Yes. Him Again.The Stories our Bodies Share/With-hold.

I wrote once about my father; my dad. About the things he made, namely me. About the things, besides life, he's given me.

We've been all over the place with gifts, emptiness, stories, more.
I love him. I can admit that now.

A week ago, my daughter turned three. We go hard for birthdays, extremely hard. We see parties as gifts we give to everyone, in celebration for how wild in love we are with our child. This year, it was an African Drumming Party.

Jam on a D'jembe... Don't laugh (or do).

We danced, accepted gifts, sweated out our respective perms and/or roller-sets, fogged up our glasses. We laughed; old laughter, young. Fortunately no one wet anything needed to stay dry.

All kinds of people came; black, brown, pink, beige (me). Some folks didn't.

Zora barely noticed the non-comers. Her cousins were there. In her 3-year-old world, that fact was both the joint and the jam. Her favoritist part. Her love her cousins.

Day ends. Two days stealthily passed. I wondered where he was. How come he kept being a no-show to these events? We'd spoke the night prior to the party. Auntie So-and-So was going to bring him from the city (his) to the burbs (ours). He even semi-joked he'd convince Mummi to come. I was even semi-ok with telling him it'd be ok if she just couldn't make it. We both knew and know: she never ever will.

Just this weekend, I learned he'd had surgery before the party. No details needed. None I'd like to share. But he'd had a surgery, an incision, perhaps blood, pain. And he hadn't told me. And he had walked, by himself, to the appointment. And he... had extreme moments along the way. My mother even confirmed his tears, the pain he experienced in the short days of recovery he'd had. He didn't ask for help. Didn't beg a glass of cool water. And I... I didn't even know.

And this has affected me deeply. Selfish, I know. Unselfish, I know.I had planned a party, held one, debriefed, and my father, my dad, was hurting.

We went to visit him this weekend. His daughter, his grandaughter. We peeked at him sideways, straight on.

I counted freckles. Hugged him more closely. And I don't hug. He doesn't either. He was his usual self more or less; gruff, sweet, sarcastic, humble. Half-way crazy yes. Side-eyeing me back.

Leaving, he long-leggedly approached my short-bodied car, leaned into the passenger-side window, crimping all 6'4 inches of himself into a very low frame, Boston, the Vineyard, and years of public transportation all up in his accent, and said :

"Kid. You're a nervous wreck. You're going to get sick. Come on."

Prideful DNA.
The stories our bodies both share and withhold.

Safety Net. My first/perhaps only.

I like to think I've not asked for much, at least not muchly.
But it's likely that I have, in wanting the basics.

I have wanted wantedly, my mother to be present. My father to be capable. My... well you've heard this before.

I don't know if these things are a safety net. I mean, I am an American with American expectations: I want what I deserve, or I deserve what I want. Whichever.

I won't go into a tunnel, a hole, a dark place I must earn, work, churn my way through. I am implicated by who suffers where, I have an allowance of reality that reminds me: bad things happen, worse things even, in ways and in places I may never see. To people who may hurt more than me. To some who can't endure.

I imagine it's like what my daughter means when she says: "We share the sun, Mummah." Pain of expectation rises here and sets elsewhere. It's how things work, how the world tinkers and goes.

So, I recently recieved as close of a safety net as I have ever. A loved one, super-loved even, said to me: "Whatever you need from me in life, just ask. Maybe I can, maybe I can't. Don't ever be afraid to ask."

But (and there are many)...

I hate asking. Hate the open hole at the end of the question. Question mark as a bungie cord. As an opportunity for no. As an... well, place where I need to have faith, and hope and space for yes as well as no.

But, the net has been cast. And I think I can jump.

When and if I need to of course.
But it/he will likely be there.

Waitingly (perhaps). But there.

D- for Effort. Mine and Hers.

Case scenario: Brilliant child. 2 going on 3. Goes to an awesome (if expensive) school. Great parents. Perhaps they're having a bad week. Perhaps brilliant child watched too much tv while parents spoke, hushedly, some feet away. But still, away.


Mother, a loving one. Me, even. Picks up scenario-ed child from school. Day two, she won't eat my food. I don't curse, I coddle (this time). "Baby girl, we can go to the grocery, with the mini-carts, and pick out the food you'd like to each for lunch" She's nearly willing. I nearly win.


Moments away, Baby-girl kicks off her shoes. Demands I put them back on. Real-me-Mama (in my mind) is like, Oh Hell No. This time I'm curt. No to yelling, but base is reintroduced in my voice: "Get up. Get the shoes ON. Walk your body to the door. Say goodbye to your friends". Near compliance.

Near.

Shoes, again are kicked off. I threaten to let her walk to the grocery in one shoed foot, one socked one. She laughes at the idea.

Moments later Baby-girl is pushing the cart through the over-priced-organic grocer. She's temporarily one inch taller on her left side than her right. The padding of that same foot looks from afar like a kitten paw, perhaps a large puppy's mitt. It ain't. It's a wet, and likely cold, socked foot, paired with a princess sneaker on it's partner.

Yesterday, a small child learned: Mummah loves me, but she might could be crazy.

Moral of story: Baby-girl and Mummah were both pushing it. Keep your MF shoes on.


And... just in case you were wondering, she yelled at me in the car too.
Bed began PROMPTLY at 8.


xo

Nearing 9/11

Be good to each other. Even if for the memory of people you never met. To fill the heartache of survivors, of onlookers, of remains that have never been picked up because they couldn't be identified; honor each other.

Life is, in fact, hard.

And some anniversaries remind you of that.

Some Kind of Perpetual State.

I'm in a worrying phase.

I don't know if fear is the right word anymore. It's very passive, blase. The definition just doesn't accurately summarize the empty ache I've been carrying in my right hand. The ever-present flutter of my outermost lash. That shit is bugging me. Fear seems so... fearful. Inactive. Lazily present.

And perhaps that ain't what I'm feeling. Worry seems lame too. Anxiety is too much of a diagnosis. I'm not there yet. No.

I been thinking about those closest to me. My mother, my lover, my child, few others. My legit-short list.

Some thoughts get more of my attention than does my work, my play, court-tv.
Some get more of my anxiety than others. It's the difference between lost sleep over love, and lost footing over a misplaced doll. It's a new kind of math, perhaps. Some things simply can be more easily over-come.
Out-run. Over-thought. #shit.

But... I won't be long-winded this go round and I need progress.
I think it's safe accurate to say: I'm feeling a certain kind of way.

My mom is too skinny. My job is a job. My man is uncertain. My child is observant. My ... other stuff too. Some ain't bad. This ain't (that) bad.

But I'm feeling some kind of way.

Right now. Today.

Baggage.

I hate that word, effing baggage. Hated it most in the months nearing Valentine's days, anniversaries with (now) exes, in conversations with friends as we scoured the bony remains of an ex-to-be. "that [expletive + adjective + noun] had baggage..."

I certainly had baggage. And so, I'd hold my nose up sheepishly. Pretend whomever we were ranting about really wasn't shit. A hater, even. Guffaw.

I'd cringe hearing the phrase when given my "it's not you, it's me speech" by whatever long-legged wave cap wearer I was in love with at any given moment, explaining how my clingyness was the sole contributor of our demise. Most times it wasn't. Most times however, they were right, at least, about my baggage; my clingyness.

Baggage pretty much sucks. It inhibits relationships to come; professional, personal, and if these relationships ever occur at all. Sometimes they scare love away. Sometimes it ain't the love you needed it to be anyway. Sometimes though, a love that could have been. A love that should have been.

In the height of Mummi's illness (1987, or thereabouts), she had this thing going on about race, ethnicity and separation. I listened as she explained what sounded like the creation story. She wanted me to get that I belonged in a certain place, with certain people. She wanted me to earn discernment, community. Kind of. She wanted me to understand placehood, a genre of being. Kind of. She interpreted hierarchy in race, class and wanted to put me in a safe place. Perhaps that was it mostly.

She also had a theory on relationships. I'll spare this story simply to say: it would have been a dangerous path if I stayed at home, spent my adolescence as a prophet of this kind of reality. I was made for more.

Reminder: Mummi wasn't on meds. She was again in a heightened state. Some All of her analogies were off. Confusing. And I was young. Small. Struggling. I accepted what she had to say as a type of truth. The best she could muster. It involved self-loathe of blackness, self-loathe of mixedness, self-loathe of bilingualism. And a promotion of all three at once. I accepted it in that way that a small child accepts the words of his/her mother.

I gauged that perhaps every third word of her relationship theory could have been right, maybe. I sheared her story of it's violence, it's sexual shame, its fearfulness. I extracted what seemed to be the most approachable of her analogy as truth. Clingyness seemed ok enough. Maybe that was how a woman should be.

I accepted her other truths, the ones about race and class, embarrassedly. I deferred to others who were "blacker", "more mixed", more functionally bi/trilingual. There was nearly no room for me to be enough of much. This feeling of not-enough-ed-ness evolved into fear of those who were enough. I moved away from Mummi and to a more homogenous environment that was nearly entirely black. I went to a school that was nearly entirely white. I was so uncool in both places I became self concious about clapping off-beat and speaking grammatically incorrect, depending upon where I was, with whom, when. No one wants to be an oreo.

Race became my baggage until it became my obsession/fascination. Relationships remained a curious thing. They still are. Even as I've grown up and into myself.

My arms get tired, all this damn baggage. I accept that I'm still working through what I learned en route.

And it aint Mummi's fault. It kind of can't be. But its my baggage. Mine.

And someday I hope I get it right. Drop it off, and move the hell on.

Vacationing on Vacation.

We went away. Far and away... well, kind of.

Our unit-of-three vacated Mass for warmer climes... no seriously, we went to Disneyworld in FL in the DEAD of Hot-As-Hell-Hurricaine Season. *Wiping sweat thinking of it.

Ask me how it was.

Ok, wait. First, lemme provide some background you may, if you're a semi-reader of this blog, already know or be able to appropriately assume:

1. I am 31.
2. Our daughter is 2 (and fresh).
3. I've never been to Disneyworld.
4. I've got that "bad", "good" "kinky" in-between hair.
5. I've developed an affinity toward Princess Tiana.

So effing what. Lots of folks, parents in their 30s haven't taken their fresh ass kids to WD. And who cares about a friggin princess... Well, in all my 30+ kinky-headed years, ain't a one of them princesses been brown, had two jobs, missed a parent with her whole heart, or set an example for always aiming to do the right thing, if self-righteously so. It's an understatement to say: I get you girl.

I grew up in a time when kids, brown kids on brown kids, called each other African Booty Scratcher. That ish is funny, but it ain't. And if you're part-time homeless, or look like you might-could scratch your booty (as um, I'm assuming I did as a fuzzy headed part-time homeless kid) brown princesses, or some other animated or real character maintaining the whole you are somebody steez would have been a great aside.



In any event, I cried, and I'm a crier, so I cry-cried at the meeting of said princess, and at the parade when my daughter; a child who lives a very different life than my own, received a full-faced smile and hug from said character.

I cried when we got on the plane and I realized I was going somewhere not out of necessity, or for work, or in running away, but for whimsy.

I cried when I realized how thoughtful the place was; sitting under a shorn hedge shaped like Minnie Mouse. Not a heavy cry, but a whimper.

I cried a little at the beach, at the silence of the shoreline, no houses blocking the view of the sea.

And, perhaps not as much as I cried at the castle, I held a heavy lump in my chest that this is an experience my parents likely will never, ever experience. And part of me doesn't know what to do with all this "understanding". I got a full two weeks of it.

Perhaps I'll learn more at the cusp of my next vacation to Disney World.
Which, I'm hoping is next year.

XO

D