The day to day is lived in tiny increments. I try to start each day putting myself on a positive path, reminding myself of all that for which I should be grateful. I thank my guides and my angels that helped me sleep through the night and I pray for the continued safety of my family--for our health, peace in our hearts, love. I try to forgive myself the mistakes I will surely make throughout the day and hope that I am leaving lasting memories, good thoughts, proof of my good intentions in the hearts of my girls. That I am arming them with a sense of this dimension and the others and interconnectedness all while serving up pasta, reviewing homework, demanding clean up of the play room, and directing the nighttime program in that killer 5:30 to 8:00 block.
I am incredibly conscious of my actions, my deeds, the things I say, aware that I play a starring role in their early childhood memories and that these moments will be mined for information, for truth, that they will be distorted and contorted to tell the story of how they were loved or how they were not, maybe because those thoughts from my own childhood flood into my mind still. Most especially when I am having a particularly good or bad moment with them, I think, 'God, I hope they know how much I love them or 'Please don't let them think I didn't. ' I am present, conscious, real, and flawed all the time except for when I am not. And so it goes.
Since visiting with my husband's father this summer, we've been talking about the small ways in which he was letting go, in which he was straddling here and now and forever. Our visit provided the girls, who'd only seen him in photos or in the case of our oldest had met him just once when she was a toddler, a chance to spend real time with him. Though he had people who came every day to check and administer his medications and others who provided him with appropriate meals for all of his health issues, with us he had company. There were slow broken conversations in English and French. The girls sang songs and made drawings for him. Jean or Papi as he is called, was feeble and disconnected, a little lonely and frustrated. He'd become annoyed at times, disoriented at others, happy and full of wonder at others. We lived with him in 3-D, wandered his home looking at journals and incredible memorabilia from his travels. The girls looked at him and his home with awe.
One evening, after I'd put the girls to sleep, I started to walk down the stairs when I overheard my husband and his older brother having a pretty deep conversation with their father. A conversation full of longing and need, revelations of secrets and stories from long ago. They were pleading with him for information about their father's family, his boyhood, his hopes and dreams. They were asking for connection, drawing for memories. clues. I stayed at his desk at the top of the stairs and let the boys and their father share a moment. I feared my interruption would give everyone an unwanted distraction, an escape from that incredible connection. I hoped they'd file that memory to pull up when they needed to recall him.
These tiny moments add up to make a life. They leave an imprint, serve as mile markers. I leave little ticks and grooves in my girls' stories so that when I am gone they might say, "Wasn't that such a beautiful moment with Mom" or "I am so grateful that we had that time together or that conversation or saw that sunset/sunrise/incredible earthly moment together." I try to shore them up with self-love, self-respect, identity. I've begun to slowly trace the roots of both families that intertwined to create this branch of the larger family trees. I tell them secrets, our secrets, whisper to them about the people full of hope, love, and promise that came before them.
Before my mother's mom passed, we all spent a last summer on Hilton Head Island and I watched her sit at the edge of the ocean on the sand watching the sun set. I knew it wouldn't be long. She too. I went with my mother a couple of weeks later to move my grandparents' things from their home to the nursing home they were meant to move to. She never made it there. I knew she wouldn't. A week before my father's mother passed, I'd called her rather unexpectedly to tell her I loved her. It was Mother's Day. I chose that evening to tell her about my then boyfriend, now husband, who was, up until then a secret, whispered only in strict confidence, spoken only to help myself believe our love true. She was so tired but so present. I'd never have thought she was soon to leave us. I think of her so often, speak out loud about the mundane, ask her questions. I miss being able to ask the questions. To get the answers.
When someone dies, they are elevated to the heavenly realm, the eternal, esoteric, almost immediately. Remembering how they were in life becomes an exercise, a quiet search for moments real and true. In our mind's eye the memories are pulled and twisted in the murky quicksand of the earthly realm. They are still with us, of the earth, on this plane, only we can't find them. We are so full of longing, living in those dreamscapes, hoping to be with them, see them, hear them speaking to us as they really did, with weight and seriousness, but also humor and humanity and humanness just one more time.
After a 1/2 day of school, a lunch at the pub with friends, ice cream at the parlor for dessert, ballet, homework, bath time, and dinner, the girls and I tucked ourselves in to bed for the night. The day patched together with sweet moments and a whole lot of chatter. My husband's tiny steps took him to his parents' home where he sat in silence, their presence all around him, longing for one more word. The funeral over. Attendees to the service gone home. Flowers laid. I hope that he and his brothers were able to pull up those saved moments, let them shiver through their bodies, feel the life shared with their dad coursing through them before they said goodbye to him and released him to the infinite.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Monday, February 16, 2015
Back to the Suburban Grind: 1/2 full
Back to the Suburban Grind: 1/2 full: When my husband goes away for work, he usually fills the gas tank for me. Even if he knows that I won't drive more than a few blocks, h...
1/2 full
When my husband goes away for work, he usually fills the gas tank for me. Even if he knows that I won't drive more than a few blocks, he knows I will feel better seeing that needle on F(ull).This morning, I went out in the frigid cold, ran to Trader Joe's and CVS, to get the handful of things on our needed list, though I knew that four more packs of seaweed snacks and a new roll of aluminum foil were not urgent and that missing them in the house would not put us on empty. At Trader Joe's, I bought three and four of everything we needed though we already had more than one of each at home. We're stocked.
My husband left for a long weekend (It's Winter Break in our school district.) one day before he'd been scheduled and had to rush to get himself properly packed and prepared for 5 days in Florida. I took him to the train station with plenty of time to spare when I looked to the odometer to find our needle underneath the picture of the gas pump and on its way to E(mpty). I mentioned its position nearly inaudibly because I did not want him to worry about the state of affairs when he left and a tank nearly on empty might tilt the board. He muttered something about having enough and being able to make it wherever I needed to go but avoided my eye because he knew it was turning crazy.
I think so much about the question, that one wherein others try to determine your stance, your position on facing obstacles in life, "Is the glass 1/2 full or is it 1/2 empty?" and I try very hard to meet them with 1/2 full. I try to look on the bright side, make lemonade out of lemons, accept that everything happens for a reason, and that as one door closes another opens. But all this comes after the scream, audible or silent, the kicked can, the certainty that my glass is nearly done. I feel hopelessly out of control, sure that whatever it is I desire, whatever it is I long for is out of reach.
In that hollow where love fills up, I have not been able to get enough. All my life. When it comes in, I scramble for things to protect me from feeling so much, for wanting to be connected, loved, seen, cared for. Just in case it won't happen, I prepare. Prepare for having to do it all alone. I've stockpiled, barricaded, trapped myself in. Paralyzed, afraid to move the line on that glass.
I'd probably have no reason to stop getting so bothered by my 1/2 empty glass were it not for the watching eyes of the girls. In a culture of consumption and with the desire for things to feel secure and valuable part of the American way, it is important that I show the girls how to work with what they have, how to make it work no matter their circumstances. When I fear my glass is 1/2 empty, there is still hope that I can use my reserve, that I have something instead of nothing. Having even a 1/2 empty glass is privileged. I've at least got something.
It is fear that leads me to want the safety of complete fullness, that wants the buffer, the cushion should I fall or should I fail. I used to say that I was an optimist preparing for the worst outcome, bracing myself for disappointment. That may very well still be true. Failure, disappointment, and losing hurt so much, and adding a spot of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment on top of that can make it all unbearable. But it also holds me back. There is hesitation, avoidance, missed chances and opportunities because I long to be promised that I will always be safe, that nothing can hurt me. I suppose it's a survival tactic. I cannot be hurt or wounded if I don't try, but I also cannot have surprising and wonderful experiences, can't discover something unexpected, cannot be inspired by something new, see something precious, hear my inner voice and learn to trust it from the comfort of my cushy perch.
I took my cash to the gas station (I get a better rate for paying in cash than with a credit card.) and asked the attendant to fill it up. I was sweating a little, nervous about getting out of my comfort zone, changing the routine. The attendant asked if I'd like to have my oil checked and cleaned the windshield. I said, "Sure," and he checked. Everything was fine. I thanked him and he told me to take care. The little one asked, "Why did that man do those things for you?" to which I replied, "Well, it's his job...but he also wanted to be helpful and be sure we were safe. People have to look out for each other. I am glad he was looking out for us. The people in our neighborhood."
Long ago when I was the age of my little one now, I used to love the People in Your Neighborhood segment of Sesame Street. We kids were introduced to all types of folks who lived and worked in our neighborhood. We learned about their jobs, what they did, where we might find them. Every one of them was smiling and happy and proud of their work and gave us a sense of community, of connection and belonging that I often miss. A friend posted on Facebook the other day about shoveling her driveway all by herself while her neighbors, all with snow blowers, all men, buzzed around her, never offering to help her. She finished the job on her own, knowing she was fully capable of the task, but missing that neighborly kindness. She wondered on her page just what might prevent them from coming to her aid, even speaking to her, a friend, a neighbor, while she toiled away in the frigid cold.
When our glasses are 1/2 empty, we spend more time trying not to spill what's left, rather than share ourselves and our joys and fears and loves and hurt. We give up on our connection. Living in a state of lack rather than abundance teaches us to distrust, to hoard, to close rather than open and share. I have my suspicions about my fear of not having enough, not being enough. It's my work to do, my issue to overcome. But I don't want to send my girls out into the world full of fear, hesitation, with closed hearts and minds. We are privileged, all of us, and a glass 1/2 empty or 1/2 full has at least something. The state in which we view it, our perception of just how much we have can be changed, strengthened or weakened, by our sense of connection and belonging.
We have enough food, enough toys, enough clothes, enough gas in the car, enough things. That it hasn't been enough tells me there is something more to share. Ourselves. And then the cup will runneth over and won't stop. I just have to get to the place where I don't mind spilling and I don't mind taking a sip.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
My husband left for a long weekend (It's Winter Break in our school district.) one day before he'd been scheduled and had to rush to get himself properly packed and prepared for 5 days in Florida. I took him to the train station with plenty of time to spare when I looked to the odometer to find our needle underneath the picture of the gas pump and on its way to E(mpty). I mentioned its position nearly inaudibly because I did not want him to worry about the state of affairs when he left and a tank nearly on empty might tilt the board. He muttered something about having enough and being able to make it wherever I needed to go but avoided my eye because he knew it was turning crazy.
I think so much about the question, that one wherein others try to determine your stance, your position on facing obstacles in life, "Is the glass 1/2 full or is it 1/2 empty?" and I try very hard to meet them with 1/2 full. I try to look on the bright side, make lemonade out of lemons, accept that everything happens for a reason, and that as one door closes another opens. But all this comes after the scream, audible or silent, the kicked can, the certainty that my glass is nearly done. I feel hopelessly out of control, sure that whatever it is I desire, whatever it is I long for is out of reach.
In that hollow where love fills up, I have not been able to get enough. All my life. When it comes in, I scramble for things to protect me from feeling so much, for wanting to be connected, loved, seen, cared for. Just in case it won't happen, I prepare. Prepare for having to do it all alone. I've stockpiled, barricaded, trapped myself in. Paralyzed, afraid to move the line on that glass.
I'd probably have no reason to stop getting so bothered by my 1/2 empty glass were it not for the watching eyes of the girls. In a culture of consumption and with the desire for things to feel secure and valuable part of the American way, it is important that I show the girls how to work with what they have, how to make it work no matter their circumstances. When I fear my glass is 1/2 empty, there is still hope that I can use my reserve, that I have something instead of nothing. Having even a 1/2 empty glass is privileged. I've at least got something.
It is fear that leads me to want the safety of complete fullness, that wants the buffer, the cushion should I fall or should I fail. I used to say that I was an optimist preparing for the worst outcome, bracing myself for disappointment. That may very well still be true. Failure, disappointment, and losing hurt so much, and adding a spot of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment on top of that can make it all unbearable. But it also holds me back. There is hesitation, avoidance, missed chances and opportunities because I long to be promised that I will always be safe, that nothing can hurt me. I suppose it's a survival tactic. I cannot be hurt or wounded if I don't try, but I also cannot have surprising and wonderful experiences, can't discover something unexpected, cannot be inspired by something new, see something precious, hear my inner voice and learn to trust it from the comfort of my cushy perch.
I took my cash to the gas station (I get a better rate for paying in cash than with a credit card.) and asked the attendant to fill it up. I was sweating a little, nervous about getting out of my comfort zone, changing the routine. The attendant asked if I'd like to have my oil checked and cleaned the windshield. I said, "Sure," and he checked. Everything was fine. I thanked him and he told me to take care. The little one asked, "Why did that man do those things for you?" to which I replied, "Well, it's his job...but he also wanted to be helpful and be sure we were safe. People have to look out for each other. I am glad he was looking out for us. The people in our neighborhood."
Long ago when I was the age of my little one now, I used to love the People in Your Neighborhood segment of Sesame Street. We kids were introduced to all types of folks who lived and worked in our neighborhood. We learned about their jobs, what they did, where we might find them. Every one of them was smiling and happy and proud of their work and gave us a sense of community, of connection and belonging that I often miss. A friend posted on Facebook the other day about shoveling her driveway all by herself while her neighbors, all with snow blowers, all men, buzzed around her, never offering to help her. She finished the job on her own, knowing she was fully capable of the task, but missing that neighborly kindness. She wondered on her page just what might prevent them from coming to her aid, even speaking to her, a friend, a neighbor, while she toiled away in the frigid cold.
When our glasses are 1/2 empty, we spend more time trying not to spill what's left, rather than share ourselves and our joys and fears and loves and hurt. We give up on our connection. Living in a state of lack rather than abundance teaches us to distrust, to hoard, to close rather than open and share. I have my suspicions about my fear of not having enough, not being enough. It's my work to do, my issue to overcome. But I don't want to send my girls out into the world full of fear, hesitation, with closed hearts and minds. We are privileged, all of us, and a glass 1/2 empty or 1/2 full has at least something. The state in which we view it, our perception of just how much we have can be changed, strengthened or weakened, by our sense of connection and belonging.
We have enough food, enough toys, enough clothes, enough gas in the car, enough things. That it hasn't been enough tells me there is something more to share. Ourselves. And then the cup will runneth over and won't stop. I just have to get to the place where I don't mind spilling and I don't mind taking a sip.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Back to the Suburban Grind: Thelma and Louise and Me
Back to the Suburban Grind: Thelma and Louise and Me: After the whirlwind week between Christmas Eve and today, I found myself with the first free moments last night. The girls were passed out ...
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Thelma and Louise and Me
After the whirlwind week between Christmas Eve and today, I found myself with the first free moments last night. The girls were passed out in my bed, tucked in after having had their first up-'til-midnight celebration of the new year's arrival and the following day's parties and good wishes tour through the neighborhood. Flicking through channels, sitting snuggled up on my couch with a blanket and a glass of wine, the quiet of the house brought the present upon me. I was no longer in my head planning for the next day, reflecting about those passed and things missed or not done, I was right there. And my birthday was coming in a few hours. I got to Thelma and Louise just as they were coming upon J.D., the young, handsome, brand new Brad Pitt, but I knew the story like I know myself. Thelma and Louise, like The Color Purple and Terms of Endearment and The English Patient, is a spot on my timeline, a moment of clarity and insight that I take pleasure in revisiting, no matter the tears and splatter that are sure to come.
And on the eve of my 45th, I looked with new eyes on my story. Every time, every single time, I love the charm, naiveté of Thelma. Her hope, her wonder, her journey (with massive shock and disappointment sure), her young soul charm and adorability. I beg her to see what I see before she gets into trouble, does something stupid, thwarts their chances and every time she does not. She is so cute, so sweet, so shiny. Oh, Thelma.
But I am Louise. Cautious, well-prepared, ordered, organized, playing the cards close to the vest. The thrill I get as this woman tidies her house before going away for what she expects will be a long weekend cannot be understated. The way she keeps herself in check, always on high alert, even when she is having fun is familiar. Her composure, her comportment, her trembling under that reserve is mine. I can be zany and funny and irreverent. I bet Louise was once a long time ago. Sometimes. Before Texas. Which she wants to avoid at all costs, does not want to revisit. It's the past and threatens to tear her wide open again.
Thelma and Louise takes us all on this journey across the gorgeous landscape of this country, showing us the beauty, the majesty, and the shifting contrasts and shadows made from that luminous glow. As these women let their masks fall, revealing themselves, their internal struggles and realizations and their skin, their human skin that they live in every day without make up, naked, we see the terrain change shape, see danger in the shadows, feel the ominous pull of life's magic and mystery as they sort out the mess of their circumstances. I have put myself in their shoes, lived vicariously through them every time. But this time I wondered, what if indeed one of these women were actually me. What if instead of two beautiful white women who find themselves with snowballing legal and emotional problems, Thelma and Louise or Thelma or Louise was a black woman. Was me. Would anyone be willing to take the journey with me? Would anyone want to come to my rescue? Would my choices be seen as heroic or tragic? Could I make that drive through the country, through the Midwest and Southwest of the United States as I tried to figure out how to right the wrongs, the mistakes and the impulses that got me into hot water? Would I go over the canyon or be knocked off long before my soul made that arc, reveled in its evolution and transcendence?
And then the tears fell harder even than usual when I realized that though the archetype, the Everyman (woman) journey, is indeed for everyone, I doubted that most would want to come along on the ride with me. It's where we find ourselves today or at least where I find myself. Deep in my heart, though I love with everything I can, I wonder if my love is reciprocated truly. In our "post-racial" America, I now wonder who wants to hear my story, any of our stories, to really listen to them without trying to place it in a specific genre, a special place, an "other" category. Does anyone believe that though our stories can be and are similar in so many ways, that we'd still like to see ourselves, be seen ourselves as part of the larger tale? That ours are not peripheral, supporting parts but starring roles too? I don't ask the questions to receive knee-jerk, fumbling reassurances. I ask because of how much it hurts me to even have to. Because the doubt has crept in and made me feel that whatever it was I thought I was leaving to my daughters has been eroded and that they will have to fight to be seen too.
I ended the year struggling to be open and available to people who were more than comfortable telling me how I feel, how people of color are/feel/act/think/behave or who told me they didn't see what I was showing them, telling them, expressing, shouting about, crying about, and were quick to walk away or shut down the dialogue with all sorts of "proof" and "post-racial" mumbo-jumbo. I lost people, let some go and allowed others to let me go when I took off my makeup, my mask, and showed my skin, my human skin, and it was real and pained and flawed, and could not be tidied. When I realized that even I, a friend or a colleague or acquaintance, could not make a convincing argument for recognition or compassion or even dialogue.
After years of trying not to "drive through Texas," not to go back to some painful truths, to reveal the scars I'd covered with my tidy, poised, secretive composure and protective stance, the circumstances had changed. I couldn't get out of this. Though I'd take many roads to try, they all still seem to end at the canyon. So here we are. I am hoping in the new year that we can talk to each other. That the seekers of the shiny and new, the naïve and the fresh can take the hands of the weary and the wary and the jaded and the wounded and forge a direction together. I hope that we are able to step back to think about and consider what each other says rather than react and attack. I hope that I am not met with theorems and postulates in place of real stories and truth and connection. I hope that we can find some kind of common group so that my story is as interesting, as worthy, as real, as true, as archetypal as any other. I want us to see ourselves in each other, longing more for what is similar, rather that foreign or strange. I want us to journey in all senses of the word--physically, emotionally, spiritually.
I love Thelma and Louise and wouldn't want to change their story. I road with them through their map, followed the lines that lead them to themselves and to their realizations and truths. I will again. Their journey has informed mine and they have inspired me to seek out hands to hold, to revisit old places and find undiscovered territory, maybe even some truth. Out there in that wildly powerful and spiritually haunting landscape, we all discover the essence of who we are. If we let ourselves.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
And on the eve of my 45th, I looked with new eyes on my story. Every time, every single time, I love the charm, naiveté of Thelma. Her hope, her wonder, her journey (with massive shock and disappointment sure), her young soul charm and adorability. I beg her to see what I see before she gets into trouble, does something stupid, thwarts their chances and every time she does not. She is so cute, so sweet, so shiny. Oh, Thelma.
But I am Louise. Cautious, well-prepared, ordered, organized, playing the cards close to the vest. The thrill I get as this woman tidies her house before going away for what she expects will be a long weekend cannot be understated. The way she keeps herself in check, always on high alert, even when she is having fun is familiar. Her composure, her comportment, her trembling under that reserve is mine. I can be zany and funny and irreverent. I bet Louise was once a long time ago. Sometimes. Before Texas. Which she wants to avoid at all costs, does not want to revisit. It's the past and threatens to tear her wide open again.
Thelma and Louise takes us all on this journey across the gorgeous landscape of this country, showing us the beauty, the majesty, and the shifting contrasts and shadows made from that luminous glow. As these women let their masks fall, revealing themselves, their internal struggles and realizations and their skin, their human skin that they live in every day without make up, naked, we see the terrain change shape, see danger in the shadows, feel the ominous pull of life's magic and mystery as they sort out the mess of their circumstances. I have put myself in their shoes, lived vicariously through them every time. But this time I wondered, what if indeed one of these women were actually me. What if instead of two beautiful white women who find themselves with snowballing legal and emotional problems, Thelma and Louise or Thelma or Louise was a black woman. Was me. Would anyone be willing to take the journey with me? Would anyone want to come to my rescue? Would my choices be seen as heroic or tragic? Could I make that drive through the country, through the Midwest and Southwest of the United States as I tried to figure out how to right the wrongs, the mistakes and the impulses that got me into hot water? Would I go over the canyon or be knocked off long before my soul made that arc, reveled in its evolution and transcendence?
And then the tears fell harder even than usual when I realized that though the archetype, the Everyman (woman) journey, is indeed for everyone, I doubted that most would want to come along on the ride with me. It's where we find ourselves today or at least where I find myself. Deep in my heart, though I love with everything I can, I wonder if my love is reciprocated truly. In our "post-racial" America, I now wonder who wants to hear my story, any of our stories, to really listen to them without trying to place it in a specific genre, a special place, an "other" category. Does anyone believe that though our stories can be and are similar in so many ways, that we'd still like to see ourselves, be seen ourselves as part of the larger tale? That ours are not peripheral, supporting parts but starring roles too? I don't ask the questions to receive knee-jerk, fumbling reassurances. I ask because of how much it hurts me to even have to. Because the doubt has crept in and made me feel that whatever it was I thought I was leaving to my daughters has been eroded and that they will have to fight to be seen too.
I ended the year struggling to be open and available to people who were more than comfortable telling me how I feel, how people of color are/feel/act/think/behave or who told me they didn't see what I was showing them, telling them, expressing, shouting about, crying about, and were quick to walk away or shut down the dialogue with all sorts of "proof" and "post-racial" mumbo-jumbo. I lost people, let some go and allowed others to let me go when I took off my makeup, my mask, and showed my skin, my human skin, and it was real and pained and flawed, and could not be tidied. When I realized that even I, a friend or a colleague or acquaintance, could not make a convincing argument for recognition or compassion or even dialogue.
After years of trying not to "drive through Texas," not to go back to some painful truths, to reveal the scars I'd covered with my tidy, poised, secretive composure and protective stance, the circumstances had changed. I couldn't get out of this. Though I'd take many roads to try, they all still seem to end at the canyon. So here we are. I am hoping in the new year that we can talk to each other. That the seekers of the shiny and new, the naïve and the fresh can take the hands of the weary and the wary and the jaded and the wounded and forge a direction together. I hope that we are able to step back to think about and consider what each other says rather than react and attack. I hope that I am not met with theorems and postulates in place of real stories and truth and connection. I hope that we can find some kind of common group so that my story is as interesting, as worthy, as real, as true, as archetypal as any other. I want us to see ourselves in each other, longing more for what is similar, rather that foreign or strange. I want us to journey in all senses of the word--physically, emotionally, spiritually.
I love Thelma and Louise and wouldn't want to change their story. I road with them through their map, followed the lines that lead them to themselves and to their realizations and truths. I will again. Their journey has informed mine and they have inspired me to seek out hands to hold, to revisit old places and find undiscovered territory, maybe even some truth. Out there in that wildly powerful and spiritually haunting landscape, we all discover the essence of who we are. If we let ourselves.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Back to the Suburban Grind: Struggling not to fall
Back to the Suburban Grind: Struggling not to fall: When I was a little girl, my family went on a trip to an ice skating rink. I'd never been before, but as I was a young dancer and prett...
Struggling not to fall
When I was a little girl, my family went on a trip to an ice skating rink. I'd never been before, but as I was a young dancer and pretty proficient on the roller skates, I took to it pretty quickly. I remember the cold and the sound of the blades on the ice and the whoosh-whoosh of the wind as I picked up speed. It should have been such a freeing experience. Here was something that felt a little like flying, where I could feel the air in my lungs clear and crisp, where I could whiz around the rink passing people, turning, and where feeling that special magic of being encapsulated in my own energy bubble should have brought me joy... and I was riddled with anxiety.
My parents, who'd both come from humble beginnings, had not had the opportunities or privilege to participate in frivolous activities like skating and skiing and tennis or any of the extracurriculars my brother and sister and I were afforded. Their after school activities were often connected to their schools or churches and they still had to make time for work and help around the home or farm. That day at the rink, my dad was up on skates for the first time too but was thrown off balance, resting on the thin blades did not come naturally. My father was and is a very solid guy. He stands firmly on the ground and gives the appearance of such physical strength that I was well into adulthood when I realized that he was not as enormous as John Henry the steel driving man. For him, skating was a challenge, but one he did not give up on. I watched him make his way slowly around the rink, staying close to the side, shuffling along trying to get the hang of it. I have always been sensitive and empathetic to others' struggles and have always beamed with pride at anyone's attempt at something new, something dangerous, something just beyond their reach. But this was too much for my tiny, little heart. To see my dad, probably the person I loved the most at that time, certainly looked up to (despite our incredible differences), working so hard, struggling, broke me and I cried and cried at his humanness. My world turned upside down when I discovered that he was just a man.
I have not posted for a very long time because again I have been crying and crying. Seriously. I am in a state of absolute pain at my core. The very real humanness of this struggle has poked and prodded at my heart and at my gut so that I just can't get much of a handle on what I believe anymore. I feel the same sensation that I felt watching my father, my hero, struggle around that rink. We are wobbling and tumbling and falling flat trying to get around this fucking rink.
I am hurt and angered and saddened by the outcomes of every case involving a black person--man, woman, or child--being killed by the police. I am insulted by the imagery being used to describe black boys and men--animals, monsters, overpowering, aggressive. I cannot believe that the victims and their communities are being told that it is their lack of respect that has brought the pox on their houses. I am hurt that the trigger is pulled so quickly and that the victim is then blamed for his past or the figure he cut on surveillance video as though those were reasons enough to kill an unarmed person. But I have been destroyed, truly cut deep, by the efforts of friends and neighbors quick to explain to me either the absolute necessity of handling black people this way or in deflection about the tough, brave, good folks in law enforcement out there. Of course there are good cops and good public servants. We are not talking about that and you know it. I never said, "Fuck the police," but I hear in the tone, in the explanation, and in the crazy, blue-cold silence, "Fuck that. Their lives got nothing to do with me."
I can see how easy it is for people, white people, to look at these all black communities, see their upset, their anger, their feelings and disassociate. I know you don't know any of those people. Truth be told, I don't either. Not personally nor tangentially. It's easy to imagine that somehow they don't want the same as you want for yours, that they are willing to destroy themselves and their communities because they "just don't care about themselves or their families or their communities" the same way you do. It is easy to say if they'd done nothing wrong, they'd have nothing to feel guilty about. It is easy to look at someone in a moment of terror or pain or frustration and read them all the way wrong. It is easy to apply your experience to the actions of people you don't know, to expect that they had every opportunity that you did and assume they are just making bad choices or are somehow deserving of the incredibly strict, harsh punishment (death) handed down for being #alivewhileblack. But the most infuriating thing is how easy it is for you to just look away.
I grew up in your community. There were a handful of brown and black faces and all the rest were white and your right to be there no matter your efforts, your intelligence, how clean, good, big your family was, your lawn, your car, your station, you knew the place was yours. That you were free to skate. There was judgment, there were microaggressions every day against my family and me. There were assaults on my psyche if not on my physical self. The same folks I saw in church would not even acknowledge me in the Pathmark. A good friend's mother would rather he put himself in harm's way than possibly end up in my arms (He was gay, but there'd be a little time for her to discover that.). A teacher at school told me that my white boyfriend and I were disgusting. A popular student told me I was pretty but that his mother would kill him if he came home with someone black. Going below the speed limit, friends and I were pulled over and though I was not driving, the officer told me to watch myself. We were held up as the proof of diversity in your community, shown as a symbol to how open and available and post-racial we were despite all that.
And you know what? I did try. I danced and shimmied at the parties, deflected when way off color jokes were told, kindly shot down hideous come-ons conjured by images of hot black chicks who can't get enough. I put the rage and anger and fear in my art, moved to spiritualism and meditation and the quest for a higher power, for the sacred because being just human, a black, female human navigating life in this country that believed itself to be post-racial, post-Civil Rights movement was exhausting and lonely and frustrating. I struggled to get my footing when, even though I was full of promise, I truly just could not find my way. Even now, I still listen to people who want to tell me how they see my experience. How they feel about what I am talking about. How they think I am getting it all wrong, that I did not even grow up in "those communities." How I am a different kind of black person. I'm not.
I never feared for my life but was raised to be prepared for it. Though my father did not know we knew, we'd seen the rifle given him by his father before we moved "up north." The weapon that was to protect us in case "those white people got crazy." We knew the stories of the South, knew that my dad and his brothers and cousins and uncles and all the men before them knew to cross the street if a white woman was walking on the same side of the sidewalk lest folks get the wrong idea and come after the. Knew that they would not look white folks directly in the eye, that they would try to keep their tone down so as not to rile or rifle or scare white folks into craziness. It wasn't my story but I knew it well enough. It's in my DNA. I knew that they endured all that and moved to this neighborhood, this town for a good job, good schools, greater opportunity, and a chance to skate around the fucking rink.
And when I say this hurts and it's bad and we have to change it, I am called to task for rushing to judgment about the police, about the policies in this country that have tied the arms and bound the legs of black people and black communities. Yes, this is a class issue, the impossible gap between the very wealthy and the working poor is staggering, but there is no denying, no matter how hard one tries, that this is a racial issue. That black people, whether they grew up in their own communities or interspersed with yours, whether they grew up poor, rich, middle class, went to college or did not, whether they sell cigarettes on the street corner or are ivy league professors or lawyers or ball players or scientists or students are viewed with fear and prejudice. And even when you ask the people around you, more than likely also white and as inexperienced as you are, if it is at all possible that what "they" say is true, you are going to get back the answer you want, the one you expect, the one that let's you go to sleep at night while some of us are still awake and in tears watching vigilantly.
I went to school with you, to dance class, to church. I trick or treated with you and sang carols. I took the SATS next to you and lent you a pencil. If you don't believe people you don't know, trust me. Slow your judgment of black people and black communities. Sure there are bad apples. But since you've never really exposed yourself to those communities, you cannot see the people who are working their tails off to succeed in a system that is set up to fail them. Even those of us who grew up in your affluent communities don't have your advantages. And before you try to hold a mirror up to our successes, our achievements, let me tell you that nothing, nothing at all came easy and the road was paved not only with obstacles and sacrifices but hellishly racist shit that would spin your head.
When we are frustrated, all of us, all human beings, and we need to let off steam, to vent, we do the same things. Scream, yell, vent, kick stuff. I know it. Now imagine in your frustration, in your pain, in your rage at injustice and disproportionately unfair treatment, there is little to no release. You are locked in. No one will feel your pain, no one will comfort you, no one will even acknowledge you. No one will cradle your head, no one will even address how much you hurt but rather that you kicked the door in. Imagine that your outrage, that your expression is met with judgment and lectures and invalidation. Imagine that what you know is true is argued about and disputed and negated to your face by someone who has no idea about what you are speaking.
All of us, all human beings want the same things. We want to give all we can to our families, to see them do better than we have, to give them more, to leave the earth, to leave society, the world better than we found it. There are little girls and boys all around the country watching their fathers skate around the rink, stumble, struggle. They are beaming with pride, falling in love with their heroes, cluelessly believing that if their fathers could just make it around the rink that all will be right with the world, completely blissful in their ignorance, as open and trusting and hopeful as every one of you. They are willing their fathers and mothers and families and communities to succeed, to make it around, to get better at it, to progress.
I was a little black girl with big dreams. I believed my dad could do anything. To see him struggle, to see him fall, to see him in fear, to witness injustice, unfair treatment, judgment reserved for him only because he was black, hindrances and obstacles placed in his way, when I knew he'd worked so hard, climbed such heights, done so much, threatened to halt my conviction. I could glide and spin and soar only when I knew he was safe. That he could get to a place where he trusted himself too. That he could falter and get up again. We must find a way to talk about race, privilege, injustice or our only future is dystopian. There must be fundamental changes in policy, better training of police and civil servants. But most importantly, we must see each other.
What frightened me most going around that rink was not that my father was so inexperienced. It was that the really good skaters, the fast ones who'd been skating all their lives might knock him down and that he wouldn't get up. That they'd zoom by so quickly they might rush over his fingers on the ice as he tried to right himself. I was afraid for him, as I am afraid for us now, that he would just give up and never try again. And he did. And I hope we can too.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
My parents, who'd both come from humble beginnings, had not had the opportunities or privilege to participate in frivolous activities like skating and skiing and tennis or any of the extracurriculars my brother and sister and I were afforded. Their after school activities were often connected to their schools or churches and they still had to make time for work and help around the home or farm. That day at the rink, my dad was up on skates for the first time too but was thrown off balance, resting on the thin blades did not come naturally. My father was and is a very solid guy. He stands firmly on the ground and gives the appearance of such physical strength that I was well into adulthood when I realized that he was not as enormous as John Henry the steel driving man. For him, skating was a challenge, but one he did not give up on. I watched him make his way slowly around the rink, staying close to the side, shuffling along trying to get the hang of it. I have always been sensitive and empathetic to others' struggles and have always beamed with pride at anyone's attempt at something new, something dangerous, something just beyond their reach. But this was too much for my tiny, little heart. To see my dad, probably the person I loved the most at that time, certainly looked up to (despite our incredible differences), working so hard, struggling, broke me and I cried and cried at his humanness. My world turned upside down when I discovered that he was just a man.
I have not posted for a very long time because again I have been crying and crying. Seriously. I am in a state of absolute pain at my core. The very real humanness of this struggle has poked and prodded at my heart and at my gut so that I just can't get much of a handle on what I believe anymore. I feel the same sensation that I felt watching my father, my hero, struggle around that rink. We are wobbling and tumbling and falling flat trying to get around this fucking rink.
I am hurt and angered and saddened by the outcomes of every case involving a black person--man, woman, or child--being killed by the police. I am insulted by the imagery being used to describe black boys and men--animals, monsters, overpowering, aggressive. I cannot believe that the victims and their communities are being told that it is their lack of respect that has brought the pox on their houses. I am hurt that the trigger is pulled so quickly and that the victim is then blamed for his past or the figure he cut on surveillance video as though those were reasons enough to kill an unarmed person. But I have been destroyed, truly cut deep, by the efforts of friends and neighbors quick to explain to me either the absolute necessity of handling black people this way or in deflection about the tough, brave, good folks in law enforcement out there. Of course there are good cops and good public servants. We are not talking about that and you know it. I never said, "Fuck the police," but I hear in the tone, in the explanation, and in the crazy, blue-cold silence, "Fuck that. Their lives got nothing to do with me."
I can see how easy it is for people, white people, to look at these all black communities, see their upset, their anger, their feelings and disassociate. I know you don't know any of those people. Truth be told, I don't either. Not personally nor tangentially. It's easy to imagine that somehow they don't want the same as you want for yours, that they are willing to destroy themselves and their communities because they "just don't care about themselves or their families or their communities" the same way you do. It is easy to say if they'd done nothing wrong, they'd have nothing to feel guilty about. It is easy to look at someone in a moment of terror or pain or frustration and read them all the way wrong. It is easy to apply your experience to the actions of people you don't know, to expect that they had every opportunity that you did and assume they are just making bad choices or are somehow deserving of the incredibly strict, harsh punishment (death) handed down for being #alivewhileblack. But the most infuriating thing is how easy it is for you to just look away.
I grew up in your community. There were a handful of brown and black faces and all the rest were white and your right to be there no matter your efforts, your intelligence, how clean, good, big your family was, your lawn, your car, your station, you knew the place was yours. That you were free to skate. There was judgment, there were microaggressions every day against my family and me. There were assaults on my psyche if not on my physical self. The same folks I saw in church would not even acknowledge me in the Pathmark. A good friend's mother would rather he put himself in harm's way than possibly end up in my arms (He was gay, but there'd be a little time for her to discover that.). A teacher at school told me that my white boyfriend and I were disgusting. A popular student told me I was pretty but that his mother would kill him if he came home with someone black. Going below the speed limit, friends and I were pulled over and though I was not driving, the officer told me to watch myself. We were held up as the proof of diversity in your community, shown as a symbol to how open and available and post-racial we were despite all that.
And you know what? I did try. I danced and shimmied at the parties, deflected when way off color jokes were told, kindly shot down hideous come-ons conjured by images of hot black chicks who can't get enough. I put the rage and anger and fear in my art, moved to spiritualism and meditation and the quest for a higher power, for the sacred because being just human, a black, female human navigating life in this country that believed itself to be post-racial, post-Civil Rights movement was exhausting and lonely and frustrating. I struggled to get my footing when, even though I was full of promise, I truly just could not find my way. Even now, I still listen to people who want to tell me how they see my experience. How they feel about what I am talking about. How they think I am getting it all wrong, that I did not even grow up in "those communities." How I am a different kind of black person. I'm not.
I never feared for my life but was raised to be prepared for it. Though my father did not know we knew, we'd seen the rifle given him by his father before we moved "up north." The weapon that was to protect us in case "those white people got crazy." We knew the stories of the South, knew that my dad and his brothers and cousins and uncles and all the men before them knew to cross the street if a white woman was walking on the same side of the sidewalk lest folks get the wrong idea and come after the. Knew that they would not look white folks directly in the eye, that they would try to keep their tone down so as not to rile or rifle or scare white folks into craziness. It wasn't my story but I knew it well enough. It's in my DNA. I knew that they endured all that and moved to this neighborhood, this town for a good job, good schools, greater opportunity, and a chance to skate around the fucking rink.
And when I say this hurts and it's bad and we have to change it, I am called to task for rushing to judgment about the police, about the policies in this country that have tied the arms and bound the legs of black people and black communities. Yes, this is a class issue, the impossible gap between the very wealthy and the working poor is staggering, but there is no denying, no matter how hard one tries, that this is a racial issue. That black people, whether they grew up in their own communities or interspersed with yours, whether they grew up poor, rich, middle class, went to college or did not, whether they sell cigarettes on the street corner or are ivy league professors or lawyers or ball players or scientists or students are viewed with fear and prejudice. And even when you ask the people around you, more than likely also white and as inexperienced as you are, if it is at all possible that what "they" say is true, you are going to get back the answer you want, the one you expect, the one that let's you go to sleep at night while some of us are still awake and in tears watching vigilantly.
I went to school with you, to dance class, to church. I trick or treated with you and sang carols. I took the SATS next to you and lent you a pencil. If you don't believe people you don't know, trust me. Slow your judgment of black people and black communities. Sure there are bad apples. But since you've never really exposed yourself to those communities, you cannot see the people who are working their tails off to succeed in a system that is set up to fail them. Even those of us who grew up in your affluent communities don't have your advantages. And before you try to hold a mirror up to our successes, our achievements, let me tell you that nothing, nothing at all came easy and the road was paved not only with obstacles and sacrifices but hellishly racist shit that would spin your head.
When we are frustrated, all of us, all human beings, and we need to let off steam, to vent, we do the same things. Scream, yell, vent, kick stuff. I know it. Now imagine in your frustration, in your pain, in your rage at injustice and disproportionately unfair treatment, there is little to no release. You are locked in. No one will feel your pain, no one will comfort you, no one will even acknowledge you. No one will cradle your head, no one will even address how much you hurt but rather that you kicked the door in. Imagine that your outrage, that your expression is met with judgment and lectures and invalidation. Imagine that what you know is true is argued about and disputed and negated to your face by someone who has no idea about what you are speaking.
All of us, all human beings want the same things. We want to give all we can to our families, to see them do better than we have, to give them more, to leave the earth, to leave society, the world better than we found it. There are little girls and boys all around the country watching their fathers skate around the rink, stumble, struggle. They are beaming with pride, falling in love with their heroes, cluelessly believing that if their fathers could just make it around the rink that all will be right with the world, completely blissful in their ignorance, as open and trusting and hopeful as every one of you. They are willing their fathers and mothers and families and communities to succeed, to make it around, to get better at it, to progress.
I was a little black girl with big dreams. I believed my dad could do anything. To see him struggle, to see him fall, to see him in fear, to witness injustice, unfair treatment, judgment reserved for him only because he was black, hindrances and obstacles placed in his way, when I knew he'd worked so hard, climbed such heights, done so much, threatened to halt my conviction. I could glide and spin and soar only when I knew he was safe. That he could get to a place where he trusted himself too. That he could falter and get up again. We must find a way to talk about race, privilege, injustice or our only future is dystopian. There must be fundamental changes in policy, better training of police and civil servants. But most importantly, we must see each other.
What frightened me most going around that rink was not that my father was so inexperienced. It was that the really good skaters, the fast ones who'd been skating all their lives might knock him down and that he wouldn't get up. That they'd zoom by so quickly they might rush over his fingers on the ice as he tried to right himself. I was afraid for him, as I am afraid for us now, that he would just give up and never try again. And he did. And I hope we can too.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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