A Very Merry Christmas

I grew up in Galesburg, Illinois. It was a big change from Chicago where I had been born, but I got used to it. I didn’t realize it then, but it was quieter and safer for us and a far better place to grow up in.

We weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination but we never wanted for anything and my parents always saw to it that we were happy and loved. They raised us so that we didn’t see being black as being anything different or less than anyone else. We were taught to believe that we were just as good as everyone else. We lived in integrated neighborhoods and we always had black, white, Asian and Hispanic friends.

Back in the early 60’s, our Christmases were very much like the one in the movie, “A Christmas Story.” I think one of the reasons I love that movie so much is that it reminds me of my own childhood.

One of the first Christmases I remember fondly was right after we had moved to Galesburg. I had taken longer to learn to ride a bike than some kids had and when I did learn, I was all excited about asking Santa to bring me one. Yes, my parents told us that Santa Claus was real and we believed it for years. Just like most other kids did.

On Main Street, in front of W.T. Grant’s, each year, a little house was erected and for us kids, it meant that Christmas was indeed on the way. It was Santa’s House! The house would go up and the streets were decorated with big candy canes, reindeer and elves and all the stores in downtown Galesburg with all the fancy window displays looked like a wonderland to us kids. And then there was always the big Christmas parade where Santa would arrive and all our hopes would begin.

Our parents would take us to talk to Santa and it was the highlight of the season for us. The Sears and Roebuck store on Main Street had a side entrance there and during Christmas, it was full of toys and my brothers and I used to love going there to look at all the great toys while our parents made payments on their account and probably bought some of our presents and managed to smuggle them to the car without us seeing them.  

There was a really neat blue bicycle there that I had my eye on and I had asked Santa if it was possible I could have that bike for Christmas. I’d been a good girl, so there was no real reason why I couldn’t.

We put up our tree and we always decorated the house and we were happily looking forward to Christmas. But just before Christmas, they told us that we were going to go to Chicago to spend the holiday with our aunt and cousins instead of staying at home.

I’d had this disappointment before. A few years before this, we had been preparing to have Christmas in Florida with our grandparents. I really did love going there and especially at Christmas. I had lots of cousins there and we could play outside with them and the best thing was that the fruit was ripe at that time of year. Grapefruit trees lined our grandparents’ home and there were pineapples on the other side. There were orange and tangerine trees, as well as lemon, lime, guava and avocado trees too.

My uncles and Papa would go fishing and we’d have a great feast for Christmas dinner so being in Florida was fun! Even after we were older, we still loved it. There is something magical about spending Christmas day at the beach with family even if it was a bit too cool to get in the water. It was still much warmer than it was in Galesburg!

But we had packed our bags and sent our boxes with presents on to Florida on the bus ahead of us and the night before we were going to leave; my aunt in Detroit went into labor and had a little girl. We were not going to go to Florida. This time, when we got on the Greyhound, we went to Detroit, not Florida.

I was so upset! All my gifts were in Florida! I didn’t like going to Detroit. I didn’t have anyone my age to spend time with so I was often alone. It was no vacation for me.

My uncle felt sorry for me and had asked a family up the street that had little girls if I could spend the night with them and they agreed. They all rustled up some last minute gifts for me but though it was kind of fun, I still missed the Christmas I would have had had we gone to Florida.

So here I was faced with this change of plans again. This time I saw my parents pack the car with presents but I didn’t see anything big enough to be a bike so I swallowed my disappointment and got in the car and we set off for Chicago.

Halfway there, my Dad started asking me what I had asked Santa to bring me. I told him I had asked for a bike. He kidded with me for a moment, but then he reached in his pocket and handed me a picture.

It was a Polaroid picture of our Christmas tree with that bicycle under it! My bike! And I was on my way to Chicago, leaving my precious bike at home. But it sure made Christmas fun and I was happy despite everything – and I knew my bike was waiting. I couldn’t wait to get home!

But a later Christmas became the standard for our family. The traditions we set that year were the ones we celebrated every year after that.

Mom and Dad wanted a new stereo that year. They both enjoyed music and we always had a nice record player and they played a lot of music of all kinds. I think that is why my brothers and I all have eclectic taste in music. But anyway, Mom went to Lindstrom’s to get a stereo.

Us kids didn’t go to Lindstrom’s much. We preferred the Platter. Jim at the Platter was way more up on the current music and he carried the rock and roll and soul music that we liked. We always likened Lindstrom’s as the place you went to get Lawrence Welk and Mitch Miller. You went to the Platter to get the Beatles and James Brown.

Lindstrom’s also sold appliances and such so Mom got this big stereo in a cabinet. We were really thrilled when it was delivered. We’d never had one that big! I remember she said she didn’t want one with the television in it because if the tv went bad, you were stuck with the big cabinet, but it was all right if it had the radio and record player in it.

Because she bought it at Christmas, the sales man had thrown in a bunch of Christmas albums. They were mostly compilation albums with songs like “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole (which is my all time favorite Christmas song of all time), and songs by Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Brenda Lee, Burl Ives, Andy Williams, Perry Como and many others.

We thought that was pretty cool but the thing that really amazed us was that stereo had lights in speakers that lit up in rhythm with the music. We were floored! We thought Mom was really great to score something like that.

That year when we made the traditional trip to the attic to get the Christmas decorations, we did it with the music playing. We always had a real tree that Mom and Dad bought from the lot out on Grand Avenue. We used the same tree stand and the angel on top of the tree was the same one they bought the first Christmas after I was born.

Our house had big wooden columns in an arch that separated our living room and dining room. We had a long plastic strand of plastic that was supposed to look like a Christmas ivy garland with candy canes and we hung our Christmas cards from the links in it. We put a big wreath on our front door and had silver garlands around the windows and we stenciled reindeer, elves, Santa and such on the windows.

We decorated the tree with the brightly colored bulbs, the strands of lights and “icicles” – silver strands that we loved.  Mom was breeding Siamese cats during several years of our lives, so we had curious cats who would often knock the tree down or break the bulbs. It wasn’t unusual for us to have to patch up the tree a couple of times before Christmas.

We popped popcorn and strung it to go on the tree. We baked cookies and Mom made pound cakes, sweet potato pies and she even made fruit cakes for our relatives. Mom’s pound cakes were special. She baked them from scratch and she put twice the butter in the pound cake and they were so rich and delicious that they were usually the first to go.

Her fruit cakes were legendary too. She used rum in the batter and when they were finished, she put them in cans and poured more rum over them and sealed the can. Every few days before Christmas, she poured more rum over them.

When she took those cakes to Florida, they were a big hit with our family. By then those cakes had enough liquor in them to knock people out. Uncle Peter liked the Claxton fruit cakes she brought, but those homemade ones were devoured!

Since we lived in Illinois, we looked forward to having a white Christmas. We used to have a phone number that you dialed to get the Time and Temperature and if it hadn’t snowed, we would call every hour to see if the temperature had dropped enough for it to snow. The years that it didn’t snow until Christmas Eve were special ones. Funny we aren’t so crazy about snow now.

Our Florida relatives always sent us big parcels with presents from our grandparents and aunts and uncles that we really looked forward to. But we really loved the second box. You remember those big round bushel baskets? Ours came full of oranges, tangelos, tangerines and grapefruit and bags of pecans.

Mom made sure we all had red or green sweaters or hats, scarves and mittens. Bless her heart; she never made us wear those ugly sweaters with reindeer and Santa on them. Friends came over bringing gifts and we went visiting doing the same thing. It seemed to me that people were way more generous then than they are now. Or maybe it was just that they had money and things were cheaper than now.

Christmas Eve was the time our parents started cooking. Mind you, our father was a chef and Mom was no slacker in the kitchen either. Our friends loved to come eat with us. Dinner was usually a feast with goodies such as turkey and ham or a big pork roast with dressing, collard and/or turnip greens with rutabaga or turnips in them. I love raw turnips and rutabaga, so Mom would have to watch that I didn’t eat most of it while I was slicing it for her to cook. Once it’s cooked, though, I don’t want it. Strange, huh? 

Usually, the cookies and cakes we had baked before Christmas were gifts so we baked more for us to have with our dinner so we often went to bed with all those delicious scents floating in the air – the tree and all the baking and turkey roasting and how happy that made me.

All this time we were playing all that wonderful Christmas music – Bing singing “White Christmas,” Andy Williams “The Happiest Time of the Year,” Perry Como “No Place Like  Home for the Holidays,” and Johnny Mathis “Sleigh Ride.” I love those songs to this day.

We would put our presents under the tree before we went to bed and Mom and Dad would wait till we were in bed and put our gifts there too. They would always buy the biggest candy cane they could find and put it under the tree. The custom was, the first one of us who woke up got the candy cane. I don’t remember a Christmas I didn’t get it. 

Christmas morning, we got up and opened our presents together. Mom and Dad would make a nice breakfast and we would all drink hot chocolate together and we would call family members in Chicago, Detroit and Florida or they would call us and we’d watch Christmas shows on television till it was time for dinner.

This was Christmas every year for us until that year when we were going to Florida and Daddy didn’t want to go with us. We didn’t understand that. He always went with us. He liked to go because he liked fishing there with our uncles. But this year, we couldn’t talk him into it. He’d been rather moody and cranky lately and Mom thought he was just being contrary so we went without him.

I called him Christmas day to wish him a Merry Christmas and I was shocked that he sounded sick. My father had never been sick in my life. He had never even had a bad cold. I was so alarmed that I cut my trip short and I flew home to see about him. My Dad was dreadfully ill and we found out later that he had cancer and we lost him seven months later.

Brian’s son Daniel was born a few months before he died but we didn’t get to see him till after he was a year old. Eddie’s son Terrence was born 5 months later, right before Christmas.

We had never been apart at Christmas and there was a huge void in our lives. We tried to make the best of it, but it just wasn’t the same.

The next few years were a little better. My brother Brian had more kids and we ended up celebrating more for them than for us. And we all started moving away from home.

I went to Florida to live and Brian moved to Normal, Illinois.  Mom had said she was going to come to Florida that Christmas and I was happy that I was going to see her, but she didn’t get there and I was depressed. I had never had a Christmas without my Mom.

But three days later, a blue Ford van pulled up in my Grandma’s back yard and in it was my Mom, my brother and two of my nephews, not to mention some of Mom’s menagerie of cats and dogs. She never traveled without them. I was the happiest girl in the world that day.

Things happened over the next few years. Eddie and I both went back to college. He went to Southern Illinois University Carbondale and I went to the University of Miami. We both came home to celebrate with Mom.

Our mother died in 1994. We stopped going home. We started making our own Christmases where we were. My brothers had married so they were with their families. I was living in New Orleans.

I eventually married too, but my husband didn’t really observe Christmas since he was Jewish. We exchanged gifts a few times but even that stopped after a few years. I didn’t even want to hear Christmas music anymore.

My brother Eddie and I ended up living together again a few years ago. We moved in with one of my friends. All of us had left our spouses and we thought living together would help us all. Our Christmases were nice little affairs. We had a little tree and exchanged presents when we could.

Eddie and I found a music station on our cable television that played the Christmas music we grew up with. We thought about how lucky we were to have had the beautiful and happy Christmases we had as children. We grew up in a small town with small town ideals and it was just the right time for it to have been uncomplicated and sweet. We had wonderful loving parents and they gave us customs that we think of all the time.

And so now, Christmas approaches again. We listen to the music and we smile and share stories. We will be with some family members and we will have a little one – Eddie’s first grandson – to celebrate with. We will share stories of the Christmases we knew and perhaps some of those customs will live with the next generation of our family.

We want them to have a Christmas filled with love and laughter like we had. That perhaps is the best gift of all.

Is This All There Is?

I just had a birthday. It was just like every other day in my life lately, except for a lot of greetings from friends and family. I sat at home in my bed, on my computer or watching television or sleeping. For one thing, I haven’t felt well for a few days. I have a viral infection of some kind and I’ve been under the weather.

But mostly, it’s because I can’t afford to do anything. I haven’t worked in over three years. I was getting unemployment for a while but that ran out. For several months, I had no income at all. I was humiliated, terrified and angry.

It’s not because I don’t have the education or the experience or the skills. I do. But I just happen to fall into that group of people who seem to suddenly have been shut out of the job market. I’m over 50, but not yet of retirement age. I’ve sent out more resumes than I can count. I had two interviews, perhaps 4 calls of interest and that is all in the past few years. Nobody is interested in hiring someone like me. I finally stopped sending out resumes because the only responses I got were the rare thanks but no thanks letters. Most folks didn’t even bother to respond.

I wonder what they think we are supposed to do? We want to work. We need to work. Many of us had jobs we enjoyed and we love the contact with people. While I did not like the supervisor I had at my last job and I thought some of the policies were rather archaic and ridiculous, I did like working with the students I taught, even if they weren’t the ideal students.

I like being of service to people. I love helping people improve their lives. I like making a difference. I learned a long time ago that it’s not about me – it’s what I can do for others that makes working worthwhile for me. It’s hard for me to feel useless and unable to do what I love.

I admit I don’t like the prospect of getting to work. I live in Chicago and going to work will more than likely consist of a lengthy ride on public transportation, something I don’t really like doing.

While it wasn’t a problem for me for most of my life, I was diagnosed with lupus a few years ago and it’s work for me to get up, get dressed, walk to the bus/L, wait and then ride for nearly an hour to get to work. I am already exhausted by the time I get there.

The best thing for me would be for me to have a telecommuting position but getting those is like finding the goose with the golden egg. And I am really looking forward to leaving Chicago.

Looking back, coming here was not the best thing for me. My health has suffered since I have been here and things in my life have gotten progressively worse each year that I have been here.

I desperately want to leave here but I cannot leave just yet.

And when I do leave, where will I go?

What will I do?

How will I survive?

The past year, it was probably better that I didn’t work. My youngest brother came to Chicago a few years ago to get help with his failing vision from severe glaucoma. He was going to classes to learn other skills so that he could continue to work despite his limited vision.

While going, he began to notice he was extremely fatigued from the trip to his classes each day. It got harder and harder for him to walk a few blocks and he soon realized he had to stop going. He kept saying there was something wrong with him and I didn’t know what to think so he was going to a doctor. It took a year or more to discover that he had multiple myeloma and amyloidosis.

He began chemotherapy immediately and six months ago, he had a stem cell transplant. He has been recovering and I have become his caregiver. My brother and I have always been close so it was no decision for me to make. I knew he needed me and I wanted him to be better. He is still extremely weak and fatigued even though he is getting better so I still keep things in order for us as much as I can.

We have had a rough few years. He couldn’t work so he had to apply for social security disability and when he got it, they immediately began to garnish student loan payments and child support. He’s never been one to shirk his responsibilities, but he went without work and was unable to pay support. His ex didn’t bother to find out what was going on, but stomped into court demanding her payment and so it was deducted. He was forced to live on what was left, which wasn’t much.

Lucky for him, his student loan debt was pardoned and he was living in a house with me and another roommate where we split the rent three ways.

When I lost my job, I had health issues that needed to be addressed and was trying to keep my treatments going despite my dwindling finances. I was also responsible for some of the payments for our household and that was getting harder for me as well.

Our living arrangements got dicey as well, Our roommate had various relatives moving in and out as well as friends and that made things different and not always in a good way. And then we discovered that our landlord had not been paying the taxes, mortgage or water bill for the house we were renting from her.

We were struggling to keep the rent paid and we were late sometimes, but we always managed to get her most of the rent each month if not all. We didn’t know how long we’d be able to remain in the house and that caused even more tension.

During this time, my estranged husband had a health crisis and had no one to assist him, so I went to Florida and stayed a month trying to get him on his feet. I did it because he had been in my life for several years and I couldn’t in good conscience leave him alone and ill. All I wanted was for him to get better. Just because we couldn’t live together anymore didn’t mean I didn’t care what happened to him.

Back in Chicago, we struggled to try to keep the home we had been living in for four years. We tried to work things out with the landlord and then when the house was sold, with the new company that bought it. It was soon clear that we would have to move and so we began looking for a place to live.

It was going to be difficult for us to find a place to live with my roommate, her family and my brother and me and our assorted pets. We knew we would have to split and look for things on our own and so we did. We both managed to find apartments with the help of family.

We are paying more rent that our apartment is worth and we are living in a dangerous part of town. We have struggled with assorted and varied issues with this apartment since we have been here but we know we are lucky to have found a place with our limited income and in such a short period of time.

We also knew we didn’t want to sign a lease and stay here two years. We planned to move back to the South as soon as my brother’s physicians release him from treatment. We didn’t realize just how extensive that treatment would be but he has done very well throughout and it looks like we may be able to leave in a few months after all.

But as I said before, where will we go?

We want to go to Florida. We both lived there at different points in our lives and we loved it.

Do we want to live near our family? Do we want to start a business in a building owned by a family member?

Or do we want to live in North Florida and find something on our own, away from them and the continuing drama that our family property has created?

And then we could go to Georgia and live where his son lives.

But would we be a burden for them?

And when will we be able to go?

And how?

Neither of us can drive that much. And we don’t have that much money. We can get a truck and go, but again, where?

We have a lot of thinking to do.

I can’t help but wonder what is in store for me. I’ve been taking care of other folks and putting myself on the back burner. I was doing what I should do. I would do it again. Some of my friends have commented that I deserve so much for the care I have given others but I didn’t do it for repayment or for compliments. When I love people, I love them. No questions.

But is my life over as I knew it? What kind of future can I look forward to? Will I have to exist on the meager funds I receive each month for the rest of my life? Can I find a job that I can do despite my chronic condition?

I am a writer and I write on almost a daily basis. I give my work to some bloggers to use and I get lots of positive feedback, but I also need to get paid. I have work that I want to include in an anthology and I can’t seem to get a publisher interested in my work. (Yes, it’s a bit racy. I write interracial romantic/erotica as well as social commentary.)

I would love a writing job. It’s what I do best and what I love. I keep hoping I will find something that will work with my schedule and so far, no go.

I want to do more. I want to be able to hold my head up and go shopping and have something to discuss with people. I want to be social again and to get out and mingle more than I do.

I am youthful and I don’t look my age. Despite the fact I have a few chronic conditions, I have them under control for the most part. The one thing I am fighting is severe depression. The difficulties of the past years were eventually more than even my strong constitution could bear. I withdrew, sat alone with my thoughts and pain and refused to share or show how I felt. I realized that something was wrong and sought help and for a while, I was feeling better but the struggle has been harder than even I realized.

While my husband and I are still married, we have separate lives and I am happy with that. We haven’t lived together in over five years. I wish him happiness and I hope he can find a woman who can bring him peace and joy. I know I am not that woman regardless of what he thinks. We can be friends, but that is all. I can’t give him what he needs, nor can he give me what I need.

I thought I had met the person who was going to bring me that joy but I was sadly mistaken. He was not there for me when I needed him and while he says he loves me, it is obvious that he will not be able to be there for me and will not be the one to give me the peace and happiness that I want so badly.

Am I too old to find someone now?

Am I too picky about the ones who seem to be interested?

Do I really know what I want or want I don’t want?

Is my life over as I know it?

Will I ever find a man to love me and to hold my hand and tell me that it will be all right and not need me to bolster his insecurity or give up who I am to keep him happy? Will I meet someone who will love me as flawed as I am while I accept his flaws?

I ask myself these questions almost daily. I try not to get depressed about it and sometimes I catch myself fighting back the tears. I’m afraid sometimes and other times I’m just angry.

I worked so hard all my life and I really tried to make things better and this is all I ended up with. I get angry because I deserved better than this. I had such high hopes for my life.

I did not ever think I would end up like this.

And how much would I have done different if I had known it would be like this?

Each month, as I make the required payments I barely have enough left to be able to eat and perhaps buy a few of the little things that make life worth living – a bottle of perfume here or there, some lipstick, a pair of shoes, things like that. Going out to dinner or drinks with friends is out of the question.

I wake up every day and do the same thing. Yes, I am blessed to be with my brother. I was afraid I would lose him for a while. The rest of our family is too far away to be able to help me when I am tired and ill, so I have to get up and do what I can – go to the store or do laundry or help him get with his medicine or clean the house. There is no help. It’s all on me.

My brother is a great cook and sometimes he prepares wonderful meals for us. Unfortunately, where we live, the stores don’t have the level of produce and meat that we are used to. And we don’t have the money to buy them anyway. We were receiving food assistance but that got cut from $400 a month to $32. That barely buys a meal.

We enjoy being together and we sit and talk over our morning coffee each day. We sit on the steps and watch the world pass by. We watch television almost all day long. It is our only form of entertainment.

I go with him to all his appointments for his treatment. His medical team says I am a wonderful form of support for him. He is my brother. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I spend a lot of time online. I have many friends and I manage to reach out and talk to lots of people there even if I get down sometimes at the news and the state of things in the world we live in now. It can really be depressing sometimes.

I’d love to be able to go shopping at the MAC counter and get a makeover and buy some new makeup. I’d love a shopping trip to get some new shoes or a new dress or a great pair of boots or one of those military jackets I saw in last month’s Vogue.

I need a new phone. I had to give up my IPhone and my expensive carrier and the phone I have isn’t worth the plastic it’s made of. I need to be able to buy a new one but I don’t know when I will be able to do that. I’d love a tablet also but…well, again, I don’t know.

Is this all my life is ever going to be?

Struggling to pay this or that and just watching life pass me by? I’ve done so many things right and yes, I’ve done a few things wrong. I’ve struggled with money all my life and never managed to get things the way they should have been financially.

I went to graduate school hoping it would improve my career and all it did was burden me with a massive student loan that has been troubling ever since I got out of school. I did not ever have a job that rationalized the debt I had to assume. If I had it to do again, I would have stopped with my B.A. and I would be out of debt now.

So many things and so many questions!

Is this any way for a smart, talented, vibrant and wonderful woman to live out her life?

It seems it’s all I have left to look forward to. 

The Cover of the Rolling Stone

Everyone has their undies in a knot over the cover of the Rolling Stone this week. The Boston Bomber, the young kid from Uzbekistan who bombed the Boston Marathon is on the cover. People are screaming far and wide about it. Walgreen’s won’t sell it. It’s a big hoopla over it.

I don’t understand it. Or maybe I do. But I don’t see why his picture shouldn’t be there. Is there something going on I don’t know about? I doubt it. He’s newsworthy of course. But I will tell you how I see it.

It’s all part of that double standard. Let’s say for instance, that he and Trayvon were both walking down a street together. And let’s imagine that George Zimmerman and his handy gun was there watching them. I don’t think I need to tell you which one of them George would be watching. Which one he’d be angry about and which one he’d suspect of being up to something. Which one would he accost?

So while he’s making poor Trayvon’s life miserable, our cute little Bomber Boy goes on home unmolested. He can go meet his brother and the two of them can discuss their plans and keep working on their homemade bombs. Nobody suspects them of anything. They look just like everyone else around, for Christ’s sake. What could they possibly be up to? And if they got in trouble, golly gee, give them a break! They have their whole lives ahead of them! No reason to ruin their lives for a silly adolescent mistake. Boys will be boys right?

Unless they’re black.

So Trayvon fights back. The unknown, unidentified white man attacked him and Trayvon fought back and our neighbor hood watchdog killed him. The cops thought it was ok. I mean, he didn’t belong in that neighborhood, did he? What was he up to?

Meanwhile, Bomber Boy and his Bomber Brother refine their plans and get what they need and nobody suspects a thing. Everybody thinks they are great kids and nobody has any idea that they are the ones who were up to something. They are the ones who should have been followed. Did anybody talk to them? Ask questions? Think their behavior looked suspicious? Of course not!

They’re just like us!!!

So while George Zimmerman goes to court, it is really Trayvon who is put on trial. He shouldn’t have been on that street. He should have gone along with a strange man accosting him. He shouldn’t have fought back. He should have allowed the profiling to go on. He shouldn’t have wondered why a man would stop him. All he was doing was walking down the street, talking to a friend on the phone bringing home his iced tea and a bag of skittles. Eight robberies had taken place there in that area. Of course he was up to something.

Robberies. Not bombings. Nobody was killed. Nobody was maimed. It didn’t even get national attention. But folks were scared and so he had to be stopped.

He’s NOT one of us!!

And now Zimmerman goes free. Trayvon’s parents grieve his death. Sentient people the world over wonder why it happened that way. Racists smugly clutch their guns and try to convince everyone they were right after all. That kid was a thug. He asked for what he got.

But now they can’t stand to look at Bomber Boy on the cover of the Rolling Stone. He looks good. He looks like a boy they’d let their daughter go out with except for the fact he did toss a bomb that killed and injured some people. They had no idea that boy wanted to kill as many of them as he could.

Seeing his picture reminds them of their mistake. They would have defended that boy to the end of the earth. They don’t want to have to look at every young boy like him and wonder if he’s all right.

After all, he isn’t the one you have to watch. He isn’t the one you follow, you harass and arrest.

The black kid with the hoodie, the skittles and the iced tea.

HE”S the one who was ‘up to something,’ right?

And that’s why you killed him. 

Talking About Race: “It’s All So Vexifying…”

I remember it was a warm day and I was sitting in the dog park near my apartment on Camp Street. My dog Molly was running about and I was just sitting there on the fountain thinking and watching Molly play with some other dogs. There weren’t many people in the park and it was kind of quiet and I was just sitting there alone with my thoughts when a young girl came and sat near me.

We didn’t speak for a while. I was lost in my own thoughts as I usually am and she was squirming and kept getting up and down and I remember being mildly irritated as she was disturbing my near meditative state with her fidgeting.

I really hate it when people can’t just sit down and be still. You know, just sit there, be quiet and be still. It makes me feel so much better when I do it that I figure it has to work for other people too but unfortunately, there are those who just can’t sit still.

Anyway, I had my notebook with me as I often do and I was taking notes here and there about the weather, how I felt and what I saw. The girl was young and kind of cute in a frivolous way. She had curly hair, though I didn’t write down what color it was. And she had this kind of irritating nasally loud voice. She had come to the park with a couple who had a dog, but they were far more interested in each other than they were in her and it was obviously pissing her off.

Every once in a while, she would yell something to them or get up and go say something to them and it was plain to see they were trying to ignore her.

But there she was, not too far from me, fidgeting and popping up and down and being loud. I didn’t want to go home yet and there weren’t too many other places to sit so I hoped she would either leave quickly or be quiet. I recall she was looking at me, and that I was wondering what her problem was when she finally said, “Your skin is very pretty.”

I am sure I said thank you. She asked me what I used on it and I told her that I didn’t really use anything, I just kept it clean and wore simple makeup. I was wearing MAC at the time and I told her about the regiment I had been on for a while.

She gave me a strange look and said she had wanted to try MAC, but she couldn’t afford it. I didn’t know what to say to that and so, I didn’t respond. She asked me what I did for a living and I told her I was the public information officer for the housing authority. She didn’t know what that meant and I told her I did public relations. She asked if I had gone to college for that job and I remember being irritated but answered her calmly.

“I went to college but not for that job.”

“Did you graduate?”

“Yes, I did. I have a degree from the University of Miami and I got my Masters from Southern Illinois University Carbondale,” I replied.

“Humph. Well, I didn’t finish college so I suppose I can’t get a job like you did.”

“You can always go back,” I said.

“I haven’t met too many colored people like you,” she said, peevishly.

I turned to look at her.

“What does that mean? And I prefer if you address me as black, if you feel you need to address me by my skin color,” I told her.

“I don’t know too many who went to college or ones that speak like you do or have a high paying job like you do.”

I thought about the bills I pay and chuckled at her assumption I had a high paying job. I also thought if I didn’t answer, she would leave.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to call you people,” she went on.

My hackles began to rise. “You people….” always does it.

“Are you colored or black or Afro whatevers? At least I didn’t call you a nigger like my father always says. I don’t know what I should say.”

“Why does that matter? We all have names. Use them.”

“I suppose now you are all pissed off with me,” she said, “cause I didn’t call you what you wanted me to. This race thing is all so vexifyin’. Ya’ll make it all so hard nowadays. I never know what to say. I was just trying to talk to you.”

And then she got up and left.

I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to go back to my thoughts but she had clearly put a stop to that. I was just a bit angry and wished that she’d been brave enough to continue the conversation but I knew that she had seen that I was mad and she left to escape the cursing out she was probably going to get.

I like to think I’m peaceful and want to teach folks but the truth is, sometimes my temper gets the best of me when I’m around stupid people and I end up just cussing them out. And I was headed for that with her.

I would have liked to explain to her that we were offended and tired of people who saw our skin color and came to all kinds of conclusions about us. Why couldn’t she have sat there and started a decent conversation with me? It was obvious she had some notions that were wrong and hurtful. I would have liked to have straightened that out.

She was angry and resentful and she had brought that out in me as well. I felt bad about that.

I wanted to tell her that college was important no matter who you were or what you did. She needed to know that there are a lot of very intelligent black people who did indeed go to college, who do speak quite well, and who have better jobs than what you usually see in Louisiana.

I remember getting on the streetcar in the morning and seeing the armies of young girls in uniforms going to their jobs as maids in the hotels downtown and in the French Quarter. I thought about all the young black men I saw sweeping streets, bussing tables, shucking oysters and doing otherwise menial jobs.

But I also thought about the past few mayors of New Orleans who were also black men. The lawyers and reporters and instructors that I knew that were black people. The world was changing albeit not as fast as I would have liked.

And yet we still had people who thought like that young girl. There was so much she didn’t know and so much she could have learned if we had talked a little more.

Talking about race really is “vexifyin.” 

What Happened to the Men We Knew and Loved?

Few words bring a chill to a woman’s heart like “Honey, I don’t feel so good!”

For most of us, the thought of having to nurse a sick man is one of the worst things imaginable. Sometimes they are worse than babies.

Consider this -  when a woman gets a cold, she goes to the store and buys some Nyquil and Dayquil and Kleenex and lemons and orange juice. She goes home and has a cup of tea with honey and takes the medicine hoping she will feel better so that she can go to work the next day. It doesn’t occur to her to stay home because of a cold. Work is more important. And for a single woman, there is no choice. She has no other means of support so she has to go to work.

But a guy? He will get a case of the sniffles and will lie in bed, his nose red, his eyes swollen and is suddenly incapable of going to the kitchen to get his own orange juice. He will suddenly become a whining sniveling patient in need of care.

So suddenly, your workload is increased. You have to get up early and get the kids off to school, get ready for work and bring him his tea and orange juice and explain how to take the medicine so that he will feel better. He will look at you and say, “You know I don’t like to take medicine.” That means he wants you to stay home from work and nurse him.

Yes, there are few things in life more awful than having to take care of a sick man.

But it goes deeper than that. Somehow, a lot of men have become as needy as a two year old. Where is that macho Alpha male we kind of like?

He’s become that lazy, whiny, angry pissy ass man that you want to take an iron skillet to. He can’t accept responsibility for anything he does. It’s always somebody else’s fault.

If you catch him cheating with another woman, does he apologize and admit he couldn’t resist and that he was acting like a boy? No.

YOU didn’t dress sexy enough. YOU were too busy with the kids and you didn’t pay attention to his needs. YOU spent too much time at work and you ignored him. YOU didn’t give him sex when he wanted it and the way he wanted it.

It wasn’t his fault. He is a sex addict. He has a behavioral problem.

He didn’t lose his job because he never got there on time or because he refused to take direction. It couldn’t be because he wasn’t working hard enough. It wasn’t because he told off his boss for asking him to do something he didn’t want to do.

“That bastard never liked me. He knew I was smarter than him and he was threatened. He’s a dumb bastard anyway. Why should I work for him?” Or “That bitch hates men. She thought I was going to get her job and she’s a lesbian anyway.”

And if you got tired of his whining, insecure childish ways and left him wow! You were never happy. He couldn’t please you. You nagged and complained all the time. You made too many demands and wanted too much and he couldn’t take it. He was happy with you but he just couldn’t seem to make you happy. You were just a bitch anyway.

It’s never his fault.

Some of my friends and I were talking about sex not long ago. All of us had encountered men who didn’t seem to have a clue about how to please a woman in bed.

“He didn’t know how to kiss. He came at me with this wet mouth like a big fish or something. No technique. It was like he just sucked my face into his mouth and I couldn’t breathe.”

“He was a lazy bastard. He claimed he had a bad back so he only liked it when he could lay there and I had to get on top of him and do all the work while his lazy ass just laid there. Who wants that?”

“He couldn’t find my clitoris if I had painted a big red target on it.”

“The whole thing was over in less than five minutes and all I got out of it was a wet ass and I had to sleep in the wet spot. It never occurred to him that I might want to have an orgasm too. He got his and that was all.”

“I told him what I liked and he just ignored me and did what he liked.”

“He said if I loved him I wouldn’t make him wear a rubber.”

You know what I mean.

They don’t want to take us on dates anymore.

“Why don’t we just hook up?” or “We can just hang out.”

Instead of being a couple, you can be friends with benefits.

All that means is instead of taking you to dinner, they just want you to come over to his place, have some pizza, watch a movie and have sex. You understand there’s no strings, right?

You aren’t the only woman he’s seeing and you are just having fun.

He doesn’t remember your name so you are “boo,” or “princess.” He may even have two or three cell phones so that he can keep all of you compartmentalized.

And you better not ever answer or pick up that phone!

He doesn’t have to woo you or court you or even treat you with any respect. He can call you bitch or ho and you get excited because he seems to like you. You think he’s fun and exciting.

And if you do happen to get pregnant, does he stick around to help you with the baby? Nope. He’s off seeing another woman. YOU got pregnant, so you can handle the kid. He didn’t want a child anyway. (This is the same man who refused to wear a condom when you asked.)

What has happened to men? Where are the big strong masculine fellas that we not only loved but looked up to? We knew those men could make us feel good in bed, they could protect us if we needed it and they loved us.  They used to call us and ask us for dates and bring us flowers and candy and call us baby and sing love songs to us and marry us and help us take care of our children.

They used to care how they looked because they wanted to look good to us. Having sex with us was something they dreamed about and worked hard to get in our favor so that we would say yes. They tried to be charming so that we would want to be with them. They used to look in our eyes and touch our cheeks and we would melt.

They used to be men.

Where did they go? What happened? Will they be back? What do we do in the meantime?

Do they know how much we miss them?

Do they know we loved them?  

Losing You

I knew some white girls who exclusively dated black guys back home. I didn’t think much about it. Since I dated white men, it didn’t matter to me who dated who. I figured it was all good if we just all dated each other and didn’t worry about what color we were.

But I noticed something that did bother me. A few of those girls came from little towns out in the country and once they started dating black guys, suddenly when they talked, they sounded more black than I ever did. What was that all about?

I expected to hear “,,,gurl, let me tell you…” or “….no he didn’t’!” from the black girls I talked to. Not from the white ones.

I finally asked one of them why she felt she had to change the way she talked. She blinked and looked at me like I was stupid.

“Cause I’m with a black guy. I want to sound like what he’s used to.”

“Chile, please,” I said, “if he wanted a black girl, he’d be with one. He’s dating you so I don’t see why you think you have to try to sound like me.”

“Don’t you speak different with the white guys you date?” she asked.

No, I didn’t, I told her.

And I had to think about that one for a while.

As most black people who live in an integrated society must, I did speak two dialects. I always liked to say I am multi-dialectical. Yes, I do speak one way with my black friends and I do speak another in mixed company. It’s not that I am trying to be white or sound white. I recognize that I have never really spoken with the “ebonic” accent many white people assume we all have.

I did, however, have southern parents and I of course learned to speak from listening to them. The way they spoke was comfortable to me and I felt secure with it. But I went to an integrated school and I had white teachers and they made sure I did not say “dem, dose and dat”  I said them, those and that and always have.

I did have a lisp, and truthfully, I still do but I know how to control it. I had years of speech therapy to correct it. Most of the time, my “sss” roll off my tongue effortlessly.  But when I am angry or upset, that “sss” sound does become more of a “th” sound.

My parents were on the job about it too. If my brothers and I got lazy and mispronounced a word, they would stop us and spell the word the way we said it.

Example: “Look, Mom, he’s buck naked….” only it didn’t sound like that.

Mom would glare at me and say, “Buck nekkid? B-u-c-k  n-e-k-k-i-d?? Don’t you know how to speak?”

Or “Ooo, look at that!” Which would sound like “lookadat!” That would really get her goat. She would spell it to Dad who would give us the look and say we sounded like ‘field hands.’

I explained to them that I knew how it was supposed to sound and I knew the right way to say it but if I was at home, I wanted to be able to say it the way that felt like home. I didn’t make those mistakes when I was out and about. When they recognized we did know the difference, they were all right with it. They were concerned that we would be held back in society if we didn’t know how to speak correctly. And so we learned.

I didn’t think much about the way I spoke for years until I was in college. I was having a discussion with a white friend and a black friend came up and I turned to her and spoke to her and then she left. When I looked back at my white friend, he had this look of amazed puzzlement on his face.

“What?” I asked.

“When you turned to talk to her, it sounded like you were speaking a completely different language. I didn’t understand a word you said,” he said, still staring at me with a very strange look on his face.

I hadn’t realized I had done that. It was such a second nature to me that I had never really paid any attention to it. But I became aware of it and knew it was true.

Part of me wanted to say, “You weren’t supposed to understand it.” There was that desire to have a conversation that white people didn’t get. Something of our own, you know.

But what it really was came from a desire to conform and belong. Most of the black people I knew did not speak the way I did. They accused me of being too proper, of putting on airs, of ‘ackin’ white” and other such rubbish. I wasn’t. It was the natural way I spoke.

If I was going to get along with black people, I was going to have to speak the way they did and so I used the dialect I was used to using at home with my parents.

And if I was going to get along with white people, I would have to speak English the way it should be spoken. It’s a fine line that most black people have to walk. Many of us learned when we were young that we had to be multi-dialectical in order to succeed. We had to be able to conform to the crowd we were with.

For some of us, like me, it becomes second nature. We go back and forth all the time without missing a beat.

Look, the way black people talk is rhythmic, musical and colorful. We have a way of describing things that is instantly understandable even if you have never heard the term before. And the way we speak becomes part of the daily lexicon.

Sounding black has become cool. And a white person who uses the terms we do almost always elicits laughter. Remember “Bringing Down the House” with Queen Latifah and Steve Martin? Eugene Levy stole the movie and had us all in hysterics with some of the things he said in scenes with Queen Latifah.

So in that case, for conformity, yes, speaking a different dialect is acceptable.

But I do not change the way I am for the men I date. I speak the way I speak and when I have been with a guy for a while, I have lapsed into my “Sistaspeak” with him. And every one of them has loved it.

They knew it meant that I was comfortable with them and knew I could be me and say whatever I wanted to and I wasn’t making a difference because of them. They took it as a form of acceptance and perhaps it was.

And this goes for this weight thing too. We have gotten in a total kerfuffle about this. Here’s the deal:

Black women are built different from white women. Yeah, we have the same basic equipment, but there are subtle differences. We tend to be a bit rounder than white women. Our thighs are rounder, most often our butts are and we can carry weight better than they can. A black woman can weigh more than a white woman and look just as good as she does.

Now let’s be realistic. There is an epidemic of obesity in our country. Way too many of us are overweight. We love our 72 ounce Cokes, our super size fries and those big Hershey bars.

We do.

Admit it.

Not enough of us like to exercise and we sit at our computers or at our desks at work and we don’t move around like we used to.

You know it’s true.

It’s not just black women who are overweight. White women are too. And yes, black AND white men. So let’s not make this thing all about us because that’s not true.

The truth is we all look better when we are not overweight, regardless of our race or sex. Men like to look at women with a trim waist and long shapely legs. We like to look at men with buffed bodies with a six-pack. So let’s not get our undies in a bundle if someone says he or she prefers us to be in shape. We ALL look better when we’re in shape.

Being fat is not sexy. It’s not attractive and it’s not healthy. Too many black women have let their weight go and still want to slide into a skin tight dress and 6 inch heels and think they should still be able to “pull” the best looking men.

Yes, there are exceptions to every rule but it’s not the norm. Most of the time, the big girls who think they are sex kittens will find that people are laughing at them behind their back. People can be cruel to fat women.

White men like women who make them look good. If a sista wants to date white men, she needs to look good for the one she wants. But mostly, she needs to look good for herself. That’s true no matter who she dates.

But for someone to say that all white men like skinny women and expect for black women to all be skinny is a damn fool. There are a lot of plus sized sistas walking around with white guys who love that big booty more than anything on this earth.

And yes, there are a lot of white men who like skinny athletic women and God bless ‘em. If that’s what he wants and you know that’s not you, pass him right on by. Leave him for the skinny woman.

And trust me, I’ve had more than my share of fat white men drooling at me. No thanks. While I don’t expect all the men to look like Gerard Butler, I am not turned on by men who look like John Candy. At. All. A few extra pounds is fine. Chris Farley is not.

A man who loves you loves all things about you – even the way you speak and especially the way you look. He knows there are things different about black women and it is perhaps because of those things that he loves you.

The biggest mistake a woman can make is to lose herself trying to please a man. Who are you when you are trying to be someone else? You’re not the person he fell in love with and you are not the person you are. You soon become uncomfortable because you are pretending. And you find you are in a relationship that doesn’t work because nothing is real about it.

I realized a long time ago that I had to be me and if that is different, so be it. I was not going to change for anyone. I didn’t care what anyone said. I will speak the way I want. I will dress the way I want. I will move the way I want. I will dance the way I want. I will sing (off key) the way I want.

All those things make me the unique being that I am and you either accept me or you don’t.

It’s all the same to me. 

That Awkward Moment…..

I’d known ever since I first realized that boys were kinda cute. I had dealt with my own demons about it. But no one had ever asked me and I had never actually expressed the fact that I preferred white boys. I just knew I did.

I tried to pretend that I liked a couple of black guys I went to school with. I thought it was what I was supposed to do. Both of them were on the basketball team and they were like the Big Men on Campus and they had their choice of almost any girl they wanted.

I had known one of those boys for years. Our parents had been the best of friends and I suppose they thought we would end up together. Nope. He had his eye on a girl who was much lighter skinned than me and she already had womanly curves and most important – she had “good hair.” She had long thick wavy black hair down to her shoulders that never needed to see a hot comb or a perm kit. No matter that she was dumber than a box of said hair. She had what it takes and I didn’t.

The other boy’s mother thought I was “too dark” for her son and not cute enough. (She regretted that later when I matured.) But it didn’t really bother me. I heaved a big sigh of relief and figured that this was a sign that I should not try to pretend any more. So at that point, I said to myself, “I like white boys.”

I thought about it for a long time. Was I missing anything when I heard other black girls swooning over some guy and saying, “Ooh, damn I love me a chocolate brother!” or “Oooh, that n&*%a is so fine!”

Was there something about black men that was alluring that I was missing? Did my preference set me up to not get along with other black women? I didn’t really have any close friends that were black at that point in my life. I didn’t share their enthusiasm for “bruthas.” And did it make me some sort of “race traitor” because I didn’t like “my own kind?”

Was there something wrong with me?

Over the years, a few people including my mother tried to set me up with guys they thought I would like. I didn’t.

When I left home, I met some other black girls who felt the same way I did. We all preferred white guys. I had never met any other black girls who felt the way I did and it was great. We might have felt like we were different with other black folks, but we were totally comfortable with each other. We didn’t have to explain or say anything. It was all right to like white guys.

One night I was in a bar back in my hometown with friends and one of the guys I grew up with came and sat at the bar next to me. We started talking because we hadn’t seen each other in years. He asked that question that you know is going to preface another question that you probably don’t want to answer: “Can I ask you a question?”

I said yes.

“What did us brothers do to make you hate us? I mean I know we kind of gave you a hard time in high school, but was it enough to turn you against us all forever?”

I suppose it’s simple to always think there is a reason or that you’re turning against something. But that wasn’t it at all. There was no reason. I don’t hate black men. There was nothing political, no cultural or revenge based reason why I like white men. I just do. That’s all. I just do.

I laughed and told him that I just preferred them and that was all. And then I asked why he would ask me since he was married to a white woman himself. I guess it was all right for him.

I went on never really putting voice to it but handily getting out of dating any black men who crossed my path. I am sure all my friends and family knew it but since I didn’t say anything, they didn’t either.

I noticed that some of my white girlfriends were actively dating black guys and seemed happy. But some of them were friendly with black men but never got serious or even considered dating them. So I asked one of my friends why she didn’t. She hemmed and hawed and said that she didn’t want to do anything that would upset her father.

I knew that was a crock. Her father would have been just as pissed if he knew some of the things she was doing with white men and I said that to her. And did that mean her father thought he was better than me? I recalled a conversation I had had with her father a few years before when I went off to college.

While she and I had been friends for years, she had been the one who got pregnant when we were teenagers. She had been the rebellious one who had started drinking and sleeping around with various men. Not me. I had gotten a job and had stayed with it for over 10 years. She had been unemployed just as much as she had been employed. And I went back to college and got my degree. She had dropped out of high school.

He smiled at me one night and said, “There must have been a mistake when you were born.”

I asked what he meant.

“YOU should have been my daughter,” he said.

All this was leading up to the moment when my Mom and I finally brought it out in the open. We were arguing over something and she brought up my only dating white men. She couldn’t see it at all. She grew up in the Jim Crow south and she had had a hard time at the hands of white people. While she had raised my brothers and me to be tolerant, she didn’t like the idea of us dating or marrying outside our race.

I told her I could do whatever I wanted to do.

She said, “No white man is going to marry you. They will sleep with you but they won’t take you home to their parents.”

“Maybe I don’t want to meet their parents. And maybe they won’t care. Everybody isn’t a bigot,” I said.

“They just want to use you,” she persisted. “They will never love you. It will only be sex. You will get hurt and I don’t want that for you. You deserve t be loved. You are loving and sweet and you need a man who will love and cherish you.”

I could have made some comment about how her first husband beat her till she left him and my father cheated on her constantly. I didn’t. Not yet anyway.

But then she said, “Don’t you ever bring me some peckerwood and tell me you are going to marry him. Don’t bring me some zebra kids either.”

I didn’t want to fight anymore so I said, “Fine. When I do get married, I will keep my husband away from you and my little zebra children too. I don’t want any of them infected with your hatred.”

She went to my father in a huff and told him what I had said. He got very angry with her and came to me and said, “Don’t you think for a moment that you can’t come home no matter who you marry. You are my child and I will always accept your choices. Your mother is wrong.”

She grudgingly accepted the fact that if I did get married, it would certainly be to a white man. We never argued over it again.

Years later, I overheard her talking to a family member. One of my cousins was dating a white guy and nobody in the family liked him. He was unemployed and lived in her apartment and was so broke he was wearing her clothes.

My mother said, with some measure of pride in her voice, “My Brenda dates white men but she has never dated any trashy ones. I know I will never have to be ashamed of any man she chooses. She has good taste and she is very classy and I trust her to not embarrass us all like your daughter has.”

Ouch.

Mom took a trip to Scandinavia with some of her friends and she came home telling me about the gorgeous men she had seen there and that I should go there because I’d be sure to find a husband there.

By then she was hinting almost daily that she wanted me to get married and have a granddaughter for her. My brothers had had only boys so far and it was my job to give her that precious little girl she wanted so badly.

“Mama, you trying to set me up with a Viking?”

She grinned and said, “Why not? I need a son in law kind of bad. A Viking will do. Some of those guys are so big and gorgeous! I showed a few of them your picture and they wanted to meet you.”

My Mom, the Matchmaker.