Cain v. Thomas

I've been wanting to post something meaningful about Anita Hill, in recognition of her twentieth year as a survivor of the Clarence Thomas hearings. I thought I would do some research first, so the piece would have some meat to it, beyond my own very subjective ranting. I thought I would read her book. Have you read it? I haven't gotten to it yet. So you see, I'm not quite ready to write something meaty about Anita Hill. But I've been thinking about her story, and all the events our country has withstood since then. I wonder... if her race were different, or if Thomas' race were different, how would that have changed - everything? I wonder if we had had a black President in office, how would that have effected - everything? By everything, I mean the trial; our national conversation about the trial; the bumper stickers that said, "I Believe You, Anita", as if a sane, educated woman would voluntarily humiliate herself, derail her successful career, and spend months under excruciating public scrutiny for the sake of telling a lie. With everything to lose and nothing to gain except the hope of maintaining some self respect, how could anyone believe she was lying?

Well, Clarence Thomas' wife thought she was lying. And she's clearly a great judge of character.

As I keep circling back to my need to write something meaty about Anita Hill, I ask myself, What will my angle be? My first thought: How would such a trial play out now, with a black President in office? How would the media coverage differ? What new kind of discomfort would such a spectacle raise?

Hey, kids! I think we're about to find out!

Herman Cain is the Republican party's black presidential candidate, with his revolutionary tax plan and rags-to-riches, American Dream life story. Now, a string of sexual harassment accusations has him center-stage. He suddenly has his first, named accuser. The fourth in a series, this lady's gone public. She has provided clear details about his methods, forcing dirty thoughts on anyone within earshot. Of course, Cain's wife of forty-four years says she knows him better than anyone, and he wouldn't do "something so silly", not like that.

Wow. I'm stuck with visions of Anita Hill describing a pubic hair on the rim of a Coke can. I'm recalling emphatic denials about a flowered dress stained with semen - wrong guy, I know. Wrong outcome too.

I'm watching:  How will we judge Herman Cain? How will we judge his accusers? How far will the race card be tossed?  How much have we learned in twenty years, Anita?

Broadway Flashback

(photo courtesy of TonyAwards.com)

My mother took me to see the wizard when I was 7. The Wiz, that is. The Wiz hit Broadway in 1975.  The show was a Black version of the very famous Frank L. Baum story, The Wizard of Oz. In this adaptation Dorothy was played by a young Stephanie Mills; Hinton Battle played the tap-dancing Tin Man; the entire cast was black and beautiful, sanctified on the Great White Way. The singing was joyous. The dancing was ebullient. The costumes were a rainbow of fiery hues that electrified the soft glow of all that brown skin. I was enthralled.

When the show ended, I sat frozen in my seat. Surrounded by the raucous applause of a standing ovation, I was paralyzed. As the house lights came up full, and people started to slither past us, my mother tried to ease me out of my altered state.

“Oh, wasn’t that wonderful? But we should get going. Come on, Sweetie.” I didn’t move. Or respond. She must have thought I was tired. Her tone was gentle, like our morning wake-up routine. “Really. Let’s go. It’s late,” she urged. But I didn’t budge, so she sat back down. Irritability and concern comingled in her plea: “Sweetie, we have to get going. Are you OK?”

Then I answered: “I’m not leaving.”

I meant it. I remember my determination to stay. That theater had filled me up with something unimaginably delicious. I couldn’t name it, for my mother or for myself. But the experience of being in that theater for that show had transformed me. And I was not willing to leave it behind. I couldn’t go back to life the way it had been before, as if that world didn’t exist.

“What do you mean, you’re not leaving?”

“I’m staying. Right here. Forever.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We can’t stay,” she insisted.

We both saw the usher approaching, heading straight for us. We were the only seated patrons left in the theater. His face was soft, middle-aged and pale. But he was friendly, not gruff. He asked if anything was wrong. I was too shy and too dazed to attempt an explanation. My mother tried to defuse his concern. “My daughter is having a hard time leaving. She had such a wonderful time. We just don’t want it to end!” she said nervously. But he saw my state – maybe he’d seen it before. I started to cry. I had no words to offer. The usher stepped in. “Well, ladies. It’s getting late, and the theater is closed. The whole place will go dark in a few minutes… wait here a moment. I’ll be right back.” In his absence, my mother accused me of acting impossible, outrageous, insane. Her patience was lost, and I showed no sign of coming around.

Then the usher returned with a record in his hand. The cast album of The Wiz, shrink-wrapped and brand new. He held it out to me. “Maybe you’d like to have this?” he offered. The album snapped me back to reality. Yes, it would be enough. I knew I couldn’t stay in the theater forever. But I would survive the loss if I could take the show home with me. “Yes, thank you,” I smiled, and took the record from him. My mother thanked him too. “You are an angel and a genius.” She asked him how much she owed him but he wouldn’t take her money. We both thanked him again, gathered our coats, and caught the subway back to the Bronx, each of us in private contemplation of what strange force had snagged us.

Fast forward thirty-some years to a bigger, brighter, more over-populated Broadway. My husband and I took our girls to see Mary Poppins last weekend, in celebration of our little one’s sixth birthday – an outing that easily cost twice as much as a lavish party would have. The show was laced with Broadway magic, and kept our girls’ attention rapt for the full two hours and forty-five minutes. The grand finale was spectacular. Little faces all around us stood agape and wide-eyed. And me? Well, I don’t like musicals much. I prefer live music for music’s sake, without all the theatrics, and theater for drama’s sake, without all the corny lyrics. But I cried at Mary Poppins, just a little. For the thrill in our girls’ eyes; for their sweet innocence;

for the fantasy and the magic. 

I don’t know if the girls loved the show as much as we had hoped they would. They have pretty good taste. So I’m holding onto hope that each of them will experience the transformative power of art first-hand, some time, and that the memory stays with them forever. 

September, You Were Cruel

It's been five weeks since my last post.
Am I becoming one of those twenty-million bloggers who start off strong, posting a couple of times a week, making huge sacrifices of time and social connectivity so they can hole up and get some writing done, as if their life depends on it.... only to lose interest six months in?

I am guilty of losing interest in projects. But not the writing.
I love writing. I love playing with words. I am not the writer who stares at the page, or the screen, or the wall, or the sky, wondering where the inspiration will come from and when. My problem is time. I am scrambling. Whenever I'm asked, "Can I help?" I answer: "Sure, can you add five hours to every day? Waking hours would be ideal, but sleeping hours would be fine too." I swear, I haven't lost interest. It's been a time issue.

September kicked my ass.
Because we are two years into a nine-month house renovation. Seriously. In fairness, it's a house restoration, which is a ball of wax I really shouldn't go into here. Suffice it to say, it's been a major front-burner distraction for a long time. And we thought - well, I tried to insist - that we would be all done and moved in before the start of the school year. So I made a lot of real commitments, all commencing in early September, because I planned to have our lives back. STUPID GIRL!

September was the month that I posted nothing.
I did make some nice lists of writing topics. The New York Times has reliably offered numerous topics for dissection, including 1. the band Fishbone; 2. the legacy (and new memoir) of Anita Hill; and 3. the new book by Toure', Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means To Be Black Now.  Even our contractor on the house project has offered great fodder for this blog. It's all on my to-do list.

Here we are, in October.
If you're reading this, I guess you haven't given up on me. Thank you! I am not lost. This blog is not forgotten. I have my list of topics and I'm gonna use it. I mean, Anita Hill!? A browngirl could fill volumes with that rant alone.

Here's to getting it done.

Summer Camp

Summer is almost over.

Those of us with school-age children are preparing for a major transition. The extended dance remix of bedtime is winding down. Our alarm clock will revert to its mercilessly timeworn 5:45 AM setting. All of our clocks will lock into the tightly scheduled structure of the School Year.

Our summer of anarchy sheds new light on my mother’s choice to send me to sleep-away camp the summer I turned six. I liked the idea of going to camp, and spending the night(s) there. She didn’t have to work hard to convince me that camp would be more fun than hanging out at home all summer. It was a classic, “old school” co-ed camp in the country, with swimming, arts and crafts, tennis, campfires and sing-alongs. And Shabbat service every Friday night. In clean white shirts. Four weeks of Fridays, with their completely unfamiliar rituals of challah bread and candles and prayers to God in foreign tongues. At 5-and-11/12ths, I had been raised an atheist, among  people of many faiths, none of whom behaved as observant Jews in my presence. We had friends and relatives who celebrated Hanukah instead of Christmas, but I had no sense of any Jewish traditions or rituals, or bible references, or Hebrew.

I guess my mother thought it would be good for me to have some exposure to our Jewish heritage. She had read the brochure. But I had no idea what I was in for. We packed “nice white shirts”, along with all the shorts, halter tops and tennis peds with our nametags sewn in, and shipped them ahead in a steamer trunk purchased at the local Army & Navy store. Those white shirts got hangers in our bunk closet, while everything else was shoved into cubbies. My shirts were not as plain as everyone else’s. My idea of “nice” was “fancy”, with lace bits and pearly buttons. So my shirts stood out. Along with the rest of me.

I was one of the youngest kids at camp. And one of the darkest. There were a couple of very dark-skinned girls in much older bunks. Too old for me to connect with in any way. They appeared to be well liked by other girls their age, and fell right in line with the Shabbat exercise. In amongst a few hundred savvy New York kids, I was the new little girl who isn’t even Jewish. I didn’t look the part. I didn’t act the part. I mumbled along with the prayers, and hoped no one would single me out for any candle lighting or bread breaking. Fridays were torture. In truth, they’re all I remember about that camp.  I don’t remember any of the kids being unkind, or the counselors mistreating me in any way. And I don’t remember having made any friends there either. It’s a blur, except for that sea of white shirts, in the soft glow of candlelight, mumbling and praying to God over shiny, puffy, braided loaves of bread.

Mom and I spent the following summer together in a bungalow in the Catskills. And after that, we found an amazing, small, artsy, back-to-nature summer camp up in Maine, where I finally found the ideal respite from the city, and the structured school year, and the hot, sticky doldrums of the Bronx in summertime. And my mother, confident that I was happy and secure, was able to spend her summers traveling, and teaching part-time if she felt like it, and doing whatever single parents do when they find themselves able to focus on themselves for a change.

As a married mother of two pretty easy-going kids, with a husband who helps a lot with the child-rearing, I feel guilty paying a babysitter to watch the girls for a few hours at the pool, so that I may sit here in solitude and get this post done. But it’s late August, and I’ve been up to my eyeballs in kid-friendly activities most days, for weeks now. And my girls say they aren’t ready for sleep-away camp just yet. "Maybe next year, Mommy."

Maybe I should start researching now.

Still Talkin' 'Bout Race

Lately I notice a lot of comments from people who are tired of everyone talking about race. “Can’t we just get past the race thing?” they ask. “Are we really still talking about race?”

Uh, yes we are, and no we can’t, to answer in reverse order.

It’s comfy and convenient to not talk about race. But the race topic is cleverly disguised as the racism topic. And that monster isn’t going anywhere unless it is consciously and deliberately addressed. It’s a national topic, a global topic, a neighborhood topic, and a schoolyard topic.

The schoolyard is what got my family talking about race. I know from my future-star-reporter daughter that she and her peers compare skin tones and genealogy during recess. A social studies unit on slavery, and another on The Settlers vs. The Indians, got the ball rolling. Suddenly they were talking about race, and who’s darker than whom. She loyally reported her findings – what everyone said, verbatim – as if she and her friends were the first bunch of kids to ever go down that path.

So I wonder if the people who don’t feel the need to talk about race perhaps don’t have children. My own super-liberal pre-children life had very little need for the mention of race. People I hung out with were accustomed to the company of a multi-culti crowd. Living in New York and San Francisco, I was comfortably positioned in the broadest race spectra on the planet. Most of my friends from that era registered fashion and music as labeling identifiers, more than anyone’s racial background. So race didn’t come up, and it didn’t seem to matter. But now that I have children, who have endless questions as well as delicate little egos, I feel the need to talk with them as frankly as I can about race, and about who they are.

For those of us whose families are multiracial, race is always a topic. For most of us, it’s been out in the open since we can remember, either as a quiet constant or a blazing flare, or something in between. What amazes me is how different every multiracial upbringing is. The parents each bring their own histories and attitudes to the mix, and the grandparents and extended families have enormous influence on who we relate to, and who we’re most comfortable with, both inside the family and out in the world. Contemporary memoirs and novels, as well as those going back to the early 1800's, document the diversity of our lives, and are invaluable learning tools for all of us.

As a multiracial person raising curious, inquisitive children, I don’t have the luxury to not talk about race. I’m not feeling the need to stand on a soapbox and shout about it, but the talking and the writing are not going away.

If we’re not talking about race, and a racially motivated incident occurs, we react with shock and horror. But if we’re consciously living with racial awareness, then we’re better equipped to confront and combat racist acts. The end goal is to live peacefully and respectfully, with ourselves and with each other. Right?

Changing Gray

I have two daughters.

L is eight. She has my complexion, but her features more closely resemble her father’s. She could easily pass for Indian. Her sister, E, is almost six. She has her father’s lighter skin color, and which of us she looks like is debatable. I say me. L is cautious, scary-smart, and very considerate of her sister, and everyone. E is also very bright, in a secret weapon way. She’s silly and cuddly and decidedly colors outside the lines.

Bedtime and dinnertime are family discussion times.

Sometimes skin color makes its way into our conversations. We all know people of all different colors, and E in particular likes to mention what color people are. Ever the observant artist. Her basic qualifiers are: superdark; mediumdark; lightish brownish; peachy white; superwhite. We all use these terms, as they’ve developed over time in casual family usage. L started it when she was little, innocently describing the difference between her skin and Daddy’s, and the similarity to mine. Which led to my describing the greater difference between my father’s skin color and my mother’s. You get it.

L suddenly started to use the term Black this year.

The topic of slavery came up at school, and brought Black and White with it.

Shortly thereafter, her best friend and classmate, who is black, asked my husband directly if he was white. To which he answered yes. This came up at dinnertime, and thus the shift from our insular code of color qualifiers toward mainstream race labeling. Innocence lost.

The other night at dinner, E declared that she was gray.

And she laughed and laughed. She caught us a little off guard, as her sense of humor often does. But I knew exactly what she meant. I had the same thought myself, when I was small. If my mother is white, and my father is black, that must make me gray.  But it didn’t strike me as hysterically funny at the time. It didn’t even feel like information I wanted to share. Gray seemed like a sad color. It was a washed out version of the two colors it came from. I do remember feeling gray, like that.

So I asked E what color I was. She thought a minute, then shrieked, “You’re gray too, Mommy. Like me! And so is L!” How could I not be happy to be in her gray club? My daughters and I shared a giggle. And my husband? “What about Daddy? What color is he?” I asked.  “Oh, he’s just peachy white,” said E. Her father pouted out his lower lip, dejected. An honorary member of our club.

Asbury Park R.I.P.

 (photo courtesy NYT/Assoc. Press)

I was never a Bruce Springsteen fan.

When he first became popular, I was a bit young for his message. The people around me who did like him were much older than me - they were the older siblings of my babysitters,  even their parents - and they were the same  people who were into Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, the Stones, or they listened to Richie Havens, Josh White, Joan Baez... There was some overlap in these two camps of Bruce fans. And I don't mean to imply that there was a racial divide in any way. It was a matter of taste, and age.  My parents were heavily into jazz, of the be-bop variety. So my music appreciation started there. My exposure and interest in pop music started when I was about nine, and went like this:

The Jackson 5's first album; the Saturday Night Fever movie soundtrack; The Eagles' "The Long Run"; Blondie's first album; Cheap Trick's "Live at Budokan"; Elvis Costello's "My Aim is True"; The Specials' self-titled debut; X-ray Spex "Germfree Adolescents". The Sex Pistols and The Clash exploded my little brain. I fell into old Jamaican ska, American and British mod music from the 60's, old R&B, 70's funk, and even embraced the early hip-hop sounds of the Eighties alongside New Wave and later "alternative rock". The appeal of Bruce Springsteen eluded me. Maybe because he reminded me a lot of people I knew and didn't like. Or maybe it was because the kids I knew who really liked him happened to be meat-heads. Maybe it was because his big hits had huge saxophone parts that really turned me off.

Clarence Clemons was Bruce's beloved saxophone player for over thirty years. 

I'm no expert on their relationship, professional or personal. But several knowledgeable sources wrote fondly of his great contributions to Springsteen's legacy, when "The Big Man" died last month at age 69. Jon Pareles wrote for the New York Times, in his piece "The Big Man, Much More Than Springsteen's Sideman": "Mr. Clemmons' presence declared rock's black heritage was shared, not plundered."

And I thought, "Really? He always seemed like the token black dude up on stage with Bruce."  So I stopped to check  myself.

First, I don't know a lot of Springsteen songs. Probably because I don't know a lot of Springsteen fans. But now, in my forties, I do know a few hard-core Bruce lovers, and they're smart, good, righteous folks. And I'm not the anti-establishmentarian punk-rock kid I once was. So I read Pareles' article with an open mind. His point was to highlight the deep admiration Bruce had for Clemons, as a fellow musician, close friend, and muse. Pareles extols their partnership, placing Clemons' musical contribution to Springsteen's sound, and live show, on a pedestal right beside Bruce, front and center. Honoring the historical context of saxophone soliloquies in early rock and roll, specifically the black flavor of Clemons' playing.

On the surface, Bruce looked like a lot of guys from my old neighborhood in the Bronx: blue collar white dudes who grew up listening to Chuck Berry records, and eventually the Stones, but who never had a black friend, and who tossed "nigger" around in casual conversation because no one they knew would object. My own bias made it easier to believe the old Brit rockers' love of American black music, than to recognize the same admiration in a Jersey boy.

I have been to the infamous rock club that launched the E Street Band, two times: The Stone Pony is a dive bar in the quiet, beach-front, working class town of Asbury Park, New Jersey. I hear it's undergone some improvements since my last visit, fifteen years ago.  I was there for work, road managing bands whose agents booked them there for the nostalgia and for the avid music fans who frequent the place. The audiences were strictly monochromatic, straight out of an MTV rock video circa 1987. Leather jackets, big hair, bad tattoos, wrong decade. It was exactly as I had expected, a close cousin to my old Bronx neighborhood. Confirming my assumptions about Asbury Park, and Bruce.

Those assumptions were confounded by a simple fact I learned earlier this year: that my paternal grandfather, who was black and whose first name happened to be Clarence, was born and raised in Asbury Park. As was his father. My beloved grandfather, who lived in Harlem, NY as long as I knew him, had his roots in the land of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

This new bit of knowledge demands further research, and less prejudice on my part. 

I can hear the authenticity of Bruce Springsteen's band. My eyes - and ears - are open wide.  

Checking Those Boxes

Kids are taking off for college in a few short months. Not ours, not for a long while. But I have heard a lot of talk, from fellow parents, about the trials of the college admissions process. The anxieties shared by students and parents alike, about GPAs, SATs, APs, along with proper documentation of volunteer work hours, achievements in extracurricular activities, trophies and scholarships, awards and citations. How to prepare and produce the perfect admissions essay. What to share, and what to omit.

The New York Times ran a Race Remixed piece last week: “On College Forms, a Question Of Race, or Races, Can Perplex.”

Yes, I know.

All those beleaguered multicultural kids applying to colleges have to formally qualify their racial identities, in the throes of the most pressurized experience of their young lives. They are craving approval, marketing their own self-worth, trying to stand out in a faceless crowd. Some may deliberately manipulate the facts of their genealogy in order to tip the Affirmative Action scales in their favor. The article says it all – so I’ll share my own dated experience.

I applied to colleges in 1985. I remember toiling over applications at my mother’s cluttered desk, in her private office at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was the Chairperson of the Science and Math Department, with a state-of-the-art IBM Selectric typewriter available for my use. The “delete” key never fully erased errant letters, so I took pains to compose and correct my essays by hand, on paper with pen, before sliding the triplicate forms behind the rotor clamp. Checking boxes was a science in itself, lining each one up so that the striker for Capital X would land with pinpoint precision. Neatness could be a deciding factor in the admissions ordeal.

Each application posed the Race question. Some forms wanted one box checked. Others directed to check all that applied. My targets were: New York University; Wesleyan University; Sarah Lawrence College; SUNY Purchase. In cases where I had to be uni-racial, I chose black. My mother instructed me to do so. And I would have, even without her guidance. Not because I was trying to “get over”, but because black was my identity. If I had to choose a singular identity now, I would still pick black. Or “Other”, if given the option. But here we are, in 2011, and the statisticians have finally figured out to include “Multiracial” in the list. And isn’t it a beautiful thing that we each get to decide for ourselves?

According to the Times article, and the latest census data, vast numbers of multiracial people are living in our midst. It looks like my daughters will be the beneficiaries of this browning trend, and will never have to pick one race label for themselves. If they had to make a percentage-based statement, it would have to be white. But I trust they will identify as multiracial. It should be easy for them.

I am so grateful for that little line of text, “Check All That Apply”.

Who Killed Bambi?

The closest emotion I have to hatred - I mean the blanket hatred that underlies blind racism - is directed at deer. I really hate them. I'm a gardener, on a mountain, in a wooded area. My garden is a test kitchen for deer. I can name six plants that the deer don't touch: Peony, Daffodil, Barberry, Mint (family), Autumn Clematis, Myrtle. Everything else gets nibbled, often destroyed. In ten years of gardening on the mountain, I have been made a fool of, I've been robbed, I've been victimized. I don't appreciate the beauty of a caramel-colored doe, or a mightily racked stag, peering over a bush, softly masticating tender greens, its gentle eyes staring. I throw rocks at them. And they are slow to yield. I shout and hiss, and they leap away, only to return in dark of night. 

On a recent  morning, I was enjoying the view of our backyard, from inside, when I caught the telltale movement of a deer's head bobbing behind a lilac bush - only one garden predator attacks at that height. As I lunged for the door handle, poised to hiss her away, I noticed a tiny movement on the ground. It was a newborn fawn, about the size of a cat. Its freckled fur looked like it had just been towel-dried, unkempt and spiky, not quite wet. The tiny faun bobbled to its feet, barely able to stand. I stood in rapt amazement, quiet except for my abrupt release of the door handle, which made enough noise to alert both the mama doe and my spastic deer-hating dog to the circumstances. 

My 40-pound, brindle coated cattledog/mutt Pumpkin made her best attempt to get out: picture Gene Kelly in Singin in the Rain, running up the wall and flipping back to feet-on-floor. We call  it the alley-oop. At a target peak of 5 feet off the ground, the force behind the move is indeed threatening. The mama doe hesitated, then took several slow leaps out of sight. Her tiny baby wobbled, then hopped. Hardly managing to balance on all fours, it made enough little hops to finally disappear behind the brush, while poor Pumpkin hyperventilated beside me, denied the kill once again.

I knew it was fawn season. Reports were rampant of fawn sightings on our road. Oh my God! They're so cute! They're so bee-uuu-tiful! And they will grow up to be garden-killers, if the coyotes don't get to them first. I knew that damn doe and her damn baby would be back. Hungry. But I enjoyed sharing my fawn story with friends who know how much I hate deer. The irony wasn't lost. I thought, "This is my punishment for saying such terrible things about deer all the time. This is the universe telling me to give it up already. This is Nature beating me. And I thought we were friends."

Yesterday my family had what we call Pajama Day. It was a lazy Sunday, and the girls and husband and I hung around the house all day. Of course, by about 4pm we're all really sick of each other, and my husband is taking secret cigarette breaks in the driveway. We call that Calling His Grandmother, although the girls  know he doesn't have a living grandmother. During one of such breaks, I peek at him through the kitchen window and he covertly gestures for me to come outside. I'm thinking maybe he's craving a little alone time with me - even just a couple of minutes. So I tiptoe out, and then see by the look on his face that he's about to tell me something unpleasant - maybe awful. Then our dog Pumpkin runs by. She's supposed to be in her pen, a.k.a. The Corral, whose 7-foot walls can't contain her when she really wants out. She's not allowed to be running by. Husband rolls his eyes, then tells me: Pumpkin has killed the baby deer. It's in the driveway.

I look past him, and there it is. Bambi. Tiny and flat, lying on her side, with a big bloody wound across her middle. 

As a Mother, I am heartbroken. As a Gardener, I am vindicated. As a Hater, I am only mildly conflicted. 

We forbid the children to go outside, and of course they have to have an explanation. So we tell them the truth, explaining that Pumpkin was acting on her natural instincts, just as she had done before, with the birds, the groundhogs, and the neighbor's cat. They want to see the corpse, but we deny them. Husband puts his manly pick-up truck to good use, and hauls the little carcass away. 

Today I am still glad that there is one less deer on this mountain. I'm sorry for that mama doe, but I don't like her or her kind. 

Do I sound like a racist? I think I do.

100 Days of May

I don't believe that May has passed, and I only posted once during the entire month.

Maybe there's some truth to the theory shared by an administrator at my daughters' school:
There are really 100 days of May, squeezed into the 31 allotted on the calendar.

Our older daughter had three piano "events" in May. One audition and two recitals, one of which was on Mother's Day, which this year fell one day after her birthday. Somewhere in that weekend we squeezed in a slumber-birthday-party for her.  It took us a few days to recover. We also managed a visit from my mother-in-law, in honor of the bar mitzvah of her dear friend's grandson. It was a great occasion for our girls to celebrate a grand tradition of their Jewish heritage, and for my husband and me to drudge up the Hebrew School debate. Again. But that's for another post.

Our girls go to an independent school. You know, "private school". So their school year ends next week. That could have something to do with my recent overriding sense of dread - I mean excitement! During Memorial Day Weekend, we had an all-day outdoor eating event scheduled on each of the three festive days. We have too much going on. That's what everyone keeps saying: everyone has too much going on.

So earlier today, instead of applying any residual brainpower to writing something fresh and new, I posted a piece that I wrote last year, inspired by the imminent arrival of Father's Day. Because here we are again, sandwiched between the two parental holy days. We spent Mother's Day with my mother, making it more of a Grandmother's Day. And Father's Day is what we half-jokingly call Father-less Day. Because we have very few fathers/grandfathers in our family. But my daughters' father is very much alive, and we will celebrate him. And if I'm not too busy picking out end-of-year teachers' gifts on behalf of both the Pre-K and Kindergarten (I volunteered to do it again this year), we'll get him something nice. Something special.

Oh wait. Our wedding anniversary comes first. Hm. Help.

Father's Day: Photo Proof

The photo snapped after five blinks of a small red light, an electronic pulse at the center of our paired reflections. It gave us just enough time to prepare our best faces, frozen for posterity: 

I am adorable; you are enamored. 

I’m staring into my own reflection, watching yours. My smile is only half-formed. Tentative, as usual. You exude pride, satisfaction, and contentment, in your quiet way. Sequestered in that little photo booth, ensconced in the heavy teal of a fixed curtain across the back, and another pulled closed, we pulled close. In that tiny moment, we were fine.

I remember being eight years old that day. I had brushed my bangs straight, for our date, the rest of my unruly curls pulled back in a tight braid. I wore my favorite t-shirt: yellow with red piping, “ROCKY” spelled out in small, fuzzy, red iron-on letters: R O C K Y. My friends at school all loved the movie, and couldn’t resist the twisting of our family name. Mom and I thought the nickname was funny. I was so glad that you did too.

You swiveled the funny little stool around, and got the height just right. Then I sat on your lap, my feet dangling down, careful not to kick. Your long legs and slender frame offered ample room for my small self. You were four years younger than I am now! How strange, to see my adult features so clearly in yours. The creases in your smile, your half-shut eyes, collapsing for the camera just as mine do now. The thick, black arches of your brows, and that unmistakable chin. I am your child.

It’s always been “the picture of us, when I was eight”. I kept in my desk drawer for years, until a college friend gave me the tiny pewter frame. It fit so sweetly there. And thus ascended into the light, to a prominent position on my desk. By then the image was pure nostalgia.

The sight of your smile brings back your smell, your laugh, and the feel of your muscular hand gripping mine, when we walked anywhere together. Did you instruct me to sit up straight, or did I work that out myself? I’m convinced I hear your words: “Sit up tall, Melon Ball. Look right into the camera. See it? Just watch that flashing light.” My neck is stretched so tall. My posture is so unnatural. I am working hard at being a proper and confident young lady. I’m earning your smile, watching you watching me.

The writing shrouds that smile of yours.  As I dig, and dive, the deliberate dissection of our roots leaves little room for the light. Our photo deserves a shrine, elevation above the mire. A protected place, for the memory of your tenderness and affection. If I’m not careful, it will get lost in the tumult of this excavation. Buried in the muck.

My Year In Books

I have a memory problem when it comes to books. I recognize titles I've read, but I have serious difficulty recalling the details of the stories. If a book is well-known and much-talked-about, I have a decent chance of remembering the important parts. But if I have to rely solely on myself to reconnect with a story, I usually have to  do some serious re-reading. So I buy books, and I keep them around. If I really enjoy a library book, I usually buy it - sometimes before I've finished reading it the first time through. Because I expect I will want to revisit it some time, in an urgent sort of way. That's how I do it.

I'm currently reading the new memoir by Alexandra Styron, daughter of William Styron, titled Reading My Father. The book interests me on many levels. One, because the father Styron's controversial masterpiece The Confessions of Nat Turner  is a startling, unique book, and the author of such work is inherently interesting to me. Also, I have met a few members of his family, and it's impossible to pretend that I'm not curious about their famous patriarch, who apparently had several personality traits similar to my own father. Finally, I've written a manuscript  about my father and our relationship. So a purportedly well-written memoir by a daughter about her father is, well, something I should check out. I'm only thirty pages in, so I'll tell you what my early preoccupation is:

Alexandra Styron was born within months of the publication of The Confessions of Nat Turner. It was 1967, the year of my birth. Yes, the civil rights movement was in full swing. Clearly, this book took a lot of balls to write. A white Southern man assuming the voice of a black slave, narrating the circumstances leading to a murderous slave revolt. It's a fascinating undertaking, a great book, and an important piece of our country's literary history. 

I re-read Nat Turner about a year ago, after hearing about a book that was published in immediate reaction to the original manuscript. The reaction book is a collection of essays titled William Styron's Nat Turner/ Ten Black Writers Respond. I found the out-of-print Respond on Amazon, through an obscure little book shop in L.A., and I bought it for about six bucks. Then I went out to our local indie book store and bought Nat Turner, figuring I'd read it while I waited for the mail to come. I had read it before, but was unsure when. I'm sure it was in school, before college, when I was way too naive to appreciate the scope of impact of the work. In fact, I had probably assumed the author was black. 

Now, the Respond book is - you guessed it - angry. On the back cover is printed:

BECAUSE THERE WERE NO MAJOR BLACK REVIEWS OF WILLIAM STYRON'S

  THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER  TEN BLACK WRITERS RESPOND:

The black writers are pissed off. Offended, disgusted and hostile in their responses. The common thread in their essays is the accusation that Styron's portrait of Nat Turner supports the toxic black stereotypes of the day, and that Turner's true character and motivations are horribly misrepresented. They identify Styron's book as a potent example of the continued defamation of black men (and women). Again, this collection is an important piece of literary history. It's a real document, depicting the raw emotions of a time that some of us take for granted. I know I do. Some of the essays left me thinking, "Oh wow. Don't  be so defensive! It's a historical novel, right? It's a story of another time."  Then I have to stop myself, to honor the realities of the day. And I imagine Styron and James Baldwin, his friend and  confidant (and co-conspirator, some might say) as they sat around that groovy Styron family Connecticut farmhouse and discussed the text, the context, and the potential influence of the book as it was being developed.

All three of these books are a time capsule of my birth year. They remind me of how far we've come, and how much ground we still have to cover.

Poly Styrene Was My #1 Hero

I was a punk rock kid in the early Eighties, when MTV was very new, and punk fashion was something you made up as you went along. The clothes and the music were counter-culture. And every kid who was into it was asserting their outcast status. Even outcasts need heroes - especially fifteen-year-old outcasts.

Today I got news that my #1 hero, Poly Styrene of the band X-ray Spex, died yesterday of breast cancer. She was 53.

My close friends in high school and I loved her. I mean, we truly loved her. Her band had one album, Germfree Adolescents, and a few singles, and we knew them all. I have them all. Some in duplicate, on neon-colored vinyl. Her lyrics were clever, poetic, wise beyond her years, and so very clear. She was political. She was a biracial brown girl, shrieking and singing, and pogo dancing, in crazy new wave outfits. With braces on her teeth. Another girl in the band played saxophone. They rocked. I loved them more than I can say.

I have to include a video for those of you who didn't know her. The song is "Identity". YouTube is loaded with brilliant footage of Xray Spex. Thank You YouTube.

The media has gotten wind of Poly's death and you can find plenty of press clippings out there.

What I can contribute is this:

Poly Styrene was the face and voice of so many of us, who were disenfranchised and angry and insecure. She made us brave. The power of her conviction earned her idol status in my world. I was in my first band when I was fifteen. We played CBGBs, The Pyramid, Danceteria. I couldn't sing like Poly, but I played a steady bass and we were cuter than hell. I kept it up, through college and beyond, and would have made a career out of it had we not grown tired of the industry disclaimer, "You guys are hard to categorize". I guess I will always be hard to categorize. Like Poly Styrene. I am so grateful to have found her, and to have been able to share her music and spirit with friends, and at DJ gigs, and here.

I wonder who my girls will trust, when they're fifteen and hating their parents.

James Baldwin Speaks

I'm reading the collection, James Baldwin - The Cross of Redemption (uncollected writings). It includes essays, speeches, profiles, reviews and letters from the 1940's to the '80's. I borrowed it from the library and the 14-day loan is not gonna cut it. This book is on fire. James Baldwin was so unbelievably smart. His novels are beautiful. His essays are spellbinding. I am enthralled.

The speech excerpt below is stuck in my brain; it's from an appearance Baldwin made before a House Select Subcommittee in New York. He spoke in support of a proposed bill to establish a national commission on "Negro History and Culture." He makes several brilliant points. In this snippet, Baldwin  defends his position on how and why the stories of American History, as taught in schools, should be revised in order to break patterns of stereotyping and subjugation of the black population.

The year is 1969:

"If we are going to build a multicultural society, which is our only hope, then one has got to accept that I have learned a lot from you, and a lot of it is bitter, but you have a lot to learn from me, and a lot of that will be bitter. That bitterness is our only hope. That is the only way we get past it. Am I making sense to you?"



Now, the year is 2011:

It's Spring Break. It's raining, both of my kids are fighting colds. I haven't done much writing this week. But I am reading. Always reading. And James Baldwin is keeping me sane from the grave.

Forty-two years of talking about our multicultural society and I'm thinking that we still have a lot to learn about each other. The text books have come a long way since 1969, but I worry that kids still read history like I did when I was ten, like it's long done gone.

Are we learning? Or are we sitting quietly, complacent, hopeful that time alone will melt that bitterness?
I wish folks would stop being coy and delicate about race.
I'm looking for some progress here.

Natural History

I live in a stone house on a mountain. It's a small mountain, forty minutes north of midtown Manhattan. The wildlife in these parts is still running free. We see deer on our road almost daily. Bunnies frolic in our front yard after dark. Wild turkeys flaunt their gangly broods up and down my driveway, in broad daylight. Hawks circle overhead, and coyotes roam the neighbor's meadow at dusk. Down the mountain, on any side, you might call it Suburbia. Some stretches are less quaint than others. Scenic vistas, car dealerships, antique shops and sports bars, and a mammoth shopping mall are all within a few minutes drive.

My favorite part is the dirt. Especially at this time of year, the smell of wet dirt in the  morning is invigorating, and comforting. The birds have returned from their southern sojourn, the daffodils are in full flower, and the woods behind our house have that telltale chartreuse fuzz at the tips. Spring is popping.

I loved it as a city kid, like I love it now. Our corner of the Bronx could almost pass for the suburbs, if caught from the right angle.  Our 21-story apartment building had a playground, and the playground was surrounded with a high forsythia hedgerow and little cherry trees. My mother, the biologist, made sure I knew the names of the plants, the birds, the butterflies. We had Field Guides to everything, and binoculars to match.

I thank my mother for teaching me to notice nature around me. And to see the different contributions that the plants and creatures make to our surroundings. I've spent most of my life crediting her, and her naturalist/herbalist father, with my appreciation of the natural world. I have that connection with her still, as we compare notes in each other's gardens.

So I was startled to discover that my father's grandmother was an avid gardener. A fact I learned from an old family photo that I recently discovered. A middle-aged black woman, in house dress and apron, in a vast Victorian-era garden behind the little Massachusetts house I know to be her own. The photo must be from the Twenties or Thirties, and the garden is lush, and layered with mature plantings, obviously the product of many years of diligent work.

I had never seen a house-proud American black woman in her own beautiful garden, from any time period.

I'm sure there must be some images out there. But what comes to mind of course is slave imagery, sharecropping imagery, and some farming imagery from modern times. Where is the disconnect?

My father loved his garden. He called it a yard, but it was an acre around his house on Long Island. He carefully designed and maintained the landscape, and enjoyed raking the sea of leaves that dropped every fall. He planted a gorgeous cut leaf maple in honor of Duke Ellington's birthday one year. And marveled at the full six-foot height of the junipers, which were smaller than four-year-old me when he put them in.

Most of my friends would rather not touch dirt. Or bugs. I suspect it has more to do with having grown up in the city than with any race-related phenomenon. But I can't help but question whether a wall came down as blacks moved north, separating us from "our agricultural past".

I relish the quiet work of gardening. It's an active connection to my American Indian heritage, and my grandfather the herbalist, and  my father with his rake, and my great-grandmother in her Massachusetts garden, and the countless unknown ancestors' connections to the land.

In these lean, green times, I hope to see more of us getting down in the dirt.

chapter/ Number One

He was Number One. He told me, rather nonchalantly, over the phone.  

“I have some interesting news: it seems I’ve been voted Best Radio News Personality,” he said, in his signature, velvet monotone.  Daddy was the late-night voice of 1010-WINS Radio: You Give Us Twenty-Two Minutes, We’ll Give You The World. Perfected for broadcast and permanently imprinted on his off-air persona, his meter and tone captured a controlled balance of enthusiasm, authority, and calm. His evening shift ran from 6:30pm to 2:30am, Wednesdays through Sundays, so if you lived in the New York tri-state area in the 1970’s and 80’s, commuted to the suburbs or outer boroughs, rode in taxis after dark, or relied on the repetitive rhythms of news radio for late-night companionship, then my father’s voice anchored your evenings. 

When he won, I was fifteen years old, a full-fledged anti-establishmentarian punk rock kid. Fifteen, living in New York City, suffering the way middle-class American teenagers suffer: I was pissed at the world, powerless against my oppressors, victimized by the ills of our capitalist society. Distrusting anyone in authority. I wanted to hate my parents. That was the norm among my friends, most of whom lived in restrictive households, commandeered by teams of parental units whose power reigned supreme.  But my mother ruled our single-parent/only-child household with a Jell-o fist. As long as my grades didn’t slip, social deviance met no parental friction from her. While I complained long and loudly about the few rules she often threatened to enforce, I was truly grateful for my father’s open refusal to “interfere with whatever understandings” my mother and I had.

At fifteen, I was used to Daddy’s absence. As puberty encroached, our lives veered apart. We exchanged brief updates from time to time, but never went deep. His occasional invitations to dinner in the city confined our contact to the timeslot he usually reserved for copy revisions. If I played it right, he might get to know me. He might take an interest in what I had to say. Or we might just forfeit another fancy meal, pressed for time, short on answers. 

 “How’s school?”

“Fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Yes. It’s all right.”

“Are you still in that band?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what this hairdo is about?”

“I change my hair all the time.”

“It’s not very becoming. Is that supposed to be punk?”

“I guess.”

“Do you like that band The Sex Pistols?”

“They’re OK. They’re not my favorite.”

“I can’t believe your mother lets you listen to that garbage.”

Hush. I refuse to defend my mother to you. She is not the problem. I wait, hoping the silence will diffuse his strange bitterness. Watching him masterfully cut and chew, sip and swallow, finesse every move with the studied grace of a debutante, I choke on my own childish need for connection. 

Daddy was a private man. He rarely shared any details of his work, the celebrity interviews, or the fantastic events he covered as part of the job. His long-gone years in Colored Radio were a total mystery to me, only hinted at by my mother, who knew him then. His exclusive access to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., as New York’s only black radio journalist, was part of his fragmented past. That black world, in which he had grown up, and subsequently discarded. 

He had ascended! Marriage to my mother marked the trailhead. The big job at WINS was the door to the kingdom, slamming shut behind him. The award must have been the final flag: he had reached the summit. His loyalty to the station, and his fierce adherence to every rule of propriety, had paid off. The sacrifices his parents made, to send him to Professional Children’s School, and the acting and modeling jobs that prepared him, and the very careful choices he made along the way, clinched his success. In an industry full of black stars he labeled “flashy, cornball disc jockeys”, he had few peers in the newsroom. No one he openly admired. He looked down on those who had failed to reach such heights, and held fast to his elite position on the mountaintop. 

I knew I should congratulate him on winning the award. This could be the start of a real connection. But where to begin?

“Did you win a little commemorative statue or something?” I asked.

“No. No statue. I’m sure the jerks at the station will make a big deal about it, in their own way. Make some sort of tacky plaque or something. But there is a prize attached to the award. It’s a trip. To London.  On the Concorde. You know, the supersonic transatlantic airliner.”

“Really?” I couldn’t see my father getting on a supersonic transatlantic airliner. Maybe in his youth, in the Army, when he had something to prove, or orders to follow. But the Daddy I knew was not looking for a thrill. His daily, round-trip drives between midtown and Southampton seemed to be all the adventure he could stand.

“I can’t say I’m looking forward to the flight. But I’ve always wanted to see Paris. They’re sending us to Paris and London. Linda is already boning up on her French.”  Linda.  Of course he would take Linda. Smart, soft-spoken, selfless, impossible-to-dislike Linda: his girlfriend of the day, and co-worker at the station. A promising young copywriter. 

“Sounds great. I’d love to go to Europe some day,” I mused, without a hint of rancor.

“Well, maybe you’ll do some study abroad in college… Is there something you’d  like me to bring back for you?”

“From England? Or France?”  I tried not to care. But there were a thousand things I would have brought back for myself, from either place. Records (vinyl) from London, clothing from Paris. But Dad wouldn’t have a clue about any of it. Country Club Chic was his idea of high style. I was the East Village to his Park Avenue.

“Come on. There must be something,” he pushed.

It was a set-up. If I fed him something real, he would forget. Or fumble. Or forbid it altogether. Like the football I asked for, when I was ten: No daughter of mine is going to grow up with quarterback shoulders.

“How about just something really different. Something I can’t get here.” I left the choosing to him, resigned to appreciate the gesture behind whatever token he delivered.

While he was gone, I imagined how much his loyal fans must have missed him. The women who sent him amorous notes, in care of the station, enclosing photos of themselves. My own late-night taxi rides, piled tight with friends going from nightclub to party, were mercifully free of my father’s live voiceover. But could anyone trust what the next day’s weather would bring? 

And what did Daddy bring back for me, from his grand trip abroad? A pair of stretchy, acrylic, unbearably ugly electric blue knee socks emblazoned with the Union Jack, which must have cost three pounds at the Heathrow duty-free shop. Ironically, they were a great complement to my non-conformist wardrobe. I wore them over threadbare black tights, with a gray plaid miniskirt and combat boots.  The socks presented a pop of color in an otherwise bleak palette, the flags boldly flying in a bright, tidy band across my calves. I also received Linda’s slightly used pair of nylon comfort slippers, compliments of the Concorde. Which crumpled and died, forgotten in the bottom of my sock drawer.

The radio station issued a limited number of coffee mugs, printed up like newspaper articles, with his name and NUMBER ONE filling the the headline. They were numbered. I have mug #92, here on my desk, filled with writing tools. A quiet reminder.