, my 5th grader still chose ponytails. She wore high tops and a blouse-y purple top that has a built in tank top so she didn't have to sport an undergarment. Despite feeling a little under the weather, she decided not to miss the second day of school. Though she is a little shell-shocked from last year, she is willing to go forward feeling hopeful, accepting this new path and direction. She knows what she is ready for and what she is not quite yet. As I pulled up to our drop off spot, I wished her insight and guidance and goodness on this second day. I told her I'd tell her how I loved her from inside the car so she would not have to be mortified by my beaming pride once out in the real world. She grabbed her backpack and tightened her safety patrol belt and said, "I want everyone to know that you love me." She closed the door and got on her path. I watched as long as I could see her, hoping she would turn to look just one more time.
And she did.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
