July 17, 2010
June 28, 2010
Attention Future Wal-Mart Shoppers
Whether I go alone or with my children, I go to Wal-Mart to shop. Not to right a wrong, to champion a cause, to test customer service, or to write about it—I go to Wal-Mart to shop.
This week when my boys and I went shopping after work, it was to run in and out; dart as close to without going down the toy aisle as possible, and to leave with as many of the items on my mental shopping list that I could remember.
Not everyone was in a rush.
As we rushed into Wal-Mart, my attempt to bypass the McDonald’s in front of the store led us directly behind a very slow moving older woman.
Her hunched back, shuffling feet, and thinning hair caused me to pause. I often think about the days when my children are grown, when I am forced to shop without the chorus of “Can I have’s…” and “Ohhhh…I need that’s.”
We slowed down.
“What happened to all the chairs?” She asked the greeter, who didn’t greet her.
“They’re broken.”
“Want a sticker?” She asks the child behind us.
Maybe she thought dismissing the person would dismiss the problem.
“Do you need help getting anything?” I asked.
The woman and I glanced down at her shopping list.
Depends, the first item read. We both knew she’d say no.
One day, I will be an elderly consumer who either because I want to or need to will be out shopping alone. Someone needs to look out for me.
“One of your customers is having a problem getting around your store and your chairs are all broken.”
“Ummm…”
“Do I need to ask the manager?”
“Yes, please.”
“Are we going to help her?” My oldest son asked. It’s what we do.
“We have to.”
The next employee was more fruitful. He sought out the store manager to not just help the ailing customer winding slowly up and down each aisle filling her cart with personal items and dignity; but, to assure a younger shopper and her two future shoppers that this store cares about its consumers from as it claims, “cradle to grave.”
During our shopping trip, we ran into the older woman several times, each time as painful as the time before.
The employee assured us they had fixed a chair for her and were looking for her. We found her first.
“They aren’t looking too hard,” the woman laughed.
A few aisles later, I watched as the manager slowly helped the woman into the chair appropriately “ohhing” and chuckling at alternating times during the tale of her recent fall as he slipped item after item from her cart into the basket.
When we saw her again, the woman was making her way to a cash register and so were we. The last time we saw her she was making her way as slowly as we were towards are respective tomorrows.
“You know what’s great,” my 11 year old remarked, “she probably doesn’t even know it was us who helped her.”
My faith in commerce restored, I smiled as we walked slowly to our car.
June 18, 2010
Honey, Your Guinea Pig is Dead: Conversations I Don't Want to Have With My Son
There are some conversations that get easier to have the more often you have them—death isn’t one of them.
This weekend I woke up to quiet.
Unexpected, somewhat jolting, my three children, dog, cat, presumably the leopard gecko were sleeping and so was—it would seem for a few more minutes—Lita Gibby.
Lita Gibby does not sleep. Or if she does, she is a light sleeper. Since she’s lived with us, she has become in tuned with movement, shifts in lighting, every whispered sound.
She detects everything.
She sings—or sang—to music, to silence, to footsteps.
Lita Gibby was Noah’s birthday present.
I should have learned you can’t give life.
The plump white and brown guinea pig, deceptively quiet in the pet store, uncharacteristically quiet today, is dead.
Because Noah was three when we got her, I spent more time than I thought I would talking to, petting, cleaning up after, feeding, and though I didn’t expect to, loving Lita Gibby.
There are just a few moments between now—when he thinks Lita Gibby is alive—and later when he doesn’t.
This is not his first death. Fish have died. This will not be his last death. I will die—some day.
When his fish died, I replaced them with new, brighter, more alive ones. I think briefly of replacing his guinea pig. But, what are the chances of getting one who whistles as commandingly as Lita Gibby?
I can no more replace his guinea pig than I can replace a dying grandparent.
Each death gets more difficult to explain, the reasons more artful, the reactions more tearful.
I can buy a new guinea pig, a frog, a toad. I can not give the gift of life and I'm not looking forward to talking about it why.
June 17, 2010
Yvonne Battle-Felton Crafter of Sexy CV's
“Great information, can I reference this for my site and link back to you?”
Compliments are probably one of the fastest ways to get your comment approved on my blog. So, likely my ego will be my cyber downfall.
When I began looking for a full-time English faculty position, it seemed logical to post my resume and CV on my blog.
It still does.
Visions of people linking my CV to the hands of my future employer would have danced vividly in my head—had I thought of it that way. When commenters began asking to link, repost or refer the content from my blogs to theirs, I was giddy—until…
Though I still have the what’s the worst that could happen mentality when it comes to accepting comments, I still read each comment, email address, website, link, IP address—just in case.
The most recent request to link to my CV made me smile, in a what the heck? sort of way. The request looked sincere enough—though in retrospect most of the requests so far have been from spammers—the site potentially linking to mine was a porn one.
There are many ways I could and probably should take this offer.
Instead, I’m taking it as a compliment. Perhaps I’ve found my niche, Yvonne Battle-Felton, crafter of Sexy CV’s.
June 07, 2010
This Message Sent to You by--Me
Though I appreciate receiving them, I didn’t always craft emails. I wrote them, but didn’t craft them. My emails were concise, sometimes blunt, often formed mid thought, mid task, mid something else. I’m sure my preoccupation was reflected in the tone, content or delivery of my email, but I was busy and so—I rationalized—was the person who was reading my email. Surely, they would appreciate the right to the pointability of my words.
Having received many such emails, I can say they did not.
In an effort to remind me that the person emailing me is mid-something else, “Sent from my Blackberry, mobile, or other device” often concludes many of the messages I receive lately. This is probably meant to translate the actual message I receive: I’m busy, respond anyway.
My first impulse is to match curt for curt.
I seldom indulge this impulse—or, I try not to. I’ve found silence sometimes works better. Not responding to an otherwise rude email does force the person to pick up the call and actually interact as if I—like them—appreciate information neatly wrapped in bows of hello and ribbons of thank you.
Other times I prefer to respond the way I craft my emails these days (or attempt to)—as if they are little moments of delicious cups of Hazelnut coffee with French Vanilla cream (though tea is possibly more endearing) with dear and sincerely where the sugar would go.
I understand the urgency of time; the pull between wanting information and wanting information right now. I respect immediacy. It takes the same time for me to open a terse message as it does to open a crafted one, yet the message is better received when the message is crafted with me—not time—in mind.
May 09, 2010
Dear Former High School Football Player, boyfriend, friend or associate:
So, chances are I don’t remember you and you don’t remember me. Or, maybe I do remember you and you remember me—fondly.
While we are in the same network, have some of the same friends, and maybe even live in relative proximity: I’m not interested in seeing you bang your wife.
Or in clicking this link, checking this out, hitting you up, viewing this video, or trying this test.
You see, whether I remember you or not, I don’t trust you or your judgment. To be honest, I don’t even trust that it’s you sending me photos, YouTube links, tests or articles to read. Over the years our relationship--as I fear has your account—has been compromised.
I suspect you signed up for an app that mentioned --in the terms you didn’t read—granted permission to access your account. The document may or may not have mentioned contacting your contacts to invite us to try the app or one from their third party vendor.
About that…
The third party you is out-visiting, inviting, following and updating you. And, it’s going to get you blocked.
So, In the future, if there is an option to opt out—please select it before your third party you outs you.
Comments In Moderation
Every once in a while I’ll get a questionable comment on my blog: one that’s a little off. Maybe it reminds me of another one with a similar IP address; maybe the response has nothing to do with the post; maybe it’s just weird.
I choose which comments I accept.
Still, what’s the worst that could happen, tends to be my approach when I publish comments I’m not too sure aren’t from scammers waiting to hack into my network of employees, clients and…ok, so I suppose that’s the worst that could happen—assuming I had a network of employees.
I understand why news sites publish comments seemingly with little moderation. Freedom of speech accounts for more than a little bit of the racist, sexist, and general asinine comments otherwise known as opinion it often publishes.
Still, the Baltimore Sun would not post a comment from Dating While Drunk that says Dating in Baltimore, Baltimore Date Sites, Baltimore Live…or 2p890 43 aoeia j;oai9 aopiera o @#()%&_!)(
Would it?
Then why does it post comments to run alongside an article about a murder? Readership may be down, but in the months that follow this trauma, at some point, a family member, neighbor, friend, will be looking for information on their daughter, cousin, classmate, and below the headline, “Body of Local Woman Found on Campus…” will be comments intended to hurt.
Not specifically meant to hurt them, but anonymously poised at the general population.
If you moderate comments in moderation it should be possible to maintain integrity of the publication as well as integrity of the article.
Otherwise, maybe not all articles deserve comments and not all comments deserve to be posted.
April 10, 2010
I do--Maybe
Most of my friends, acquaintances, and family are in relationships of one kind or another with varying degrees of happiness and commitment.
I don’t envy them.
Still, as I prepare to date seriously—with the intent to commit (at least) to dating—I find myself reconsidering what I once considered spam.
Every two weeks I receive email about how to promote love and happiness in my marriage. Which would be great if I had a marriage I wanted to save.
Up until recently, I deleted these messages with regularity. Today, I pause before I click delete.
Would I—in the right circumstances—ever marry again?
I no longer know the answer. I don’t mind not knowing. And, truth be told, I’m kind of glad I’m asking.
April 06, 2010
Finding Words
We are there to pick up books. Not cozy mysteries, romantic thrillers, young adult dramas, or preschool serials. Just books: free books.
I admit free is part of the fantasy.
And, there is a fantasy. The moment I read about the Book Thing—a warehouse stuffed easel to easel with books of all topics, languages and genres—ok, so I don’t think such a description existed, but surely it was implied—I fantasized about finding the perfect book. The book I absolutely needed, right then.
I’m a believer that when I need to find something, I find it. This is not the same as believing if I lose something I will find it. It’s better. A lot of things happen by chance, by design, or divine, and some things—like the right words at the right time—just happen.
At the Book Thing, my 3 children—a teenager, a middle schooler and a preschooler—pick up books indiscriminate of subject matter (more or less). I pick up books I had long forgotten, like the Bobbsey Twins (after reading it with my 4 year old, I remembered why I had forgotten it), a mystery or two. My daughter finds a Spanish book; my boys find books on space and antiquated books on culture around the World. For my little one we all find something.
To the 18 books we leave with that day, there is little thought given. One book in particular I pick up because it’s a children’s book written by Lucille Clifton.
It isn’t until evening, my 4 year old ready for the evening’s literary adventure, when I find the words I didn’t known I was ready to speak.
I talk a lot about dating—with my friends, my family, online. But, not with my children. Until now.
I struggle with balancing dating with raising a family. As I figure out what is important to me in my relationships, I don’t want my children meeting multiple men I may or may not want to know well. So they don’t meet anyone and of the men I date, I rarely speak.
Common sense tells me when I am ready to introduce them to someone, I will. Until then—though I have no one in mind to introduce them to—I worry about it.
Usually, my children know when I am going out on dates. We have discussed dating in obscure terms, without absolutes.
Lucille Clifton’s Everett Anderson’s 1-2-3 is a poem/story about a young boy’s perceptions when his mother starts dating. He is worried about sharing their time with someone else. He’s worried about someone else taking his place. He is worried.
I sit with my little one explaining why the little boy in the story might feel this way. I call to my oldest son, he listens. We talk about how he would feel in the boy’s situation. I call to my daughter. We talk.
We talk about dating in terms of absolutes: in terms of me.
February 11, 2010
Maybe it's the Winter or Things I Know
Maybe it’s the winter.
For some reason—and I doubt it’s a flattering one—something about the sunless, cold mornings, the dreary days or the bitter nights, reminds people of me.
And, not in a flattering way.
The deeper the snow, the lower the temperature, the icier the air, the more texts, instant messages and emails I get from men who for whatever reason, I chose not to pursue relationships with.
I have never responded with, ‘while you weren’t good enough then, I’ve recently lowered my standards…’
That they think the cold temperatures might drive me to desperation is either a fault of theirs or one of mine.
That I think, ‘hmmmm’…. when I receive these unwelcome e-memories is a fault of mine. I have—but do not suffer from—selective memory. Still, each time I get a text from an unsaved number that I seldom recognize as a deleted number, I typically resist the urge to respond, “who are you?”
Because, I know.
While I may not remember the name, the face, or the exact reason. I know for whatever reason, I didn’t like the way I felt when I was with the person, or the fact that we didn’t share the same definition of ‘single,’ or that we did not then (and presumably still don’t) want the same things from life, relationships, experiences.
I understand, not because the media tells me so, but because I know, that dating is challenging right now. I know that we all have varying definitions for attractive, funny, single…
I know my standards will change, grow and adapt.
I also know they won’t lower, I can’t afford for them to.
So, before you send that ‘am I good enough now?’ text to someone you weren’t quite compatible with last year, just anticipate the response.
Silence.
Translation: No.
Comment on Comments
Lately, I have been trying to communicate more. With friends, family and colleagues, I have a tendency to communicate in doses.
So, when I decided to join the community of blogger—about a year after I started blogging—it was somewhat cautiously.
I started by commenting on other writers’ pieces on Open Salon. Most writers there are a lot better at reading other’s posts and commenting, it’s really a community. I dangle along edge.
After a few comments here and there, I was ready to comment on a few other sites. Yet, not all sites were ready for me, or ready for me to comment that is. For some, you either had to register, create a profile, or otherwise commit in order to comment.
I see the benefit of ‘Hi, I’m (insert username) and I (insert comment here). But, I prefer the ease of posting a comment with less effort. I don’t mind supplying my email address as a sort of guarantee that I stand behind my words. What I mind is the assumption that I have the time (or inclination) to provide my address, subscribe to a newsletter or feed, or otherwise commit to the content (other than my comment).
Still, I prefer the e-antics of registering over the silence inspired by sites that don’t accept comments at all. While their blog posts inspire bloggers to write responses and post them on our own blogs, they don’t inspire communication.
And, isn’t that the point of communications?
From Baltimore with Love
2 feet of snow.
Outside of my back window, icicles slowly drip, snow glistens, trees bend. Occasionally a squirrel—a reckless naysayer no doubt—rushes up a heavy branch.
Out front, my children, neighbors and I have piled two feet of snow into treacherous mounds of four or five feet, packed behind cars, along narrow parcels, squeezed anywhere so we can all get out—when they plow our small cul de sac.
At 1:45 AM, a bulldozer beeps, light shining as if it is not 1:45 in the morning, up my street. Accidentally, the small truck knocks over a mound of snow as it turns. It is not so much plowing snow, as making tracks over it in some areas, through it in others.
By morning, my street is more clear than it will be in 24 hours, but today, I am on vacation.
When I think of vacation, I think of warm sand, blue waters, music. If I think of a snow vacation –and I rarely do—I picture skis, a cute bunny suit, and warm cocoa.
The State of Maryland is under a state of emergency.
Two days and two more feet of snow later, I am on vacation again.
Baltimore City is in a Phase III emergency. Bulletins warn residents to stay off the streets, even walking them, unless it is an unavoidable. Essential employees, police, fire fighters, must report or are on standby. Four feet of snow has a way of putting careers in perspective. Even the self-declared-self-important, must stay off the streets.
My children are restless, bored, easily agitated with one another: we are in a house of emergency.
This is not how I would choose to spend my vacation.
But, I can’t afford not to.
To be paid for the days off due to snow, I must use my vacation time. Millions of Americans do not have company paid vacation time. Across the country, in other state of emergencies, non-essential employees are forced to attempt to trek snow and ice covered streets because their employers cannot or do not offer paid time off.
And so, I sit in front of my window waiting for a stalactite-like icicle to drip off the side of the house attempting to enjoy yet another day of vacation.
December 19, 2009
A Day in the Life of a Community College Professor
I don’t tend to view moves emotionally. In my experience, they have always been for positive reasons—even if I didn’t understand them at the time.
As an adult, I’ve been blissfully emotionally and physically unavailable throughout my moves. I can barely remember my move to Maryland over 15 years ago. For my move from my first townhouse to a townhouse with my then-boyfriend (and now ex husband) I was physically unavailable—I was at work.
I was nine months pregnant for the move from the townhouse to our home. Packing and unpacking, moving, rearranging, these things are handled, typically, ideally, not by me.
Today, we are in the final stages of closing the 23rd floor. Clients are settled into their new offices on the 27th floor. Technology is uninstalled. Furniture is moved out.
The furniture move, despite requiring little actual physical energy—from me—was emotionally exhaustive. Selecting a mover, while contingent on estimates and availability—became a matter of which moving company seemed to care most about the move.
Yesterday a fleet of movers came to haul, crate and remove remnants of my past seven years.
Seven years ago, I was a student at community college.
Today, I have my Master’s degree and I am one month away from teaching my first writing class at Anne Arundel Community College.
I am one step further on my writer’s path, wherever it leads; I’m getting closer every day.
November 17, 2009
You Should Read This: The Case Against Demands
I am often at odds with what I should do.
When I log onto Twitter, I find that I should check someone out on Facebook. I should click a link to an article. I should watch a video on making more money RIGHT NOW. I should join, I should respond, I should add.
It’s exhausting.
It’s also rude.
There are quite definitely things I should do. I should make sure my children are taken care of. I should write as regularly as I bathe. I should take time to experience and imagine possibilities. I should engage in my communities.
Seldom do the things I should do include things like clicking links, checking out articles, participating in surveys.
There are a myriad of things I could do, things I need to do.
Those things—just like the things I should do—are better received when they are suggested to me politely, preferably with an introduction, a question and an answer, or an introduction, an answer and a question—I’m flexible.
I’m willing to read blogs, watch videos, even participate in surveys, but not on demand. Demands never work well, you should think about that.
October 27, 2009
Diary of a Reluctant Freelance Writer
To be general, I love writing. To be specific, I love certain types of writing.
What interests me as a writer is the psychology of characters--I am intrigued by motivations, actions, dialogue and how these components intertwine to determine character reaction, character relationships: character.
While I say I want to write for a living; I mean I want to make a living as a writer. I picture a published writer, an award or two, an abundance of time and writing what I want, fiction and nonfiction that explores the depths of my characters.
In pursuit of my dreams, I find myself accepting freelance projects to--you know--feed the kids. The projects I accept are typically things that intrigue me: branding deals with the relationship between words, the expectation of dialogue and action. I accept editing projects, write ad copy, perform voice overs.
Recently I was offered two projects: One I could not afford to take, and one I could not afford to turn down.
These are the lessons I've learned from them:
1. Outline (verbally) the expectations and scope of the project.
2. Reiterate (in writing) the expectations and scope of the project
3. Provide realistic timelines and cost estimates
4. Be clear about payment terms—methods and time frame
5. Project specific contract signed by both parties
6. Check in half-way providing status: progress, hours put in, cost estimate, sample and estimated project conclusion.
7. Ask fellow freelancers for advice
8. Choose projects with discretion: not every project is the project for me.
9. Price based on realistic, inform estimate of time and resources it will take.
10. Be selective: Not every project is the one for me.
August 21, 2009
African American Women and the Loss of Identity in Marriage
My grandmother was born in 1919.
She was not the typical woman of her era. In her lifetime my grandmother went to college, married, worked a full time job as a nurse, raised four children, owned four houses and managed and owned a guest house. At the end of her work day she cooked, cleaned, washed clothes, helped with homework, read to little ones, paid bills and managed to find time to spend with her husband. As a child I remember watching her come home for the weekends clean the house, cook dinner for the week and prepare my grandfather's medications for the week. I hated that my grandmother had to work so hard. My grandfather was retired so I felt that he had time to cook and if the medications were important, he would remember to take them. Still, I never questioned my grandmother's weekly routine but I remember thinking "I will never do all of that for any one." I can't say he didn't appreciate it, only that he had grown to expect it.
And why not? She had trained him to expect her to do everything so if it ever bothered her nearly as much as it bothered me, it would have been difficult but not impossible, to change the situation. But she never did. Why not? She loved cooking or rather she loved to have home cooked meals but surely cooking had not been her passion in life, why was so much of her life consumed with it?
My grandmother has hundreds of suggestions on how my sister and I can improve our marriages by accepting more. We are both mothers, married, full time employees and full time students. When I ask more of what, she questions how long it has been since my husband and I spent time without the kids. At times I marvel at how progressive she is in her thinking. Those times are often overshadowed when she says we should reconsider our separation until the children are older I never fail to ask, "What have I done to deserve to be unhappy for so long?" She does not understand my question.
My grandmother is selfless and expects my sister and me to be the same. She expects us to happily postpone our lives for the sake of our children who she reminds us, "did not ask to be here" yet why, I ask, does my unhappiness guarantee their success? And why can't I ask and expect my husband's help with the children and household chores after he gets off of work? My grandmother was not born this way; she was not always grandmother, mother, wife, she did not always belong to someone else. She was born Charli Ruth Watson, it is a name she changed as soon as she could, assuming not only a new name but a new more feminine identity. But at what cost? For some reason she gave up any dreams she had of childhood along with much of her autonomy in her roles of dutiful daughter, selfless mother and industrious wife. When did it happen?
According to The Marriage and Family Experience "black women's conceptions of womanhood emphasize self-reliance, strength, resourcefulness, autonomy, and the responsibility of providing for the material as well as emotional needs of family members." (Strong et al 126). I have inherited the very chains that bind me and the wings that set me free for motherhood is at times a rather heavy gift to carry. As an African American woman, I am charged with the task of keeping my family together at all costs, even if it costs me my sense of self.
Women in general, African American women specifically, are sacrificing ourselves for the goals of the family. We are losing sight of our goals, dreams, inspirations and souls while assuming identities others find pleasing. Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow, explores Avey Johnson's loss of identity as she merges in to the woman Jerome Johnson needs her to be, the woman Jerome Johnson can love.
Sometime before saying "I do" women seem to learn to think, feel and say "I will." Women appear to accept and encourage others to take our kindness as weakness and our strengths fore granted. We are constantly taking on new challenges, new goals to please someone. Successful women in media and literature are selfless, generous and tireless and if they are in a relationship they are working toward family goals or eventual marriage. The woman outside those boundaries, the woman who follows her own dreams first, is typically single and seldom by choice. If she is not single then she is "out of her cotton pickin' mind," (Marshall, 24).
Avey Johnson has spent much of her adult life becoming a woman she does not know. When she begins questioning herself and Jay's commitment to her she is sacrificing her identity as a strong, confident woman. Jay's late nights at the office give rise to her fears of his affairs with white women "that would be more likely to appeal to him," (Marshall, 92). These fears and her insecurities with her body and her pregnancy transform her one Tuesday evening into the woman on Halsey Street who represents the struggle of the African American woman (Marshall 106). That night he pulls away from her and she pulls as well, she continues transforming in the seconds it takes him to choose to stay with the family or leave "before either she or Sis could think to run after him or find the voice to call him back," (Marshall 111).
Through the years Jay's pursuit of education, rejection and eventual success transforms him into Jerome Johnson. He becomes critical of the things from their past from Halsey street to the music and especially of other African Americans. Avey feels the move from Halsey Street "was an act of betrayal," (Marshall 122) yet she moves for the sake of the family to a better neighborhood. She keeps her memories to herself, memories of what Halsey Street represents to her which is not the same as the poverty and embarrassment it represents to Jerome Johnson who is unable to say the streets name. Avey continues to keep most things inside "at a deeper level...unreconciled to the change, and as distressed and uneasy as she had been the first day," (Marshall 130). Seldom does Avey speak her mind, seldom do her thoughts venture far from Jerome Johnson's.
To speak her mind is to be victim to the "unsparing, puritanical tone that had developed in his voice," (Marshall 132) and to risk the delicate base holding their marriage up. Avey worries that Jerome Johnson will think the things she misses from her marriage to Jay "would even appear ridiculous, childish, cullud," (Marshall 136). And Jerome Johnson does not think highly of African Americans.
Avey resembles this cynical, joyless man: "they were getting to look, even to sound alike...
According to an essay by Dagmar Pescitelli some theorists believe a woman's identity is not formed until she has married or has children, that the family experience is needed for a woman to become complete or whole (Pescitelli). Pescitelli also finds that other theorists believe women's self concepts reflect the images of those around them. (Pescitelli). In "Praisesong" Avey's presence on the beach represents a certain place in life, being at a certain place at a certain time causes others to confuse her with someone else, someone that belongs. The people on the island "immediately stripped her of everything she had on and dressed her in one of the homemade cotton prints the women were wearing..." (Marshall 72). Alone, Avey is not afforded a separate identity from those around her; she is absorbed in to the group as one's identity is absorbed in to a family.
According to Sociology in a Changing World the role and contributions of the African American mother is all inclusive because it has to be. It appears few studies have been conducted on how the individual goals of African American wives and mothers exist before, during and after child rearing or marriage. My research on this subject has primarily returned negative information where African American families are headed by African American women largely because of "the difficulties faced by young black men with limited education when seeking jobs," (Kornblum 508) and that "life in the black community has been conditioned by poverty, discrimination and institutional subordination," (Kornblum 509). That may be true for some people; the women in my life suffer similar situations as mine: we all give unselfishly of ourselves.
I have learned the more I am willing to give, the more others are willing to take. According to Nancy Woloch's Women and the American Experience, historically various women in America have been responsible for child rearing, farming, making goods, cooking, housework, field work, laundry, working, etc. yet have been expected to be subservient and "deferential" to their husbands (Woloch). Women were expected to assume the identities of their husbands, their political opinions, goals and aspirations were to be of one mind, his. It is 2005 and as far as women have come, some where others of us are still finding ourselves unwittingly giving ourselves up when we say "I do." But we are waking up; we are realizing happiness does not begin when we end. It is important for women to maintain, enhance and encourage our identities. Analyzing Praisesong, I have had the opportunity to learn that women can do it all, we can be happy, seek our education, raise a happy family, be successful ,be productive and live happily ever after even after "death do us part."
Works Cited
Kornblum, William. Sociology in a Changing World. 6th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2003.
Marshall, Paule. Praisesong for the Widow. New York: Plume, 1983
Pescitelli, Dagmar. "Women's Identity Development: Out of the "Inner Space" and in to New Territory." Simon Frasier University. 10 Dec. 2005 < http://www.sfu.ca/~wwwpsyb/issues/1998/spring/pescitelli.htm>.
Strong, Bryan, Christine DeVault, Barbara W. Sayad, and Theodore F. Cohen. The Marriage and Family Experience: Intimate Relationships in a Changing Society. 8th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2001.
Woloch, Nancy. Women and the American Experience A Concise History. 2nd ed. New York: Mc-Graw Hill, 2002.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As submitted on AC
Woman to Woman: The Importance of Communicating in Relationships
When I got married almost ten years ago, it was with out preconceived notions-or so I thought-of happily ever after and till death do us part. As far as I was concerned, I didn't have many gender role expectations or limitations for my husband-to-be or for myself. I didn't know much about marriage. I was from a single-family household and the lives of the married people I knew were not ones to be emulated: the married people I knew were not happy and if nothing else, I knew I wanted to be happy. To be honest, I didn't give marriage nearly enough thought; if I had I would have done some things differently. Not the ceremony but the engagement. I would have talked with my fiancé more, or at all, about his expectations and given some true thought to my own. I also would have talked and listened to the couples around me. I would have asked the women in my life the question I ask us all to consider now: Are we sabotaging our own marriages?
Today I think if only someone had warned me... and I have to stop myself, that's not fair. There is no shortage of both solicited and unsolicited advice in books and magazines, on screen, in music and more importantly through friends and an often-overlooked resource: family. I can vaguely remember someone saying, "Marriage takes a lot of work" and reading something about the necessity of communicating to make a marriage work. They weren't talking about me-I thought-and to be honest, I just wasn't paying attention. So while I didn't take on the title Mrs. Sylvester Felton (I hyphenated), I did take on a new role: the Super Wife. I became my own worst enemy, my own nemesis. The day I got married, I unconsciously began sabotaging my marriage and eventually my own happiness.
You see, when I said, "I do" I was saying yes to raising a family, working a full-time job, putting my own needs second, and maintaining a household while being a loving, caring, supportive, understanding and forgiving wife. That's a lot of pressure and I have to say honestly it was self-imposed. My husband never said, "honey after you get off work can you cook dinner, help the kids with homework, clean the house, wash the dishes, do the laundry, put the kids to bed and then spend some time with me?" But I heard, or rather felt this undeniable pull, this necessity to do everything. At first, when he asked, "do you need help with anything?" I heard: "since you can't take care of it, I'll step in and take care of it." So my answer was always, "no, I'll take care of it." Meaning: "I can handle it." Over the years he stopped asking, anticipating my response, which unbeknownst to him was changing to: "can't you see I need help!" Instead of saying the words-and why should I have to, I thought-I began resenting him. I resented his stress-free day, his distance from child rearing, his assurance that the children and everything else was taken care of. But I didn't say a word until it was too late. When it started bothering me, I should have said something. By the time I said something, it had gone so far that I couldn't take any more. He couldn't recognize the magnitude of the problem and instead felt I had done things quite efficiently, so efficiently that he felt I no longer needed him. The problem is that by then, so did I.
With our marriage deteriorating seemingly beyond repair, we separated. That was actually the best thing for us to do. Over the course of our on again off again separation I have learned to say the things I usually held back, the words which I found were hardest to say: I need help. My story is not as unique as I once thought. Statistics say American marriages are in trouble; more importantly American women are in trouble. Some of us are forgetting that a marriage is a partnership. Which means we are not in it alone. At this point in my life it may not be as important to consider how or when I lost sight of this, as it is to figure out how to fix it. But since I am raising children I should at least pause to briefly reflect on the causes. According to Gamble and Gamble's book "The Gendered Communication Connection", the family is the primary source of what they gender socialization: "the family provides the most significant context for our learning about sex and gender (193). According to this theory the roles women adopt are based on roles we have seen enacted by our own parents or primary caregivers. It appears that we internalize and categorize behaviors as acceptable and unacceptable based on our experiences or perhaps based on reactions to those experiences. This does not mean that we necessarily emulate gender roles as they are, but rather as we would either expect or want them to be. Meaning I may not necessarily communicate with my husband based on my parent's communication patterns but in spite of them. Still we are impacted by our experiences and perceptions.
According to research compiled in his essay, Communication between the Sexes: Male Gender-Role Orientation and Confirmation/Disconfirmation in Marital Dyads, Thomas Veenendall agrees that parents are the primary source for gender role conceptions and expectations: "Acquisition of sex roles and gender roles and the identities that result from the acquisition process seems to be the product of several forces in combination" (63). Veenendall goes on to explain that the process of gender-role development may be well under way by the time the child is in preschool: "the preschool child has already distinguished sex-related standards of appropriate behavior and begins to exhibit appropriate behaviors," (64). Therefore the family, according to Veenendall's research, is responsible for a complex parental/familial socialization process that creates "sex-role and gender-role identities [that] become strong foundations for belief, attitude and value structures which strongly influence behavior patterns," (65). So when you look in the mirror and think you see your mother, you may be right.
But according to Gamble and Gamble we can't just blame mom. Women are also socialized and molded by society and are stereotypically cast in the role of caregiver. According to Gamble and Gamble: even when both parents work "research still reveals that mothers regularly spend significantly more time caring for children than fathers do," (203). Besides caring for children and working, women are still largely responsible for domestic tasks perpetuating the myth of the super woman. According to Gamble and Gamble, these expectations are reinforced through experiences outside the family. School, work, sports, culture and messages obtained through the media also conspire to form our gender expectations and actions. In short, our past may be sabotaging our futures.
All is not lost. According to Veenendall, "since sex roles are learned, they also can be unlearned and redefined," (68). Keep in mind when things are not working out it may be necessary to reevaluate how you communicate your needs. It may be as easy as acknowledging your role in your current situation, deciding you want a change and communicating your needs with your partner. If so, this is natural. According to research compiled for J. Lyn Rhoden's essay Marital Cohesion, Flexibility, and Communication in the Marriages of Nontraditional and Traditional Women: "when nontraditional women elect to marry, they may need to negotiate power sharing, changing needs, balance between their work and family lives," (248). As Rhoden explains, this renegotiation need not be negative and is not necessarily indicative of a marital impasse: "...processes like bargaining and negotiation do not create conflict but rather are an acknowledgment of and attempt at resolution of the conflict of interests and needs," (254). Effectively communicating your needs may increase your marital satisfaction, but Rhoden is quick to point out that "low marital stability, however, does not necessarily precede dissolution of the marriage, and degree of marital quality does not always correspond to a comparable degree of marital stability," (249). Rhoden's research shows "in both nontraditional and traditional marriages, effective communication is important to the cocreation of the marital culture through interaction of partners by exchanging perceptions and negotiating differences," (253). It appears that the first step in fixing a problem is acknowledging it and after that, you have to communicate to your spouse rather than hoping they will read your mind and change on their own. Unfortunately some spouses will resist change.
According to Nadya Klinetob and David Smith's study on the demand-withdraw syndrome-what she describes as "communication during which one partner attempts to engage the other in discussing an issue by criticizing, complaining, or suggesting change while the other partner attempts to end the discussion or avoid the topic..."-"the spouse with the most to gain by maintaining the status quo is likely to withdraw, and the discontented spouse demands the change. Insofar as the status quo in marriage generally tends to favor men, men will appear most frequently as withdrawers," (Demand). Further analysis of the Klinetob/Smith study leads her to the conclusion that communication may be the key to couple satisfaction: "a final explanation may be that healthier couples demonstrate greater flexibility in their communication styles than maladjusted couples," (Demand). Granted, positive change does not happen when one person acknowledges the need to change and the other denies it or refuses to consider it. In those cases communication may need to occur differently, through counseling. But still, experts and laymen seem to agree that communication is an effective step to changing behaviors.
So what do you do when you realize you need help? Now that you have trained him to think you don't need help and can handle it all, how do you get the man who used to offer to help, to offer now? According to relationship expert Dr. Susan Campbell, you ask him. According to Campbell, some women may have a hard time asking for what they want: "some people are uncomfortable expressing wants because they imagine they'll appear demanding or controlling," (Speak up). According to Campbell, asking for help when we need it is a healthy and positive necessity that can possibly bring couples closer, not farther, away by expressing vulnerability-which is not necessarily a bad thing. By not asking our husbands for help, some of us actually unconsciously set them up for failure by not allowing them to meet our expectations. Campbell explains that some of us have difficulty asking for what we want because we expect others to deny our requests: "when you operate as if this were true, you don't ask for very much, so you don't have to hear no very often," (Speak up). Don't let this stop you from asking for the help you want and need, advises Campbell.
Whether to avoid the trap of playing super woman all together or to change established patterns and redistribute responsibility allowing both of you to flourish, Dr. Brenda Shoshanna advises women to be careful of "communicating with double messages," (Pitfalls). While she focuses on the problem of saying one thing and doing another, I would stress that we avoid saying one thing and meaning another. When your husband offers to help and you need help, accept it. Or if he does not offer and you need help, ask for it. Struggling to do everything yourself will undoubtedly leave you feeling stress and resentment, and face it something or someone is bound to suffer. In her article Solutions to Your Top Two Communication Problems, Dr. Shoshanna stresses the importance of communicating our wants, needs and desires: "without effective communication, no relationship stands a chance." She reminds us that effective communication involves listening as well as talking: "each person can only truly 'hear' what is being said if they are willing to put aside their own point of view and really be available to know the heart and mind of the other," (Solutions). So while you are asking for what you want, be prepared for your partner to share some requests or concerns.
Asking your partner for help empowers both of you to positively affect your marriage and the success of your relationship. Communicating effectively may be difficult, you may be dealing with cultural gender role expectations which may limit your ability to ask for help and your partner's ability to see you need help, but transcending the limitations of culture and recognizing your needs as an individual opens your relationship up for success. It's 2006, women of today can (and are expected to) do everything from raising children, working full time, completing higher education, contributing to the household economy, caring for parents and sometimes grandchildren: we are all things to everybody. But it is time we do something for ourselves. From one strong woman to another, my advice to you is when you need help, ask for it-before it's too late.
###As appears on AC
August 10, 2009
The List of Lists
Whether it’s the top ten reasons couples stay together, the top ten reasons couples break up, the top five reasons he isn’t in to you, or the top five reasons you aren’t in to him, if it’s on your mind (or not), there’s a list for it.
I like, love, or tolerate lists as much as the next person –more or less—my acceptance of lists depends on the content, my mood, the language, tone, style…well, the list of things I like or dislike about lists is extensive: I’ll condense it here.
Why People (A broad general category to describe those who think like me, and those who do not) like lists:
1. Concise, manageable, chunks of information: easy to read.
2. They are every where
3. There is a list for everything
4. They are easy to remember
5. They are easy to forget
Lists are how we remember what to pick up from the market, what we like about a person, what we are looking for in a car. They are compact guidelines made in haste, in earnest or in vain.
I plot the tangibles: career, finances, vacations with children, qualities I am looking for in a man. The intangibles: qualities I am looking for in a mate or future spouse, I can neither plot, imagine or list.
I’m not that far in my pursuit of me to consider a pursuit of we. So, for now I create lists of places I would like to visit: Top five places to go before you turn 40; types of people to date: Top ten traits for a date; experiences to have: Top five things to do before considering saying I do.
But tomorrow, I will create more mature lists: You know you are ready to consider a serious relationship when…
And the day after that I will create one more: Top ten reasons not to create another top ten reasons list…
July 24, 2009
Dating While Dead: An Intimate Essay
I often cheer for the delinquent, the misfit, the misunderstood, the unstable, disenfranchised, disillusioned, disheartened, the despaired. But, I don’t date them—at least not on purpose, and never for real.
At times I am attracted to—but not committed to—improbabilities. I am, at least for now, selectively single.
It took me a while to realize I was hurt by my ex-husband’s affair. And so, for a while, I didn’t.
I am not one of those women who wonder why with all of the attractive, successful, “eligible,” single men around the Beltway, I remain single. As a “self aware” woman, I recognize, admit, and acknowledge certain flaws, characteristics, strengths, and traits, and yet, I cannot self diagnosis my own injuries.
Which does not mean I don’t self medicate.
I pop men as if they are tiny, dispensable, candy-coated cough drops.
For the past few years, I have substituted relationships for “relationships” with various built in trap doors. I often admit my attraction to absurdities. Eventually, when playthings and fantasies turned into reality, my attraction to absurdities became a sort of addiction to them.
I have dated improbable men. I have been seduced by the obscure, by the experience of living and the pursuit—though I didn’t recognize it then—of inevitable endings. I remain fascinated with goodbyes.
We all have our vices.
For a few weeks, I dated a man going through a divorce. As someone who rarely talked about divorce even when I was going through one, I was often shocked by his addiction to disclosure. In person, over the phone, through texts and IM’s, I learned so much about his marriage that I recommended he stay in it. I also recommended he talk to his friends, therapist (a bit too subtle of a suggestion that he seek therapy) and his lawyer. I recommended he talk to anyone, but me, about his divorce.
He didn’t take my advice.
My final suggestion came midway through texts about his recent discussion with his wife—she wanted him back. I recommended he take her up on it.
“I just can’t do this,” I texted.
Two texts of 140 passion-filled characters (he always had passionate discussions about his marriage) streamed across my screen, then silence.
I only regretted the way I said goodbye.
Each of my relationship experiences, though departures from my norm, were necessary for me to realize I was hurt, temporarily broken (well, not broken, perhaps a bit worn) for a rather long time. My instinct was not to hurt others (though I did); it was to protect myself (I did that too).
I was emotionally isolated, DWD: dating while dead.
Now I recognize my condition and I allow myself to be temporarily hypnotized by hot guys in fast cars with dark windows (I’m still rather shallow) as they speed closer and closer to my reality.
Does this mean I am ready to commit? No. It means I am ready to commit to dating—for real.
June 17, 2009
Seasons of Graduation: Part III: Middle School
The following night we are shopping for my daughter’s graduation dress, a summer dress she picks out. While I worry that it is not quite dressy enough, I keep my concerns somewhat to myself.
The morning of her graduation, Amira is a princess. Her light-blue summer dress is simplistic; the aura of royalty is within her.
Noah is distracted many times during the first hour of his sister’s graduation. He is distracted by sitting on a metal chair, perching on my knees, pretending to listen to the speaker. All he wants to do is see his big sister walk across the stage. Well, honestly, all my four year old wants to do is leave, but I tell him we can’t leave until his big sister walks across the stage.
Many awards are given to many of the same children who storm, stroll or saunter up to the stage again, and again. My daughter’s name is not called. High School will be different, I think. While she is in advanced classes now, she really has to work harder to be involved in sports, arts, after school events.
Practices, games, meetings, fundraisers. High school will be exhausting, for her too.
But today, she is an 8th grader.
Her principal reminds the students, during her speech, to strive for success though others may not wish it on you and to aim for excellence though many do not want you to reach it. I hope the children are listening. I hope my daughter is listening.
“The children’s names will be called in random order,” one of the announcers says. Briefly, I wonder whose idea that was.
A room of parents, grand parents, brothers, sisters, and student who really just want to see one child—maybe two—walk across the stage, accept a diploma, smile for the camera, and sit back down, is now expected to sit quietly while please holding all applause til the end.
Randomness is too chaotic.
Most manage to hold their applause, at least until their child’s name is called.
We are reminded, often, to wait until all names are called but because the program has no names on it, it is a fruitless endeavor. The children are restless. The adults are restless. Still, the list of names drones on until finally, my child’s name is called.
I hear no names after hers.
Seasons of Graduation: Part II--Elementary School
For my son’s graduation, I purchase—the night before—dress pants, a dress shirt. The morning of, I purchase his dress shoes and his father comes over to cut his hair.
My baby is growing up.
This year has been challenging for Sylvester, and for his teachers. He is learning self expression and experimenting with limits. Through diligent research, my son is testing the hearing of adults to see just how low he can speak with or without being heard. He has mastered the art of repetition by doing things over and over and over to see if he will get the same response.
He’s ten and next year he’ll be a middle schooler.
In my family, we appreciate everything; we celebrate birthdays, holidays, report cards, good days, dry nights, fight-free days, grades, teeth that finally fall out and of course, graduations.
I am proud of Sylvester for getting through fifth grade not painlessly, but with all of the pains, challenges, and struggles getting through fifth grade means.
And yet, I am not one of the parents in the back of the recreation center shouting “Woo-Hoo!” or “Mrs. Howard!” or even, “Woodlawn High School, that’s us right here!” during Mrs. Maryland’s commencement speech.
I am not one of the parents in awe of little girls in prom dresses clunking around in heels teetering dangerously on tippy toes while they rush to keep up with boys in three-piece suits, or short sets, or dress slacks.
I am not one of the parents who after lunch whisk my child away in a stretch Hummer limousine.
I am one of the parents with tears in my eyes as I look up and see my baby standing on the stage, one of three, to sing for his graduation.
The one with the big smile, yes, that’s me.
Seasons of Graduation: Part I
The 2008/2009 Master’s candidates of Johns Hopkins University Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences is filled with parents, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, employers, employees, writers, scientists, researchers, investigators, dreamers, doers, achievers, and thinkers in various phases of career, achievement, life, goals.
The crowd is a blur of family, friends, colleagues, alumni, faculty, police. The ceremony, despite applause, cheers, a few ‘I love yous!” and even fewer, “You made its!” is orderly, subdued, Hopkins.
We are changed, and yet unchanged.
For many of us, a Master’s degree marks the end of an education but surely not the end of learning. We are now tasked with applying our education to obtain knowledge. We are challenged to reach for new goals and as Hopkins Graduates, to achieve them.
Surrounded by fellow graduates, it is an indescribable feeling, this task to use knowledge to achieve knowledge. As a Hopkins grad, I am armed with the confidence that the Dean; the speaker, John Astin; the faculty; my family; my friends; and that I hold within. I am prepared to reach for the next success, and to achieve it.
I plan to celebrate with a small lunch with my children and maybe with a tattoo—a small Blue Jay holding a fountain pen.
I settle for lunch.
June 10, 2009
Complication Doesn't Pay the Bills
I have a complicated relationship with money.
I value it. I respect it. I like it.
At varying times I have it or need it or want it.
I earn it through work. I ask for it through grants.
I just don’t write for it.
I usually don’t write about it.
It is, as I’ve said, a complicated relationship.
I want to make a living as a writer. The implication is that I want to be paid for writing, not paid to write (a slight difference making me feel less wordishly whorish). Still, there is the implication of a financial interaction, not the cumbersome actuality of it.
I write because I have a fascination with the way words sound on the page. Not, because of a fascination with money. And yet, I want to make a living as a writer: The implication being a writer who eats.
A few days ago, I updated my blog to include a section about me. In it, I don’t imply that I will write for money. I say it.
I will write articles, blog posts, short stories, newsletters, features and interviews. I will write to inspire action. I will write to support a cause. I will write for money…
Well, maybe not for money.
I will write with and without the expectation of compensation in the form of something of value.
It is, after all, a complicated relationship.
June 03, 2009
Leveling the Personality Playing Field
I am an INTP.
According to my recent Myer’s Briggs personality assessment, and according to my life, I am socially challenged when it comes to socializing.
I find off line networking, socializing, and interacting somewhat exhausting. This is not a confession. Those who know me already know I cherish silence. This is not an expose. When I need to be alone I don’t hide it nearly as well as I think I do. It just simply is.
But, I do it.
I make time to spend with friends, colleagues, and intimate strangers to share experiences, opportunities, and information. I sparingly attend networking events. Perhaps you’ve seen me; I was the person indulging in multiple conversations for about twenty minutes or so. Twenty minutes later, I was the person engaging in a few select interactions. One hour later, I was the person gone.
Online, I am not as reclusive, or I am but people don’t notice.
I have Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I update, post, read, share, learn, network, friend and follow. Online where everyone has something to say, every connection is an interaction that I control. If I feel crowded, I can choose to not log in, to log out, ignore, or put off. But more importantly, I can engage when I want to as often or as little as I want to and no one has to know that our connections are in fact stronger because of, not in spite of, the e-distance between us.
May 29, 2009
The Sex Appeal of a PHD
I want to be a Doctor—I think.
Not a life-saving, disease-curing, blood-splattered doctor. Not a doctor who writes prescriptions, but a doctor who writes.
It takes a certain type of passion, dedication and selflessness to become a doctor.
I don’t have that.
What I do have is passion, dedication and the belief in the selfish pursuit of my craft.
There are PHDs, MFAs and MAs who studied writing to inspire other writers to appreciate, respect and achieve their craft; to find and pursue what interests them on the page. I had such a professor. Johns Hopkins’ Joanne Cavanaugh Simpson recognized the pursuit of my craft and encouraged me to appreciate that which I admire and aspire to achieve in other writers. She encouraged me to submit pieces for publication and researched publications for me to submit to.
Joanne became more than a teacher; she became my unofficial mentor and advisor, my writing enabler, my friend.
If I were to teach, I would want to take such an interest in my students that I recognized their strengths and weaknesses. I would want to be a professor who critiques works with the eyes of an editor and the goal of helping each student make each piece publishable. I would want the vision to help each writer I touch realize what they most admire about their craft and strive to develop, hone and cherish it.
But I worry I am too selfish, right now, to teach.
I do not want to face a mound of manuscripts to my left while cradling my own in my lap. I do not want to have to put off ‘one more minute’ to critique a piece for fear of losing the tone of a dialogue. I am not ready to put my words behind those of my students.
I know myself intimately, and so I will not teach.
Instead, I will continue to learn, to craft, to practice, to write. I will continue to build a network of writers, to appreciate language and psychology within words, and to be fascinated by endings.
I may or may not pursue my Doctorate in Creative Writing. Afterall, I just want to write, a place to write, and a community of writers to indulge in.
Still, I am taking French lessons just in case I decide to pursue my PHD. There is something sexy about Dr. Yvonne Battle-Felton.
April 25, 2009
Applause in High C
For years I have successfully boycotted the recorder—or rather the assertion that the recorder was an instrument. Today, at the Baltimore County Elementary Choral and Recorder Festival, I was pleasantly surprised—once I got over the treachery—by the evidence that proves that the recorder is—or at least that it can be—an instrument.
One year my daughter announced she was learning to play the recorder. As a former high-school band flutist, I contained my laughter.
Within days the notice and the request for money to purchase said recorder arrived, was signed and eventually returned. As threatened, a recorder soon followed.
I was spared hours of what I imagined would be labored sounds of breathing, perhaps a barely perceptible throaty tweet every now and then. There was little practicing at home. It didn’t seem odd to me, what was there to actually practice?
I did not complain.
Months later the concert was announced. Again, I did not worry, I did not complain.
Concert night arrived.
I consider myself a supportive mother, if not always a composed adult. And yet, a stage full of throaty whisperings, at least 45 children breathing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ down cream colored recorders made my sides hurt. I sat in the metal folding chair with my then four or five year old son beside me and thought of things that were not funny. Things like hunger, homework, bills. It worked until I looked at the quizzical expression on my little one’s face and burst into laughter.
Years later, by the time my son brought his permission slip home; I had learned to say no. Besides, recorders didn’t come up in conversation any more and though not missed, I had not heard one squeak even at the last concert. Still, because I had been at the last concert, I said no to all instruments until we could afford to offset classroom instruction with private lessons.
Over the years I had learned it was not the children: they had the required amounts of imagination, belief and desire. Maybe it wasn’t even the music teachers: they were most likely doing the best with what they had. It was us, the parents, who were to blame. We had lowered our expectations and finally had been duly rewarded with grinning second, third, fourth and fifth graders barely squeaking out C’s to roars of applause.
My son has a beautiful voice and his school is blessed with a talented music teacher with standards high enough to lead the boy’s choir to where I want to be—the audience.
My son has been in boy’s choir for a few years now and today, I went today to hear him perform in the All County choir with talented children from schools across the county. Until I looked at the schedule this afternoon, I was not aware recorders would be present, let alone played.
Years of artfully dodging them had led to this.
I resigned myself to an afternoon of cramps.
By the first refrain I was a believer. With the right blend of practice, effort, skill, teaching, support and expectation, kids can do amazing things with a recorder.
Is my littlest one a future recorder player?
I applaud effort, I support hard work, and I encourage imagination. I give standing ovations when children try, fail or show up. I hear squeaks and dream of symphonies.
Today, I heard symphonies.
April 10, 2009
Advice From an Infrequent Reader
This Friday, the Writer’s Center in Bethesda hosted an Open Mic Night for members and nonmembers. The reading drew a crowd of about twenty five people, most of them readers, a few were supporters: all were supportive, well almost.
Many of the readers were members, some were avid readers, some had not read in years and for some, tonight was their first reading. There was a pleasant sense of camaraderie and a surprising hint of animosity.
First, the camaraderie: All readings have etiquette.
1. Food and drinks were to be secured before the reading, during breaks, but not during changes in readers.
2. Cell phones were to be turned off.
3. People who did not adhere to item number 2 were to be immediately shamed by the turning of heads of all who had conformed and the silence of the reader. The ending of the shaming coincides with the reader’s continuation of the reading and the silencing of the phone.
4. No laughing during anyone’s reading, unless the writer waits awkwardly for said laughter or unless the line, word, look, tone, is supposed to be funny. Because I lack poetry skills, my cues are off. I did not laugh.
5. Relax
6. Enjoy yourself
7. Project your voice
8. Make eye contact (which is different from allowing your eyes to roam freely and I dare say creepily around the room)
9. Introduce yourself, these people don’t know you and even if they do—introduce yourself.
10. Please, do not introduce the piece. If it is important for listeners to know the piece is about your ex-boyfriend who deserted you on 695, dooming you to walk where no pedestrian should, as you learned the difference between the inner and outer loop: write about it (please). But, please do not tell readers this and then read a piece to which this knowledge is relevant or not relevant. If it belongs in the piece, put it in the piece.
11. When you like something about a piece, let the writer know. Encouragement is appreciated.
12. Please read your own writing.
Now to the animosity: I was surprised when a fellow reader approached my supporter and I to ask if we had come expecting to learn “to speak alien.”
“It wasn’t on the website,” I diplomatically replied.
I was equally surprised to learn he was not referring to his own poem.
“I could just kill him,” he said, slicked-back hair slicking.
“You’d have to write about it,” I joked, not certain he was joking.
“I wouldn’t really kill him,” he said, finally.
If only I were reassured.
Open Mic Night at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda offers a largely inviting atmosphere to listen to writers in various stages of their craft. The welcoming vibe, all-inclusive turn out, the support of fellow writers, the promise of snacks, and the free cost to participate, makes this venue a nice place to practice thesis readings while appreciating the community of writers wherever you find it.
My Audacity or Why I Write
Writing is an indulgence, a particularly self indulgent one. And so, if I’m going to indulge myself and ask that others come along for the ride, my writing needs to say something, to be about something, to give something in return. It needs to be a mutual relationship, an experience to rise above my need to merely indulge myself.
Does the Thought Even Count?
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
I wished I could take the words back as soon as they left my lips. How shallow they sounded from my vantage point of dry earth and warm clothes, security. My newly made friends in Iowa could be watching their houses, businesses, cars colliding in a rush of water, mud, and other people’s memories.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
What I meant was can I send something that is suddenly in low supply, something dry, anything dry. How the postal service would deliver them was anybody’s guess but to not offer, seemed barbarian. I should have explained in a flood of intentions, emotions, concrete suggestions, but hadn’t they had enough of a deluge already? What do we do when suddenly cast in such a role?
You help, you offer, and you mean it. So maybe I wasn’t so crass, so shallow as the words sounded to my ear. Perhaps when recovered in the drenched voicemail box of a soggy cell phone, or dried from a rusted email account, the words will be the branch they were intended to be.
Licensed to Kill
One weekend I went to a gun range to shoot, well, sort of.
I went to shoot and get certified to do, well that I wasn’t quite clear about. So, I got to the class, late. My friend, another single mom, which may have explained the low cut blouse (the lone female instructor made a point of telling her not to shoot a semi-automatic because the brass would burn between her breasts…awkward?) was already there, and when I walked through the door her face lit up, it’s so sweet to have friends like that. But why she was so surprised to see me when the instructor and she spent ten minutes on the phone giving me directions (until my Sprint network lost signal) is sort of weird, but still. So, she turned and waved when I came in and everyone turned and so I had to smile. They ushered me in so I could sit next to her, near the front. Everyone saw, heard, or felt me come in.
What I got from the class were the three basic rules of handling a gun: never point the gun at anyone you aren’t going to shoot, never load the gun unless you are going to shoot and something else about the gun or shooting. The instructors went over some basic parts of some guns and they were ready to certify.
They asked if anyone now, after having watched the video, wanted to get certified. A few hands went up, mine didn’t. So after the presentation I asked when I could see the next video, I was told it would be during the next class, probably in an hour or so, that was fine with me. But I could fill out the application now, ok that was fine, then the other instructor filled it out and before I knew it was I certified.
Ummm….ok, so then they wanted the class to go out to eat at the picnic tables…ok, I didn’t actually register for the event. When I breezed past the people at the Juneteenth registration booth, it turned out I was supposed to register for there. They didn’t know, I didn’t know or they didn’t know I didn’t know. So I had to back track and register (though I was already certified).
My friend and I ate, most of the food was good, some of it was…It really doesn’t take that long to eat, the echo of gun shots has a way of making you eat faster. The sun, my impatience or–ok, probably my impatience–made us start asking at 1:15, how long before we started shooting. “Oh, in about 15 minutes,” one person said, “probably in 30 minutes,” answered another.
“At 2 o clock,” replied the instructor absently, as if I had no place else to go and nothing else to do but wait for the group to finish eating. Have I mentioned I arrived by myself? So, by 1:24 I was in my car, certified to purchase a gun in the State of MD based on a video I never saw and a gun I never held.
Did it ever occur to them to ask why I needed a gun?
The Diner in which I Find Myself
It is a brightly lit (green, pink, yellow) house, a shack perhaps but because the last time we were here she said I was bourgeois (bourgie to be exact), I really can’t say it aloud. Though I am afraid to touch, the walls look sticky, like tangy strips of melting candy. Toys are everywhere; she says, pleasantly, the décor reminds her of the house in Toy Story, the bad kid’s house.
I don’t disagree.
Star Wars, Pez dispensers, it is like a flea market. I have always hated flea markets. I study the menu to avoid the tightening in my throat, I am almost 5’8 and if I sit up straight, the table almost reaches my neck. If I slouch, the table reaches my chest. If I lean back, legs stretched and twisted before me, I look ridiculous. There is no comfort to be found. It reminds me of a grandmother’s kitchen I tell her, not my grandmother’s kitchen, because my grandmother could cook. So, it’s like a neighboring grandmother’s kitchen. One with salty cookies and sour milk—the ones to be avoided.
Six creamers and six sugars later, the coffee still tastes like coffee. I drink a cup of coffee every day, but I don’t think I actually like it. I am addicted to French Vanilla Crème and can be quite bitchy when I haven’t had any. I have had two cups today so my mood is inspired by this diner in which I find myself.
Nikki Giovanni: Telling Tales
They come in twos, threes and sometimes fours, ushering, strolling, sauntering past those of us worried about such things as being on time, getting a good view, hearing a damn thing. They slide down cool metal bleachers, down neat shiny rows, sliding tighter than socially acceptable and just like that, they are us. We are a congregation of older women with smooth, mahogany skin; younger women with flesh the color of chestnut; children painted a baked-apple brown; a sprinkle of men like brown sugar on toast. We are textures and hues of varying shades of brown, though mostly we are categorized as black.
There are perhaps 150 distractions in Pavilion 4: the lull of chlorine waves; the splashing of dolphins, the whiff of salt water on their skin; the ceremonial symphony of cell phones being turned off; the soft shushing sounds of new books crinkling, flipping, turning. Perhaps the most startling distraction is the hum, the utter energy required to appear to wait patiently. We talk, we laugh, we smile at the children. Perhaps we wonder why children are here in the first place. The children seem almost as restless as the dolphins the National Aquarium’s Rosalyn Stewart worries will upstage Nikki Giovanni during her lecture for Women’s History Month—they won’t.
Giovanni is the second speaker of Celebrating Poetry, Prose and Praise, the Aquarium’s 2008 Women’s History Month celebration. According to Stewart, the aquarium’s community relations coordinator, the event honoring women is part of the Aquarium’s Cultural Heritage Series. The series includes programs to engage the community in Black History Month, Latino Heritage Month and International Day. Stewart is enthusiastic about giving back to the community. By tying in community programs with the Fridays After Five lower entrance fee program, her department is hoping to encourage more people to attend. While the event is nowhere near reaching the room’s 1200 capacity, Giovanni won’t seem to notice, neither will anyone else.
Giovanni approaches the room with a laugh, baseball cap worn backwards. She greets the Hokies first. A trill-like call and response: she calls, they respond. She laughs and a deep cadence fills each empty seat. Hokies unite! She greets the rest of the congregation. Most of us have never met one another, let alone met her, yet there is a familiarity amongst us. She is wearing the New York Yankees baseball cap in Baltimore because the Yankees embraced Virginia Tech after the shooting. She laughs; the sound is rich, genuine, vigorous. She wastes no time on implications, leaving you to wonder if the Ravens reached out to the Hokies; leaving you to wonder if any among us lifted a hand. But, she doesn’t talk about that. The Yankees, for lack of a better word, will play the Hokies in a baseball game. She clarifies; the Yankees will crush the Hokies in a baseball game. But, that of course does not matter, what matters is the relationship, the rebuilding of the Virginia Tech community, the restoration.
Giovanni loves the Ravens. But, “if that boy”, she says, “in that game had of been white…” Laughter confirms what she already knew; there is no need to continue the sentence. Still, she asks “how do you call pass interference on the 8 damn yard line?” We laugh. Some of us laugh because we know what she means. Others laugh because Giovanni is perhaps an inch over 5 feet if you include her tightly-curled black and silver hair; she is a dapper 64 in her black pant suit, black and white blouse, blue-stoned pin sparkling in her lapel; and her southern mannerisms and rapid succession of laugh, pause, anecdote, leaves you a bit unsure you heard her right in the first place. She tells stories and laughs. Maybe you laugh along, and maybe you know, as certain as you know anything else, the words and the laughter don’t mean the same thing.
Giovanni gives us the words because she’s a story teller, it’s what she does.
It’s 2008 and the anecdotes of yesterday are still the realities of today. If you believe it, the laughter is for you. There are those of us who have lived the past 10, 20, 36 years blissfully denying, avoiding, ignoring the issues of race. We have heard murmurs of racism in hushed whispers and ignored them, maybe we had to. Tonight, we can’t. The laughter eases the taste of the uncomfortable coincidences we have been diligently avoiding. It feels somehow like a deception, like sweet liquor. We know Giovanni is political; she is a lyrical call to action. She is, as she is introduced, “a Black woman, lover, mother, teacher, and poet.” She appears before us not as one of these beings, but as all of them.
So it seems somewhat appalling to be held, a willing captor to this rhythm, to this story, but no one walks away, perhaps no one else wants to. Giovanni says what she wants to say, she apologizes for it, but she says it. She talks about race and football, race and rules, race and cheating. While she is talking she says, “I shouldn’t be saying this,” and “I shouldn’t mention that, but it’s a Friday night.” And, she says it. Would you expect a woman who says, “if I can’t do what I want to do, then my job is to not do what I don’t want to do,” to not say what she wants to say?
Her voice deepens and she talks about “Rosa,” her children’s book about Rosa Parks. She says, “I don’t mean no disrespect to Ray, but…” Again, it’s the implication, the pause properly applied. But she wavers, reminding us that, “weak men don’t marry strong women.” Giovanni explains each page in detail, explaining what Bryan Collier, the book’s illustrator, wants the reader to notice on this page, on the next. But, speaking of Bryan, Giovanni points out the newspaper Rosa is reading on the bus, the Emmett Till headline. “Bryan wants you all to know…” she says. There is a call for anger as she describes the characters in Till’s murder, sets the scene, the tone, the setting. She may make you cry and make you sad that it can still make you cry, or angry, or disappointed. She may remind you that it hurts to respond.
But, it will remind her of Mrs. Parks, her friend for over 20 years, and how she must have felt when she politely refused to give up her seat on a bus. Giovanni tells us the story about Mrs. Tate, the bus driver’s wife, and how reporters told her that Giovanni was happy Tate had died. She finds it curious that they would interpret what she did say, “Oh, another one bites the dust…uhn,” as her being happy. But, she does not apologize for the miscommunication, only for letting the media goad her in to saying anything at all. She is tired, she confides, “of black people having to carry the burden of forgiveness,” or having to pretend to carry the burden. Tate chose to correct Giovanni by explaining her husband was simply a “man of his time.” With a fever barely confined, Giovanni explains she makes hundreds of mistakes, many “worthy of correction.” But, she would not, she explains after sharing the markers of men of the 17th, 18th and 19th century as they related to slavery, racism, the Holocaust, and human trafficking, “be corrected by Mrs. Tate” nor would she expect any man to endeavor to be remembered as a “man of his time.”
Giovanni summarized the Alabama boycott, “It started by one woman who said no, one woman who said yes, and then the men come in singing, ‘here I come to save the day…’ When she is finished not reading “Rosa,” she asks, pages already flipping, if she can read a poem. Perching her gold-rimmed glasses on her nose as she speaks, the links of the chains swaying as she reads, hands pointing, her voice lyrically lilting, climbing, falling, faltering as the microphone fades in and out, in and out. She doesn’t seem to notice. There is a rhythm. She weaves history, black history, women’s history, our history. We lean forward, stretched in silence until her voice fades, until she turns to walk away, until the story ends. Giovanni calls, and this time, all of us respond. “God is good,” she calls, “All the time,” we respond. And one by one we part, a congregation, a choir, a group of black women perhaps a little more certain who we are.
A Solution That Makes Sense-A Plan to Save Baseball from a 9th Inning Fan
It takes an O’s fan to ignore season predications, the rumors that Angelos just doesn’t care and the evidence that other fans don’t. It takes an O’s fan to discredit the statistics from the last ten years, the last season, heck, the last O’s game. It takes an O’s fan to find the optimism in the inexperienced, over-experienced and just plain poorly experienced O’s roster and their kaleidoscope of medical injuries, drug allegations, and legal problems. If you still have your season’s tickets after watching them do opening day what they will undoubtedly accomplish many times this season, if you still believe the O’s have a sliver of a chance at a good season, if you still live in Maryland, then have I got a deal for you.
Reality aside, if we consider each of Maryland’s 5,615,727 residents a fan, together we can raise the $360 Million the Major League Baseball Association promised to pay Angelos for the Baltimore Orioles. Granted, some realists have the O’s slated to finish this season in last place. But, if they can overcome their past, their roster, and their lack of confidence in one another, themselves and their management, the O’s can salvage the season. Even if they don’t, whether they lose every other game or each remaining game consecutively, Angelos is guaranteed $360 Million, at least, when the team sells. With that sort of guarantee, Angelos doesn’t have to care if the O’s win or lose. And, there are many who say he doesn’t.
So does he.
Just days before the game, Angelos was asked how his team would do on opening night. Angelos was overheard saying he didn’t care. Maybe he was joking. The decisions he has allowed or executed say otherwise. Gently put, the O’s haven’t played well in at least ten years and as a team, they don’t inspire much reason to think this season won’t be a tragic reminder of the last. Forbes blames Angelos, the fans blame Angelos, the players blame…well one another, the fans and possibly (though would they really admit it publicly?) Angelos. We can’t fire the team; well maybe we could gift them to another state but who wants to do that and who would have them? We can’t trade all the good players, that’s already been done. We can’t just fire the coaches, staff, and administration, well we could. Perhaps we can avoid a baseball coup d’état (complete with replacement management, players and if necessary, replacement fans) the old fashioned way, one dollar at a time.
Using the 2006 Census as a starting point, for a mere $64.10, each Maryland resident regardless of gender, age, income, and more importantly regardless of fan status, becomes equal owner of the team. From there, and this idea comes straight from O’Malley (well sort of), Marylanders can expect yet another tax increase, but this one will cover the annual operating revenue for salaries, stadium maintenance, and administrative support. At some point our state’s underrepresented population, the census dodgers and commuters, the illegal immigrants and the homeless population, will need to be addressed. Why not get that out of the way now? As Marylanders, these people have equal responsibility to the team. Their job, collectively, is to fill every seat, every game, home or away. And, to support every player, every game, win or lose.
If we’ve learned one thing over these past 15 years, we’ve learned that team ownership will not create instant appreciation for the art of baseball, the talent to create a team, or the desire to lead one. That’s where we call on democracy. If the American people are savvy enough to decide our nation’s next leader based on political past, or lack thereof, finely crafted speeches, and directed media coverage, then the people of Maryland can certainly elect the officials necessary to build a winning baseball team. Once elected, the business of hiring coaches, recruiting players and seducing talent, is up to Congress, I mean, the staff. Only, we may need to call the head coach and the assistant, the president and vice president. The team will be the soldiers. The fans, well these days we’ll consider them hostages, but in good times, they’ll be the citizens. With citizen support, our team won’t just play games, they’ll win wars. We aren’t just talking about building a team here; we are talking about rebuilding relationships. Relationships where coaches are held accountable to the team, the team is held accountable to the fans, and the fans are held accountable to the democracy of it all.
Under their current structure, the Orioles are perched to repeat the tumbles of seasons past. Marylanders, why should we wait until November 4 to choose our next leader? We are just $64.10 a piece away from becoming the next MLB super power. Mr. Angelos, maybe we can’t impeach you, but that doesn’t mean we can’t buy you out, one dollar at a time.
A Pep Talk for Multi-Taskers in Waiting
There is a rumor, no matter how innocent its intent, that you can’t have or be everything. Perhaps, this was started to spare those of us who are not gifted with the ability, commitment, time management skills, determination, resources, personality to do or be everything. But, to those of us who can—these words sound rather like excuses.
You most certainly cannot please everyone all of the time. Despite knowing this, there are those of us who plan weddings, parties, dates, with one meat, one poultry, one veggie selection and the advice that those for whom this menu does not appeal eat before they arrive.
Or, maybe that’s just me.
And while I said a mere moment ago that you can be anything (actually, I said you can have or be everything)—you can do it all, you know—I meant all things within reason, skill, resources, experiences, commitment (and, or the ability to obtain the reason, skill, resources, experience, commitment…). You can balance a family, your education, career, friendships, relationships and marriage (as a recent divorcee, don’t quote me) without losing your mind, sacrificing one relationship over the other, or lowering your expectations to include the possibilities of failure (I don’t count divorce as a failure).
As someone who is successfully balancing family, friendships, dating, working, grad school (recently graduated), writing: life (successfully may be up for debate but really, if you would care to debate it—feel free to start a blog), I know that I need to have competing deadlines, multiple projects, ongoing tasks.
I am a mom, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a writer, a lover, a neighbor. I am a doer of many things, a keeper of many keys, a student of many teachers. Each role refreshes, restores and reawakens something in me, each provides me with something I need while allowing me to give something to another.
And, at the end of the day what do I need? I need the many roles, the many tasks, the many expectations to be fulfilled. I need the solitude and peace of knowing that today I have done all that I set out to do. I need to know that tomorrow promises a myriad of opportunities to succeed.
Selective Memories
Tomorrow I leave for Chicago. I miss my children today.
When my heart longs for them (which is whenever they are not around), it is the throaty voice of my 3 year old's Barack Obama impersonation: “I love you back,” that I hear. It is visions of my 10-year-old’s genuinely delighted smile and thoughts of my 13-year-old’s inherited wicked sense of humor that I imagine. It is the daughter, the son, the younger son, the hugs, the laughs, the cries, the learning, the responsibility, the love, the courage, the strength, the questions, the answers, the doubts, the fears, the dreams, the absolute awe of knowing everything and nothing—that I miss.
At these moments I forget the last rapidly escalating argument, the well-timed, ill-intentioned sharp remark to or from my 3 year old, or the lingering “…but, mom…;” “can I have,” or “but my friends are allowed to____” that often pepper conversations with these replicas I have spawned.
So when they—the other realities of parenting: the stress, the frustration, the disappointments—come tumbling towards me in a rush of he said, she said, he did, she did, he looked, she looked, I act swiftly to restore equilibrium. I imagine moments of solitude: libraries, beaches, cemeteries. I act, sometimes I over react; I laugh, sometimes a lot, I talk, often too much.
Hastily I work to restore equilibrium, with longing I ache for the storm to subside, at these times reality is somewhat glaring and shocking, until tempers again subside with a hug, a tear, a talk.
I am a thousand miles away (give or take) and in these vast moments of solitude (rare), I miss the good and the bad times, the complete concoction of motherhood with its not-so-subtle imperfections and its infinite complexities, undertones and underestimations.
While I miss my children immensely, it is selectively. I am not tempted, when given the opportunity, to “mother” a sick roommate, to plan group activities, to check-in or on stray roommates. I mother only those I give birth to.
Six days later I am back home.
It took far less time than I thought for us to fall into old patterns of stiletto voices and hockey-style scrabbles. My children are heading to sleep and I to deliciously horde moments of e-solitude and prose.
Forgiving
How far are we willing to go to give our children what they want?
So, my children want a larger family, it’s the same answer to a different question. They wanted a grandfather years ago, and I accommodated them, well I tried. I emailed, we talked on the phone once or twice, but the first time he wanted the children to call him grandpa or something equally as insane, I stopped all communications from our end, quickly, completely and deliberately.
They didn’t ask again.
Then my daughter started wanting to visit Philadelphia rather, our family in Philadelphia. I don’t know that I consider them family, but I called, we talked and as I tend to do, I lost interest. Today my daughter, barely stifling giggles, handed me the phone, “it’s your father,” she said voice hushed, loud enough for him to hear the appalling implications; “it’s your father.”
“Who?” I asked, not really because I didn’t believe her, not because I didn’t know who she was talking about, but because we don’t actually refer to him in those terms. I never have. Yet, she said it again, only because it amused her.
My mother divorced him when I was 4, I have only seen him a scattered amount of times since then. I’m sure there was a day I longed for him, don’t daughters do that? If there was, I don’t recall it with any certainty.
If I ever really wanted it, a father, wouldn’t I still want one today?
Confessions of a Recovering Bully
am a recovering bully, which is to say as a child I was a bully and now that I know better, I am more conscience of my tendency to be a bully.
Of course, at times my old ways still crop up and serve me incredibly well, dealing with teachers, my children’s classmates, and various people I traipse in to on any given day. I am the mother who tells her children to tell the teacher if another child hits or bullies them. I am the same mother who tells her children if the teacher doesn’t do anything about it, you may have to hit the child–hard. I am also the mother who admits this to the teacher and to the other child’s parent if necessary.
I have been an aggressive driver (a condition I am also in self recovery from), an agitated shopper, an impatient colleague. I have been appeased, accommodated and allowed (by myself) to entertain this conduct when it serves me and to discard it when it does not. It is a process, a learning process and a slow process.
Yet I am in recovery, they say the first step to any recovery is recognizing the condition don’t they?
April 08, 2009
Respect
It comes in to question a lot, not by me and not by people like me—usually–but a lot, by people who are in whatever ways not like me. For people more compassionate, considerate or thoughtful, respect is something earned but easily given. For those who do not have or grant it easily, respect is something worth living –or dying—for.
I think, at times, about the ways in which I have used respect: the ways I have wielded it, abused it, denied it.
Respect costs me nothing and yet it is an often overlooked, under estimated and undervalued commodity. It is a language, like the Dow, that I am learning bit by bit.
Respect is returning phone calls; being cognizant of the meaning of time and the importance of being on time; it is reliability and expectation; it is valuing advice and recognizing the value of finding something you’ve been searching for and cherishing it.
Respect is a noun and a verb.
It is the thing and the act.
Respect is—at least for me and certainly for people like me and unlike me—worthy of living –and while maybe not dying—worthy of fighting for.