all buttoned up.

Tiny Missionary

I am the child and grandchild of former missionaries.

My maternal grandparents spent a lifetime in Nigeria working to improve agricultural methods, caring for lepers, praying for their neighbors, and spreading the Good News. When we were cleaning out their house we had to figure out what to do with dozens of Bibles, boxes of ancient tracts, and books in languages they used to speak to each other in code. I grew up loving this exotic legacy of piety and perseverance, of colonization and enculturation. I traced the ebony heads on their mantle with my fingers and I imagined my grandma cooking over her open fire. And like most (maybe all) white missionaries to foreign places, they were the both the glorious helper and the colonizer-oppressor in a single person. Onward, Christian Soldier.

To do this work, they sent their children off in small airplanes across the country to boarding schools staffed by strangers. Some of the adults were kind. Some of them had been placed there after being pulled off of "field" assignments for indiscretions. Some of them were cruel. My mom was five when she went off to sleep in a dorm governed by severity and righteousness. There are lots of stories that she told us growing up that made me sad and still make me sad. I am amazed that she was the mother that she was and is given how little she had been mothered.

I knew that my grandparent's service had wreaked havoc on their family of six. Whoever they had intended on saving, it was their children who were left without the net. They are, in some ways, still paying the price for this sacrifice. This too, my legacy.

****

When I was young my parents traveled the world sleeping in the homes of friends, family and strangers. We traveled together with a group of young adults who played guitar, sang choruses and performed at colleges and on street corners.

I loved flying and being with my parents and the attention of the adults that traveled with them. I loved learning how to read in the back seat of a 15 passenger van. I loved meeting children and making friends and the smells and sounds of new places. My sister and I learned how to untangle microphone cords and sing duets with polyester puppets. We learned all the skits and the finer points of miming. Over time the places that we returned to became extensions of our own sense of home and family. We were aces at the wordless book-- a small flip book of colours that stood for the crucifixion and resurrection story and the way to salvation. We were polite and respectful.

When I was six, and just before my parents retired from this part of their lives, we spent several months in India staying with my "Auntie" Tara and "Uncle" Rajah and traveling by train to different parts of the country with bulky sound equipment and a collapsible puppet stage made of PVC pipe. My parents were cultural anthropologists as much as they were street preachers and they tried to participate in the life of the places they traveled to. One of my clearest memories of that time: standing in a group along the edge of a Hindu temple courtyard watching as a man brought in a baby goat to the center. I remember my dad's hand on my face as he turned it away, and I listened to the last bleat of the goat as they slit its throat. We watched the people line up to have their forehead's anointed. I saw mothers holding babies and children my age avoiding the blood on the ground as they waited for their turn. There were marigolds everywhere.

Whatever lesson I was supposed to learn from that day was most likely lost on me. I saw sacred act, surely. These people believed differently but no less fervently than I did. They clearly needed Jesus, but I was unsure if that was my job. Maybe we had washed our hands of them in that moment because they were probably too far gone.

We visited the Sadhu's as well-- these wise men and teachers who held their limbs in impossible positions meditating toward enlightenment. Their eyes were terrifying and their limbs were held up by ropes and withered to nothing. This was curious to me. And otherworldly. I have squeezed my eyes shut and thought about what else I can remember. I see Mother Teresa's Home for The Dying-- but I only see the flat roof and the funeral procession below. I feel myself trying to hide under the chair away all the people wanting to pinch my cheeks. There is more, but it is nothing exciting.I loved it all, though, and would find myself longing to go back. My sister returned for a visit in her early twenties. My auntie Tara came to visit when my boys were young. My love for her transcended the hard line she took on my growing apathy toward regular church attendance.

****

Years later I would be waiting at an intersection in Chicago as a bus pulled away from the corner. A burst of steam rolled up from the vents as I heard the red line pass underneath the street. It was hot and humid. The smell of piss, garbage, and exhaust rolled together with the fried food being sold behind me and it all made me fall back a few steps. I had never smelled or felt something so clearly tied to a time of life that I loved so much as I had in that moment. I started to cry.

****

I joined first grade at my small elementary school in the river valley half way through the year. It is the same school that my nephews and niece now attend. On the first day I thought that someone had broken my Mork and Mindy lunch box and stolen my lunch. But it was someone else's. I cried. I mostly cried because this was hard. I had attended school for a day when we stayed in a college town with friends. The principal had noticed me with my hands in my pockets during the national anthem and had walked to where I was standing and pulled them out in front of everyone. Our friends had told me to run home for lunch, so I had taken off across the field as soon as the bell rang not realizing that it was just time for PE. They brought me back. I cried after I returned to their house a second time and begged to stay home. I imagine my mom recognized the fear and frustration in my face. But now we were home and this was my school and the teacher did not understand my travel journal or my scrapbook. I knew how to read better than most of my classmates, but I did not understand that the pecking order had already been established. She insisted that I had been taught to write my "a"s incorrectly and I turned red at my perceived incompetence.

I would make friends quickly. My dad became a self-employed contractor and built us a playhouse as a replica to our actual house. We pulled it on a trailer in our small town's parade. We were surrounded by family and a community that had watched my dad grow up and supported our family while we traveled. I broke my leg on one of the last days of first grade and had to wear a hip to toe cast for most of the summer. We still lived in service to our neighbors. My parents had not sacrificed their family for their calling. More likely, their family could live in concert with their calling in ways their parents had not been allowed to. My sister and I counted it all joy. There would be more siblings.

****

I told one of my kids that I was applying for a job and he said, "but you already have one. You have lots!" And he listed off the things he sees as he moves through the week. They are "jobs" but they are unpaid. That is not true. I guess I am paid in-kind. They are meetings and hours of volunteering and turning up when I am asked. I am grateful and surprised that he sees any of it and counts it as part of my work. It is my work. My family and this way of showing up is the way that I've reconciled myself to the endless cycle of motherhood and home-keeping. I did well in school. I had potential. What is my lot now? What is my legacy?

It is this and all of the above.

Citizen as Participant

I used to write and hit publish and then go back and fix the typos I swore I had already corrected. I am trying to be more diligent now, but I need a good editor and someone to proofread and then tell me to order my thoughts accordingly. This is an apology to my writer-ly friends who read and cringe and still read. I love you. I am trying.

I came to the United States in the mid 90s on a student visa. It expired with graduation and I decided to stay on a bit longer, working as an occasional nanny and office assistant. My friends were going on tour in the Spring and I could be Merch Girl and then I had a job (maybe?) waiting for me outside of Toronto for the summer. As a student on a Visa, the only legal employer is the institution you are attending. This is the agreement between the government and the private sector and it is a beneficial situation for everyone but the student. The college's wages were exceptionally low-- hovering just around the 4.10/hour minimum wage. There is also a limit to how many hours a student could work and of course, there are no tips or bonuses. My fellow international students coveted these on-campus jobs, but we also realized that we were getting the shaft. Our American classmates were waiting tables, valeting, and working in coffee shops. They were answering phones for ad agencies and lawyers. They had access to places we did not and wasn't it enough that we were afforded an opportunity to study in America? Our earning potential was bureaucratically cut.

It was a big city and a kid could easily work for cash and lots of students did. We were fresh faced and bound by a strict code of conduct by our college. Who wouldn't want us shuttling their kids to Hebrew school or fixing weeknight dinners? Is there such thing as being a "little bit illegal"? We worked for bank execs and house sat for philanthropists and politicians.

I have been thinking about this time as someone who is a permanent resident but not currently a citizen. What would it take for my permanent residency to become temporary? A traffic ticket? Maybe a series of them? An arrest during a civil demonstration? Perhaps an eviction? I was told that even if people are cleared of their felonies or misdemeanors that trigger deportation orders, "it will be the civil shit that gets you if you catch them on a bad day". These are within the realm of possibility in my circle, if not immediately personal. The cost of living has skyrocketed, with housing and gentrification leaping to precariously high levels every year. We are, as a family, two or three house payments away from "uh-oh" if we were to lose our ability to earn money. I'm not black so "driving while black" is not a problem I contend with, but maybe it would be by proxy during the times I stop to bear witness to law enforcement pulling over or detaining my Black and Brown neighbors. I am protected by my Whiteness, my access to my community, and my willingness to submit to respectability. I blend in. I am fine. I am probably fine.

I ended up in Ontario late that Spring, working for a rose breeder digging at the still frozen ground while renting a room from an Irish woman who loved listening to charismatic preachers and tut-tutting my late night phone calls to Paul.

****

My aunt sent me this after I asked her to help with a specific date: 

Your Dad’s grandparents Katherine & Wilhelm Fehdrau came to Canada from the Ukraine in 1909.  The village they lived in was a [German} Mennonite village called “New Samaria.” They travelled by sea and arrived in Montreal and then took train to Saskatchewan.  While on their ocean trip your  Grandmother Helen (who an infant 3 months old) became very ill and the ship crew told her Mom it would be best to throw her baby overboard and our Grandmother said, “That will not happen until I see her dead in my arms.”  This was the story my Mom (your grandmother) told me.  Hope this the information you wanted. 

She is the keeper of the family history for my dad's side of the family. She does not let things get wishy-washy like they so often do in family histories, with truth and myth running into each other. She told me that my paternal grandfather was born in Kansas, as was his father, shortly after the family had also sailed from the Ukraine.

I have been thinking a lot about becoming a citizen and what that might mean in my family's own legacy of migration. I understand the urge that some people feel when they come to the United States to become a citizen right away so that they can fully participate in a place that they are coming to love. I do not love this country, so that would be tricky. I do not love any country. But I do feel like participation as a citizen is a primary part of the resistance.

I do not know where I will land on this. I am concerned at cutting off my own children's options. And yet I want to throw my entire weight-- systemically and physically-- against the mounting waves of anxiety and real-life threats to our neighbor's safety. Tonight, there was a rumor that ICE police were stopping busses in outer areas in our county and asking people for paperwork.  We fear Islamic Extremists who storm buildings separating people out by sect or clan. I just... This is out of a dystopian movie. This cannot really be happening. It is only a rumor and yet we believe it because everything seems within the realm of possibility in this time.

It is happening.

****

I was fixated on the Holocaust as a child. Mostly, I was fixated on the idea that Germans blithely and fervently followed fascism to it's awful end. I was German! Did this mean these were my people? Well. Yes. They are all of our people:

The men and women who reportedly handcuffed small children and the elderly, separated a child from his mother and held others without food for 20 hours, are undoubtedly "ordinary" people. What I mean by that, is that these are, in normal circumstances, people who likely treat their neighbors and co-workers with kindness and do not intentionally seek to harm others. That is chilling, as it is a reminder that authoritarians have no trouble finding the people they need to carry out their acts of cruelty. They do not need special monsters; they can issue orders to otherwise unexceptional people who will carry them out dutifully.

If you are unmoved by any of this... It does not really matter how you might have thought or hoped this would all turn out, I am willing you to decide that the impact is not worth the blood you will have on your hands.

Our friend, Andrea, bought us the book Good People Everywhere by Lynea Gillen. We read it often and I hold out hope that those Good People really are Everywhere.

And All That Was Left Was His Love

The church I grew up in did not sing gospel music, per se, but more contemporary types of praise music mixed in with hymns... Um, choruses? They were often performed slightly off tempo thanks an abundance of acoustic guitar and hand percussion. They'd best be compared to camp songs if you'd like the non-theistic version. So it is not that music, but the music that I heard on Sundays in college and in my dorm room (thanks to my roommate) that I find myself humming in the shower and dancing to across the living room. I started listening to gospel music again when the babies were little and we had left church-going for good and I needed the comfort that gospel music brought to my spirit--words and melodies that mixed up hope and love and folk religion all together and unapologetically. 

The boys give me a lot of side eye over this.

It is deserved.

And... somewhere else inside of me wonders if these words and melodies will fill them or render some familiarity as they grow up and leave. They will be part of the "unchurched" and yet-- church-- in all its cultural significance, will be a part of who they are: showing up for their neighbors, singing, dancing, believing in the power of love to heal trauma and move us forward.

****

Someone I love reminded me of this:

There is always something to do.
There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well.
And while I don't expect you to save the world I do think it's not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.

Nikki Giovanni

****

There is a good chance that my family will be caught up in one way or another in the horror of this world of brash Executive Orders. It's a world that preys on people's fear and takes no account of the real human toll. What will you do when your neighbors do not return home from picking up their children from school? Oh. Maybe you don't have *those* kinds of neighbors. I do. But never mind. Will you notice when there's no one left to cook the food at your favourite restaurant? What happens when you can no longer find produce at the grocery store? What will give you pause? When academics are deported? Do they have to look white? Do good things? Live properly? How many parking tickets are they allowed to have? What if their children get free lunch at school?

Wait. Mine do. Should that make a difference?

****

I grew up in a river valley. The water had been drained and dammed and the now fertile farmland was parceled out by The Crown to settlers. I grew up on land stolen from the indigenous river people that was offered to those colonizers-- those refugees from Europe-- in exchange for their agricultural expertise and piousness. My grandparents worked hard. They were marginally successful. But only marginally. They owned a small dairy farm and my great grandmother lived in a back bedroom my grandpa added on for her. When my dad was a toddler, he contracted Polio. My grandpa prayed the prayer of Hannah from the Old Testament, and beseeched God to spare my dad's life. He survived, just as the barren Hannah gave birth to Samuel. When my dad announced that he was going to Bible School and then out into the world, my grandparents gave him their blessing, knowing that this was the promise they had made their God years prior.

You see, it was all "blessing": blessed with health, land, opportunity to succeed or fail, opportunity to be successful after failure. These are the stories that we get to tell ourselves when we equate the fortune of privilege with the notion of unearned blessing-- or worse: We work hard, we will always be rewarded.

My dad now works in company with his indigenous neighbors seeking to reconcile the sins of our forefathers.

It all comes around if you let it come at all.

****

Families in Fear: The Atlanta Immigration Raids

Experts in the Field-- an Essay by Bonnie Nadzam. This is a brave and beautiful piece by someone I know to be the same. Her truth telling is powerful and uncomfortable. I am horrified and I am amazed and I vow to be believe people when they show me who they are.  

What I really want to say is that all of these things happened to me, that none of it was okay, that I didn’t deserve any of it, and that I have nothing to be ashamed of.  But the truth is it has all diminished me, silenced me, terrified me, and shamed me. We know, don’t we, that men, especially those in positions of power, try to hurt, tame and control what they fear, and cannot or will not try to understand. And we trust that women, individually and especially together, are tremendously powerful.  If ever there was a time to disregard those who won’t believe our stories, now is the time to speak very plainly about the behavior of those men who assume we’ll be swept away by their poetry, or politics, before we understand what’s happened. Says James Baldwin: “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim…she has become a threat.”

 

Give More Give Everything Give Blood

I have Mary Tyler Moore episodes on my split screen right now. You Tube, you are the devil, but sometimes you come through beautifully.

Paul bought me season 1-3 of "Rhoda" for one of our first Christmases together.

We met at a hardcore show in the basement of a Food Not Bombs building in Champaign, IL in the winter of 1999. We hung out briefly after the show at his big, gross, party house and he bagged on Canada and I bagged on the size of the semi-ironic (but not so much) wolf painting on his wall. He was intent on moving to Alaska to study wildlife and meet someone that looked like the folksinger, Jewel, and I was intent on finishing up a degree that had become burdensome. He started showing up in Chicago to my perfect one bedroom apartment in Uptown, that I shared with 1-3 roommates.

I was a total mess in the dating department. My missteps don't bear repeating to anyone but my own daughter, save to say that this was different and after a few false starts I threw myself into the whole thing with gusto. We got married in a fever.

We looked impossibly young and doughy and I do not know why we thought we had what it took to make it through. Scratch that-- we probably did not have what it took but we got it together anyway. He reminded me that we were both too stubborn to be talked out of anything. Looking at pictures from that time make me cringe. Those were good days, those were not good days.

****

He works from home in what used to be the Sisters' Chapel. His desk faces the big stained glass window. The room is long and narrow (it's the original front porch) and it is the only space with wall-to-wall carpet. We replaced the eternal flame-- a hardwired lamp with no off switch-- with an outlet. He shares the room with our beta fish, Dorito, and a second hand couch. Truly sneaks in with her book and her cardboard box "car" when he's not on the phone. The dog parks himself under his feet. He starts working before the rest of us are awake. He works part-time on the weekends as part social experiment/part bill paying mechanism.

He grew up as an only child. So, sibling dynamics are not a lived experience he gets to draw on. I did not imagine my life would be like this, but I could conceive of it. He did not imagine, could not conceive, and I think most of our friends wonder why he hasn't packed it in ages ago over all of this. "Packing it in" is not really his thing. He loves each of our kids so completely. He is constantly thinking of ways to get them the tools they are going to need to thrive.

I don't know why I am writing about him or us today, and it feels self-indulgent and a little weird. He puts other people first all of the time. He is impatient, but stuffs it down because that's what is best for the room. We've only been married 17 years, but they've been full and sometimes difficult. And mostly I want to acknowledge how good he is to us and for us and to me and for me. He doesn't have to be and he is. That's the crux of it, really-- all of us do not have to show up or be good or show kindness, but we can choose to do it and sometimes that is The Work we are asked to do. He is a quiet activist, moving through the world in genuine service to others, with no reciprocal expectation. 

****

Today would have been Trayvon Martin's birthday. Many, many young, black men have lost their lives in protection of white fragility. But Trayvon and Tamir and others like them, loom large in my mind. Paul and I are letting our kids move out into the world without us. The voice of the oldest changed over night. My 9 year old is often mistaken for years older, in spite of his small stature. This is not a unique phenomenon. My 8 year old could take a grown man out if provoked. We practice mindfulness techniques and hug a lot. I wonder who will provoke him and I have waking nightmares over the consequences.

****

Black Boys Viewed as Older, Less Innocent Than Whites: “Children in most societies are considered to be in a distinct group with characteristics such as innocence and the need for protection. Our research found that black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent"

The High Cost of Being Black in Multnomah County This should leave you in a puddle of rage. There is a neighborhood I walk through often and sometimes I choose to walk in the street because the sidewalk is so littered with phlegm and spit from people doing their marathon training/morning run/stroller jog. Can someone request a "spit sting" in this impeccably manicured neighborhood, I wonder?

"What is surprising is the unexpected, little-discussed daily experiences of black residents who are more likely to be slapped with violations for things that white people rarely even think of as violations.

• Spitting in public? Black people were charged at 27 times the rate of white residents.
• Failing to cross the street at a right angle? Fifteen times the rate of whites.
• Jaywalking? Eight and a half times the rate of whites.
• Walking in the road? Five and a half times the rate of whites.
• Littering? Nearly four times the rate of whites."

Speaking of Protecting Whiteness: Please read about Carolyn Bryant. I think... I think it's hard to think of this as not anomalous. As in, she did this horrible thing, but it was a one-off thing. It's not though. It's not a one-off. White women and white men lie to cover their own sense of entitlement all of the time. I see it in my kids' schools, we see it on the bodycam footage of police officers, we see it at the highest offices of our country. And we pay for it in blood.

Translator/Notes From a Heretic*

 

(Baby Melissa)

_{^{*you come here for the profanity, yes?}}

Hi Danielle!

After you left the other morning I picked up T at preK, set her up with food and toys and sat down to read your book. I have set my mind to reading (at the cost of housekeeping) as an act of self-care and revolution. Two birds down. And I decided that I liked you so much, that I needed to read the book right away to make sure I was on the right track.

I have not read a book meant for a "Christian" audience in many, many years. At this point in my life I read it the same way I read a book meant for Budhists or Muslims or any other faith system I do not necessarily ascribe to, but I still value. Which, I think maybe we should all do often. 

This book-- these essays of yours-- were exactly what I thought they would be: uncomfortable, relatable, beautiful. Living in concert with refugees or sitting with poverty or claiming it as shared struggle, is something of a Great Reckoning this country will surely face. It should not be left for teenage missionaries or 20 something optimists or tenuously connected non-profits to turn the concept of loving our neighbor into a collective reality. Your upbringing was different than mine, but similar in its earnestness and guiding principles. I twitched reflexively when you write about matching t-shirts and Vacation Bible School fliers and I see myself in Chicago or Vancouver or Kansas City. I'm15 years old, intent on my own willingness to make things better, but blind to some of its absurdity. For what it's worth-- I always like the "doing" projects more. Cleaning? Yes. Digging holes or pouring cement or clearing empty lots? Yes. That spoke to the work that no one wanted to do. That spoke to selflessness and kindness. The rest had always been uncomfortable.  

When I had signed up to volunteer with the refugees, I immediately noticed the harried and dazed looks of the sweet-souled people who worked for this charity organization. They were in over their heads. As it would turn out, the Somali Bantu were some of the least successfully acclimated refugees the United States had attempted to resettle. When I met them, fresh out of a decade or so of awaiting thrie fates in refugee camps, many of them had never used a light switch or indoor plumbing, or even climbed stairs. I saw the shock of America through their eyes, and it was very sobering indeed. When I went into the non-profit office to sign up to help, it was not yet clear how difficult it would be to force these resilient and stricken families to assimilate in a culture still besotted with manifest destiny....

...It's amazing how much I didn't know, how to this day there is still so much left in the gray. But from the moment I met them, I knew at once that they were not immigrants hewing closely to the origin story we like to tell about ourselves and our country. These were individuals who had been forced by unbelievable trauma to leave everything behind. As Warsan Shire, the Somali poet writes: "no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark / you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well." The Somali Bantu refuges I met were polite, they were grateful, they were intent on surviving. But they were not happy to leave their country, fraught as it might have been. I wonder if right from the moment they stepped on the ground, they sensed it: the American dream had no place for them. And yet, here they were.

You detail the ways in which your work changed, the ways that showing up seemed to matter more than any other metric, and your own rationalizing of the Gospel as you understood it to be, toward the Gospel as you wanted to live it. When you were over we were talking about racial equity work and the responsibility of White People to recognize their own Culture. I mentioned how far I had seen people move when they 1. were in relationship with others who they did not share a common past with 2. allowed themselves a pass to get it wrong one or one hundred times and to feel the shame and then move through. You asked if I thought this was possible for Christians.

You said that your publishers mentioned you missed the mark on the general Christian audience but that "nice church ladies" were receptive. I think I know why. First, I think that church ladies were relieved to hear that maybe by cooking and sharing meals and going about their business in their professions or by being involved in their communities, that maybe they can dig deep into living in faith without the burden of proselytizing. Perhaps living their best lives and building relationships within their circles of influence was the way they could Show Up and Show Love. I think women have seen this side of what The Church is capable of for a lot longer than men. They have often missed the mark, but they know it's there. This is not the way of the church though, and so congregants continue to sit in fear, paralyzed by the belief that they are being singularly persecuted, and lay no claim to the role of persecutor. And I think you missed the mark with the rest because they are not ready to claim their stake in this mess. They are not ready to calculate how ignoring social and racial justice is costing them our shared humanity.

When I listened to the impassioned speeches on the National Mall from my couch in Portland, I heard what I wished I heard from the pews I spent years sitting in. Tamika Mallory spoke/preached:

I came here to address those of you who say you are of good conscience, to those of you who experience a feeling of being powerless, disparaged, victimized, antagonized, threatened and abused. To those of you who, for the first time, felt the pain that my people have felt since they were born here with chains shackled on our legs. Today I say to you, welcome to my world. Welcome to our world. I stand here, as a black woman, a descendant of slaves, our ancestors, literally nursed our slave masters. Through the blood and tears of my people we built this country. America cannot be Great without me, you and all of us who are here today. Today you may be feeling aggrieved, but know that this country has been hostile to its people for a long time. For some of you, it is new. For some of us, it is not so new at all.

Point me in the direction of her church.

And here is your gift, I think. You are a translator. You speak in a language that people in churches understand. This is the work of this book for all of us, regardless of our belief systems-- to explain what is lost by not showing up, what we have missed, not giving ourselves a pass, not opening ourselves up to the idea that we may not have a corner on the Whole Truth Market. We need to be reminded to care about the deepest parts of our shared humanity. I don't know how in the WORLD, so many people are standing by and letting a literal monster take a part this corner of the free world. But they are. And folks like you can explain how and why we should care.

I told Paul after you left how I believe that Jesus lived in a constant state of conflict-- he didn't seem to mind. People were always telling him to be respectable. Build capital. Abandon this quest to love the dying people and the sex workers and the homeless. I wonder if churches spent less time wrestling with their internal conflicts, misunderstandings, and finer points of theology, and spent more time digging in to the work of showing up, might they come closer to being what he was all about.

"If the Church the same Zero Fucks that Jesus did about existing within conflict, I'd think about going back". He said we should get that on a t-shirt.

You may want to rethink this friendship.

And then you wrote:

If I were a person of mercy, I would treat each student like a prophet, reverent and grateful. I would not be so hopeless; I would not write this all out. I would hide the beautiful flame that flares up and then hovers, nearly extinguished. It would not feel like the world is an endless river, that all I can do is sit on the shore and touch the bodies as they float on past.

***

My friend and I were discussing the admonishments she was receiving from friends/acquaintances asking her to tone down our rhetoric around the women's march or liberal ideologies on social media. They were from men who she knows through her work as a preacher and a teacher. They are hung up on abortion and a woman's agency (or lack thereof) over her own body. She herself works at a Direct Service organization as a case manager. Her clients are the very people who have run out of places to go to for help. How does that work? Take a seat gentlemen.The paltry safety nets we offer do not even come close to meeting the needs of the mothers and the babies that we so desperately convinced them to have.

Oh, see, I took a quick detour. But I hope you're following. You are allowed in places I don't have any desire to enter. You can see the real crimes we are committing while the church argues in circles with itself. You have the gift of generosity and kindness. You can, like my wonderful friend, argue the apologetics and the technicalities of love. You can translate the cost that we are paying into terms the people will understand. You have already started.

See you soon,

M

***

DL Mayfield's book is here: Assimilate or Go Home

Please check out what it takes to get into this country as a refugee from Syria or Somalia. Think about your children. Your cousins. Your brothers and your sisters. Ask yourself what you would do if there were in a place so ravaged and wrecked, they may not survive. Then ask your government officials to do better. They can and they are choosing not to. We will be on the wrong side of history on this one.

White, Conservative, Christian Friend, I Wish You Really Were Pro Life  (When you google John Pavlovitz's name, "John Pavlovitz False Prophet" is one of the prompts. We should all be so lucky.)

Begin throwing money at your local Refugee Resettlement Organizations (google one in your neighborhood) and legal defense funds/legal aid folks who aid those at risk of deportation. The reckoning is coming, friends. It has already begun.

Briefly: On Fades and Belonging

I took A to the barbershop today. We have given up taking all of the kids together. While this system worked for a little while, "worked" would be the operative word. The boys would arrive home, lined up and fresh, with a side of emotional abuse as I had just spent an hour or two threatening and cajoling as they flipped flopped their bodies on top of the leather sofa and plastic chairs and begged me for my phone or the receptionist to change the channel to Cartoon Network.

Other children could flip and flop. I do not care. My children will not. Other children here don't have white moms. Mine do. The sidelong glances are not for my boys. They are for me.

So, we take the kids in pairs or alone now, in part because it's much faster and in part because I realize that the boys do not enjoy the specter of the multi-racial adoptive family dynamic. I think I've established that discomfort has become part my life's work, but I'm certain that none of my children have come to the same conclusions. The people that work there show the boys kindness but focus their conversations on the other adults in the room. I used to wonder why they didn't talk to the kids unless they were correcting them or giving them a lecture on hair care. I soon realized that this was exactly what my kids preferred and any insincere small talk or effusive banter would demonstrate that my kids didn't really belong there. The head nods and the going-about-the-business of the haircut is what my kids are after. This is not to say that fondness or familiarity has not grown over the years. We routinely check in on each others families and side hustles and the general state of the neighborhood. But it is the wordless nods and hop into the chair that I think my boys desire the most. The less I say, the better for them. They do not want to be the center of anyone's attention when they move through Black spaces. They just want to be in them, quietly, belonging.

A crosses the room, jumps in the chair, and asks for a fade but pleads for him to leave it extra long on top. They both look at me for approval

We love our barbers and we've been going there since August was a baby. It has been a neighborhood presence for many years and the building and the business are both owned by a former NBA player and Portland resident. His son pops in after work. People roll through all day saying hello. It sits on a street that was rebranded in the mid-2000s to appeal to the heart of "new" Portland. It is now an "arts district". Galleries, pot shops, food trucks, and expensive coffee places squeeze out the Black barber shops, the corner stores, the taquerias and the social service agencies. The only Black owned club on the long stretch of businesses is threatened by the city and the Liquor Commission with curfews and fines. I realize my barber drives in from across the river to come to work. The people lining up behind us are coming in from the suburbs and East County. I sit by the window and watch groups of people walking by with artisanal ice cream dressed as parodies of themselves. They glance quickly into the glass doors and look away. I wonder if they are surprised. The stores they've been into don't hire people who grew up in this neighborhood.

I secretly hope that they choke just the tiniest bit on their delicious, delicious waffle cones.

Like me, these people are threatening the spaces my children feel most comfortable in-- the places they feel the most belonging. It will continue to happen. Our part of town is one of the most rapidly gentrifying spaces in this country over the last 15 years. I lament what we thought we had, while recognizing we have tacitly helped to bring about its demise.

A hops off the chair. Smiles big. He left it long enough on top.

****

With the arrival of this new age of recklessness around vulnerable peoples, I came back to this story published last year by our local weekly--"It was insistent, a worm eating through my heart: Good intentions aren't enough. I was living out another page in the history of a state that has accepted outsiders reluctantly." I Moved to Edge of Portland... By DL Mayfield

Growing Up White "I don't have a checklist," he says, "but if I did, it would sound something like this: If you don't have any close friends or people who look like your kid before you adopt a kid, then why are you adopting that kid? Your child should not be your first black friend."

If you feel deeply around family and what that means, go ahead and make sure you've seen the Closure Documentary. And then head over to Angela Tucker's page the Adopted Life to listen and watch brave and beautiful adoptees describe life in their own terms.

It Seems Like Blessings Keep Falling in My Lap

Selective memories are easier to edit.

****

Lea and Laura send us all the voicemails and emails people leave for the Strangers podcast. Perhaps not all-- we don't get any really angry ones, and my guess is that those exist. I haven't asked.

The messages that people leave usually tell a part of their own story and how ours relates to or resonates with them. I am humbled and moved by all of them, but especially by the ones that talk about the kids and the way that they are interpreting the world. A man who spent his childhood in foster care after his siblings had been adopted and learned how to code switch between lifestyles, talked about listening to the oldest boys and feeling old anxieties creep back in. A woman wrote about growing up as the only biological child of a family that ebbed and flowed in numbers and existed amidst a lot of chaos. And so, hearing Sam's small voice, she could not believe she was his age when she faced so much confusion. The best part of these stories is that no one takes a congratulatory tone about either Paul or I or J because, I think, they know that this situation is fraught. And that none of us know the ending to this story.

We just want it to be okay. Not perfect. Not magical. Just okay.

I know that I keep writing about this. I don't think I can speak it into the record enough.

****

I have been reading the "Mis-Education of the Negro" by Carter Godwin Woodson. I think this should be required reading for every educator, every NGO and Non-Profit or Direct Service Provider, every Sunday School teacher, every preschool teacher... Everyone. It was published in 1933 which put me off, because I am lazy and a snob and I wondered if reading something so old would be at all relevant. I am, of course, foolish and I have spent good chunks of the last few days yelling quotes at Paul and rolling off the couch screaming at its accuracy. He could have written it about my kids' school. It could have been written about the Women's March.

As a matter of fact, however, such Negroes are the real workers in carrying out a program of interracial effort. Cooperation implies equality of the participants in the particular task at hand. On the contrary, however, the usual way now is for the Whites to work out their plans behind closed doors, have them approved by a few Negroes serving nominally on a board, and then employ a White or mixed staff to carry out their program. This is not interracial cooperation. It is merely the ancient idea of calling upon the "inferior" to carry out the orders of the "superior....

....This unsound attitude of the "friends" of the Negro is due to the persistence of the mediaeval (sic) idea of controlling underprivileged classes. Behind closed doors these "friends" say that you need to be careful in advancing Negroes... You can never tell when some Negroes will break out and embarrass their "friends". After being advanced to position of influence some of them have been known to run amuck and advocate social equality or demand for the race the privileges of democracy...

Oh, democracy. And the right to assemble. Imagine if 500,000 people of colour had assembled on the Mall? Would the white voice be so complimentary? The right to vote and The Voter Rights Act being challenged in states across this nation. Our very electoral college meant to keep every vote from registering.

He also details the educational systems set up for Black children after the end of the civil war. Slaves had been emancipated "out of a sectional conflict out of which their former owners had emerged as victims". So the freed men could not expect any help or cooperation from their neighbors and had to rely on philanthropic northerners to come in and set up schools. While arguments over what kind of educational systems needed to be set up (vocational or classical) erupted, the generations of teachers to follow (while sincere in their mission) had no idea of the culture of their students or the trauma they had come from. And so, neither educational model served them well, as their teachers from the north were either uncredentialed or inexperienced to train them classically, and their vocational schools were set up with such inferior equipment to those programs in White schools, Black students were trained in methods already obsolete.

If you have any understanding of urban public school districts who serve poor or Black or Brown children, as an employee, parent, community member or student, you will probably be able to draw up half a dozen of your own parallels. 

You see why I'm screaming over this.

As I was reading it out loud to Paul, my white brain cringed every time I had to say the word Negro out loud. I changed it to "Black Student" for the benefit of my kids that kept walking through the room. But, let's be really honest, it was mostly to abate my own discomfort saying it over and over again. If you listened to the Eula Biss podcast, you will remember her saying this:

We can’t — I think if you can’t talk about something, you can’t think about something. And I think — I’ve worked with students who could barely, barely let themselves think, they were so scared of thinking the wrong thing.

And so, I don’t want to be misunderstood as making an argument for offensive language. But I guess the argument that I’m making is that I think that we need a cultural atmosphere where we understand where the crimes are happening, and that many of the crimes are not in the arena of language, but that we need to be able to stumble through imperfect language and imperfect sentences in order to find our way to where the crimes are happening.

So, I'm asking us collectively, to give ourselves the permission to think all of the things. It is vital to entertain multiple perspectives at once and look at the lines you've drawn in the sand, and ask yourself who that line benefits most clearly. If you believe that we are living in a post-racial society and that I am making something out of nothing, do you see the crimes, the oppressed, the forgotten? If you believe that you are a good citizen who places yourself in solidarity with the other, can you show me where the crimes are happening even there? Let these thoughts shake down to your bones and take up residency in your marrow. 

****

Black Students Don't Even Get an Equal Education in Diverse Schools-- “If you go to the schools in our district, it looks like utopia. And if you’re a white student, it is utopia.” A parent at a birthday party was commending our decision to send our children to our neighborhood school-- not because it was the right thing to do, but because she's heard "it's a good school". My question to that is always, "good for whom?" This is so prevalent in even the most progressive communities.

Obama's Racial Legacy "If Obama's blackness mussed up white folks' notions of the presidency and their relationship to it, his blackness also complicated the ways black folks critiqued the White House."

Written on Friday, January 20. For My Friends. (That means you)

One of my dearest, oldest friends sent me a text today: "how has this day been for you?"

The answer is easy and not easy. It is not very much different than any of these dark days. I am resolved to resist better, interrupt more directly, and surface all of the things that make it difficult in small and big ways to be anything other than a CIS gender, able bodied, white person in this country. I'm scared. A little. I was scared before, though, so I guess that is not new to today. I also went to Costco, visited my youngest sons' school, took Truly and her best friend out for their nearly shared birthday, and made dinner for my family. Easy.

****

I spent tonight listening Eula Biss speak about Whiteness. She begins (the unedited version of) the interview by responding to a question about her multi-racial, extended family. She pauses and pushes back because she resists characterizing her family as being unusual or unique as somehow authorizing her to speak about race. It is as if being White in this country might mean you've been de-racialized. "You are nothing" and so unable to speak deeply and consciously about hard things. Plus, her family is not that unusual. So many of our families are made up of families that criss-cross cultures, generations and races. I am in this uncomfortable position often and it resonated deeply: My children are the reason that I listen and learn and write about race. They are. They are not. My relationship to adoption and it's complications are the reason that I listen and learn and write about adoption. It is. It is not. This responsibility falls on me because I'm a citizen of this place... because I'm White. Because, as she says, I carry a debt that I have not paid.

I am seeing a trend in lots of published writing: Whiteness as Expert on Race Relations Because Whiteness Adopted a Black Son or Because Whiteness Has Black Husband or  Because Whiteness Chooses Diversity. Whiteness is Doing The Work Because They Have Skin in the Game. We are looking for voices we relate to who can translate this work, and we've authorized them to speak because they come with these shaky credentials. I have a surprise for you, friends. We all have skin in this game. We all have shaky credentials. Some of us have none at all. We all need to dig in. Your proximity to Blackness will certainly strengthen your work, but lack of it does not negate your responsibility to do it.

We care about getting this right and sometimes we don't go in because we know we are not doing a very good job. It is embarrassing. It is not for the risk averse. Worse, we stop learning and critiquing because some of us think we have it sorted out. With the resolve of the last few years, I have lost a few friends (I'm sure) and I've probably lost potential friendships. The latter might be more difficult for me to reconcile because I value my reputation. Folly, to be sure. Better though-- I have regained friendships that I thought were gone and developed deep and abiding connections with people that I had only admired from afar. This work, however bumbling or inadequate, is the gift.

****

White Debt in the NYT By Eula Biss (Wherein she speaks about Little House on The Prairie, Home Ownership, Baldwin and then delivers a gentle Face Ripping Worthy of the Ages)

...I asked myself what the condition of white life might be. I wrote ‘‘complacence’’ on a blank page. Hearing the term ‘‘white supremacist’’ in the wake of that shooting had given me another occasion to wonder whether white supremacists are any more dangerous than regular white people, who tend to enjoy supremacy without believing in it. After staring at ‘‘complacence’’ for quite a long time, I looked it up and discovered that it didn’t mean exactly what I thought it meant. ‘‘A feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one’s achievements’’ might be an apt description of the dominant white attitude, but that’s more active than what I had in mind. I thought ‘‘complacence’’ meant sitting there in your house, neither smug nor satisfied, just lost in the illusion of ownership. This is an illusion that depends on forgetting the redlining, block busting, racial covenants, contract buying, loan discrimination, housing projects, mass incarceration, predatory lending and deed thefts that have prevented so many black Americans from building wealth the way so many white Americans have, through homeownership. I erased ‘‘complacence’’ and wrote ‘‘complicity.’’ I erased it. ‘‘Debt,’’ I wrote. Then, ‘‘forgotten debt."

On Being Interivew with Eula Biss This is... I mean. If you haven't started, this is a good a place as any. Especially if you are scared of what Anti-Racism work looks like in parenting.

Why I'm Skipping the Womens March on Washington By Jamilah Lamieux --Marching feels compelling to so many of us. I get that. I also get why it does not. (Please throw some of your yarn money at the ACLU):

Of course, much of the post-election news cycle was dominated by White folks wringing their hands: How could this happen?Why did it happen? There was lots of weeping and wailing from women who could get the answers to those questions by simply asking their relatives, friends and partners who put Trump in power. 

And finally... This episode from StoryCorps about the price that most of us will never be required to pay. I have listened to it twice and each time I am struck by the same questions: What is the very least that I can do? Am I doing the very least? What does it mean to risk more?

 

Monday, January 16 2017

We are all wearing a little thin on this,The National Day of Service. The kids have attended school only a handful of days since the beginning of December. They just called another Snow/Ice Day for tomorrow. We do math problems at the dinner table and I assign people for them to study: Assata, Sojourner, Malcom, Huey. I think that this is what we should try to do every weekend. I put Grace Lee Boggs and Yuri Kochiyama on my list. I hope that they will teach me more than I will teach them. They'll pack food bags later and I beg them as a gift to me and this day, to just be kind to each other. Please.

I read about what Mrs. Obama might attempt to do when she becomes a private citizen. "Open a window on her own without permission" is at the top of the list. I am grateful for what she put herself through the last 9 or more years. I realize that she will continue to pay for the privilege of her husband's office for many more years. I aspire to be as strong and committed as she is to her family and to her work. I cannot imagine the responsibility. I also struggle to come up with a plan for dinner. So, it seems like I have a long row to hoe.

I am grumpy and frustrated with the carelessness that the boys carry through the house. They drop things they're finished with at their feet and step over them to go into the next room. They leave cheese on the table, pee in the toilet, and lights on in empty rooms. One says "I hate you" and the other responds quickly with the same. I wonder how those words come out of their mouths so easily. I know that I'm not good enough or kind enough in any of these moments. I am better at my sewing machine or in front the computer or scrubbing the toilet, or really-- anywhere else-- but right in the middle of doing this.

****

I cleaned out our bookshelves and sorted through all of the many, many children's books we own. I pulled out everything. I separated the books into stacks: white protagonists, non-white protagonists, non-human protagonists. Then I pulled and sorted until the stacks looked more equal. They were still lop-sided, but better. Representation matters. (I am reminded that Augie's whale/stingray/turtle phase was really long.)

Next to the Kadir Nelson favourites and our growing Christian Robinson collection, I stack up: Chicken Sunday, Patricia Pollaco; Everybody Cooks Rice, Norah Dooley; Harlem's Little Blackbird, Renee Watson; Spin a Soft Black Song, Nikki Giovanni; Ron's Big Mission, Rose Blue; Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, Mildred D. Taylor... There are lots more. There are the board books about loving big hair and Princess Truly (!!) who has happily upset Pinkalicious.They sit next to the books I should have already read as an adult and the Young Adult fiction I'm trying to force my Middle Schoolers into. I see that I need more books from other countries and that there are important perspectives I'm still missing. I hope they come back to these shelves when they are grown and pull out their favourites to take home to their people. That they one day have a home and people is the hope on a day like today. To be honest, that is the hope of every single one of my days.

What books do you love from the places you're from? What books opened your eyes to the places you do not claim?

****

I am often told that the boys are kind and sweet to their friends and classmates. People tell me that they look after each other when they are out in the world and that they are always so polite. They like to be helpful. We go over the rules before we go into Target-- "no running, no hands in your pockets, no picking things up and carrying them around". The little one asks why and one of his brothers explains. There will be school on Wednesday. I will send them off with an affirmation... "I am loved, I am wise, I am kind" and hope that they carry the best of what they have out into the world with them.

Five Years Gone, Tiny White Girl

Truly is almost five.

This is a partial retelling of five years ago but if that grosses you out, just skip ahead to the stars.

There were some minor complications during my pregnancy with her. I had this strange thing called gestational cholestasis which meant I itched, horribly, from the evening hours until 4 or 5 in the morning. The itch would come through the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet and across my legs. Welts rose up down my arms from the scratching. I had indigestion and restless leg. Persistent sickness (what we found out to be gall stones) put me into the hospital before Christmas with big contractions. This was where they also realized my thyroid was out of wack and making my heart rate soar dangerously high. At home, we were having our basement redone to accommodate a guest room, and days before she came I set about repainting and moving rooms around upstairs to distract myself from the itch and bring on labour. The cholestasis meant I had to somehow get myself ready to have her three weeks early. If I could start labour without chemical intervention or deliver without a C-section, they could take my gall bladder during the same hospital stay.

The night I booked into the hospital, my friend Annie and Stephanie sat with me while they hooked me up to monitors and set about trying to mechanically dilate me further (don't ask. It's terrible). Paul put the boys to bed and then came to sleep on the window seat. I did not sleep. The contractions were painful and steady. I was still itchy. I worried I would not be able to push her out as I had not been able to push out Sam. She was facing the wrong way. I could feel it. It started to snow.

Early the next morning I was far enough along that they could break my water. When she was ready to come, I asked the nurse how I should be pushing-- I did not think I was doing it particularly well. I gripped the mattress and tried to pull it around my body. I tried not to make any noise. Just after noon she came out, facing the wrong way, painful as all hell. I shook uncontrollably. The nurses laughed at how it had all come together so quickly once I figured out what to do.

I would have my gall bladder removed the next day. It was a ridiculous move considering-- and definitely something I would not recommend unless you already have three small children, a basement full of contractors, and a husband who has no paternity leave (in which case, yes, by all means, try surgery less than a day after a baby). I scrubbed myself down while I called Paul to tell him what was happening. I would be back in the room three hours later, just in time to nurse her.

She would be the baby we all needed and wanted, a tiny 6 lb something with dark hair that eventually all fell out. She had no profile to speak of, massive eyes, and moved like a muppet. She hated the car seat and looked like a beet in pink. She would never learn to properly crawl, but would place her left leg out in front of her and use it to pivot her bottom forward. She mastered walking up and down stairs refusing any kind of assistance, terrifying passerbys. I fought my own body to nurse her.

****

She has a fever today and is curled up under covers on the couch flipping her fingers in front of her face. She is making up stories and stating them as gospel truth. Paul is her favourite person. (He is everyone's favourite.) She is desperate to go to school tomorrow and is complaining that in PreK you do not really get homework. She wants to see her best friend (her words) who has a mom that I'm lucky enough to call my good friend.

She is a small, white, girl and I do not know where to start with undoing all the things she will be conditioned to believe. The first five years were easy. I want her to learn how to feel safe without having to teach her how to be afraid. I want her to know what fragility looks like, and then learn how to swallow it hard and move forward. I want her to be the kindest and the wisest in the room but not at the expense of anyone else. I do not think these things will come naturally to her. I do not think these things come naturally to most of us. My friend jokes that a guy won't be able to look at her sideways for fear of being beat down by one of her brothers. I take some comfort in that and remind "her boys" that one of their only jobs is to look after people who are smaller than they are. And who will she look after, amplify, and partner with?

She will come from a multi-racial family. This will not be enough.

I am watching women I know grapple with Intersectionality and Racism. As we are leaning into keeping each other accountable, my friends and I are often hamstrung by our emotional response to being called out by women of colour. I resist it even as I live it. Never am I more grateful or more nauseous when I am called out by Black friends. Our parents and our grandparents may have marched, or sat in, or protested. They thought they had this figured out. And then, as it so happens, they did not dismantle the systems that kept them and their peers holding most of the power. Their personal sacrifice and discomfort was nearly lost on future generations. We were not taught the language of resistance and we were not shown what it meant to take ourselves out of line without losing our dignity or our fight. We were not taught how to hold all of it in a single hand: We are the oppressed, as we are the oppressor. We are victimized and we victimize others. It is excruciating to face and we must still face it.

****

Tru threw up a little while ago. She has accepted she will miss school. She's fallen asleep propped up on the couch clutching a small bowl. Her fever dips. I will sleep out here with her, trying to hug onto my end of the couch as her nearly five year old legs try to shove me off. She is the person that our family needed. She will do better than I have done.

An Intervention for White Women

I love this first story from Danusia Trevino on her first Jury Duty on the Moth Radio Hour

When White Feminists Respond to Racism Like Men-- Handy graphics that break down common interactions