The Best Thing I Ever Did

Almost a year to the day and I finally have something to say.

I have the ultimate excuse though.

Clearly, I have been busy.

Last month, we were pleased to welcome the newest, and most welcome, edition to our messy, loving, and occasionally fraught household.

We have a daughter.  I have a daughter.  I'm not biased or anything but clearly she's perfect in every way and obviously superior to all other babies.  Apparently becoming a mother also means you become insufferable.  Just don't follow me on Instagram.

Jesus-I'm responsible now.

I took a year off from blogging and all sorts of other extraneous things because I wanted-actually needed-to focus all my attention on my other great undertaking.  I decided tackling my first year as a teacher while undergoing my first pregnancy was challenge enough.  This was probably not also the year to delve deeper into couture sewing techniques, or teaching myself embroidery, or learning a foreign language. or trying to alter patterns that will not cooperate.  I've learned restraint.

I successfully completed my first year with nothing but ideas, enthusiasm, nerves, and excitement for the year ahead.

I successfully grew and delivered a human being with the mental, emotional, and physical strength of my body.  She is my masterwork-the best thing I ever did.  Seriously.

Life is still hard.  Still challenging.  Still bleak and depressing at times.  Still messy.  Still unorganized . . . . but we made it.

We made it.

What Am I Doing? What Are We Doing?

I started this blog as a writing exercise and a creative outlet.  I also really enjoyed reading blogs.  I had this sense that they were letting me into hundreds of individual realities and hence, providing an authentic look at multiple lives as they are lived by real people.  This despite the plethora of Pinterest ready homes, recipes, DIY projects, and obsession with Anthropologie.  Behind all of that was real motivation and human action.  There has to be something behind this really specific, softly lit nostalgia right?

The thing is . . . even though I was into that whole deal, my life, my real life interfered. My real life looked nothing like what I scrolled across in my news feed.  At times, the Davis execution and the Zimmerman trial specifically, the disconnect is jarring.  How is the whole world not thinking or talking about this? Why is there nothing . . . not one mention in comments even, about Trayvon Martin on my favorite parenting blog?  The comforting community of Pinterest addicts and lovers of glossy white trim began to feel a little less welcoming.  A little less congenial.  A little less relevant. 

Then it hit me, maybe I'm just too black for this life.

Sometimes the assumed universality of my favorite sites is just too much to bear.  It's nothing major.  (No, we don't all want to laugh at Sweet Brown.  Your use of hip hop slang for comedic effect is more than just incredibly whack, although I really can't stress enough how whack . . . .)  It's not overtly racist, but the absence of any sort of cultural awareness of any kind has me instinctively bracing for impact.  (Because not really racist and not overtly racist still hold potential for violence.)  Especially when the world at large has seemingly become more hostile than usual.

Maybe I just don't fit in here.

I haven't been posting.  

I haven't been posting because I can't write.  More to the point I can't write the way I assume blogs should be written.  I can't write the way the popular bloggers I follow do.  I can't write in ways that either unconsciously or conscientiously avoid controversy.  I can't write that way, even though I would like to write that way and have that soft focus, beautiful life-at least in print.  

My writing can't assume universality because my blackness and my femaleness and my general poor-ness get in the way.  I can't write about aspirational furniture, or DIY projects when I have all this blackness in the way.  I can't write about being married without all my blackness, and accompanying respectability politics, getting in the way.  I can't write about step-parenting because my husband's blackness gets in the way and makes it less about parenting and more about how men, allegedly, don't stay with or take care of their children.  I can't write about feminism because my blackness and my insistence on being included, get in the way.  I can't write about beauty, especially hair, without including my blackness.  I can't write about politics because my blackness makes me predisposed to high blood pressure and other stress-related diseases.  

I can't classify my blog as one thing or another because I am not one thing or another.  My whole world is not about blackness . . .  but, come on now, my whole world is about blackness.

My whole world is also about gender, about socioeconomics, about misrepresentation, about misrecognition, about advocacy, about shame, and about silence . . .  crushing silence.

I have felt silenced by the overwhelming representation of ordinary life.

So I haven't been writing.

I have been working, and teaching, and struggling towards making some kind of life and having some kind of family.  Trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.  Trying to not go gray in vain (!).  Trying to keep a handle on my sanity and my sense of self in a world that feels, at times, like it's going mad.  

I haven't been writing, but I have not been idle.  I can't write . . . but I'm going to write anyway.

Hopes for a Happy and Harmonious New Year

I didn't make any resolutions this year.

Source: unityhawaii.org via Andrea on Pinterest

Instead, Wes and I marked the turning of another year by holding our own burning bowl ceremony.  I can't remember where I first came across the concept-maybe a reiki website or a Unitarian one. . . in any case, the idea resonated.  

What do you want to leave behind you?  What do you want to say goodbye to?  What do you need to let go before you can move forward?  

2012 was a hard year for us and we want 2013 to be better.  We wanted to focus on moving forward, onward and upward.  Naming the things that have been holding us each back, separately and together, and watching them turn to so much smoke and ash was the first step towards freedom.

Building Family Traditions: Holiday Angst

The holidays-in the mall and on the main streets of small town Georgia-have arrived.

I get weird about the holidays.

In my youth, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter were obligatory family gathering days.  One might be excused from making the road trip back to Southeast Arkansas for only one of these holidays but you better not miss them both.  Unfortunately, I will probably be committing that cardinal sin this year.  I don't want to drive to Arkansas by myself, Wes can't go because he has to work on Black Friday, and there is no money in the till for an unnaturally expensive plane ticket.

So we will be riding out the holidays together-which if we are honest is what we really prefer anyway.  

Still, I will miss not being home with everyone else in too small and too hot rooms surrounded by somebody's too wild children.  I can't think about it too much-gotta maintain my stiff upper lip.

Instead, I have been focusing on developing some new family traditions for two holidays I feel pretty conflicted about.  I know too much American history to be down with Thanksgiving as it is commonly represented.  Smiling, smiling!, pilgrims and equally cheerful Indians over tables groaning with food. . . . Just.  No.  Added to that, the cute little food items on pinterest made out of cookies and chocolate and God knows what else shaped like turkeys and teepees plus all the little kid's craft projects of construction paper feather headbands and whatnot.  Just no some more.  

Source: craftily-ever-after.blogspot.com via Chelsea on Pinterest

I won't lie-I got down with all of that when I was a kid but as I grew older and gained knowledge I started to see it for what it was.  A weird form of race theater that was cool with literally everyone I knew because no one I knew was Native American*-a phenomenon made possible by the very real waves of genocide that preceded and followed "manifest destiny". 

Source: media-cache3.pinterest.com via James on Pinterest

Would making cookie teepees as place card holders (seriously who are the folksy yet bourgeois people who come up with stuff like this) be the equivalent of slapping on some blackface?  I don't know.  Are there equivalency scales for racist-ness?  Anyway it makes me uncomfortable because I imagine it would make someone else uncomfortable. 

Which brings me to my weirdness about Christmas.  There is an aggressiveness around this holiday that seems to be growing.  I started to feel some kind of way about it when the whole vilification of the phrase "Happy Holidays" picked up steam a few years ago.  I always thought of Happy Holidays as an efficient and respectful way of politely wishing ones friends and acquaintances well.  After all, I don't know your life.  I don't know how you get down and frankly-that's your business.

Source: themetapicture.com via Dawn on Pinterest

But no, happy holidays was too inclusive.  It left the Christ out of Christmas which everyone, even the non-Christian among us, should be mortally offended by.  For a season of celebration and goodwill this was just so mean-spirited.  Beyond that, the religious commercialization of the holiday has been the most distasteful to me.  There is always a lot of talk about the true meaning of Christmas and the spirit of giving and all of that-but it seems that it is drowned out by the sheer amount of religious themed goods produced and sold just for the holiday.  I am not against spiritual celebrations-in fact, I will be having one of my own this year.  What I am against is the overwhelming prevalence of Christmas as the only spiritual celebration that really counts.

Source: someecards.com via Shara on Pinterest

Also: Elf on the Shelf=Creepy.  There is an equivalency for you.

I leave you with two questions:  After you strip away the layers of tradition and popular culture, what remains?  How do you build new and better family traditions?

*Like for real Native American, not trying-to-pass-off-your-weave-as-genetic-inheritance-from-a-Cherokee-ancestor-only-you-have-knowledge-of. . . you know who you are and you know what I mean.

Miss Viola and Uncle Ed Lee

by Alice Faye Duncan and illustrated by Catherine Stock

Source

Wes found this one at our local library too.  We were really taken with the story.  It was very cute and anyone who has a somewhat irascible, loveable, and relaxed-to-the-point-of-lazy uncle would know exactly what I mean.  There is also a hint of old-fashioned courtship that was very sweet as well and definitely worthwhile to impart to a perpetually grubby little boy.  The artwork, as you can see from the cover, was also beautiful.

The Kid had the added bonus of having Grandpa read it to him so he was very thrilled about that.  We will definitely be looking for more from this author.

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain

An oldie but still a goodie.

Source

We checked this out for the Kid from the public library.  Wes and I have fond memories of this book courtesy of a childhood spent with the much beloved Reading Rainbow.*

Wes came across this book on the shelf by accident.  It really is not easy to go into libraries or bookstores and find books that feature Africans or African Americans unless you just know precisely what you are looking for.  Needless to say, we were both very excited about it.

The Kid was kind of meh.

I KNOW right!?

Anyway, he finally consented to the reading of the book and just to make sure it made the right impression, I sprinkled on a little of the delicious crack that is James Earl Jone's hypnotic voice the next day.

*If you refuse to watch Power Rangers like I do, whole episodes of this show are on YouTube.