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.