Inspiration - The paintings that almost burned, set my imagination on fire.

Inspiration comes from all kinds of places and lately I've been inspired by a lot - friends, music, all forms of artistic and creative expression.  I've even gotten a good amount of encouragement towards finding inspiration in myself.

Appreciating the artistic expression of others is something I've always done.  I find myself drawn to this person's painting, that person's music, the words of another.  I discovered my love for photography through my appreciation of music.  I found that capturing musicians in performance was engaging, thrilling and satisfying for me.  So it's a little funny that until recently it hadn't occurred to me to find writing inspiration through other art forms.

This past December I went to a creative workshop with the musician Vinx.  During the workshop many life-changing things happened for me.  One thing, in particular was not, as yet, life-changing, but it did provoke me to try something new.  Vinx showed us photographs and had us imagine what was happening in them - what kind of story they told.  I decided to make this a regular exercise for myself - but, as I often do with developing new habits, I procrastinated getting started.

Then a few days ago, a friend of mine, Karen, who is a painter started talking on facebook about burning her old paintings.  She felt done with them and saw them more as space-stealers than works of art worth cherishing.

Now I've always loved Karen's work - have often wished I had the money to purchase some of her work and had promised myself that one of the first things I would do when I achieved even the slightest amount of financial stability was to buy any of my favorites her work that were available for sale.  I panicked a little at her statement about setting her work on fire.  What if one of the paintings I had always imagined on my wall went up in flames?  Fortunately, myself and others expressed our dismay at her burning her work and she decided to let them live.  She posted one of the pieces she had been thinking of burning and suddenly an idea to shape for me.

Why not write stories inspired by her paintings as my new writing exercise?  I looked at this beautiful piece - a hand - and started to write. An hour flew by during which I was completely lost in the words and images in a way I haven't been in ages.  And a two-page story emerged.  Nothing complex, or earth-shattering.  Just a simple story.  But it was different than anything I'd ever written before and it made me happy.  It was a little part of myself on paper that never would have existed otherwise.  And I wrote it without allowing myself to get caught up in the self-doubt and criticism that normally plagues my work.

Without letting myself think about it too hard, I immediately sent it to Karen and told her I wanted to keep going.  She posted another picture and another.  I happened to be running around those two days and couldn't sit down to write.  But this morning I was determined to make time to try again.

I looked at one of the two paintings - a foot - and a story immediately sprang to mind.  I started writing, but something else came out.  I kept trying to bring it back to the story in my head, but this other piece, short, compact, and determined, pushed its way onto the paper.

This is a whole new thing for me.  To write what without self-censoring, without thinking about what it should be, to let the writing live in the way it wants to.  I'm hooked.

The next step for me - an odd and scary step is to share my writing.  I want to say to share it without fear - but I'm petrified.  Still, I learned something else in that Vinx workshop.  Fear isn't something you ever really get rid of - but it is possible to be deathly afraid of something and do it anyway - in fact to be scared and still act is more powerful and satisfying than acting without fear.

So despite my fears that my writing is crap, despite my fear that someone will say - or worse, think, but not say - that the pieces I've written are horrible and I should give up on writing as a form of creative expression. I am putting them out there.

I haven't posted anything on this blog in more than a year - but I now revive this blog for the sake of sharing my collaboration with Karen.  The paintings that almost burned, and the writing they inspire.

I Run

I have big boobs, and short, fleshy legs.  When I was 12 or 13 my friend, The Equestrian, decided she wanted to go out for the track team at school and she wanted to me do it too,  I had never really done any running at the time, but if she wanted to do something, chances were, I’d try it as well.  So I found myself standing, in shorts, in Van Cortland Park, waiting to do run a hundred yard dash.  I ran.  I came in last.  My time was atrociously slow.  It felt like I was running backwards. No matter how hard I pushed, I was slow. I was not a runner.

A year or two later, my father, started jogging.  He was determined that I needed exercise, so he woke me up at 6am and made me go with him.  I hated it.  I was not a runner.

Shortly after that, I joined a soccer team.  I was good at the kicking, the dodging, the maneuvering.  I sucked at the running.  I was not a runner.

Many, many, many years later, I was trying to get back in shape after having a baby.  I tried to run.  My boobs bounced, my legs jiggled.  My partner, baby strapped to his chest ran ahead of me and I couldn’t keep up.  I was not a runner.

I live across the street from Central Park.  For years I have watched people jogging.  Around the pond, around the reservoir, through the roads and bridle paths.  I watched and wondered how they could get out there day after day, pounding their feet along, springing, sprinting, keeping slow and steady pace.  I didn’t understand.  I was not a runner.

A couple of years ago, I heard about a program to turn people into runners.  Couch Potato to 5K.  It sounded easy, reasonable.  You started slow, run for a minute, walk for a minute and a half.  I tried it.  I hated it.  I struggled through each slow second of running and cherished the too quick moments of walking.  I stopped.  I was not a runner.

Last week I talked to a friend.  Yes, the same one who got me thinking about religion and god and all that.  He runs. He runs distances, he runs even when it hurts, he runs to prepare for a marathon.  He is strong, toned, muscular, as I want to be and am not.  I told him that running has never felt good, and he put out the idea that maybe I had never tried it long enough for it to feel good. That maybe once I was stronger, more toned, more conditioned to it, I would enjoy it.

I was skeptical.  It’s not that I’ve never been in shape.  I have been.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy exercise.  I do.  It’s just running that never did anything for me. I have been trying, for years to get back into swimming or rollerskating, or something that I enjoy.  I tried Bikram Yoga and loved it.  I took belly dancing classes and loved those too. This past spring I forced myself to make time for the gym and found it passably enjoyable.  But with all of those things, I had to devote money, needed special clothes or equipment, needed to block out time I felt should be spent looking for work or getting my house in order, or taking care of kids.

Suddenly, when I talked about running with him, it sounded like such an easy thing to do.  Put on sneakers, walk out the door.  So simple.  No driving to a gym or class, no lugging big skates to an ideal location with smooth ground.  No pool schedules to adhere to.  Just walk out the door, into the park and run.  Easy.

I decided to try the Couch Potato to 5K thing again.  I was certain it would last a day, maybe two before I found it unbearable as I did before.  I hadn’t even started and I was prepared to stop.  I  imagine the shin splints, the bouncing boobs, the pain in my lower back. I was ready to hate it. But I decided to try anyway.

Out the door, up the hill to the track, I popped headphones in my ears, set the stopwatch and began to walk.  At 1 minute 30 seconds I kicked up my feet, picked up the pace and started to run.  10 seconds in I realized I was moving too fast.  I was running, not jogging, I couldn’t sustain the pace.  And yet, it felt kind of good, kind of free.  My lungs clenched on a breath, but I pushed past it and forced myself to breathe from my stomach. My legs screamed.  I thought I should slow down, really, before I hurt myself.  I decided I’d finish out the minute slower, I looked at the stopwatch to see how much time I had left.  

I was at 2 minutes 40 seconds.  I had exceeded my minute by 10 seconds.  

I was shocked at how quickly the time went by.  I slowed to a walk, catching my breath, feeling the muscles in my legs tighten and ache. At 4 minutes I was surprised that I was ready to run again.  I had enough air, the aches were manageable. I ran.  

I moved around the track again and again, alternating running and walking.  I was happy for the walks, ready to regain my breath and slow my pace, but I was equally happy for the bounce and spring of the running minutes.  I liked feeling my muscles spring beneath me, enjoyed keeping pace with the music coming from my ipod.  I got lost in the music and the pace.  I forgot to stop at 20 minutes - went for an extra lap, finished at 22 minutes, 30 seconds instead.  

I walked home feeling all kinds of aches and pains I hadn’t felt in years. I got in the house and took a handful of motrin.  Once the discomfort subsided, I felt energized, focused, and calmer than I’d felt in weeks.  Good.

The next morning I woke up, ready to run again and it was easier the second time.  The third day it was hot and humid, I feared running in such heat, but to my surprise, it was easier.  My muscles didn’t scream and complain.  The sweat dripping down my face and body were barely noticeable as I pushed myself a little harder than before because the rest of it felt so good.  I pushed each running time by a few extra seconds and shortened the walking times.  On the way home I did lunges and skipped sideways. I had so much energy, my body felt so good.  The sensation of using my muscles was delicious.

On the fourth day I got an unexpected call to help a friend and there was no time to run.  I thought about it all day, missed it, couldn’t wait for the next morning when I could do it again.

When that morning came I was up early and back out.  I pushed myself harder than before and loved every second.  For a while I ran with my head tilted back, the sun on my face, my eyes closed and it felt like I was floating.  

At the end of my last jogging minute, I suddenly wanted to see how hard I could run, I pumped my legs hard, and had that sensation I had when I tried sprinting as a kid - the feeling that I wasn’t moving anywhere at all, almost that I was moving backwards.  I pushed harder, faster and the world started spinning.  I slowed down and everything flipped over, my stomach rose up into my throat, my heart tried to jump out of my chest.  The nausea and dizziness were overwhelming for a moment.  And then everything subsided and I felt this RUSH of energy.  My whole body tingled.  What was this?  I still have no idea, and it feels strange, bizarre that I actually want to experience it again.

Yesterday, I took myself off the track.  I jogged and walked through the park, up and down hills, across rocky areas, on dirt bridle paths and paved walking areas.  It was too much and eventually I returned to the track, feeling slightly beaten - but energized as well.  

Suddenly running is a challenge to be met rather than a torture to be avoided.  I am curious about how much my body can take, how far I can push myself.  I can feel my muscles working and I imagine them growing stronger and more capable.  I think of things I can’t do and can clearly see a time ahead when they will be easy.  

I think, maybe, for the first time in my life, I am a runner... or at least there's a possibility that I could be.

What's It All About?

I had a conversation this weekend that has left me reconsidering, yet again, what life is all about, what the universe is about, what life and death really are.  I wish, so often, that I could feel the certainty others do about these things.  Religious people and atheists alike all seem so sure of what they believe.  How can they?  How?  I fear that I never, ever will be certain.  I’ve been considering these questions since I was a small child and still I have no answers, only more questions.

I remember being around 7 or 8 years old and having a conversation with one of my many cousins.  At the time she absolutely believed in God.  She insisted that there was a God, and that this God saw over us, and had some control over our world and out lives.  I couldn’t understand her certainty.  I asked her why, if there was a God, and if this God was so powerful and knew right and wrong, how it could allow us to do things that it knew were wrong.  Wouldn’t a God who could make things right, choose to? Isn’t it just as bad to sit back and watch a wrong be done as it is to commit the error?  I had been to Sunday school, had read children’s versions of Bible stories, and it just confused me that people thought this God was so real and so wonderful when there it allowed so much pain and suffering and wrong doing to go on in the world.  I decided then that the Bible was just filled with interesting stories that weren’t real and that God was something people made up to explain the things they didn’t understand.

A few years later, this caused many arguments with my mother.  She was a lapsed Catholic.  I don’t ever remember seeing her enter a church other than for a wedding or funeral, but she still held onto the beliefs of her childhood.  For her God was an omnipotent father figure.  An old white man, with a long, white beard, sitting on his cloud throne up in the sky, watching over us all.  When I told her I thought this was all made up, she would cringe, would look impossibly sad that I could reject such a God.  And yet, all those questions I’d had when I was younger still persisted, and no one was answering them for me.  

I went to various services with friends and family, Went to Synagogues and churches of different Christian denominations and still, I saw and felt the same thing - that people believed because it helped explain things they didn’t understand and made them feel better about things that troubled them - but there was no real proof, no stable foundation for believing the things they did.

Around the same time, I was studying mythology in school and became fascinated with the Egyptian myths.  I loved the stories, the various Gods for different things.  I remember, though, that there was a condescending nature to the way it was taught.  The idea was look at how funny it is that these people believed the sun was pulled across the sky by a chariot, when now we have science to explain these things and know there is only one God and not many.  I was always troubled by this.  I kept thinking, how do you know these Gods don’t exist? How do you know that science won’t one day prove, or hasn’t already proven, that all the things you believe about this one God aren’t true?  

I think this was the start of me really questioning, because somewhere in the back of my mind, I started to see that it could be just as possible that there are many Gods as it was possible that there is one God, as it was also possible that there is no God at all.

A few years further down the line as a teenager I began to see connections between seemingly unrelated things. I began to wonder about things outside of our world.  About the universe about things unseen, yet felt, about how our senses sometimes connected us to other things.  I became fascinated by the power of the mind, about things like “extra sensory perception.”  I began to wonder if there was life on other planets, somewhere out beyond the stars.  I played with things like ouija boards and tarot cards.  I played games with friends to see if I could sense their thoughts. And mostly, I began to have dreams that came true.  

Popular culture created questions in my mind too.  I loved movies and there were messages mixed in amongst the comedy and adventure that made me think.  In “Oh God!” the movie starring John Denver and George Burns of all people, God appeared as a feisty old man and when John Denver’s character asked him why he looked like that, he told him that he appeared to people in the form they could best understand. I wondered then, if there was a God, could this account for the variations in religion?  Was it possible that God was too vast, too complex for the human mind to comprehend, so it dumbed itself down to simpler versions that people could take in?  

In “The Empire Strikes Back,” the second Star Wars movie, Yoda talked to Luke a lot about the energy that connects all living things, taught him how to tap into and be an active part of that energy.  Was it possible that energy was God?  That maybe we were all just energy that was intertwined and that mass collective was God.  That God wasn’t sentient or controlling or all knowing, but was merely the symmetry and interconnectedness of everything that exists?

When my first real adult crisis happened, and I looked for help, the aid most readily available came with a spiritual component attached.  My husband at the time had a problem with drugs and alcohol, so I turned to al-anon.  And there it was in those 12 Steps.  “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity,”  “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”  Those are steps 2 and 3 - I couldn’t get past them.  Believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity? Turn my will and my life over to God?  I wasn’t even sure I believed there was ANY power or ANY God.  How could I believe that this unseen, unknown, perhaps unknowable or non-existent thing could do any of that, could be any of that?

Other people in the meetings I went to, grasped hold of these steps happily, easily, and I wished, SO MUCh that I could be like them.  But I was caught up in a spiral of questions.  I felt trapped, needing so much to move forward and yet the tools I was given to do so were confusing me as much as helping me. 

I finally decided that if I could believe in other people, they could be the power greater than myself.  That collectively, all of us at those meetings were a power that could help restore each other to sanity.   As for turning my life over to God…that was harder.  I struggled with it for months.  In the end, I never fully believed.  I simply decided that if I could accept the possibility of God, that would have to be enough.  If I could consider the possibility of spirits and ghosts and aliens, then I supposed I could consider the possibility of God.  And if it was possible there was a God, then perhaps it was possible that God could have better control of my life than I did at that point.  For crying out loud, I could believe that a frog could take care of my life better than I had at that point.

So for the first time in my life, I opened myself to the possibility, the small chance that there was a God.  That at least some of the stuff in religion was true.

From that point on, I began trying to decide just what I thought God was.  Accepting the possibility of there being a God seemed to let me in on a club I felt that I’d been outside of my whole life.  So often, when the topic of religion came up and I revealed that I didn’t subscribe to any, people had asked, “So you don’t believe in God?” with such disdain and sadness in their voices that I felt immediately alienated from them.  There was a comfort in being able to say, “Yes, I believe in God, just maybe not in the same way that most religions present it.”

But that, in itself led to a new frustration.  As I developed and refined my belief in God, in something spiritual,  I found that I had a need, a desire, to share my growing beliefs with others.  With all the religious and spiritual groups in the world, wasn’t it possible that any of them matched what I felt to be true?  I began looking around, began examining various religions.  I went on Beliefnet and took a quiz to find out what spiritual ideals matched with my own.  I found the survey vague and inadequate, but it gave me direction to focus on.  Unitarian Universalist.

So one Sunday morning I bundled up the kids and enlisted my partner and we headed off to a building a mile from our apartment that I’d passed a thousand times and walked into the UU Church.  We were greeted warmly - almost too warmly for me.  Native New Yorker that I am, extreme or intense friendliness from strangers always makes me uncomfortable.

We sat through the service though and I was encouraged.  It was about community, about honoring people and their feelings and thoughts, about caring.  There was a way of looking at religion from a different perspective, of examining things in a slightly different way.  I felt like I could enjoy this, could gain something from it.  It was nice to be in a room full of people who had come together to share, to be there for one another.

We went back week after week for a few months, and while there was much I liked, I also began to see that the people there were as subject to prejudices and petty judgments as in any large group.  I was troubled that these attitudes could exist in a fellowship that was not only about spirituality, but about the acceptance of all kinds of spirituality.  We stopped going.  I missed it on some level, but on another, I realized that while I had enjoyed my time there, I hadn’t gotten closer to understanding my own beliefs about God about what I thought spirituality was all about.  I was still confused, still had more questions than answers.

One thing it did give me was a desire to examine existing religions a little more closely.   I also had the urge to do this because Sugar had begun asking about religion.  Friends had mentioned their beliefs to her and she had questions.  I had started teaching her some of the basics of other religions, but I wanted to know more, wanted to be able to answer her questions with more depth. Wanted better answers for myself as well.  It occurred to me that maybe if no one religion had THE answers maybe each of them had a grain of truth.  You know that saying about how to every story there’s three sides - yours, mine and the truth. I decided maybe I should start looking for the truth in different religions.

At the time a new recording of Bible had just come out.  Virtually every known Black actor in Hollywood had teamed up to record the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments.  I bought it and began to listen to it.  The stories were amazing, the acting impeccable, it brought the Book alive.  But I became impatient with the lack of answers.  The only grain of anything I got out of it came from something I felt was repeated over and over.  God kept insisting that people follow only Him.  That they place no other Gods before him.

Now, I had heard this before.  Had heard it in church, in watching movies like The Ten Commandments.  I had always assumed that this was to mean that there were no other Gods and that people shouldn’t put their faith in things that didn’t exist, but rather in this one God.  This went back to my elementary school studies of Egyptian mythology and the teacher who laughed at the idea that people had once believed in many Gods.  They didn’t exist, so it was ridiculous to waste time on them.  Wasn’t that what the God in the Bible was saying?

I wondered.  What if there were other Gods, lots of them.  Or what if there were no Gods, no omnipotent beings, but spirits who wanted or needed to be recognized and worshipped - who presented themselves as powerful and necessary to people.  What if this one spirit had decided it should be THE one and set about to make it so and had thus become the center of the world’s major religions?  What if the other Gods or spirits were out there still.  Wasn’t this a bit of what various forms of Paganism were about?  

I started to look a little at this and found that many Pagan beliefs were not bad or Satanic, as they had been portrayed, but were merely a recognition of nature, of synchronicity in the world, of the balance between people and the earth.

This made a little more sense to me.  But still, none of it…not even a little bit…seemed to ring absolutely true.  And so I’ve wandered as lost as I was in the beginning.  Wondering, questioning, but still finding no real answers that I could fully believe in.

Now, I haven’t delved into examining religions as much as I would like.  I wish I had the time to read more, to see more and experience more.  Certainly, my examination has, for the most part, been rather superficial.  I have a friend who has recently chosen to follow Islam and I soak up the information she has given me, but I haven’t really looked at it for myself.  That recording of the Bible still sits on a shelf, most of the Old Testament listened to, but more than half of the new Testament unheard.  I recognize that there’s SO much more I could do on my path to understanding my spirituality.

Then, a few days ago, the subject came up with a friend.  He had mentioned before that he believed in nothing.  I had wondered what that meant and when he said that he had gone to Catholic school, I  asked him about what he had believed then and how he had gone from believing to not.

He put forth the premise that there is no God, no afterlife, no spiritual component to humanity. That there is merely, imagination.  I shouldn’t really say merely, because as he presented it, imagination is huge, vast and a vital part of who we are as sentient beings.  He said that we are so capable of imagining so very much that doesn’t exist or can’t be seen that it is hard for us to believe that there isn’t even more beyond what we are capable of.  That we have created and brought into reality so much that couldn’t be seen that of course we would be inclined to believe that there’s even more.  That our brains have created the idea that there is more to us, that we go on beyond the scope of our bodies’ existence.

I have a hard time putting his ideas into my own words, but I get it.  I get that it’s possible that our brains create the concept of our souls and spirits.  That our brains see the patterns and balance in the world and create from that a higher power that makes these patterns come about.

I hesitated to offer him the words I have heard people utter so many times about how they realize there must be a God when they look at the shape of the world and the universe.  I hesitated to talk to him about my own growing awareness about how there does seem to be a connectedness to all things - about how just thinking or talking about things seem to often make them happen.

I hesitated because I realized, from his point of view, our brains did this.  That our ability to think and imagine and create things from these thoughts, was really the God we attributed so much to.  And on some level I couldn’t argue with that.  I told him simply that I had to think about what he had said.  That something in it made sense to me, and I had to think.

That’s what I’ve done for three days…think about it.  As usual, I still have questions, still don’t know what the answers are.  There’s something to what he says, but it makes me uncomfortable..  I think, always, always, despite my questions about God and about religion, I have always had the sense that there was more.  That there was something beyond this life, this reality. I mentioned in a previous post that as a very young child I had a memory of coming to this life from someplace I didn’t want to leave.  I think I have spent my whole life waiting to return there.  To knowing what that place, that reality is. To allow myself to fully believe what he says is to relinquish that very comforting idea that this life is merely a stop along the way.

That idea saddens and frightens me.  So much of this life has been unfulfilling and painful.  Am I to believe that this is all there is? That there will never be another chance to have fulfillment, happiness.  That I’m never going to get the chance to get it right?

I don’t like that idea.  And yet, again, if it is true, and I choose to believe it, what an amazing incentive it gives me to not waste another moment of this life.  How motivated would I be to really get out and live and make the rest of this life all it can possibly be?  How much more of a push would it be to take care of this body I have because it really is all I have, all I will ever have and when it’s gone, I will be too.

Ah, I don’t know.  More questions.  More to wonder about. More to consider.  And so little time to consider in if there is only this life left to do it in.

Exposed

I love blogging.  I really do enjoy being able to write about the things that are on my mind.  It’s a great outlet.  A wonderful way to clear my head of all the random thoughts bouncing around in it.  However, I’m always torn about how I feel about the public nature of it.

On the one hand, I love the idea of publicly sharing my ideas.  I love the thought of getting responses from people, the possibility of sharing a dialogue about the things I think about. Of gaining new perspectives and maybe even provoking someone else to think about things a new way. When I think about it this way, I would love to have lots of people reading my blog.  Would love to build up a following of readers.  

On the other hand, I often hope that no one is reading my blog.  In fact I am often tempted to close it down to readers and make it completely private, for my eyes only - to use it as more as a journal than a blog.  I actually tried this a while back.  I set up a blog to write my “Morning Pages,” a creative exercise.  It worked for a while, but I soon got bored with it.  I wanted feedback, wanted that dialogue.

And yet, there are many, many things about my life, and particularly my thoughts, that I am uncomfortable with sharing with others.  The one thing I learned in my life very early on is that humans are judgmental creatures.  We look at the thoughts and actions of others and we compare them to what goes on in our own heads and lives and we label them right or wrong and act accordingly.  I fear judgment.  I strive, and often fail, to not judge others, and I am petrified of the idea of others judging me.

Maybe it comes from growing up in an environment where I was so different from everyone else.  I’ve talked about it before.  It wasn’t just that I was a Black girl in a predominantly white neighborhood. It was also that I was taller than everyone, started puberty years before my peers, and had a single mother who was a very young (22 when I entered kindergarten) Playboy Bunny when most everyone else had two parents, one of which was often a stay at home mom.  Every day of my childhood was a struggle to fit in, a struggle to not be judged too different, to be accepted.

It was more than that too.  I think I’ve always been different inside as well as out.  Even as a young child, I lived in my head a lot.  I thought about things I never heard other kids talk about or say they thought about.  I  can remember being young, maybe 3 or 4 and thinking, especially in the early mornings, about remembering where I was before I was born.  I would often wake in the morning, remembering dreams of the place I had been before.  A place that was very green and beautiful and filled with warm light.  I could remember that I didn’t want to leave there to come into this life and  was upset when I was told that I had to go.  I would lie in my bed quietly in the morning wishing for the time when I was finished here and could go back to that place.

Even as young as I was, I knew these were not things other people talked about and I kept those memories and thoughts to myself.  When I did slip and tell people the things I thought, they were usually rejected or dismissed and I grew to know that, though I could pretend to be like other people, I wasn’t and that it was better to close my differentness away.  Through both circumstance and choice, I became a bit of a loner. 

I enjoyed time with other people, but it often tired me, still does.  I grew to love the time I spent by myself, with my own thoughts.  Away from the, sometimes overwhelming, ideas and needs and behaviors of other people, I could be completely myself.  And, over the years, I also learned that people judge you less harshly when you give them what they want and need.  I became a giver, a helper, hoping that when little holes appeared in my facade of normalcy, that people would like me enough for all I did for them that they wouldn’t be so quick to toss me aside because of their judgments.

Now I am older, stronger, more comfortable with who I am and have less of a desire to be what other people are.  And I write this blog and wonder how much it really matters how other people judge me.  One thing I’ve learned is that judgments come no matter how hard I try to avoid them.  I’ve also learned that those judgments have little to do with me.  People act and react and judge according to their own experiences, their own thoughts and beliefs.  No one ever really does anything to someone else.  We are all focused on ourselves.  We all act out of our own interests even when those actions affect others.  Judgments always say more about the person making them than the one they are pointed at.

So, from that point of view, I suppose I should be OK with being completely open and honest on this blog.  Yet, a lifetime of choosing to keep my thoughts, and sometimes my actions, private does not fade easily.  I think it will be a while before I can be completely open on this blog, before I am willing to accept the impact such exposure can bring into my daily life.

*Interesting that I wrote this and then immediately made a huge change in my life that I now have to decide whether or not to share on this blog.  To do so would be to break out in a run before standing or walking.  

My New Motto

If you can't handle the worst of me, you don't deserve the best of me.

Remember the Dream

47 years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr. Stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC and gave what may be one of the most poignant, moving and remembered orations of all time.  He told us of a dream in which all people could find their common humanity and come together despite differences that should be inconsequential.
Today, on the anniversary of that day, there are people standing in that same place proving how far away we really are from the realization of that dream.
I am saddened.  I was born just a couple of months before MLK gave that speech and I grew up believing in that his dream so completely that I was almost an adult before I understood that it was still a work in progress.   My young mind was shaped, almost from day one, by his belief that people really could understand that we are all more alike than we are different.  And even though I’ve had life experiences that could easily cause me to think he’s been proved wrong, I still hold onto an undying faith that he was right.
I don’t understand people who want to focus on the negative, who want to see others as so different, and difference as so bad.  I don’t understand those who want to harm, disregard, or demean those who look or behave that are so very slightly apart from their own.
I refuse to mention the names of the people who stand on the Lincoln Memorial today.  Instead, I will leave you with Martin Luther King Jr.’s words and a hope and faith that one day his dream will be a reality.






"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. [Applause]


Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

-Marting Luther King, Jr.

So Long, Farewell

This year seems to be one filled with goodbyes for me.  First I lost Saint Aunt in January. That was the hardest goodbye of all.  It was one I didn’t want, one I would have done anything in my power to prevent.  It’s the one I think I will struggle with for the rest of my life.  I will always wonder if I could have done more, and I will always, always, always feel an emptiness in my life because she’s no longer here.

The other goodbyes have been more by choice, though certainly, many of them I did not feel like I was choosing at the time.  I felt the partings were forced on me, that I had no choice but to say goodbye.

I wonder how much of these endings is choice, though.  I wonder how it is when you could keep someone in your life, but know that their place there really isn’t a good fit.  Is it better to say goodbye even when it’s easier, simpler, and less exscrutiatingly painful to maintain a relationship that is lacking.

I also have to wonder, when it comes down to it, why it is that I have allowed myself to get involved in so many relationships in my life that are lacking.  Is it because my first relationships, the ones I didn’t choose, the ones with my parents were missing so many things I needed?  Do I even know, or understand on any level what it means to have a fulfilling relationship with another person?

When I look back over the course of my life and all the relationships I’ve had, with friends, with men, with family, it seems that they have all been missing some vital elements I needed.  I wonder if that is why I have maintained so few relationships over the years.  Certainly, I know that I have not been perfect. I have made mistakes, I have hurt people I cared about.  I haven’t always been there in every way I could, or maybe not even in every way the other person needed me.  Is it even possible to have a complete relationship?  Is it possible for anyone to be there for another in all the ways they need them to be?

Lots of questions, and I don’t know if there are any real answers.

I’ve recently come to understand that many people, certainly not all - some? most? - approach relationships with their needs in mind.  From the very beginning, they look to have their needs met in the interactions they have with people.  Where they can, they arrange circumstances so that those needs are met, where they can’t they walk away before they are invested.

I think this is what all those, “games” and “rules” in romantic relationships are really all about.  They are a way to set a standard, to create a bargaining situation that makes both parties understand that there are mutual needs that must be met in order for the relationship to succeed.  Women who don’t play the game, who don’t establish their needs as a priority tend to get taken advantage of emotionally.  Men who don’t establish their needs tend to get taken advantage of financially.  Those who refuse to acknowledge the rules or insist on playing outside of them, tend to wind up in shallow or continually failed relationships.

Does that mean the games and rules must be followed in order to have successful, mutually satisfying relationships?  Certainly, Steve Harvey, or those women who wrote The Rules back in the day, sold a lot of books by adhering to the ideal they’re necessary.

But I’m not so sure.  And part of the reason I’m not certain of the validity of this approach is that I think that establishing and being true to one’s needs is not something that is only necessary in romantic relationships.  I think it crosses over into friendships and familial relationships as well. Certainly,I have struggled with this in every relationship I’ve had - even my interactions with my children.

How do I devote myself to caring for and honoring the people important to me while making my own needs a priority, both to myself and to them?

Again, I have questions, but no real answers. I look at the interactions I’ve had with people and it seems that others seem to do this seamlessly, naturally.  They do what they need to do, they take care of themselves when they need to, or let me take care of them when I can and will.  When their needs conflict with my own, they seem to not be phased by taking care of themselves without regard to me.

For a minute I thought I could try this approach, but it always seems to backfire on me.  When I have put my needs first, when I have disregarded the needs of someone I care about in order to take care of my own, I have found myself at horrible odds with the other person.  Their hurt and anger at this has been extreme to me, and my own guilt at neglecting a loved one is overwhelming.  So what to do?

This year, I have taken the approach of simply walking away. Of saying goodbye.  There seems to be no other way for me.  An unfulfilled life suddenly seems immensely more painful, more damaging to me than a lonely one.  Maybe it’s time for me to take care of all my own needs, as much as I can, rather than looking to others for a way to mutually share in the fulfillment of each others needs.

Of course it’s difficult to do this, and immensely painful.  I have said goodbye to friends and lovers and quietly, almost unnoticeably, to family.  I have cut back on some relationships, ended others and even am hesitating to start one or two that don’t look promising.

In fact, I am wondering if I should allow any new connections with people at this point in my life.  I clearly see that I am lacking in the ability to find the kind balance that would make relationships work, so perhaps it is better to spare myself the pain of reliving past mistakes with new people.
And yet, I am drawn to people…so how do I honor that particular need in myself without falling into the same old traps.  Yet another question with no answer.

I guess I’ll just have to keep asking, keep thinking and hope that someday I find a solution that’s better than saying goodbye all the time.

How Dare You

Recently, a friend of mine, and an amazing thinker and writer, Joan Morgan, posted a link on her facebook page to a blog post written by a young woman who was concerned about how best to speak out for children who are often harshly, physically disciplined. She talked about the acceptance in the Black community for various forms of physical punishment. That it seemed, far too often, we talk about our own beatings as children with a kind of humorous nostalgia and frequently uphold the practice of hitting our kids as distinctly Black and a sign of superior parenting.

She gave the example of her God-sister being hit by various family members and how it was breaking the child’s spirit, how the child herself was aware that it was harming her. And the writer looked for ways to advocate for this child, for other children.

One thing that stood out in her desire to advocate for children was that she looked at the other side of it as well. She recognized that too often, Black parenthood, Black motherhood in particular is held under a microscope that has a lens warped to magnify the negative. She expressed a desire to advocate for children while not demonizing the people who may be misguidedly handing out a discipline that damages more than it corrects.

This is an issue I have thought about often. It has never been a difficult decision for me to not hit my children. It was a decision that was made for me in my own upbringing. Amazingly, my very young parents - my father was 21 and my mother 17 when I was born - who agreed on very little, came together on one thing, no spanking. I was raised without physical violence as a form of discipline so it never occurred to me that it could be a valid approach to raising my own kids.
This has often, clearly, set me apart from my parenting peers. I have frequently found myself outside the circle of camaraderie when the conversation turns to discipline and parents talk about giving their child a “pop” or a smack or a “pow pow.” This happens even when the parents don’t know about my own no-hit policy. I tend to fall silent, to shrink back from the conversation, to find something else to do at that moment.

Not that I am a complete coward. There are times when I speak up. When I share my own upbringing and ideas and experiences both as a parent and a child with discipline without hitting. There is always a moment when everyone’s eyes turn on me and their expressions turn to disbelief and sometimes disgust. You can almost see some parents thinking, “Uh huh, her kids seem ok now, but watch them turn into little devils when they realize they can get away with anything without a beating.” That look hasn’t changed even though my oldest is now 11 and still one of the most obedient, thoughtful, considerate kids I’ve ever known. Those who know my practices, love to tease me, to jump on the times when I struggle with my kids’ behavior (as all parents do, regardless of discipline practices) as an opportunity to tell me that if I would just give them a beating, they’d know their place and stop acting up.

I take it all in stride. I’ve developed enough of a thick skin and a healthy self-confidence in my parenting to be able to take some sideways glances and a bit of ribbing without letting it get under my skin. But I often wish that there were ways that I could make other parents understand that hitting their children doesn’t make them better parents or their children better behaved. I struggle with watching people I love and respect resort to physical violence when it’s so unnecessary. And I fight with myself in my never-ending battle of trying not to judge.

I have a severe aversion to making judgments of other people. I think that we all try to do the things we think are right. We try to do our best, not just in parenting, but in all things. Often we make decisions that we know are wrong, often we make decisions we believe are right, and later discover were wrong. Sometimes we think things are right, and never discover for ourselves that they are wrong. That’s life. We approach our life’s decisions out of our own experiences and personalities and it’s too often impossible to really understand the choices others make because we have not walked in their shoes, haven’t been shaped by the things that shaped them. I don’t believe it’s my place to judge others based on my experiences, my ideals, the ways I’ve been shaped. That is true for the decision to hit as a form of discipline as well.

I recognize that most parents, good parents, look at their own upbringing and sort out what worked and what didn’t when they approach raising their own children. For people who were raised with spankings they frequently see that as the way they learned the rules of the world, so when they go to teach their own children those rules, they use the method they learned by and have a hard time seeing there is any other way. I don’t always think it is my place to judge their parenting skills based on this. Certainly, I am not the perfect parent. Certainly there are things that I do as a parent, sometimes consistently, that aren’t the best parenting practices. I try to balance those things with love and attention, and thoughtfulness.

I have to admit that, to a certain extent, I am a yeller. While my parents chose not to spank me, my mother yelled a lot. And, in many ways, this is how I learned the rules of the world - by being yelled at when I didn’t adhere to them. For the most part, I realize that yelling isn’t the best way to get things across. Sugar has taught me that. She doesn’t like to be yelled at. Actually she doesn’t like yelling at all - even when she’s not the focus of it. I have had to learn, over the years, better ways of getting my point across.

However, because yelling is ingrained in me, there are times when I still do it, for better or worse. And I do reserve the right to yell under certain circumstances. I believe that it’s important for children to learn that their actions affect others. That there are consequences to the things they do. I don’t always let my children see my anger. Most times I work very hard to remain calm, even in the light of some of their worst behavior. Still, sometimes I let myself express the full range of the emotions they elicit in me - from the sheer joy and love I feel at the wonderful things they do, to the anger and sadness that their misbehavior causes - particularly when they’re being hurtful. This is a conscious decision on my part, and as a good, thoughtful parent I consider it my right - something I never expect to be questioned on.

Recently, I had the misfortune of having that behavior not only questioned, but attacked and it both frightened and angered me. It made me even more determined to put myself in check when I unwittingly make judgments about other people’s parenting practices - especially when it’s people I don’t know - when I witness a moment out of their lives in public.

I was taking Sugar to one of her many activities and she had done something particularly irresponsible and was compounding the problem by whining and being fairly belligerent and hurtful in her responses to my questions.

We sat in the car, half a block from the building her activity was in. It was a warm day and the car windows were open. I struggled to keep my composure despite her increasingly disrespectful and whiney tone. And then she said one of the most hurtful things that has ever come out of her mouth. “I’m still sad about Saint Aunt and you don’t do anything to help me.”

I had one of those moments when a thousand different thoughts goes through your head at once and you can see the possible outcomes of each potential action. Instantly I considered not answering, only expressing my concern at her pain, getting out of the car and walking away, putting her out of the car and sending her to class without further discussion, just silence, and finally, expressing all that I felt at that moment.

Ultimately, I knew that while my child did still struggle with the loss of our beloved aunt, she chose to mention it at this moment as a way of lashing out at me. I knew that to not acknowledge that she was intentionally doing something hurtful and mean would condone it and would set me up for more of this behavior in the future. Now, certainly there are those who would disagree with me, who would say that maybe all of the behavior that day was the result of her pain at losing someone who was so integral to her life 5 months earlier. I would say to them that I know my child and I know the situation better than they ever could, if they spent a hundred years talking to us and watching a movie of our lives they couldn’t know what went on and how she felt about it better than I do. So I reacted in the way I thought best fitted the situation - I yelled.

“How dare you!” I screamed, “How DARE you say such a thing to me!” I went on to tell her all the ways I had helped her, how I continued to help her, to be there for her, to comfort and strengthen her through this hard time, every single day. And as I said all of this, I let all the hurt and anger her words had caused me strengthen my voice. She would understand that when you say hurtful things to people they react out of the pain you cause them.

Before I could finish, I heard a voice speaking behind me, outside of the car. I stopped, I turned. A tall, White man in a suit stood beside my car, peering in suspiciously. “Is everything, OK?” he asked. I was immediately embarrassed, realizing that with the windows open my voice was carrying, disturbing people in the upscale, Upper East Side neighborhood we were parked in. I looked around and noticed a doorman across the street staring our way and I felt my embarrassment deepen.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “I lost my temper for a moment. Everything is OK.” The man asked me if I was OK, did I need help, the police perhaps. I assured him I was fine, that everything was fine. Then he peered deeper into the car and asked if there was a child with me and I began to understand…he wasn’t asking if I needed the police, he was suggesting that he needed to call the police on me.

I took a deep breath, realizing that nothing would be served by telling this man exactly what I thought of his interference. I brought my voice down, took on the calm composure I reserve for professional situations and dealing with difficult people. I spoke to him rationally, without emotion, even as he continued to berate me and tell me I was abusing my child by yelling at her, even as he continued to threaten to call the police, even pulling out his cell phone, showing it to me as though it were a weapon he could use against me at any moment. Inside I was shaking with anger and not a little bit of fear for what this man stranger could do to my world in a moment. Outside, I continued to speak to him slowly, methodically, and yes, even with some of the deference I knew he believed he was entitled to.

He finally walked away, convinced that I was put in my place by him. I turned to Sugar, who looked at me wide-eyed and frightened. “Why would he say he was going to call the police?” she asked. I explained to her that the man thought I was abusing her and that when people think a child is being abused, they will call the police to ensure it stops.

I asked her if she felt abused by my yelling, if she thought the man’s reaction was warranted. She said no, and expressed concern and fear that this man could call the police on me. We talked about children who are abused, children who don’t have anyone to advocate for them, to make the abuse stop. We talked about our family, the ways in which I discipline her and express myself when she misbehaves. I reassured her that she was safe, that the man was appeased, would not do anything to disrupt our lives, to hurt me, and her through me. And, finally, we talked about our Aunt and how we both still live with the pain of losing her and how I always had been and always would be at her side, helping her handle that pain.

Finally, a little late, when we had initially arrived early, my amazing girl, composed herself and went off to her class. She needed the time there, the familiarity of doing something she knew and loved to remember that no matter what outside people did, her life could and would go on.
As I drove off, the full impact of the altercation began to wash over me. I saw myself through this man’s eyes. Saw a loud, Black (or possibly Hispanic - I’m often mistaken for such) woman sitting in her car, yelling. I saw, through his eyes, not someone thoughtful, educated, intelligent and capable. I saw, from his perspective, someone without the self-control or intelligence to handle a situation in the way he would.

And that’s what it came down to. He believed that his way was the best way. Certainly a better way than this woman with curly hair and slightly brown skin. All this man’s privilege and status in our society had taught him that he knew better, knew more, was superior to me - and that he had the right, from his position to chastise me, instruct me, and if I wasn’t sufficiently deferential, understanding and expressing my place beneath him, he believed he had the right to punish me.

And that’s what it was about, punishing me for not fitting his world view, not succumbing to his ideas. He didn’t care about the well-being and safety of my child. If he had, he would have known that to stand there, threatening to call the police on me frightened, hurt and damaged my child worse than my yelling ever could. He introduced her to the fact that our world is tenuous at best. That at anytime there are people who can turn your life upside down, invade it and change it. He stood there with his phone and his threats and his look of contempt and showed her that he had power over me, over her. That is something that will always shape her. He planted a seed of fear that I can never dig up.

All I can do is plant even more seeds of confidence to strengthen the ground he, in his arrogance, tried to weaken.

In part, because of that man, my own, natural desire to not judge is strengthened further. He combined with some rather humbling life experiences in the last two years have made me realize, more than ever, how judgments are too often false, too often arrogant, too often unenlightened.

It is easy to look at the actions of another and say they shouldn’t do this, or they should have done that. What’s hard is to see the person. REALLY see that person. To imagine there is a whole life behind the face. What’s hard is to at least realize that there is no way to have the whole story of another. No way to understand, fully, the reasons behind their decisions.
What’s exceptionally difficult is to know and accept that my way is not the only way. That no matter how right my way feels to me, it is possible that the way of another feels equally right to them. That our values, ideals, practices, decisions, opinions are all the result of our experiences, upbringing and culture. What’s almost impossible to do is to fully put ourselves in another’s place and fully understand how the blend of those things led them to the decisions and actions they make today. So if we can’t understand, what can we do…

We can accept. We can empathize and sympathize. We step out of our own arrogance and self-centeredness. We can share and we can listen. We can not judge.
I think back to that man, back to the young woman who is trying to advocate for children without demonizing their mothers. And I think to advice someone gave me a long time ago about approaching someone who you see is on edge with their children. “Don’t chastise, empathize,” I was told.

I think about how I would have felt if that man had walked up and followed his “Is everything OK?” with “Oh, somedays are hard, aren’t they. She must have said something that really got under your skin.” He could certainly have helped. Could have diffused the situation - not that I’m still certain the situation needed to be diffused. But if he had cared more about being helpful, than being right, he could have gotten the same result - that I stop yelling - without the damage of frightening my child and I.

I’m certainly not perfect when it comes to judgments. More times than I can count, I have walked past someone berating (really berating - calling names and cursing at) or spanking their kid, shaking my head and rolling my eyes. And now that I have been on the receiving end of such judgment, I have to question myself harder. What if, instead of wandering off feeling superior, I stopped and offered to help that person? I might get my ass kicked. But, then again, I might make a difference in someone’s day. I think it’s worth the risk.

I hope I have the courage, moving forward, to help more often than I judge.

Privelege

Privilege is a funny thing. When you have it, you tend to be unaware of it. When you don’t have it, it’s glaringly obvious to you. I’ve never thought of myself as privileged. Never. It’s so easy to focus on what you don’t have, the ways in which your life is harder, the struggles you have to face - that it’s often difficult to remember the ways in which your life is easier, that you face less obstacles than someone else.

As a light skinned Black person, I’ve often seen resentment in the faces of others who were darker than me. Raised in a working/middle class, fairly educated family, I’ve never thought about how that may have made my life easier than those who had less - money and education.

I’ve always been MUCH more aware of those who had more. Maybe that’s because I was raised in an environment where most people had more and those who had less were rarely even in my range of sight.

Growing up in Riverdale, surrounded by White, solidly middle class people, I was always on the bottom of the ladder - even before I clearly understood what that meant. I mean, there were a few kids who had less money than I did, but not many. And they all had a greater social standing, just by the very nature of the color of their skin and their family status.

When I was a kid, EVERYONE had both a mother and father at home. I was the only one with a single mother, that I was aware of. Certainly I was the only one with a mother who was a Playboy Bunny and had a different live-in boyfriend every few years. Well, maybe that sounds a little harsh - there really weren’t that many. Earl, Fred, (a couple of guys who didn’t really live with us, but were around a lot, whose names I can’t remember) and finally she married Paul, who was closer to my age than my mother’s. I guess that’s not too many over the course of 15 years. But then again, I don’t know - good or bad - I’ve spent 15 years with one man.

But this isn’t about my mother’s romances, the point of it is that I didn’t have the social standing of having two parents in my house, who could interact with, build relationships and support systems with the other parents - so that lowered my status easily as much as having less money and being Black did.

I grew up being acutely aware that I was different - and not just different, but less than - everyone else around me. Even before I knew why, I felt it and let it become a part of my understanding of myself.

So, by the time I got to high school and junior high school and college and started experiencing those who had, or felt they had less than me, reacting to the privilege they perceived I had - I was so used to being the one with the least, that it was virtually impossible for me to see that I had much, much more than many others. And I couldn’t understand the anger and resentment that was focused on me by those who thought I had more.

My first experience with this was one I didn’t understand until recently. It actually happened even before junior high school, when I was in 4th or 5th grade. A new boy started in our class. I guess he was bussed in - but I’m not sure how that worked. As far as I know, he was the only one. I don’t remember there being other kids who came to our school from out of the neighborhood - but maybe I was just oblivious. All I knew was that he was new, not from Riverdale and mean. Really, really mean.

From day one, the new boy, Walter, seemed ready to fight. This didn’t sit well with me because in my own struggle to feel a part of something, to feel worthy, I had taken on the cause of not letting boys intimidate and degrade the girls.

Sometime around 3rd grade the boys started teasing the girls, picking on them, even hurting them, but mostly acting like they were better than the girls. It was dead smack in the middle of the Women’s Rights era and girls were being taught that they could do anything boys could do, and I took that message to heart (yes I get the irony of being a budding feminist with a Bunny mother). And since I was bigger and taller than most of the people, boys or girls, in my class, I took it on myself to protect the girls. Anytime a girl was picked on by a boy, she came to me and I made the boy see the error of his ways. But then Walter came to school.

Walter didn’t seem to be much interested in generally picking on the girls like the other boys did. Walter seemed to want to pick on me. Every chance he got, he was trying to hurt me. Punching, pushing, shooting rubber bands, whatever way he could think of, he would lash out at me. I stood up to him, but was thrown off - why did this boy hate ME so much? Eventually, Walter’s resentment towards me bubbled over and he actually chased me into the girls bathroom, knocked me to the ground and kicked me over and over. He had to be pulled out of the room forcibly by teachers and shortly after that he left the school.

I remember being so relieved that he was gone. Not just because he had literally kicked my ass - which no other boy had been able to do - but because even when he wasn’t trying to hurt me, he made me uncomfortable.

I had no words, no understanding at all back then for why he left me feeling so out of sorts, embarrassed, uncomfortable with his presence. I just knew I didn’t want him there. That the sight of his brown skin, hard wiry body, tan construction boots (damn those things HURT when he kicked me) and shabby clothes made me feel ill at ease.

It would be many, many, many years - way into adulthood - before I would realize that my discomfort was because he made me see my own privilege as well as how tentative it was. I was so used to being on the bottom, that it was uncomfortable for me to see that there was plenty of space beneath me. But even more disturbing than being faced with the knowledge that I had it better than someone else, was the fear that others would see the similarities between him and I and place me even further down - with him.

As a kid I couldn’t recognize it at all, even as a younger adult, I couldn’t understand it. I look back now and see that there were other instances throughout my life that I was equally oblivious too. My first boyfriend in junior high school, whose sister who called me an “oreo” and told him that I had to give up all my my white friends or he couldn’t see me. The boys who stood outside Clinton high school(which I think is coed now, but was all boys back then), which was behind Bronx Science, and yelled taunts at me and made comments about me thinking I was too good for them. The basketball player in college who would alternately ask me out and insult me, telling me I didn’t know who I was. The woman on an online message board a few years ago who insisted that ALL light-skinned Black people were privileged and tore into me when I dared to disagree with her - telling me to open my eyes. Finally, a friend who despite having what appeared to be a perfect life with a husband, house and three beautiful kids, constantly on edge with me, always making comments about the texture of my hair and the color of my skin.

With all of these people, I wondered over and over, why single me out? What was wrong with them that they treated me as though I had done something to them, had taken something away from them, or was blocking them from getting something? Why couldn’t they get over their pettiness and just let me be? And what was this idea that came up over and over, of me thinking I was better than them, too good for them? Didn’t they know I wasn’t better than anybody? Couldn’t they see I thought of myself as less than everybody?

Now, with a lifetime of experience and a greater acceptance of myself, I can look back at all of these people, starting with Walter, and see what they saw. See that they couldn’t know the insecurities I walked with inside me. All they could see was my privilege, the ways in which I had so much more than they thad, or thought they had.

And, when I am honest with myself, I can see also, that maybe, in some of these instances, my feelings towards them were shaped by my unperceived privilege as well. Certainly this was true with Walter.

By the time Walter came to school, I’d had enough experiences to begin developing an unconscious understanding of all that made me different from my peers. I knew it wasn’t just that I was taller, bigger, more developed than everyone around me, or even that it was because my family structure was different from theirs. Some part of me sensed, though wasn’t consciously aware that being Black was part of the equation. It would be years before I would start to consciously notice that when people just saw me as me - forgot, even momentarily, that I was Black - I was always better off. Yet, I think in my young, unconscious mind, some of my fear of Walter was rooted in the only thing he and I shared, being Black.

Walter was a shining beacon of Blackness. His chocolate skin screamed it out in the sea of creamy faces. Not only that, but he seemed to fit every negative stereotype of what we had all seen as Black - rough, shabby, impulsive, violent and full of bravado. I think some part of me feared him shining his Black light on me - reminding others that I was Black, and allowing them to think that one thing made me more like him than like them.

And yet, now, as I look back, as I write this, I realize that Walter and I shared more than ancestors from the same continent. We had both been shaped by the way our worlds had reacted to our ancestors and to us for having them. We were both full of false bravado, full of the need to assert a place for ourselves in a world that seemed to constantly remind us that we were too different to really belong. Interestingly, when I think about it with a lifetime of experience behind me, I think it’s sad that Walter and I were separated by our similarities instead of united by them.

If he hadn’t seen my privilege, or if I had seen it - I wonder if we could have helped each other instead of hurting ourselves.

True Love

Not too long ago I shared some of my thoughts about love here. I talked about how, for me, love is never ending, about how I love easily. And that I wondered if there are different types of love, or if love is just, love.

I’ve been thinking a lot about love again lately.

A couple of weeks ago, my cousin, Pam, was in town with her wife, Kate. I had been planning for ages to photograph Pam. She needed headshots for her work on her blog and speaking engagements and news appearances. And I enjoy taking pictures of people and have gotten good at it. Then I decided to try making a living at it, and she was coming to town, so the time was right to shoot her. It would help us both - help me build my portfolio, and get her the shots she needed. Plus it was her birthday, and I’m broke, so I figured it would be a great birthday present. And in addition to shooting her, I would take pictures of her an Kate as well.

It turns out that shooting Pam and Kate together, was my favorite part of the day. And editing and retouching those photos delighted me more than any of the other pictures I’ve ever worked with. It was capturing their love and dedication to each other that made it so wonderfully perfect.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about them, and how amazing their relationship is. Especially in comparison to every other relationship I’ve ever known or been a part of.

My own parents were separated before I can remember. I have no recollection of them together at all. In fact their personalities are SO dissimilar and they have always shown so much contempt for one another, that it is difficult for me to imagine how they ever managed to be attracted to each other and wanted to be close long enough to conceive me.

I grew up with no real knowledge, no example of how two people can really love one another and value that love enough to make things work through the hard times, to navigate the little annoyances and inconveniences enough to live with one another day to day.

For much of my childhood, my father was single. I remember him dating women, but it wasn’t until he met my stepmother when I was 10 or 11 that I really saw him have a relationship. My mother had relationships, but they always seemed to be volatile, passionate, and had little to do with building a connection through love.

By the time I was an adult, I had decided that if I ever married, it would be for life - no matter what. That there was no point in marrying unless it was a real commitment. And I would never live with a man without marriage. I’d watched my mother do that over and over and it never lasted more than a few of years.

By my late twenties I’d had a couple of relationships, and they’d seemed to mirror my mother’s - volatile, passionate and short-lived. I chose men who disregarded me easily, seemed to love me for one thing or another, but didn’t value all of who I was. Or they were simply so caught up in their own turmoil, that they had little of themselves left to give to me.

Then I met a man who was different. He loved me as completely as anyone has ever loved me. He loved me heart, mind and soul. He cherished me totally and he gave all of himself he had to give. When he asked me to live with him I told him that I would never live with a man I wasn’t married to, and he replied that he wanted to marry me…and so we married. And I thought it would be for life.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know then that there are things that can make it impossible for people to stay together, no matter how hard they try, no matter how much love is between them. Like many of the men I’d been with before, he had issues. His issues were didn’t keep him from giving himself to me. In fact, just the opposite, they caused him to give too much of himself, to rely on me for too much. And my own turmoil made me take on his problems, to try to make them my own.

We became locked in a classic co-dependent relationship and eventually I came to see that we could only heal ourselves if we were apart. Together we spiraled down, out of control and I saw myself changing into someone I didn’t want to be, a mean, violent, angry woman who alternately babied and lashed out at him. Eventually it became clear that the most loving thing I could do for him was to leave him, and so we parted.

I was divorced. The one thing I had vowed never to do, I had done, and it shook me to my core. Every innocent and idealistic thought I’d had about relationships and marriage were torn from me and I was left with a level of cynicism about love and marriage that has shadowed all my future relationships. I made a new vow. To never marry again.

I spent the next few years engaging in mostly dead-end relationships. Tossing men aside when they didn’t meet some ideal or another. I saw no point in working through things with any man. I’d done everything in my power to work things out with my husband and in the end, it did no good. I figured that if a man wasn’t all I wanted in the beginning, it was better to move on quickly than to get caught up in something that would eventually end in pain anyway.

Then another man came into my life. He wasn’t all I wanted. He frequently showed me that he would never be all I wanted. But he wouldn’t go away. Over and over again I tried to toss him aside, to move on, but he always came back. And I always took him back because, for reasons I still don’t understand, he seemed to belong there at the time.

Eventually we moved in together - and I became pregnant. Over and over again he asked me to marry him, but I still couldn’t believe in marriage. I still believed that there was no point in doing something that is supposed to be permanent if it’s really only going to be temporary. We had a beautiful daughter and then another and we struggled through years and years of hard times.

It was clear, when our first child was young, that we would never be right for one another. Like the men I dated early in my adulthood, he loved a part of me, but not the whole me and I could never be happy while part of me was being disregarded on a daily basis. In fact, that disregard ate away at my self-confidence, my belief and love in myself, my soul. But I had a new ideal in place by then, a new cause that kept us together.

I wanted to give our children what we never had - an example of two people working through the daily frustrations of life with someone they loved to make a family. I thought if I’d had that as a child, if I had seen that, maybe I would have made better choices, had better relationships, a better life. I decided my happiness was worth the sacrifice of giving my children the chance for something I didn’t think I could ever have.

Over the years I’ve watched other couples struggle in similar ways. Watched them come together, go through turmoil, struggle, not be able to work things through and go their separate ways or stay together because they were afraid to part, but sink into unhappiness and despair over their relationships. I’ve seen them fight and look for small bits of happiness and satisfaction in other ways.

Sometimes they throw themselves into work, or caring for their homes or kids or they splurge on big vacations or houses or cars, or they drink or do drugs or cheat to fill the spaces that their mediocre relationships leave within them. And that cynicism I developed when my marriage ended has grown larger and larger - leaving me feeling that it just never really works. That even when it seems to, even when a couple looks perfect from the outside, they are dying on the inside. That long term relationships, marriage, are a farce, a hoax that people have bought into that’s killing their souls.

I looked at my single friends, longing for love, for a relationship, for marriage and I laughed at them. They had the perfect lives and they didn’t know it - couldn’t appreciate it. If only they could just enjoy what they had instead of striving for this thing that, if they got it, would eventually make them die a little inside.

And yet, despite all this cynical thinking, somehow my heart remained open to love. I tried to adopt the attitude that I could fulfill some of the needs that lead people to relationships without actually engaging in one and letting myself get caught up in emotions. I thought all the cynicism, all the cold hard gazing I had done at relationships had closed and hardened my heart.

I was wrong. I discovered that despite everything my head told me about the nature of relationships, that my heart persisted in beating and feeling and caring and loving.
I was confused and hurt by this and at a loss for what this could possibly mean for the rest of my life. I believed I was doomed to constantly love and continually witness that love being inadequate against the natural course that relationships must take to eat our souls up and spit them out, dry and brittle and used up.

Then Pam and Kate came to town and I pointed my camera at them and I saw something else. Something I had almost forgotten I ever believed existed. I can’t quite explain what it was like. The closest I can think of is it was like seeing the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny or Santa Claus standing in front of me.

TRUE LOVE.

There it was - right there in front of my eyes. A unicorn standing in the middle of the Socrates Sculpture Park where I was shooting them couldn’t have surprised and delighted me more.
The look in their eyes, the way that they touched, the playfulness and caring, the selflessness and passion, the understanding, the bond. Everything I had ever dreamed and planned for love to be when I was young - yet never witnessed for myself, was right in front of me and I was capturing it in my camera for all to see.

Every day since that day I have thought about Pam and Kate. Thought about their love for one another. Thought about the struggles they’ve gone through, continue to go through, and how with such amazing love and caring and humor and grace - they do it together.

Shortly after Pam and Kate got married they came to New York and I insisted that the family have a party, a kind of informal reception to celebrate their marriage. At the time my older daughter, Sugar, was about 5 and the younger one hadn’t been born yet. To me Pam and Kate being married was as normal and natural as any other couple getting married, but I didn’t know if it would be confusing to Sugar. All the married couples she knew were comprised of a man and a woman, and most of the talk she had been exposed to was of two gender couples.

It’s funny how the language we use, the jokes we make, the attitudes we express on a daily basis can be so biased without even noticing it. I realized that in our daily world there was little, if any, reference made to two people of the same gender loving and caring for each other. I was delighted that Pam and Kate would give me the opportunity to introduce this concept to my child, and a little disappointed in myself that I hadn’t made sure we moved in circles where it was more a part of our lives.

I told Sugar that we were having a party for Pam and Kate. She asked if it was a birthday party and I told her that, no, we weren’t celebrating a birthday, we were honoring Pam’s and Kate’s love for each other. We were celebrating the fact that they got married. I explained to her that when two people love each other so much that they want to be a family that one way they can do that - become a family - is to get married.

I’ve been thinking lately about that explanation I gave to Sugar, and about how much Pam and Kate embody that idea. They are each others family in the truest sense. They are there for each other through everything, they hold and support each other through the hard times and laugh and share in each others delight through the good. There is a permanence to their love and commitment that only happens in a family. A deep and unfading understanding that no matter what happens, they have each other, and share a bond that can’t be broken.

It astounds and shocks me that there are people who think that this amazing and oh so elusive love that exists between Pam and Kate is not as valid, not as worthy of honor and recognition as the love between any man and any woman. That somehow any of the flawed, imperfect, often unhealthy and always temporary relationships I’ve had (or have seen between other men and women) could, with a few dollars and a few minutes in any City Hall in the country, be made legally binding and recognized as such anywhere we wanted to go. How could those mediocre travesties of love be more worthy of respect than

True Love.

A love so complete, so binding, so eternal that it turns strangers into family. That’s what Pam and Kate have. It’s not a myth, a fairy tale, a child’s fantasy to dissipate with experience and knowledge. It’s real, it’s tangible, it’s true. It lives in these two people together. It makes me re-think everything I’ve come to believe in the last 16 years. It gives me hope.

The sight of their love, the very existence of it shakes me to my core as surely as the ending of my marriage did. Is it possible? Could it be that maybe if it exists for them, it could exist for everyone? Even me?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s so rare that it only comes to a very few. All I know is that when it does happen the gender of its recipients is irrelevant and it should be held up as a shining beacon so all can see it’s possible and it’s real.