Do You Mind If I Pass?

January 15, 2013 by 10 Comments

The girls are in a production about the Civil Rights Movement.  I learned what ‘passing’ was.  It’s when a light-skinned African-American person used ‘white-only’ facilities.  Quietly, respectfully.  Not drawing attention.  Hoping just to sit on a train, for example, if they could.

Oh.

Like me?

I heard my mother and grandmother discussing an event that happened a generation or two ago.  In the process of breaking up housekeeping of one of my great-great-grandparents, a photo was found.  It was a photo of a black woman.  On the back, it said one word…

“Mama.”

At the time, I said nothing.  Sometime later, I referred to that event.  Mother just stared. It was anger and “I-don’t-know-what-you-mean?” at the same time.  Had she forgotten?  Was it a secret?

Nevertheless.

Whose mother? The answer is lost. Only Mother is alive to know it and, she isn’t talking.  There were the great-greats who both died, leaving the little girl who’d be my great grandmother, an orphan.  There is also the great-great who smoked cigars and only changed underwear twice a year–when she put on the winter underwear and when she took them off.  Her son would live 76 years, only to decide to take his own life.

Someone kept a photo labeled, ‘Mama’.

My mother was born in the 40s.  My grandmother in the 20s. My great-grandmother died in 2005 at age 93.  If she was still alive, she’d be 101.  Even given forty years for the two previous generations, that would place her grandmother’s birth in the year 1867.  Five years after the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation.  If by some chance my forebears in both those generations were older than 20 when my great-great was born, ‘Mama’ could have been born a slave.

It’s possible that the woman in the photo isn’t actually a relative at all, but a nanny.  Someone may have found a photo labeled ‘Mama’, and just never disposed of it.

Neither of those seem terribly likely, as this de-cluttering would have taken place before my grandmother was born.  Would it have been extremely likely that a white person, living in the 1920s in America, would keep a portrait of a black woman labeled ‘Mama”, if it held no personal meaning?

The photo, if kept, wasn’t kept by my branch of the family.  Of whom I am the only descendent.

May I pass?

Feel free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: acceptable level of racism, Extended Family, Imagination, life lessons, Loving, searching, where I'm from Tagged With: , , , , ,

Is It Just Me? Or Is It Hot In Here?

July 7, 2012 by 4 Comments

Pretty often, when I was talking with friends someone said I needed to write.  Allegedly, I’m funny.  I don’t think I’m funny on the blog.

Sometimes, without voice and facial expression, it’s nothing.

Sometimes, facetious doesn’t work in print.  I envy bloggers who can deliver snark.  When I try, I second guess.

Sometimes, it’s double entendre and that’s a problem because it’s my true medium. So much so, that I’d been entertaining the girls making comments on pins and posting them to facebook.  They had the meaning that the divas understood.  But they were so ripe with double entendre, I nearly passed out.*  I had to delete them.

The other day I was feeling wild and free (always a red flag). I added a pic and made a few comments that I thought were funny and got to the point. Which was important to me.

I don’t write a post and forget about it.  I edit and re-edit in my head for awhile.

I teased about a member of the boy band being attractive.  Then I got to thinking about the possibility that I could be older than his mom. What would she think about what I wrote?

Thursday, Pinterest started serving up the hardcore porn.  I sort of think the anger and the ICK made me feel wrong and I transferred it onto the post.  Which wasn’t.

I had the girls read the post, I asked my husband about it and he didn’t remember it.  I asked Jennifer.  She didn’t remember it either. Comments so racy that no one even remembers them. So much for being edgy and funny.

I edited it, anyway, and I like it better now, because it gets to the point.

This One Direction thing has been a gold mine for opening up conversations we need to have. (For starters,  I laid out ground rules in a post and violated all of them.  Lesson one: Cop to your @#$%. Good Times.)

In particular, The girls and I had a long talk this week about marketing and the term: “If you hang around the barber shop long enough, sooner or later you’re gonna get a shave.”  Sex and culture.  Young people aren’t being taught to “possess their bodies in sanctification and honor”. They have been taught to follow their impulse in the moment.

The decision we think we’d make, while having a conversation with our mom about sex,  won’t be what’s going through our minds when we’re alone with someone who smells good and has had just enough beer to make his breath sweet and says we’re beautiful and funny and…

what was I talking about?

Oh yeah.  A conversation everyone needs to have.  Not as difficult as it sounds, and I have no idea how I would have initiated it or realized it needed to be had any other way.

-I’m old; not dead. It’s healthy for me to notice a man.  How I comment to that is a matter of my dignity and home-training.

-Naill Horan’s Mom will be fortunate, if my confession (that I realize “While cute, he’s a child and can’t go on the freebie list I don’t have that Liam isn’t on either“), is the worst thing she hears ‘women of a certain age’ say about her baby.  Fortunate, indeed.

-I want to be respectful.  I want to be accountable. I want to be loving more than I want to be funny.

-When I smart off IRL, I hardly ever get ‘checked’.**

-I want to show my kids what is right is right, across the board.  Whether I will stand in front of Niall’s mom or not, eventually I will stand in front of God.  I will have to look at myself in the mirror everyday of my life.  So will they.

 

 

*behind the wheel.  Hours later. Nearly drove off the road when it hit me what I’d said.

**There was that one time. Jennifer made a bumper sticker about a comment I made.  An IRL person never spoke to me again. IT WAS THE TRUTH.  It IS a poor man indeed who must purchase testicles!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: blogging, humor, Imagination, Liam Payne, life lessons, Niall Horan, Niall Horan's Mom, One Direction, Parenting Teens, Uncategorized

If It Were That Simple; Everyone Would Do It

May 22, 2012 by 9 Comments

Anyone who’s known my blog for awhile may have noticed I don’t mention parents, in-laws or extended family.  I always affirm others in those relationships, but haven’t shared my own story.

Lately, I have felt prompted about simple obedience.  No matter that the world around me is having a full on revolution of selfish self-seeking rude violent lawlessness.  What leads to happiness is what always has.

“Trust and Obey, for there’s no other way to be happy…”

Elisabeth Eliot, once teaching on finding rest, said,”The happiest students on any college campus are the athletes and musicians, because they have voluntarily come under discipline.”

We’ve had a lot of change going on.  Change can bring discomfort.  If you want to know about trusting God, I can’t tell you, because the minute we got a little money in the house, I started having trouble listening to Him.  I know what I ought to do.  I would prefer to do something else.  So, I am living the philosophy that I have always hated most

“It’s easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.”

Um, no.  It isn’t.

At any rate, along with EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE UNIVERSE, the topic of extended family relationships began to nag at me.  What is my role? Do I want to lose them forever?

Two years ago, my dad’s stepdaughter publicly eviscerated me on facebook.  I promptly called him to say I didn’t say anything that warranted that response and in the course of the conversation said, “I understand that you may have found your second family and might not need a relationship with me, but…”

And while I paused to search for the right words to ask that I not be bawled out by people who don’t know me for things I have never expressed or implied, he said, “Yep.”

He didn’t clarify and ended the conversation by saying he’d talk to me in a few days.

I never heard his voice again.

And no one else’s in the family either.

Based on the thinking of the last couple of weeks, which coincide exactly with the original event, I moved forward, tentatively; with an email to the cousin closest to me in age. My cousin responded to my email by saying:

“I don’t know about it, or want to take sides.   I just think it is sad for all involved.”

If they don’t know, how can they think it’s sad.  Isn’t it taking sides to not hear both and not speak to the person whose side you haven’t heard?

To my blame, writing this has made me realize, if I’ve been having a hard time listening to God, I shouldn’t initiate processes without His approval.  Will all things work together for good?  Sure.  Did it have to be this way? No. This is uncomfortable.  I can explain my side, but if they didn’t care about it last week, it’s difficult to imagine they’d change now.  I don’t feel ashamed of the way I have handled it up to now. The Bible does say, “Seek peace and pursue it.”  It doesn’t follow up with, “because it’s your job to make it happen.”

I don’t have to be the one to pursue God, My Father.  He pursues me, crazy, rebellious, black sheep that I am. And all I have to do to seek peace is obey Him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Imagination, parenting small children, Prayer, Uncategorized, where I'm from

Tribing Up

April 21, 2012 by 4 Comments

I was describing a relationship the other day.

“I really love and care about this person and I know they care about me.  But if the apocalypse came and I got to choose who to rebuild civilization with, I wouldn’t pick her for my…”

At this point,  the light came on.  This is what a tribe is.

(And that my imagination is apt to run away with me at any point.  If I am in charge of rebuilding civilization, our problems may be larger than just the apocalypse.)

I absolutely hate catch phrases.

Remember “Paradigm Shift”?  Ick.

I guess that makes me lucky not to work in an office of any size.

I digress.

There’s a difference between loving someone and needing them in your life when you need someone you can trust.  When you need someone whose strengths and weaknesses complement yours.  With whom you can march forward, encouraging and pulling each other towards your respective goals. (If you hear sirens, it’s because the Grammar Police are coming to lock me up.)

Tribe gets used all in a business-y sense.

It wasn’t there first.  It was real life first.

There’s my actual Native American tribe.

My family tribe.

My high school tribe.

My adulthood tribe.  Interesting.

The other day, this took place in a matter of just a couple of minutes.  I realized there is a huge difference in the relationships that I have to have to survive and be safe and create a life worth living, and those I love, but I feel secure in the knowledge they wouldn’t choose me either.

I have a little work to do in maintaining some of these relationships. But now, I have a sense of freedom to work on those without worrying about a thousand acquaintances.

I feel like this is something I should have figured out a long time ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Imagination, tribe

Valentine’s Day Emergency

February 13, 2011 by 5 Comments

I have the thing that is going around; however, because I hope to impact the world for good before I die I am keeping the life support plugged in long enough to save your Valentine’s Day and possibly your relationship.

Men, I am referring to you.

Statistically, we know there is an inverse relationship between length of time you have been in a relationship and the amount of time you spend planning Valentine’s Day.  The longer you have been together, the less thought you give to stoking the fire.  Is it because you get smarter, funnier, better dressed, more thoughtful, and sexier every 365 days?

I think not.

With a few glaring exceptions, you got lazy.  She takes care of everything else and you forgot this is on YOUR list.  Along with taking out the garbage and…  Well, that’s about it.

Today, you Fortunate Bassmaster, is your lucky day.

With my assistance, you will go down in history as Valentine’s Day Guy and radically increase your chances of getting lucky.

ACCIDENTALLY BY DESIGN GUIDANCE ON HOW TO NOT GIVE YOURSELF THE SHAFT THIS VALENTINE’S DAY

1)Flowers.  Dear God In Heaven Above, know who you are dealing with.  There are exactly two kinds of women.
–The first type is: “Dozen Long Stem Red Roses” type.  She expects her flowers in addition to whatever else you are doing.  Like the Christmas Tree at Christmas, this is the symbolic requirement and by no means all that is expected.  You do it to show her you are paying attention. She doesn’t want daisies, carnations, or tulips.  Get. It. Right.
–Everyone else is the second type.  Our flowers must relate to who we are as a person.  If we can plant the bulb out in the yard later or if our flowers are in a framed print, flowers speak to us in our hearts.  Even if we are allergic and can’t have them in the house.  Lucky man indeed who is in a relationship with a Daisy or a Tulip girl.
2) Perfume.  We live in truly shocking times.  The classics are fall by the wayside as starlets on their way to rehab allow their name to adorn stuff that smells like a sanitary puck.  This is not your problem.  Your task is to find something that smells great and doesn’t remind you of your mom.  If you don’t know her favorite, go for a scented candle or bubble bath or a gift card to S*phora or something .  Like “Your Song”, do this right and you will make your life easier.  Forever.  No pressure.
3) Candy. Hooray for candy.  Does she love the “heart shaped box” and the crap shoot of finding a good one in the midst of the weird?  Go for it.  If you had started earlier, you might have ordered specially written candy conversation hearts. Since you didn’t, I recommend the candy store at the mall and filling a clear container with bulk candy.  Her favorite.  Not yours.
4) Jewelry.  Unless you are buying an engagement ring or already married, you are setting your self up for trouble.  Earring boxes and ring boxes look too much alike.  If she is expecting a ring and gets a bracelet…that sucks.  Seems like dangerous territory to me, but I am not a jewelry girl. If you have a jewelry girl and have been in the relationship any amount of time, your needs are beyond the scope of this blog post.
5) Practical gifts.  Depends. You want out?  My dad once bought my mom an over under shotgun for her birthday.  He got a gun and out of the relationship.  Win-win for him.  Other gifts to avoid may include but are not limited to:  small kitchen appliances, exercise equipment, tickets to watch YOUR team, fishing tackle (even if she says it is what she wants; this is Valentine’s), over under shotguns.
6) Cards, handwritten letters.  Mandatory.   READ THE CARD.  If you can cop to what is written there, you are in business. If you can’t be bothered to read the card, hand write the letter yourself.  It doesn’t have to be long.  It has to be true. Does not include texts, email, e-cards, fb wall posts, or tweets. If you think you rock because thousands of other people listened in to your innermost feelings, you are too young to have a valentine.
7)  Lingerie.  Only if she will be proud to wear it.  If you will never see it again, why bother.  Me?  I like nice warm socks.
8)  Economy Sucks?  Time is money, Hondo.  Start earlier.  Use your imagination.  Make her life easier.  Arrange for a reliable sitter yourself.  Clean the house. Cook the dinner. Wash the dishes.  Let her hold the remote. If Hershey and Hallmark are still in business, so are you.
9) Under no circumstances should you tell her what you wanted to do but didn’t have enough time.  If there was no question of Valentine’s Day being canceled this year, you have had 365 days.  Don’t. Tell.

Hurry up, Valentine’s Day is not a day for anyone to go without.

Go.  Now.  While there is still time.




Filed Under: Accidental Guide, Holidays, humor, Imagination, Talking about Sex, Valentine's Day