Some thoughts on privilege

The house is so quiet, and the sun is slowly setting. Slow like molasses running down a slight decline on a cold day. Tom is in California, Nutmeg is out for his evening romp through the neighborhood, and the boys are asleep. Finally.

I am in PJs, a comfort made even more comfortable by virtue of also being in a just-right recliner under a lazy ceiling fan. We're five weeks shy of six months in this house, and it is finally and decidedly starting to feel like home. 

I'm happy but tired. Weeks like last one weigh heavily on my heart. I'm a lucky woman, blessed in so many ways. I ache for the people mourning the ones taken from them last Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday, and all the other days.

It is sometimes so difficult for me to figure out how to go about normally as if nothing has happened when in fact so much has. It is bizarre to go purchase a couch, fretting over the right color and the right fabric, when others are burying loved ones. Daily life often feels so important, so urgent, but perspective sometimes renders it almost silly.

I have never been much good at compartmentalizing anything and have often struggled to square what I have with what others don't. My family has worked so hard for their educations and successes, and yet our whiteness has helped at every turn. 

Papa, my grandfather, was a Sicilian immigrant, as poor as they come and with a mean hellion of a father to boot. He was the first in his family to attend college, an experience that was wholly against his father's wishes and made possible by his being a talented football player. And by being white. Even Italian white in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Papa lived in a bathroom in Tulane's stadium for a year, but at least he could play -he played in the first Sugar Bowl (1935) in which Tulane came from behind to win- and learn. Non-HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) didn't allow black students or athletes for another few decades. 

I recognize completely the many privileges that come with white skin. My whiteness doesn't shroud me in guilt but it does prompt in me a fierce determination to do something. To change the attitudes and biases that long ago became deeply entrenched, to help undo the systemic discrepancies in perception and treatment that were purposefully codified and which have unjustly benefitted whites at the expense of others: housing policies; school segregation; biases in the criminal justice and employment systems which have torn families apart and left so many with little mobility or financial safety net; to raise my children with an awareness of their privilege and a deep desire to make privilege a thing for all instead of some.

There remains too much denial about the woefully imbalanced scales between those with white skin and those with black and brown. Rectifying that asymmetry isn't a solution for all that ails our country, but it is an immensely important, crucially important, need. 

A friend of mine penned this poem today. I find it extraordinarily powerful and painful and moving. Thank you, Freddie Williams, for allowing me to share your words.

I'm a sin eater
Not by choice
By default
When you're the only black person in a white space that's what happens
My job is to assuage white guilt
Tell them it's OK,
Tell them I know they're a good person
But I can't do it anymore
I'm choking on the sin
Its too much
I can't breathe
And I never wanted this job in the first place
I just wanted a nice job so I can buy my family a nice house in a nice neighborhood
Didn't know I couldn't have one without having the other
I'm weighing now if it's worth it
I can't take the stares any longer
The sorry's
The How are you doing today
I want to work and go home
But I'm a Sin eater
So every white person in the office has to tell me their pain
How much they hurt
How sick they are
And then they can go home feeling better about themselves
But where does that leave me?

The blackberry bush

The morning after Mom arrived, she shyly brought out a gift. It was wrapped in damp paper towels, newspaper, and a plastic bag.

“What do you think it is?” she asked as I carefully peeled back the layers, my hands trembling slightly.

“Well, it’s a plant. It has thorns. Oh, I know! It’s a cutting from your Dr. Van Fleet" (a climbing rose that’s been in our family for generations).

“No, not that. Try again.”

I guessed several times but never could figure out what the spindly, spiky plant was. Really, it was little more than two slender stalks and a dirty root ball.

“It’s one of Papa’s original blackberry bushes. It’s about 60 years old. I called the new owner of their house and asked if I could dig it up and bring it to you. I have another one, too, but it was too big for my suitcase. I’ll bring it next time.” (Papa was Mom's father, my grandfather).

Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I hugged Mom tight. “Thank you, Mom. Thank you so much.”

I looked at the treasure in my hands and noticed a lone earthworm still nestled among the tangle of roots. Its presence seemed auspicious, as if it loved the plant too, and didn't want to leave; so it stayed, amidst uprooting, wrapping, and two plane rides.

“The new owner and I agreed that you’re the one who’ll treasure it most, Em,” Mom replied, hugging me back. “Someday, the blackberries for your pies will come from this.”

I grew up eating Nanny’s blackberry pies. Nanny, Mom’s mom, was the grandparent with whom I was closest. She was one of my dearest friends. She died two years ago, and, as y'all likely know, I still miss her almost daily. She (and also Mom) taught me to make her pie crust and pie, and I now make them all the time, for blackberry is also Jack's favorite.

I have written frequently about Nanny and her pies. I have made blackberry pie more times than I can count. It’s a simple pie- just four ingredients in the crust and three in the filling. It’s the sort of dish that proves that the little things matter, that god is in the details and they needn’t be fancy.

That Papa planted some blackberry bushes in a sunny spot by a storage shed on his Lake Charles land sixty years ago changed the course of our family in a way. Those bushes spread and grew and fed not only my grandparents and their children, but also their grandchildren and friends, sons- and daughters-in-law, neighbors and great grandchildren.

Now, one of those plants sits humbly in a sunny spot by a storage shed in Maryland, planted carefully and with love by Papa’s daughter and granddaughter. It is leafing out with happy abandon, and each day, when I visit it to water and check on its progress, I see family and history and love. I am reminded of the value of falling and letting yourself be picked up, of valuing the little bits of life that make it glow and shine.

Begin again

“Drink from the well of yourself and begin again." - Charles Bukowski

Isn't that a marvelous bit of advice? It popped into my email today, courtesy of the Quiet Revolution newsletter I receive, and I saw it after working in my yard for a hot, humid hour.

This has been a very difficult week for me, and I have felt myself turning inward with anxiety, self-doubt, and overwhelm. It has been hard to fall and stay asleep, and harder still to tap into the confidence and self-respect I usually carry. I've felt like a solitary being caught in torrential downpour and tasked with catching every drop with nothing more than my hands. 

Head back, eyes wide, hands outstretched, it seems futile. Intimidating. Not worth trying.

I'm not sure what precipitated this inner maelstrom. I had such a happy birthday, flew high for a good bit and then started coasting downward on a steep slope. Most of my friends have felt awfully frazzled since the beginning of May; the end of school is shockingly busy and everyone is tired.

Just when your kids run out of matching socks and pants with intact knees, you start the race to the finish, and it's chock-a-block full of transitional meetings, final conferences with teachers about what may or may not need to be done over the summer, the coordination of gifts and last play dates before kids scatter on the winds of June. 

But this last-lap sprint can't explain everything, or at least it doesn't seem like it can. I have felt like an empty well and doubt I'd have thought to drink from myself anyway.

After writing about the situation in a tremendously wonderful class I just finished up, a friend responded: 
I believe mothering was never ever meant to be done in isolation. It's a construct we've created as society and it has been intensified in the last 30 years as we become separated (sometimes a good thing, grant you) from extended family and what were our natural tribes/villages. Now one woman is supposed to be all things to all her children but she can't be. It's a physical, emotional and mental impossibility. She cannot be good at *everything*.

Beautiful and true. Even the best of friends, and I am lucky to have so many, don't wholly approximate the community that other times and other cultures have and do have. The weight of that loss feels leaden at times.

Mom came the morning after a very low point, and I continue to be incredibly grateful for her presence. She has allowed, reminded and enabled me to slow down. She has helped with the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning, the yard. She has picked the boys up from school, helped me fix odds and ends, taken some of the heaviness from my shoulders.

Slowly, I am righting my listing ship. My vision is clearing, and I am able to remember that although I do not have a career and don't bring home the bacon, I am good at many things.

Today, as I plucked weeds and put down fresh mulch, a gentle breeze blew, and I felt calm. My mind wasn't racing, my jaw wasn't clenched. I wasn't worried about all I needed to do, I heard the birds singing and watched the ants march.

My thirst felt slaked for the first time in too long.