November Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

November was crazy, and so was I.

The whole election thing had a lot to do with it. Everyone around me seemed to believe that Romney was going to steal it. And Super Storm Sandy - that bitch was fierce. All in the throes of Halloween. Halloween is always a bit frantic around our house, since we like to make our own costumes, and we often have a bit of trouble (i.e. anxiety) deciding who/what we're going to be. This year, I was Miss Piggy. Our eldest was a made up character named Miss Kiss, who doled out Hershey's kisses to adoring friends and strangers alike. Our youngest was Animal, from the Muppets. For whom I crocheted a wig worth $47 in fancy yarn. Cos that's how we roll at Halloween time.

As for Super Storm Sandy, everyone in New York was effected. Rich and poor, black, white, yellow and brown. It's been one of those "great equalizer" moments. Everybody living without the services we all take for granted… It put a bit of mind-blowing perspective on things. Lots of things.

As for election day, I felt like I was the only person alive who believed Obama would win. Maybe because Halle Berry was on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine sitting on our kitchen counter. 

Her pretty brown face, so confident and lovely, was like a wink to the rest of us: He's gonna do it again. Don't you worry.

I woke up on election day expecting Obama to win. I just had faith. Which is unusual for me. But there it was. A powerful feeling that enough democrats would get out and vote, to prove the pundits wrong. We did. And we won.

Three days after the big victory, we went to our good friend's out-of-state wedding. At fifty, it was his first time under the huppah. With his lovely bride of forty-something. They're eager to start a family, statistics be damned. So that gave us something fresh to talk about - something outside of Halloween, and hurricanes, and the presidential election, and writing, and blogging, and... and... ourselves.

Before crazy November began, my husband and I took a music-for-hire job. We haven’t worked together since the kids arrived. Now we finally understand the value of regular childcare help. But we have yet to secure any of our own, and our deadline is right before Christmas.  That, my friends, is the icing on the crazy cake.

So I'm looking forward to January... when I plan to get back to the old rant. I'm hoping my kids will have a few full weeks of school, for a change, and I can back to writing on more meaty matters. Motherhood is kicking my ass, and is expected to continue to do so from now thru the holidays. Whoopee!

Have a Happy!

Affirmative Admissions

This morning I caught an article in the New York Times that I just had to read, even though my girls were off from school and they reeeeeally needed my attention and I was having one of those very unattractive mothering moments where I just wanted to scream, "Why the fuck can't I have a minute to read this one article in peace?!" but I didn't say that. I just read as fast as I could. And then decided I had to write a quick post about it.

Apparently there's a move on to undo Affirmative Action. Not new news, really. But there's a young lady from Austin, TX  appearing before the Supreme Court this week, because she wasn't accepted into the UT school of her choice, and she feels it's unfair that her race - which happens to be white - was a factor in her not being accepted. This young lady believes that race should not be a factor in college admissions. That's what she has come to say to the justices of the Supreme Court. Her argument is intended to give weight to the argument to end Affirmative Action.

I've been to Texas several times. Through and around Texas, down endless miles of flat, dry, barren highway. And I've seen some crazy poverty there, as well as some incredibly racist attitudes. I don't mean to defame the entire state of Texas, but much like many parts of our vast country, there's a whole lot going on besides what you see in the big cities. And this young lady from Austin seems to think that we're ready to embrace a new, post-racial set of public policies, so that no one else like her has to suffer the indignity of not getting into the school of their choice. 

Maybe the fact that we have an African-American president levels the playing field. I mean, if blacks are running things, the time to be giving out hand-ups is over, right? And all those Latino families whose kids are citizens but the parents can't legally work, they don't deserve any assistance. And the Asians are taking over the world, so they shouldn't get any preferential treatment...

Yeah, we're really ready to overturn Affirmative Action. 

That will probably fix our economy.

Questions for The Help

I knew I wouldn’t get a lot of writing done this summer. Lack of structure means lack of discipline, and flighty focus. So I got serious about making time for reading. I read several very satisfying books, some of which I’ll “review” here before the year runs out.

For starters: I finally read The Help. I liked it. I'm not going to offer a dense review. Countless more capable journalists have done that already. Instead, I'll share my take-away:

My reading The Help coincided with the death of Sherman Helmsley, the actor most famous for his TV role as George Jefferson. You remember “The Jeffersons”: George and Weezie (a.k.a. Louise) and their son, Lamont, “moving on up” to a de-luxe apartment on the East Side. They were the black family who made it big in the dry cleaning business, leaving behind their white, working class neighbors (Archie and Edith Bunker) back in Jamaica, Queens.  As a child, I was struck by the character Florence, the Jeffersons' (black) maid.  She arrived in the morning, and left around suppertime, donning a maid’s uniform and a sassy attitude. Her irreverent reluctance to do any serious housework caused constant friction between herself and her employers, and triggered big laughs. She puttered around, complaining that she needed to put her feet up, asking Weezie to bring her a cool drink while she was in the kitchen anyway, and it all made me wonder, Why did the Jeffersons have a maid? What did Weezie do all day? She didn’t work… and didn’t she feel uncomfortable having a black lady working as her servant?

Marla Gibbs as Florence Johnston, courtesy Sony TV

When I was about seven, my mother hired a “housekeeper” who came to clean our apartment twice a week, and kept an eye on me until my mother got home. Joyce was her name. I remember Joyce as a somber, middle-aged black woman who dusted, vacuumed and mopped the floors without much comment or kindness. My mother remembers that Joyce broke things, and that she only did a good job the first day she came. Joyce only lasted a few months. After Joyce, we moved on to teenaged babysitters, and the house just stayed dirty.

My husband and I have a “cleaning lady” who comes once a week for three hours. I feel ridiculous having a cleaning lady, since I’m not earning a regular salary these days. But my days are full, and my head is spinning with project ideas that will never be born if I stop to thoroughly clean the house. I tidy up constantly, but real cleaning doesn’t make my daily to-do list. So we have Mita, who is probably ten years my junior, as agreeable as can be, and blonde. And I just think it’s funny (funny weird, not funny ha-ha) that I have a white cleaning lady. Not because I think cleaning ladies should be black! But because my relationship with Mita is a reversal of the ones I saw all around me growing up, and still what I see everywhere in the world of nannies.

I’m back to The Help, with its rich depictions of mid-century Southern women, perpetuating and withstanding a dehumanizing status quo, until they chose to upend it. All of the ill-conceived opinions that the women on both sides of that world held about and against each other... I’m sure so much of it lingers today, even in our “advanced state of coexistence”.  I wonder what goes on in Mita’s head, what she thinks about me and my family, and our arrangement. I wonder what Joyce thought of me and my mom, a divorced white lady with a black child, in that apartment in the Bronx.

Summer Souvenir

Shifting gears, getting back into the structured school year schedule... 
We had a really nice summer. The girls were in day camp part of the summer, and we made a lot of time for family and friends. 

I managed to squeeze in a very fantastic week-long writing workshop at Sarah Lawrence College, where I was turned on to the poet Billy Collins. Our instructor shared the YouTube video below, and in tribute to all mothers everywhere, I've decided to mark the end of summer by posting it here. 

Invest a few minutes of your busy life and check it out. Pass it on! You'll laugh, you'll cry. It's brilliant.

I will get back to posting original material later this month. 

Enjoy~

American Grown

Summer is here. 

Again, I marvel at how impossibly busy our small family can be. We raced through May and June like amusement park revelers, testing the boundaries of sanity and speed, trusting the onset of summer to mark the finish line. I’ve been telling myself I’m too busy to write well right now. So I get my word fix at our neighborhood bookstore, hungrily browsing, imagining that some day a jacket with my very own title will grace the front window display. On a recent dash past said window a strange image caught my eye. Who is that glamorous black woman, laden with her garden’s harvest, smiling out at me? It seems Michelle Obama – busy mother of two! – has published her first book: American Grown. It’s all about the White House kitchen garden. So. Cool. I jumped inside, to make it my own.

The book is full of photographs of Michelle Obama’s journey into gardening. 

It connects the work she's been doing to combat childhood obesity and the symbolic power of home-grown food. She includes a piece about famed urban farmer Will Allen, and the phenomenal influence he's had in cities around the country, and in the local food movement. But the main topic is the White House garden, and the lessons learned while building it.

Back to the front cover. 

The image is slightly startling, rich with saturated colors. Our First Lady looks gorgeous as usual, with her hair in a loose up-do, diamond stud earrings, and a crisp navy blue oxford shirt. She's holding a large, weathered basket at pelvis height, stuffed with eggplants, chard, corn, zucchini and tomatoes of various types. Gorgeous again. But Mrs. Obama is too coiffed and too clean to have been working in the garden. She looks more like she's headed to the yacht club. Throughout the book, even when pictured on her knees in the dirt, her clothes – down to her choice of gloves - are not those of a real laborer. The book reveals her reality: a staff of gardeners and chefs maintains the White House kitchen garden. But our First Lady is garden proud, spreading the kitchen garden gospel to the uninformed masses. And her focus is the children of this country, who desperately need to hear what she's preaching. Praise be.

Maybe the First Lady of the United States of America doesn't want to appear on the cover of a thirty-dollar hardcover book in dirt-smudged overalls. Maybe the Obamas’ publicity machine can’t allow it.  For fear that such an image might reflexively remind us of the countless black women in the fields who, in their time, symbolized poverty, malnutrition and inescapable oppression. Without access to diamond earrings and the yacht club.

Ladybird Johnson, another great White House gardening enthusiast, had far less complicated image issues.

As for me, I’m in a semi-permanent state of dirt-smudged-ness. 

Lately, I've been gardening as much as my lower back can handle. Our new-old house came with a big, blank yard. And this weird, warm Spring has pushed the growing season here in the Northeast about a month ahead of normal schedule. So I’m out back as much as time and strength will allow.

I dig and I weed, and I plant, because it feels so good to put energy into the earth. 

The earth doesn't whine or complain, or refuse to eat the meals I prepare. It doesn't need me to teach it, or scold it. The earth quietly accepts my efforts, offering up magical returns. The dark soil under my fingernails reminds me of my mother's weathered  hands, and the botanist's flare she inherited from her father. I remember my father raking endless leaves, admiring the landscape of his own proud acre,  just like his Massachusetts grandmother did. And the distant history of Lenape Indian earth-worship embedded in my veins. 

We've given our children a large garden in which to learn and play. 

They’re lucky and they know it. A huge THANKS is due to Michelle Obama, and the current wave of earth crusaders, on behalf of all the kids who aren't so fortunate.

Chapter/ The Pickup

My mother’s voice nudges me out of an unreal place and time in dreamland.

“It’s time to wake up, Sweetie.” Before opening my eyes, I remember: Daddy is coming to get me. We’ll be spending the long weekend together at his house in Southampton. It’s been a long time since we’ve spent more than a day together. Not since last summer. I am nine, and have only known my parents as separate beings: our house, and Daddy’s house; our car, and Daddy’s car; her rules, and his. I’ve been careful to contain my excitement about this visit, afraid that he might cancel. Now, I’m bubbling inside. It’s coming true.

From my bed, I check the night sky out my window. It’s just as we planned, the starry black middle of the night. Mom’s faceless shape is a flat silhouette, backlit by the slip of light peeking around my bedroom door. “Wake up,” she repeats gently. “You have about half an hour before Daddy gets here.”

            “What time is it?” I ask, my arms and legs still stuck in a sleepy twist.

            “It’s four.  He said he’d be here right after he got off work.”

            “Did you listen?” I know she has long since broken the habit of monitoring Daddy on the radio, but maybe she’s checked on his timeline tonight.

            “No. I’m sure he’ll be on time,” she says with certainty.

We packed my bag and set my clothes out before going to bed, so getting ready is simple. We move through our usual morning routine, with Mom pushing me along, like she doesn’t trust me to get it all done. We share a quick and quiet breakfast of Rice Krispies, too early for our regular morning news shows. My mother sits in somber detachment, not her usual chatty self. I won’t be seeing her for four days, and she’s already come disconnected. The anticipation of Daddy’s arrival has her on edge.

“He should be here any minute,” she finally says. And on cue, the intercom buzzer rings. “You can get it.” She smiles, knowing how eager I am to see him. I run to the door, stretch on tiptoe to reach the intercom box, and answer.

            Talk button/ “Hello?”

Listen button/ “Hello! It’s your Daddy!”  His words ease across his warm, toothy smile.

Talk button/ “Hi Daddy! I’m ready!” I holler.

Listen button/ “Ok, ok. Buzz me in now,” he coaxes.

So I do. Then I listen for the telltale sounds of the lobby door closing behind him. The click of the latch. The trailing echo of hollow sound in the empty vestibule. Mom comes at me, flustered. “Go get your things. And make sure your toiletries make it into your bag.” I’m wide awake now, and look at her fully. I notice her outfit and am horrified.

“Mom! Your bathrobe! You’re not dressed!”

She glances toward her chest, down to her toes. “So?”

            “Daddy’s on his way up! He must be in the elevator already!” How can you greet him in your pajamas?!

            “He doesn’t care if I’m in my bathrobe,” she explains dryly, as if I should know. She’s not going to discuss it any further. Their relationship – or what’s left of it – is their business. Not mine.  They’ve each told me that. I hope that when I’m older, they’ll trust me with their stories. Because I find it hard to believe that they ever liked each other. They are as different as two adults can be. They have nothing in common. Except me.

I try to forget Mom’s bathrobe and slippers. In the bathroom, I check my own reflection, smooth some stray flyaway hairs, and square my shoulders. Pretty good, I think. Daddy will approve of this shirt, with the alligator logo, like the ones the big kids at school wear. He likes the preppy look. My jeans are crisp and new. Saved, from our last shopping trip, for just such an occasion.

I realize I’m hearing Daddy and Mom already exchanging hellos, so I hover, down the hall, out of sight.

            Hi, Clar. Punctual as always.

            Good morning. Sorry about the ungodly hour.

            Come on in. She’s just getting her bag.

            All right.

            Sweetie! Daddy’s here!

            Coming!

Standing by the door, Daddy’s hands are casually jammed into the front pockets of his blue blazer, unbuttoned over a crisp light yellow oxford shirt. He’s clean-shaven, wearing pleated khaki pants and black loafers with no pennies in the slots. As I run at him, he bends to receive me into his long, loving arms. He smells so good I pull my face into his soft ribcage and breathe him in, locking my hands together behind his back.

            “Hey, Melon Ball! You’re going to crush my lungs! When did you get so strong?” He asks, laughing.

            “She’s doing gymnastics. Her teacher says she has great upper body strength,” Mom answers.

            “I told him about gymnastics, Mom,” I mumble, with my face still pressed against Daddy’s torso. He takes me by the shoulders and forces me out in front of him. He takes a long look at me, the way most relatives do when they haven’t seen you for a while. He smiles his approval.

            “I like that shirt. The color’s very nice on you.”

            “Thanks, Daddy.” I beam. It’s going to be the most perfect visit. Four whole days, and no working in between. Just us, and the beach, and Bobo the dog. McDonald’s for dinner, and Entenmann’s chocolate doughnuts, and bologna sandwiches. And badminton, and Frisbee, and basketball in the driveway. We’ll stay up late watching scary movies, and maybe we’ll even go to the drive-in.

            “What time do you think you’ll be back Sunday?” Mom breaks in.

“Well, I have to be at work by five, so we’ll shoot for between three-thirty and four.”

“Wait. Sunday?” -  I’m stunned - “I don’t have school Monday. Aren’t we coming back Tuesday?”

“Oh, no,” says Mom. “You can’t miss school Tuesday. You’ll have to come back Sunday, and hang out with me on Monday.”

“Can’t I stay with Daddy? At least Monday?” Please don’t make me beg.

He chimes in, “I’m not coming into the city until Wednesday night. You’d have to miss school Tuesday. Mom says you can’t miss school.”

Daddy has let her decide, as usual. I’m scared to look at him. Scared that he’ll see how close I am to tears. I don’t want to look like a crybaby. I can’t make eye contact with Mom either. This is her fault. So I look at the door, and I wish I could become invisible and run straight through it, far away from this.

“Come on, baby. Don’t look so sad. We’ll have a great time,” Daddy says. “I

have a surprise for you in the car. I promise, it’s going to be a great weekend.”

Mom isn’t backing down. “I’m sorry you’re upset. I thought you understood the plan. You know you can’t miss school.”

Our “perfect visit” is already cut short. I don’t care what the surprise is. There won’t be time to do all the things I imagined. And Monday, I’ll have to sit around the apartment with Mom, instead of being out at the beach with Daddy. The school year is almost over, and this holiday weekend is supposed to be the start of something grand. There will be lots of weekends at the beach this summer. It’s going to be great. So I have to be cool, or the invitations won’t come. I have to be sensible and not blow it. Be agreeable, so he doesn’t get upset. He won’t make the effort if I’m a pain.

Daddy picks up my bag, stuffed with two days’ too many clothes, and reaches his free hand toward the door. “Let’s get going. No sense standing around being upset.”

            “I’m ok, Daddy. I’m just really happy you came.” I smile. I want to hug him again but he’s already halfway out the door. He calls over his shoulder at Mom, “We’ll see you Sunday,” just as she’s bending down to kiss me. I give her a quick hug around the neck, then grab Daddy’s arm and follow him out. As the door clanks shut, Mom’s voice calls “Bye,” behind us.

            We ring for the elevator and wait, me still holding onto Daddy’s arm, and him still holding onto my overnight bag. The hum of the elevator approaches, then swallows us down. Nineteen stories is a long descent; over a minute, by my calculations. A long time to stand in uncomfortable silence with your beloved Daddy. I’m grateful when he speaks.

            “Do you remember that I said I have a surprise for you in the car?”

            “Yes,” I answer shyly.

            “Well, it’s Ara. She’s so excited to see you again.” He doesn’t seem to comprehend the burn of this announcement.

I smile, because I know I should. But inside I am crumbling. It’s clear that his girlfriend Ara will be spending the weekend with us. She will come between us, and dance around us, and distract Daddy’s attention and affection as only a girlfriend can. My knees lock as the elevator door opens. Daddy drapes a heavy arm around my shoulder and leads me out into the lobby, and out to his car. To Ara, smiling and waving.

Spring's Holy Days

THE EASTER BUNNY IS COMING TO THE MALL!!

Much like Santa’s December descent, the occasion draws long lines of children smaller and more innocent than mine to be channeled through the velvet ropes, pretty and primed. The Paas dye kits are overflowing the seasonal aisle at the supermarket, while the Manischewitz products stand proud among the ethnic foods. And I am stuck in the semi-annual quagmire known as Commercialized Christian Holiday vs. Solemn Jewish Observances. It happens in April, just like it does in December. And this year, spring’s holy days are right on top of each other. There’s no time to buffer between Easter and Passover, complicating for our kids exactly what it’s all about, and whether or why we do or don’t really celebrate some and not all of it.

I confess there have been times when I wish I had grown up with some religion. Just something to sink my teeth into. Someone, other than my family and teachers, on whom I could rely for supernatural assistance. My mother the scientist came to believe in a higher power at some point in her adult life, but I’m unsure what relation that power has to the Judeo-Christian God. Raised among atheists and anarchists on a commune in upstate New York, she’s not into Jesus. I know that. She’s never belonged to a church or a synagogue, though she enjoyed taking me to friends’ bar and bat mitzvahs, and since she’s become the Jewish grandmother of Jewish children, she looks forward to Passover and Hanukah. She and I are Jewish through the maternal bloodline, as prescribed by Jewish law. But we’ve always celebrated Christmas together. We never owned a menorah.

Not until I married my Jewish husband.

My childhood memories of Easter candy and Christmas trees are not the stuff of his youth. But we’ve managed to weave them into the modern texture of our family. “My Granny Flo is rolling in her grave,” he says, smiling to soften the truth of it, as if I’m forcing our children into shameful practices. We do it all. The seder, the Easter baskets, the menorah and the tree. Our children are accustomed to our light holiday lecture: “Our family is large and diverse. Different people have different beliefs and different traditions, and we’re lucky that we can honor them all.” Our girls, ages eight and six, seem to get it. Unlike most of their friends, they still believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. They seem to believe everything we tell them.

The other day, in the car, my older daughter asked me, “So who came up with all this Easter stuff?”

She meant the eggs, the candy, and the visit from the bunny. I told them the strange and gruesome story of “that man Jesus Christ, from the Bible”: “You know that these stories are very important to a lot of people, right? Well…”   

They didn’t like the part about the crucifixion. Nor did they accept the idea of the immaculate conception. I think the resurrection was more information than they could process. So I guess they’re where I want them to be with regard to religion. But I have to ask myself a whole lot of questions, and wonder if my mother had them too: Will they flounder in the atheist’s quagmire when they get older? What meaning will our mixed bag of holiday customs hold for them as they mature? Will any of it comfort them when we’re gone?  Will nostalgia be enough?

The Step Dance Kid

It’s been a couple of weeks since I first read about Drew Lovejoy. 
I can’t shake an almost maternal feeling of pride: There goes another one of us, quietly ascending to peak performance. If you haven’t seen or heard of Drew Lovejoy, he’s worth a google. Drew is the seventeen-year-old Irish Step Dance World Champion. He happens to be biracial, born in Indiana and now living in rural Ohio. He also happens to be Jewish. This is the third consecutive year that Drew has won the World Champion title. He is the only non-white contestant to ever win the title.

Watching him dance in any number of YouTube appearances, it’s impossible to ignore how much he stands out among his predominantly female, entirely white step dancing peers.

I think of my own short-lived dance world aspirations, as a young student at the Dance Theater of Harlem: my not being dark enough to be black, according to my classmates. The tap teacher often positioned me in the first row, so the others could follow my lead, but I was an unpopular outlier in the changing room. Being the best wasn't enough to keep me there. As much as I enjoyed the challenges of dance, not fitting in wore me down.

I’m not the biggest fan of Irish Step Dance. I can’t even say that I enjoy the form. It doesn’t stir me. But I look at Drew Lovejoy, and his story blows me away. Like Tiger Woods, he has accomplished so much more than the obvious athletic achievement. Living in rural Ohio, he claims to have experienced overt racism more than once. So he doesn’t walk his dog after dark.  

But he sure does dance in the light.

(photo courtesy of jspace.com)

Rocky Mountain High

Our family recently returned from spending mid-winter break in Aspen, Colorado.

We had a great time. The girls skied, I skied, and my husband’s family, whom we were visiting, skied like the seasoned experts they are. The mountains were breathtakingly beautiful, as they are at any time of year. This year’s record-low snowfall has caused disappointing ski conditions: no five-foot base this year. But the mountains’ majesty inspires awe nonetheless.

I always feel a little out of place in Colorado.

I’m a city girl from back east. I don’t ski with confidence. And I could have told you that the African American population in the state of Colorado is under 10% without looking it up; in fact, it’s 4%. In Aspen, it’s 0.8% of a population of 6,658 people. In other words, it’s pretty typical to walk around Aspen and not see any black people.

Then there’s my John Denver problem:

I did not grow up enjoying the music of John Denver.

Lyrics like, “Country road/ take me home/ to the place I belong/ West Virginia/ Mountain Mama/ take me home down country roads” were a huge turn-off to this urban-grown brown girl. West Virginia made me nervous. The state’s history of racism was enough to give me nightmares. I associated John Denver with those scary thoughts, because it sounded to me like West Virginia was his beloved home. Hence, I figured that Denver, Colorado must be a scary place too. John Denver; Denver, Colorado; West Virginia: all scary and definitely not for me. That’s what I figured, growing up.

John Denver made a guest appearance on the Muppet Show once, and that got me thinking that maybe he wasn’t a bad guy after all. I knew the reputation of Jim Henson and the Sesame Street organization to be pretty “modern” in their approach. And I knew that grown-ups could change their politics over time. So John Denver scored a few coolness points by appearing on the Muppet Show, but I remained frightened of West Virginia, and Denver, Colorado, certain they were both teeming with redneck lynch mobs.

Fast forward to my freshman year of college, when I made a new friend who happened to be from Colorado. A Jew from Colorado. I assumed his family must be living in cognito among the cowboys. I discovered that he was from Aspen. Well! Some of my childhood schoolmates had been from enormously wealthy families, and they spoke of Aspen like it was the most exclusive, most fabulous, most expensive vacation destination on the planet. So I drew some pretty judgmental conclusions about my new friend and his family. He explained that the Aspen of his youth was undeveloped big sky country, populated by sprawling ranches and earthy ski bums. But I still had trouble discounting the notion of Beverly Hills transplanted to the Rockies.

In a strange twist of fate, I married my college friend from Aspen, Colorado.

Now, Aspen is a place where family congregates. And I am getting to know the place. 

Over the past ten years, I’ve been watching her grow, and shrink, and change.

I used to get excited when we had an Ed Bradley sighting (yes, the 60 Minutes Ed Bradley) at the supermarket. Then Oprah bought a house there, followed by Will and Jada Smith. There are some huuuuuge corporate houses there, and some sports teams have houses in Aspen – don’t ask me how that works. The point is, it’s a lot less homogeneous than it was even ten years ago.

During this last trip, our family encountered another multiracial family, right there on the ski slopes. Honestly, I almost fell over from the shock. They weren’t flashy, or glitzy, or “Aspen-y” in any way. They were quiet and casual, like us. Signing their little brown girl up for ski lessons, just like us.

I had to recognize that my John Denver bias was from another era.

Little brown girls are everywhere!

Don Cornelius RIP

(photo courtesy of SoulTrain.com)

 My babysitter Renee watched Soul Train with a zealot’s devotion. She turned me on to it, and Baby, did it open my eyes.

Don Cornelius, the show’s producer and host, died at the age of 75 last week. He said “Baby” a lot. He was the only TV host I ever heard address his guests and his audience members as “Baby”. Renee’s mother called me Baby. My father’s parents called me Baby. My father called me Babygirl sometimes. I figured it must have been a black thing.

(photo courtesy of SoulTrain.com)

As a brown girl being raised by a white mother who insisted that I was black, in a culture that insisted that I was black, I was on the lookout for clues about “black things”. My own black father was not trying to expose me to my black heritage, ever. The dilapidated state of Harlem was an embarrassment to him. He had some choice words for Don Cornelius, whose style and lingo fell short of his own professional standards: “pimp” and “jive turkey” his most common epithets.

Don Cornelius and his afro-licious bellbottomed booty-shakin’ dancers looked like they could teach me a black thing or two. Renee taught me how to emulate the moves; we studied variations of the hustle and the electric slide until we knew them cold. The music was infectious! So different from the stuff Mom listened to at home: Thelonious Monk, Coltrane, Billie Holiday and Miles were moody, intellectual, demanding. Don Cornelius played funky, happy music. It was uplifting, high energy, make ya wanna dance music, Baby!

Soul Train offered a beautiful view of Black Americana  - a tantalizing taste of that black thing I was missing. I felt an instant connection to those pretty brown faces, smiling and dancing en masse – celebrating themselves. It’s easy to forget the impact of those old images.

Our Holiday

When I was a kid, we spoke of him with great reverence, his full title in tact: Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. His legacy was fresh then. Our way of life was the immediate product of his life’s work. He was a hero of our time.

When my parents married, their interracial union was still illegal in some of our United States. Here in New York, my father reported the latest developments of the Civil Rights Movement on WWRL, the city’s Colored radio station. He landed a jailhouse phone interview with the great man himself, the Reverend Doctor King, all in the line of duty.

Martin Luther King, as my kids casually call him, was our martyr.

For that he got a holiday.

On Monday morning, we began our observances in our pajamas, ensconced in Pink Panther cartoons and the weekend’s New York Times. I heard my maternal self assert the importance of his work – his legacy – to my children:

“You guys remember why Martin Luther King is so important, right?”

Yes, Mommy. He made it OK for black people and white people to be equal.

“He devoted his life to bringing about that very important change.”

Yes, Mommy.

“Well, you know how we have all these holidays from school? The religious holidays, and the three-day weekends?”

Uh-huh.

“For our family, this holiday – Martin Luther King’s birthday - is the most relevant holiday of all. You understand that, right?” Relevant. Good word. Do they know what I mean?

Because we’re black and white.

“That’s right.” We are black and white. And last weekend, when we celebrated Daddy’s friend’s 50^th birthday, and we three and a Latino bartender were the only brown people in the room, it was all right. We were welcomed into the restaurant by a smiling white hostess, and we shared the dishes and the bathroom same as everyone else. We had a fine time, all of us mixing it up. There was nothing strange about it. 

My girls are surprised by my need to explain. This is how we live.

THANK YOU, DOCTOR KING.

Moved

Our family just moved.

We landed in our new house full of boxes on the first night of Hanukah, four days before Christmas. That’s my explanation for not having posted in a long while. November dutifully marked the onset of the Holiday Season. This year, it also marked the onset of what we called The Big Purge: Throwing out and giving away a lot of extraneous personal belongings; Cleaning out file cabinets that hadn’t been undone in many years; Exorcising bottomless junk drawers; Sorting through an attic filled with baby gear that no one in our family will be putting to use any time soon. We had a lot of packing to do, so the purge came first. I thought I would be inspired to write, as I unearthed forgotten treasures, sleep-deprived and eye-high in to-do lists. But it didn’t happen. I convinced myself I didn’t have the time or energy to write.

Moving day was a twelve-hour marathon of packing, crying, consoling, and admiring the super-human endurance of eight undereducated demi-gods who did, in fact, leap small buildings in a single bound – over and over and over again, laden with impossibly heavy loads, without complaint. We forgot to light the menorah, neglected to play dreidel, and failed to fry up any latkes because Chinese food was a whole lot easier. Our youngest daughter packed some things in a shopping bag before bed, threatening to move back home. We loved our old house.

Nearly three weeks in, we are enjoying our new house. I think we will love it soon. The girls don’t talk about moving back any more. They have settled into a rhythm here, now that school is back in session and they have their geographical bearings. This new house is big. Our old house was big for us, when we first moved in. Before children, three bedrooms seemed like a huge amount of space. Complete with three acres of untouched woodland, it was our own small country.

Now we are townies, with a big yard. And this new, bigger house seems immense. I am told I’ll appreciate all the space when the girls hit their teen years. I think back to my own, sullen teens, in the two-bedroom apartment I shared with my mother and an ornery cat. It was plenty of space for us. The math doesn’t add up: do four people and one aging dog need so much more space? I can’t help but question our priorities. “Bigger is Better” was not a slogan of my youth. I was brought up with “No Nukes” and “Zero Population Growth” and “Fight the Power”.  I want our girls to be conscientious citizens of the world. It’s a struggle.

We’ve been here almost three weeks and we’re still surrounded by boxes. The holidays brought new stuff, to complement the old stuff, which we haven’t completely unpacked. We’re living very comfortably. So I have to wonder: What is in all these boxes?

I have a dedicated office in the new house. That’s the big bonus. A room of my own. Currently uninhabitable, filled with boxes of family photos, reference books, precious printouts from Ancestry.com, and my preferred computer, still hibernating since the move. I imagine doing serious work in my new office. The manuscript will get done there. I will fight distraction with a new vigor.

I’ve been up since 3:30 am, debating whether to get up and write. Or should I unpack boxes?