Excitement Hangover and Why I Say No A Lot

I haven't had an actual hangover from drinking too much since before I had my oldest daughter.  On a wild night I might have a third glass of wine.  (Woo hoo!)  And I haven't had more than a glass and a half of wine since before I was pregnant with my youngest.  I'm still breastfeeding, and I'm not trying to get my 6 month old drunk.

But occasionally I do get excitement hangovers.  

Like the one I've got this bright and sunny summer Monday.  

My baby still sleeps in bed with me, and her little sleepy feet started kicking against my body around 6:30 this morning, and she was finally in full blown I'm awake and hungry gimme the boob mode by 7:15.  So I opened my eyes, I pulled her into me, I fed her, which allows me some time to wake up fully, and I rolled my exhausted ass out of bed, knowing I couldn't have coffee yet because I needed to pump some milk for rice cereal, and I'm not trying to give my baby coffee in her morning cereal.

Friday night my actual plan included signing up for, paying for, and beginning the arduous process of building my new website for my new business (more on this later).  Then after visiting with my husband once the kids were asleep, I added a few more things to my action plan. (I don't remember what they are now.  Needless to say, they didn't get done.)

Ah, action plans.  They are good for organizing what needs to be done.  They are not, however, fervent task masters that insist you get those things done.

Matilda just turned 6 months, and at her pediatric check up her doctor gave us the green light to begin solid foods.  (yay!)  This milestone meant we needed supplies:  high chair, cereal, spoons, bowls, and other random stuff I buy when I'm out and I can't help myself.

Instead of doing the logical, time saving, tried and true shopping that the brilliant moms do, which is to use Amazon Prime and have it all delivered two days from the doc appointment, I decided to "make a day of it."

I am on this new kick where I venture out into the world and spend my money in actual stores.  I recently read an article on how Amazon, led by the fabulously fit JK Simmons look alike Jeff Bezos, is taking over the world.


        

So?  I love Amazon.  Who cares if it takes over the world?  More convenience for me.  The problem is that I actually enjoy venturing out into the real world and interacting with real human strangers and experiencing real life through exchange, both cash and conversation.  So while I certainly still enjoy the convenience of Amazon and happily contribute to my brother's stock in the company through regular purchases (you're welcome), if I can carve out time for a shopping day, I will.  I want to contribute to physical stores in an effort to keep them around.  (I'm trying to be the change I want to see in the world.  So far so good, right?)

So I shopped.  Outside.  

I told my husband to enjoy having the day to himself taking care of all of his little projects, and I headed out with our girls for a day of shopping and lunching and starbucksing.

It was great.  We shopped, we took our time, we had a nice lunch outside at Rubio's, and we stopped at Starbucks drive thru on the way home for coffee, ("kid coffee" for Celaya, which is just steamed milk with a shot of vanilla syrup).  Matilda took a nap in the car on the way back home from Pacific Commons in Fremont to our house in Hayward, so I decided to make one more stop at Carter's to spend my $20 in rewards since the baby would now have rested energy for a bit more shopping.  I had my kids five years apart for a reason; the five year old is manageable now which frees up time and energy to devote to the 6 month old, which makes the whole two kid thing relatively painless.  Which leaves room for more fun.  And I'm all about fun.

That afternoon when we got home the heat was settling into "warm" as opposed to "dear god why don't we have an air conditioner in this inferno!?"  My husband was in the kitchen cooking chile verde for dinner, blasting salsa music.  I unloaded all our goodies and put together the high chair while the kids played on the floor.  Friends came for dinner, and we hit the pool before eating, and when the day was done and the kids were in bed, my husband and I sat up and visited over red wine.  It was a perfect Saturday.  Activity rich and full but not "busy."  There was time for sitting, time for laughing, time for closing eyes and reflecting.

Then Sunday came.  From the moment my feet hit the floor I was running.  My sister was in town, staying in a local hotel (because she has two adorable fluffy little dogs that shit and piss and bark everywhere) and we had one day to spend with her and her family (because she makes separate time for separate parts of her extended family).  So we decided on the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

We were up and out of the house by 8 AM. We arrived at the Jack London Square Ferry in time to catch the 8:55. My sister caught a later ferry and met us at the museum by 11. The kids ran, they explored, they laughed, they did cartwheels, they hugged, they cried over hurt fingers and feelings, they played and pushed and pulled and did all the things cousins are supposed to do.  We had an early dinner at Il Fornaio on Battery, not for food (the men and the children all had chicken strips and fries off the kids' menu, and my sister and I split a pizza), but for the atmosphere.  The "glass house garden" next to the fountain outside on Levi's plaza is perfect for relaxing and letting the kids play.  We all took the ferry back, and my sister and her family hung at my house until later that night.  It was a nice day.  Again, fun and full, but not busy.  For the relationship that my sister and I have (which involves some eggshells), it was a perfect day.

But now here I am exhausted.  I am so tired that the world spins a bit if I close my eyes for too long.  It's Monday.  I work Monday through Thursday until 10:30 at night.  This fatigue is unlikely to wear off until Saturday morning after a week of catching up on sleep and a full night's sleep including sleeping in on Friday night (thanks honey).




And this, this exhaustion, this catch up game, this world spinning, is why I say no a lot.

No I won't do a birthday party on one day and a day trip to Sacramento the next.

No I won't schedule my kid for dance on Monday, soccer on Tuesday, gymnastics on Wednesday, and piano on Thursday.

No I won't camp one weekend and then throw a party the next weekend.

No I won't stay up all night with friends Friday night and then plan a late night movie out with my brother the next.

I like to sit.  I like to sleep.  I like to breathe.  I like to sip a glass of red wine slowly and smile at a cute story and go to bed early.

Sometimes.  Often enough that I enjoy it, that I ensure that it is an actual part of my life and not an exception, that I don't miss it to the point of craving it.  Relaxation time.  Time to reflect.  It is essential to my soul.

My girlfriend is a full time stay at home mom who does not work outside the home at any sort of traditional income earning job, and I swear she is busier than I am.

That woman says yes to everything.

"Hey Katherine, how about kids movie night next Friday?"

"Oh, I can't.  I'm going to see Green Day with Ed."

"Katherine, how about a kids musical two Saturdays from now?"

"Dang it.  We have a birthday party that day."

"Katherine, let's go to the waterpark on Monday."

"Can't we'll be in Yosemite."

"Ooooh Katherine let's pick blackberries Tuesday afternoon with the kids."

"I just made plans to see a movie and have dinner with my mom that night."

"Have you been to the Hayward farmer's market, Katherine?  Let's go this Saturday."

"Ugh, can't this Saturday, I'm making Chili for a fundraising cookoff."

"Oh fuck Katherine show me your calendar and I'll pencil myself in!"

I kid Katherine.

I love Katherine.

And, more importantly, I understand where it comes from.

Katherine wants the world for her kids.  She wants her kids to have full, rich, fun filled lives where they explore their varying interests in sports, recreation, friends, academics, nature, travel, and anything else that is part of the world's oyster.

That alone would keep anyone busy.

In addition, she works hard to be stay actively involved in the development of her marriage (concert with Ed), an attentive daughter (dinner with mom), make time for things she enjoys personally (wine at a friends house or a night out with the ladies) and to be a good human (chili cookoff).

And good for her.  Her kids will only be little for a short time, relationships do need time and attention, and humanity does need to be saved (one cookoff at a time).

But when Monday morning rolls around and we watch our kids play at the park together, separating their tussles, mediating their arguments when they get too obnoxious to ignore, Katherine is quite frequently "tired.  So tired.  And I don't know why.  I get plenty of sleep.  I exercise.  I eat well.  I'm doing everything I am supposed to be doing.  Why am I so tired?"

I don't have any advice for Katherine on this issue.  I don't judge her.  Katherine is one of the people in my life through which I have learned that someone can be different from me without being wrong, bad, or even worthy of criticism.

I admire Katherine for all of her yesses.  I am frequently entertained by her Monday morning stories of adventures or snafus.  I enjoy our time together, and I think she is a genuinely good, giving person with a fuck of a lot on her plate.

But for all of my admiration I do not aspire to be like Katherine.

I do not want to be tired.  Let me restate that:  I actively work at being tired for as little time as possible in my life.  I abhor being tired to the point where I will leave work early when I don't have students and risk losing hourly pay so I can go home and go to bed early.  I will nap in the middle of the day.  I will "accidentally" fall asleep with my baby when I put her to bed on one of the nights I'm home.  I need rest and relaxation.  I need at least one day a week where I don't pile my kids into a car for anything, even a trip to a local park.  "Let's walk instead," I'll say.  I need downtime.  Lots of it.  I do a lot for my family and with my friends; I am regularly serving others, and I cannot serve from an empty vessel.  For me, this is how I fill my vessel:  downtime.

So I say no a lot.  And I will continue to say no when I need to, and yes whenever I can.

(And always yes to Katherine.)

Katherine finds other ways to fill her vessel.  Or her vessel remains half full (as opposed to half empty).  Katherine will figure out what works for Katherine because she's strong, she's smart, and she's capable.  And most of all, because she wants to.  Even if that means being tired a lot.

But I sure hope Ed rubs her feet at night.

Dead Batteries, Cold French Fries, and Choosing Happiness

I've been trying out this new approach to life:  love, light, open heart, open mind, unafraid.

Choose happiness.

I am working on letting go, letting goodness in, and turning away from negativity.

For more than a month now it has been going very well...

Then my day yesterday began with me yelling on the phone at my husband.  This is not a typical scene for us.  In the more than ten years now that we have been together, he and I have had maybe two handfuls of fights that involve me yelling and him trying to get through to me.

I was frustrated.

I was planning on writing a long blog post about misogyny, casual misogyny to be specific.  And whenever I get angry about men and casual misogynistic behavior, I hate to admit it, but my husband takes the blame for all men everywhere.  Suddenly everything he does is oppressive and paternalistic and standing in the way of my feminism and my feminist lessons to my daughters.

Honestly, sometimes he has actually done something wrong; it is usually lots of little things that drive me crazy, then something somewhere else unrelated fully pisses me off and I explode all over him with all the little things that I genuinely don't care about and would probably never bring up except to tease him at social gatherings.

But the misogyny article will have to wait.

I yelled.  I cried (because that's how I vent my frustrations).  I took my kids to the park.  I cooked. I cleaned.  I shopped.  I prepared lunches.  I spent time with my girls.  We read.  I packed for work:  breast pump with all the parts and pieces, check, coffee to go, snacks, and dinner, check, workbag with laptop and history papers, check.  I took the fresh flowers I had bought out of their wrapping and put them into vases.  I fed my baby.

My husband came home, and ten minutes later I headed out the door to work.  As I got to my car I realized I had forgotten my phone.

"Oh well," I thought.  "I have my laptop from which I can text and do everything I need to except make phone calls.  As long as my car doesn't break down, I have no reason to need my phone.  And my car is not going to break down.  It's virtually brand new."

So went my thinking.

I got to work early, prepped for my students, had some productive sessions, got two rounds of breast pumping done at work, and planned for a quiet evening at home writing and catching up on some household duties at the desktop computer.

Throughout the entire day I had been thinking to myself, "Apologize to your husband.  There is no room for ego and pride in your marriage." So I did. "Look at what a great job you are doing, getting so much done without any stress or anxiety.  Doing the important things first and the little things later.  Good for you."  Yes.  I am proud of my new approach to prioritizing and settling into a rhythm and routine that involves me saying no when I need to to certain things, so I can say yes to the fun stuff.  "How nice it is that we have a home we love where we all fit comfortably.  How lucky I am to have happy, healthy, smart, active, beautiful children.  How wonderful to have a husband who is my friend and wants to take this journey into happiness with me."  I am working on changing my language to include gratitude and joy instead of lack, need, and frustration and anxiety.  "Wow, look at my students, we are making really good headway on this work.  I am a really good teacher."  I believe in self confidence and positive self talk.

It's working.  (more on that later)

So my day unfolded in a very strange but positive way.  And then I walked out to my car.

I pushed the button to start my car,  the lights flickers, the engine choked, and my car died.  No lights.  No engine.  No action.  My battery was dead.  I own a 2014 Hyundai Santa Fe.  Why was my battery dead?

It was ten o'clock at night.  I was the only one at work.  The parking lot was empty.

So, a couple of months ago had this happened to me, I would have spun out on all of the evil possibilities.  Had someone rigged my battery to die?  Was someone lurking in the dark waiting for me to go back to my center and follow me in to assault me?  Was my baby okay at home?  I don't even have my phone so I don't even have a flashlight.  What do I do?

And then I would have pulled it together and figured it out.  Because that's what I've done for 38 years.

But this time I skipped all the anxiety.  I sat in my car for a moment with my owner's manual by the light of the street lamp, trying to figure out if there was anything I could do, maybe a fuse or something?

Then I packed my breastmilk back into my center to the fridge, called my roadside assistance for a battery jump, and settled in.

And I thought, "how fortunate I am to have roadside assistance.  How capable I am that I can do this myself.  How nice that I can text chit chat with my sister while I sit and wait and that my sister is a night owl and is up to chat and commiserate with me.  I am so proud that I have a capable father for my children.  I know everyone is sound asleep without a worry at my house.  Oh, I better send a text home so everyone knows I am okay just in case they wake up."

I was flooded with gratitude that things happen out of our control but we control our reactions to them.  I appreciated that this was a minor blip on a Monday night that, despite maybe a few hours of sleep lost, would really not make my life worse, and in many ways made it better.

I submitted a couple of proposals for freelance writing work while I waited.  I got a new follower on twitter!  (thanks for the hookup sis!)  And I applied for and got approved for a new 0% intro credit card with a nice high limit.  (my credit is looking up!)

Life is good.

The roadside guy showed up, figured out how to jump my car (I think he was new), and made a few cracks about how it was too bad I had a Hyundai because they have so many problems.  He should know, he tells me, he has one too.

"Okay Eeyore.  Stop trying to rain on my happy parade."  I think to myself.  My car is just fine.  I'm not spending weeks now worrying about what other shoe could drop with my car.  (The old me would have.)

He also warned me not to turn my car off for at least a half an hour.

Okay.

I head back to my center, get my baby juice out of the fridge, load my car back up, and head out.

Oh, I also stole a cell phone from work because I was not driving home at midnight through a dark canyon with no cell phone after that.

I get in my car and notice my gas tank is empty.

Oh no!  My gas tank is empty!  How on earth am I going to deal with this?  I can't turn my car off.  I need gas to get home.

Oh no!

But, I didn't freak out.  I grabbed myself some french fries from McDonald's across the street.  I earned those french fries.  I reward myself with pure crack when I am at my most Amazonian.  And I headed over to the gas station.

"Hey, Nascar doesn't turn their engines off when they fill up the tanks," my sister noted via text on my work cell.

Thanks sis!

So, I filled up my tank with my car running, grateful for yet another lesson:  never let your gas tank get that close to empty.  Also grateful that I didn't explode.  (Yay!)

I pulled onto the road and took out a french fry.

Cold.

My beloved rarely purchased, rarely enjoyed french fries were cold. And everyone knows that crack is best served piping hot.  Cold crack is inedible.

Oh no!  Poor me!  This sucks!  I just want to get home!!

That's what the old me would have thought.  I would have tossed the fries, gone home angry and hoped tomorrow would be better.

Instead, I made a U turn, went back to McDonald's and asked for fresh fries.  They happily accommodated my request.  And I enjoyed my fresh fries, my charged car, and some NPR news updates at midnight on my way home.

I rode the elevator up, walked in my door, plopped my stuff down, brushed my teeth, and got into bed.

My baby started fussing so I popped a boob, then the other boob, in her mouth, she went right back to sleep, and I settled in for a nice 6 hours of sleep, thinking about how amazing I am, that I not only got through a very full, very challenging day, but that I chose happiness through it all.

I chose happiness.

White Pride

There has for many years been this binary between white guilt and white pride.  As if we have to choose between the two.  First, we are guilty of so much. And I think that perhaps because of the many reason for guilt, we have tried to bury that guilt by shifting blame and claiming a pride we are unworthy of.  But I believe we can perhaps become worthy.

I'm white.

There's no denying it, disguising it, pretending to be "mixed" with any other race or ethnicity.

I am as white as they come.

Both sides of my very large family are full of white people.

I have no idea what my heritage is.  As far back as I know, which is all the way back to both of my great grandmothers, my family comes from The United States, but I don't know where from before that, and I have no idea which part of Europe anyone is from.  We throw around "Bulgarian" on one side, "Scots Irish" on the other, but no one really knows what that means.  None of us have actually ever seen Bulgaria or Scotland or Ireland.

We are all just white.

For my entire life I have been pretty comfortable in my skin.  I have always known who I am.  I have always fought for the things I believe in.  I have always been proud of myself.  And I am quite proud to be a woman.  I love having daughters who get to carry on my legacy as a strong woman fighting the patriarchy.

But it has never occurred to me to be proud to be white.

In fact, the concept of white pride is shocking to me.

I grew up in a town that was mostly white, black, and latino.  My friends from middle school on were mostly black, some latino.  My serious boyfriends were mostly black and latino.  My first husband and my current husband are both Mexican.

I look at other cultures celebrating their ethnicity with pride, and I understand where the sentiment comes from.

Black people were stolen from their land, brought to a strange, lawless land where they were separated from fellow tribe members who spoke their language, separated from their families, enslaved, raped, beaten, murdered, and told that this was all for their own good.  As time went on, children were born into slavery; it was the only life they knew.  Children were fed from pig troughs, refused an education, raped, both boys and girls, at very young ages, separated from their parents, and the cycle continued.  It is common knowledge that people with low expectations do not often do much to improve their lot in life because the odds of success seem so low.  The slave mentality should have been one of sheer subservience.

And yet, they rose up, they rebelled, they fought their masters, they ran away.  They overthrew entire governments in the caribbean islands.  They not only survived.  They thrived.  Then, when slavery was ended by white people after the civil war, mostly because they were afraid of an outright revolution that would take power and control out of white hands, very few concessions were given to free blacks, but they persisted nevertheless.  They elected black congressmen, then opened black schools, they educated themselves and their youth, they brought cases for equality to the supreme court.  They fled the south and made new lives in strange places in the north, where they were still discriminated against, still beaten, still spit on.  And they persisted.

Black people, yes black people, created the only music that is authentically American:  jazz.  Black people did that.  Black people wrote amazing works of literature, poetry, created art, led anthropological studies to preserve their culture, their story, their language.  They went on to become federal justices, found universities, establish black townships, fight in both world wars, and thrive and thrive.  Black people led the civil rights movement, which went steps further to guarantee actual equality in this country that they helped build with their blood, their bones, the lives of their children and other loved ones.

Today, black culture is easily the most replicated, most admired, most desired culture in this country.  Everyone either listens to music made by black people, reads books written by black authors, tans their skin to be darker, wants a body shaped like the stereotypical black body, wants fuller lips, wants curlier hair, we as a society crave black culture.

Sadly, we do not love black people the way we love their culture.  But that is another blog for another time.

Black people have ample reason to be proud, to raise their fists in the air as Toni Morrison wins the Nobel Prize, as Barack Obama becomes president, as Hidden Figures becomes a major motion picture.  Black people have reason to be proud that they survive yet another generation of police brutality, another decade of the prison industrial complex, another school year of inadequate funding for majority black schools.  Not only survive, thrive.  Persist.  Overcome.

And Mexicans.

Mexican people in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico are currently hunted down by immigration officials and deported from land that is in fact Mexican land.  The land we stand on here in the west was quite literally robbed from the Mexican people through a staged war and a corrupt bargain.  Mexicans have fought in every war the United States has ever fought in, on the US side.  They have had their land stolen, their language taken from them, their families broken up, and their history co opted.  I have a friend who moved to California from Wisconsin who didn't even know California used to be Mexico.

Mexican people make up a primary source of necessary labor in this country, and they have for over a hundred years.  In exchange they have received token periods of amnesty, temporary reprieves from persecution, and, once again, a co opting of their culture.

White people love Mexican food.  I challenge you to find a small white town without a Mexican restaurant.  We also love eating out.  We love cheap fruits and vegetables.  We love cheap labor.  All of these things are predominately provided for us by Mexican people.

Yet where is the love for the people?  We haven't passed comprehensive immigration reform for more than 11 million undocumented immigrants through two entire presidencies, yet we continue to benefit from that labor and from the millions of dollars in taxes they pay each year.  We have a tiny percentage of Mexican, or any Latino for that matter, people in congress, while celebrating a "racially diverse" congress. Spanish is the number one foreign language taught in high school as the second language requirement for college admittance, but the students who take the classes learn little to nothing.  But white people love to say "hola!"  and "gracias!"  

We have oppressed Mexican people in this country from the very beginning, down to kicking them off land they owned by law, yet they have survived.  They have thrived.  They continue to immigrate to this country and work hard, put up with our abuse, take the lowest paying jobs, and send their children to school to be educated, but also to be subjected to continued abuse.  They continue to be the most bullied kids in the US, their women are the object of hypersexualization by the media and our citizens.  Our very own governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, commented that Latina women are "very hot," apparently because they "have part of that black blood and part of that Latina blood in them."

And with all of that, Mexican people survive.  They thrive.

They are the largest minority group, and growing rapidly, in the United States, and as a result politicians have and will continue to have to pay close attention to their demands.

They produced critically acclaimed literature that continues to be studied in schools across the country at all grade levels.  Mexican people becoming increasingly interested in politics and gaining a political voice in this country.  Mexican people have discovered the secret to unity and protest, staging immigration marches and various "day without a Mexican" boycotts.  Spanish is becoming a necessity in many states in this country.  More Latinos are heading to college than ever before.

In spite of the odds.  In spite of overt and casual racism from all directions.  In spite of a system that tells them from birth that they are inferior and will never be more than servants.

Mexicans have many reasons to be proud of their heritage, of overcoming, of surviving, of thriving.

The same goes with Asians, who also have their own history of oppression at the hands of white people, going back to dear Matthew Perry telling Japan in no uncertain terms that Europe and the US would be trading with Japan whether Japan liked it or not.  Similar imperialism occurred with our Open Door Policy with China.  So, we want to come into your country, open trade ports, send missionaries to convert you to christianity, but we do not want you in our country.  Just look at the Chinese Exclusion Acts and the Japanese Gentleman's Agreement, not to mention Japanese internment during WWII.

And yet, today, Japan's economy is thriving.  China is arguably one of the most powerful countries in the world.

And in the US Asians are the fastest growing minority group, and the most successful one as well.

We can tell a similar story of Indians.

And the Native American story is perhaps the most remarkable, worthy of an entirely separate piece of writing.  The fact that there are even still Native American people alive and carrying on their history and tradition, fighting back against the US government hundreds of years after the first battle for land is in and of itself nothing short of a miracle.

Pride.  All of this perseverance is worthy of open, unabashed, vocal, fist raised in the air pride.

But whites?

What cause have we for racial pride?

I recently watched an interview with Richard Spencer, the current leader of the alt right movement (i.e. the white supremacist movement) in this country, and he had the gall to say that white people are responsible for all the great inventions throughout history.  Furthermore, he said, white people are a people of great genius and ambition.

First of all, this claim of invention is profoundly untrue to the point of obscenity.  Second of all, it is reflective of the sheer ignorance and cognitive dissonance of this white pride mentality.

The first concepts of law, agriculture, tools, surgery, and yes, civilization, came from Africa.

Arabs gave us our number system.

The primary religion white people practice, christianity was brought to them by, you guessed it, a Jewish man.

The Chinese gave us concepts of civil service and the mechanical clock.

In fact, it is pretty settled truth that if not for the aid and assistance of Native Americans, the first European settlers would have all died off or disappeared the way of the Roanoke colony.

And in the modern day people of color have made numerous contributions to math and science.  I am not going to provide the myriad links to prove this as the research is incredibly easy to find for anyone with an 8th grade education.

So, what do we white people have to be proud of, as a race?

I'll tell you what:  war.  Yes, most of the greatest empires of all time have been created and maintained by white people.  The Roman Empire took over most of the known world.  Napoleon followed up by almost covering as much ground as the Romans.  And Hitler had almost conquered all of Europe and had ventured into Africa by the time he was put down.

We are great at bloodshed.  At sheer brute force. At killing mindlessly.  At taking what is not ours from people who have a legitimate claim to it and calling it "destiny," "progress," or, my favorite, "superiority."

We are also great at enslaving and oppressing, again, through sheer force and might.  We steal, we rape, we maim, we cut, we carve, we invent things like guns, atomic bombs, and hydrogen bombs to perpetrate mass killings to clear the way for our superior race.

Sure, we started the scientific revolution and the agricultural revolution, we started the enlightenment.  But what did we do with it?  And on whose backs?

We then, as a race, as an ethnicity, as a culture, flip the entirety of history on its head and teach our children in school about the greatness of white people and the savagery of the people we conquered.  Black savages raping white women.  Native American savages scalping innocent white frontiersmen and women.  Mexican thugs and rapists.  Muslim terrorists.

When the reality is that we, white people are responsible for the majority of raping, scalping, killing, and terrorizing.

This is not to say that white people don't have our own heroes.  We should certainly be proud of our Susan B Anthonys, our John Browns, our Newton Knights, people who genuinely fought for equality for all people.

But we don't focus on those people in history.  We focus on the oppressors, and we glorify them.

No, as a race, right now, we don't have any reason for cultural pride.

But maybe our day has come.

Maybe we can join our brothers and sisters of color and raise our voices with theirs.  We can fight for equality for all.  White people can use all the power we have gotten through bloodshed and war, through cunning and deception, through implementing systems that have ensured our progress and success at the expense of people of color and we can help to tear those systems down.  We can use our privilege to enact real democracy, not democracy for the wealthy whites.  We can use our skin color to shield people of color from brutality and murder.  We can bear witness to outright racism in the form of police brutality, the prison industrial complex, the school to prison pipeline, the exploitation of undocumented immigrants, and we can talk about them, call them out, all the time, we can join our local ACLU chapters, we can elect people who run on equality, we can identity people in the criminal justice system who fight for equality and put them into power, keep them in power, and we can identify the criminals in the criminal justice system, narcissistic cops, racist judges and prosecutors, for profit prisons, and take them out of power.  The biggest mistake the founding fathers made was placing the people in power.  The smartest thing the people who have power have done is keep us divided and uneducated.

So now is our time. White people can educate ourselves and take up the power alongside our  brothers and sisters of color and build a country we can be proud of.  White people can be proud of saying, "after you."  We can be proud of spreading the word amongst ourselves that the divisions we imagine among the races in this country are by design to keep us separated.  White people can be proud of recognizing that most of us are at the mercy of wealthy elite white people who have thrown us some crumbs and told us that people of color are trying to take those crumbs from us.  Distraction. We can toss their crumbs in their face and refuse to take the bait.

We can let go of white flight, we can truly integrate our schools and pay teachers well to educate our children.  In fact, we can encourage people of color to become educators, so children will see teachers of all skin colors.  We can teach real world history, teach children the accomplishments of the many people of color.  We can teach children to be proud of the human race.

Then, once we let go of our need for comfort and racial superiority, we can be proud.

Until then, we should shut the hell up and get the hell out of the way of progress.  A progress for which people will someday be proud.

This Is Who I Am

I have spent 38 years, almost 39, becoming the person I am.  I have lied and cheated.  I have stolen.  I have hurt people close to me and betrayed people I made commitments to.

I was born of survivors, people who did what they had to do to survive, and that's who I became, a kind of victims' caste system.  I took what I wanted, and I made no apologies.  It never occurred to me to apologize.  The people I took from seemed to have plenty when I had so little.  I made no justifications for hurting people because I did what I did to survive, to feel, to breathe, to push forward into another day.

My entire life was reactionary.  Life happened to me, and I reacted.  It was who I was.  Sure, I loved unconditionally and worked hard to take care of my siblings, and I defended the women in my life who suffered, but I was surely no saint, quite the sinner in fact.

I genuinely had no fucks to give.

I never worried about dying, about getting old and sick.  I had no sense of my own mortality.  No anxiety.  No stress.  I lived.  I breathed.  I survived.

I did whatever the fuck I wanted to do.

For more than twenty years this is how I lived my life.  Thoughtlessly.  Carelessly.  No goals, no dreams, just survival.

It all changed in my mid twenties.  A combination of factors joined to slap me across the face and wake me up.

My siblings were becoming young adults, conscious beings.

My marriage was a boring pathetic disaster.

My brilliant banking career was a boring nightmare of corporate bullshit.

And my mother, my aunts, my grandmothers, had all lived, or were still living, a series of mere survivals that I did not want to duplicate.

So I left my husband, I quit my job, and I started college.

I turned my life upside down,

But I cannot say that I regret my roller coaster ride of a life before I finally found stable ground.

It made me who I am.

And I am proud of who I am.

Probably the biggest wake up call for me before it all changed was my sister getting ready to head off to college.  I was 26 and she was 16 and I didn't want her to do it alone.  I had no role models in my life, no example to live up to.  I wanted my sister to see me as a role model.  And it was in that moment, realizing that I wasn't the best role model, that I realized how important that was.  I had given money, time, energy, and love to my sisters and brother, but I hadn't given them anything to look up to, nothing to say, "she did it, so I can do it too."

I remember the day very clearly, at 26, my car had been stolen, I had close to a handful of various part time lovers, one of whom was married, and I was still floating, still drifting, with no real sense of who I was or who I wanted to be, and when I looked at myself, sitting there on the curb outside of my building waiting for the police to come so I could file a report and one of my lovers showed up, the married one, to check on me, I thought, "oh my god, I don't want to be this girl."

I was at the lowest low point of my life, completely broken, and that very day I picked myself up, said goodbye to the old Shanna, and built myself up into the person I am today.

Still Shanna.  I used those broken pieces to put together a stronger self, a warrior woman.  But I'm still Shanna.  The scars are healed.  The ugly battles in the dark are behind me.  But those broken pieces are still there, deep within.  I'm still Shanna.  I'm still that woman, that girl.  And I am proud of who I am today.

Now, twelve years later I look at my daughter and I want her to make no apologies for who she is.  I want my five year old to be strong, tough, but also kind and caring.

I model for my daughter what a strong, kind, caring, confident woman looks like.  I want for her to be able to get to where I am without having to be broken first.

So I model, and I expose.

I want my children to see the world as it is and to remain strong and caring in its face.

I take my children to the gay pride parade every year so they see love in all of its wonder.  Today was my five month old's first pride parade.  My oldest has gone every year for the last five years.  Today, after the parade, my daughter and I were talking about it.  I have told her in the past that the parade celebrates all kinds of love, that anyone can love anyone.  She has friends with gay parents and we have gay family friends, so she is not naive to different lifestyles, but she's five now, so I wanted to be a bit more clear.

"Do you know what 'gay' means?"
"No."
"Well, once upon a time, and still today sometimes, gay used to mean happy.  So someone could say, oh, I'm feeling quite gay today, and that would mean they were happy.  But now, we also use it to mean someone who likes the same sex as they are.  Sex means boy or girl.  So, if a boy wants to marry a boy, he's gay."
"Or if a girl wants to marry a girl, she's gay."
"Right!  But if a girl wants to marry a boy, like I am married to papa, we call that 'straight.'"
"What sex do I like?"  My very precocious daughter asks me.
"Well, you're still very young, so you probably won't know for a while whether you want to grow up to marry a boy or a girl, but you'll figure it out some day."

This is a five year old version of the gay/straight talk.  We have had similar talks about transgender lifestyles.

We can have these talks because she is exposed to people who live differently than we do and because we go out seeking new experiences and engaging the world as it is, like the gay pride parade.    We celebrate people's differences and we celebrate their ability to be different, actively.  We don't speak in hypotheticals.  We discuss the real world as she sees it and real world consequences.

My daughter and I have had discussions about racism, sexism, the education system, finances, poverty, death, and many, many other topics.  All at a level appropriate for her age, and all because of a particular book, experience, or movie she has been exposed to.  I live a very intentional life now.  I put everything I have into being good, doing good, and helping my daughter learn how to be and do the same.

I hate the 40 hour work week.  I did it for more than 10 years of my life and I hated every moment of it.  I hated school.  It played a huge part in my brokenness.  

So, I do not work a 40 hour work week.  And I will not put my child in school.

This is not reactionary.  I have done ample research on both topics, and all evidence points to the absolute destructiveness of both the hectic work schedule and the education system in this country.

I live my truth.  I lead by example.  I am one hundred percent who I am all the time.  No lies.  No cheating.  No stealing.

I never did drugs, and I have never been a big drinker, but I am definitely a recovering shitty human being.

I have been in recovery for more than twelve years now, and I think I am a success story.  But the only way this works is for me to be authentic all the time.

I am the same person with my husband, with my kid, with my coworkers, with my students, with my friends, with strangers on the street.  You must take me or leave me, and I won't blame you for either. I am a lot to take.

One week ago a parent friend, a friend we've had for three years, asked me if I could consider watching my language around his kid.

I had just told him about my new approach to life:  I am going to come at everything in my life with an open heart and an open mind.  Well, I told him, I'm going to try.

Instead of instantly passing judgment, as I am fond of doing, I will try really hard to think of the perspectives of people involved.  I will work hard to place myself in other people's shoes instead of instantly deciding they are just assholes.  The best example of this would be republicans.  I am what you would call a bleeding heart liberal.  Say what you will about my youth, and I can say plenty, but I have always believed that black lives matter, that gays should have equal rights, that we should be protecting the vulnerable, and that the rich should pay their fair share, which is obviously grossly more than the poor.  I have always sided with the underdog.  I have always defended the defenseless, children and women who are victims of abuse, in my case.  I have always had a nose for injustice and a strong sense of justice and righteousness.  In my teens this was obnoxious.  In my twenties I was a self righteous soap box marcher.  Now, in my thirties, almost my forties, I am righteous.  I know what's right.  I am highly educated.  I have evidence to back up my claims.  And I will not back down.  I am incredibly passionate about my positions.  But, I am trying to understand the people on the opposite extreme.

Okay, maybe not them.

But the people in the middle, or at least closer to the middle than the far right.  I am trying to find a way to reach more people, and I realize I can only do this by opening my heart and my mind.  I still will not give up or back down, but maybe if I get more of where people are coming from, I can change more minds, get more people motivated, help progress along a little.  Do my part.

So, my friend takes advantage of my open heart and open mind, and makes his request.

The issue, as he presents it, is that his child is becoming more aware of his surroundings, more observant of language and actions.

So I think.  And I think.  And I think.  And I talk through my thought process with him.  How difficult this is for me to remain open about because of how opposite we are in our child rearing approach.  I am homeschooling my daughter.  He is putting his child into kindergarten in the fall, followed by all day after school care.  I expose my daughter to as much of the world as I think she can handle at her age.  He shelters his child from Curious George, because George gets into very stressful situations. I use every single moment, every situation, as a teachable moment, a chance to have a discussion, a chance to help my daughter become the woman I hope she will become.  He shies away from conflict with his child, using a soft voice and a gentle approach.  I'm not sure I even have a soft voice or gentle approach to use.

So, I ask, why can he not just tell his son not to talk like me, in the event this kid throws out a "fuck" and blames me for it?

Well, he says, he was hoping he could reason with me instead.

Huh.

I tried.  I tried really hard to be reasoned with.  I spent a week discussing this with my husband, with friends and family.  There were lots of fucks involved.  Of course.  I used to give no fucks.  Now I give all the fucks.  I have an endless supply of fucks to give and I give them all.  A veritable bottomless pit of fucks.

So here I am, a week later, and I am quite comfortable still to this moment with my initial reaction.

No.

I will not watch my language anymore than I already do.  I am obviously more careful around the kids.  I certainly don't say fuck, shit, or ass, or motherfucker... or douchebag... or any of my other favorites, when speaking directly to the kids, and if they hear me use any of those words it is because I am pissed or passionate about something and I am talking with other grown ass adults.  But this is essentially the same as asking me to not talk about black lives matter, not talk about gay bashing, not talk about our pussy grabbing president, not talk about any other atrocity in a world full of atrocities in front of your kid because it might offend his sensibilities.

The reality is this:  kids know the world is mean and ugly and violent and hurtful and hateful.  We do them no favors by sugar coating it because eventually they will catch on and then they will wonder why we lied.  What do we hope to accomplish by pretending reality is not reality?  Let me tell you what it actually accomplishes:  Donald Trump as president.  Brock Turner.  Trayvon Martin.  Philando Castile.  Sandra Bland.  When we raise our children in a world without fear, without consequence, sugar coated and all prettied up, they grow up to victimize or become victims.  We can only do so much to protect them from being victims.  But we can do a fuck of a lot to prevent them from becoming victimizers.

And we start by telling them the truth.

Shanna says fuck a lot.  I don't like that language.  But I like Shanna a lot.  Because she is kind, she is a fighter for the innocent.  She cares.  She cares a lot.  And that's mainly why she uses fuck so much.  Because she cares.  When you grow up, maybe you'll care a lot too.  I hope you do.  And maybe you'll say fuck a lot.  I hope you don't.  But she does.  You're five.  You can't.

There.  That's what you say to your kid.

I hope you do.

Is It Ever Okay to Say Nigger?

Let me begin by saying I do not have an answer to this question.  The title of this blog is intentionally a question.  I am a white woman, so I will never be able to provide an answer to this question.  Understandably.

But I am interested in exploring the question and some of the complexity that surrounds it and in working through some of the conclusions I have come to.

Let me further say that I can absolutely declare without reservation that it is never okay to call someone or refer to someone as a nigger.  And, unless you are black, in my opinion, you probably should also not be calling anyone or referring to anyone as your nigga.  Although I have certainly been guilty of the last one in my past.  I spent many years thinking I was a member of some "in crowd," thinking I was "down," and so of course it was acceptable for me to say "nigga please," or refer to my friend as my nigga, never a black person, of course.  I never used this expression in front of the black people whose lives I spend so much time studying, fighting for, arguing for.  Not my friends, not my boyfriends.  And I never questioned why.  Why didn't I feel free to call my black friends "my nigga?"

The answer is obviously because I knew deep down that there was something wrong with my use of the term.

As I grew older, the word evolved out of my language because it seemed like such a young, uneducated thing to do, silly.

I'll admit I still sing along to Jay Z on my headphones while I run, "If you feelin' like a pimp nigga go on brush ya shoulders off.  Ladies is pimps too, go on brush ya shoulders off."

And I suppose I gave myself a pass using nigga so colloquially because I felt like I was part of the club, because black friends had told me I was an honorary member, because black scholars have argued that the word can be used by anyone depending on context.

Randal Kennedy, in his book Nigger:  The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word argues that white people can say the word nigger just as black people can, depending on context.  He thinks the word is moving in the right direction in our language, that it is now, at least in the public arena, used more often positively than negatively.  

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/01/that-word/303059/

Neal A. Lester, a professor at Arizona State university, has an entire class on the word, exploring its complexities.  Yet the website, tolerance.org, specifically states in its transcript of an interview with him that Tolerance will refer to it as "the n word."

http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-40-fall-2011/feature/straight-talk-about-n-word

Yet, with all that, I still no longer feel comfortable using the term "nigga," and I have never used the word nigger in a derogative way.

But I do have a problem with saying "the n word."

There was a whole movement led by the NAACP a decade ago to "symbolically bury the N word."

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, among others, implored the rap industry and comedians to stop using the word.  They argued that it has so much history and that use of it in songs and comedy skits empowers people to keep using it, many in the wrong way.

Yet Chris Rock, Jay Z, and many other rappers and comedians have refused to edit the word from their language.  In an interview with Bill Maher on Real Time in 2011, Jay Z argues that the word "boy" said in the wrong context would be just as offensive to him as the word "nigger."  He argues that we are the ones that give words power and that by taking the word away from white people, black people can reshape it.

I think the NAACP movement then led many people to edit the word from their language entirely, so that now we cannot even use it in a discussion about race relations or repeat some atrocity in the news.  Newscasters everywhere appear on television to report the use of "the n word," like children afraid to say "fuck."  Bill Maher is one of the exceptions to that rule.

So let's talk about Bill Maher; he is the reason I am writing this piece tonight.

On his most recent show, which aired on June 2, Bill Maher jokingly referred to himself as a house nigga.  Now, we can discuss whether he referred to himself as a house "nigger" or a house "nigga," but the intention was the same regardless.  Bill thinks he is a member of the club, that he's down, and so he should be allowed to use that language.  Because he, and many, many people of all colors, would argue adamantly that Bill Maher is absolutely not a racist.

He's got plenty of credentials.  He is not one to say "I'm not racist, but...." or "I have black friends!  (so I can't possibly be racist)."

He's a comedian.  He makes a point of being politically incorrect.  And he has argued before that he, and everyone else, should be able to use the word nigger or nigga, obviously depending on the context.

I must confess I am a fan of Bill Maher.  I watch his show regularly.  And while there are plenty of neo liberals who will bring up the many radical things he has said about Islam, that is for another piece, which is in the works, I promise.

So when my brother came in Saturday morning and said, "Bill Maher said nigger on his show last night," I thought he used it the way I use it, to repeat something someone else said, or to discuss the use of the word in history or in society today.

Then I heard the whole story, and I was so sure he would not apologize.

It's just not like him.

But then HBO apologized, and cut the scene from future tapings.

And then Bill apologized.

So, I say, good for him.  Because, in the end, we're not members of the club.  Our job, as white people, is to change the minds of other white people, and using the word nigga or nigger colloquially is not going to do that.  If anything, it will encourage people who are not so adamantly in the fight for Black Lives Matter and an end to police brutality, for equality in education and in the economic system, to use the word, and then, oops, slip and use it as a slur, and then, oops, feel free to show their racist true colors.  If he uses it, why can't we?  They would argue.  And they have a point.

The word has too much pain, too much history, too much blood, too much death behind it.

We cannot use it colloquially.

And if black people want to use it, that is a decision for them to make.

And if black people want to give us permission to use it, we say, thank you, but no thank you.

Because our fight is a different one from theirs.  Our fight is to change minds within our own communities, minds that equate black men with violence, black women with sexuality, and black people in general with crime or sports or rap.  Sure, they'll admit to a few exceptions, but that is just what Henry Louis Gates Jr  and Barack Obama are, exceptions to the rule that white society has written down in concrete and blood.  Casual use of the word nigga or nigger by white people will only help further engrave that rule.

My concern here is for the use of the word educationally and in open discussions about race.  I just cannot bring myself to say "the n word."  There is too much about that expression that worries me.  It is far too reminiscent of the saying "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  Also, I can't help but think of Voldemort, "he who must not be named," in Harry Potter.

There was a controversy a few years back over whether the word nigger should be removed from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.  The argument was that it would offend readers sensibilities, that children were not mature enough to handle the content.  And here is where the problem lies.  Usually, in these arguments, over whether Bill Maher is a bigot for speaking out against extreme Islam, over whether Huck Finn offends people, over whether something is racist or offensive, the outcry comes from white neo liberals, not the muslim community, not the black community.  White.  Neo.  Liberals.

Those same neo liberals who think Colin Kaepernick is using the wrong venue for his protest, that Kobe Bryant shouldn't be wearing a Black Lives Matter T shirt at a basketball game, that Martin Luther King Jr would be spinning in his grave over the Rodney King riots or the current Black Lives Matter protests when they reach violent levels.

The idea is that if we just don't talk about it, if we dance around the subject, if we politely avert our eyes or walk away when others have this discussion, when someone else brings up the subject, then everything will be okay.  We will not make any waves in society.  But everything is not okay.  Society is more segregated than ever.  And I would posit that part of the problem with our failure to find equality, to, in fact, go backward, is that we do not address our racial issues in this country.  We must identify a cancer, speak freely about it, and cut it out.

I appreciate the move to bury the words nigga and nigger in music and comedy.  I understand where the NAACP is coming from, but I think that the move to ban all use of the word entirely from discussion is largely a white one, and it is yet another half measure:  "see?" they seem to be saying.  "I can't be racist.  I don't say nigger."

The power of language is mighty, and we must be careful with our words.  To abolish the word from the language while black bodies are being brutalized on live television, while black men have to put their hands in the air simply upon encountering a police officer, where black women cry after they've been pulled over by the police because they are so relieved that they escaped unscathed, seems trite and token.  Nigger is a word that holds so many of the evils of slavery and Jim Crow and Civil Rights and post Civil Rights and the prison industrial complex and the issues with the 13th and 15th amendments.  We worry so much about whether a newscaster says "n word" or nigger, but we are not having an open discussion about the blatant segregation of our schools, the underfunding of schools that are predominantly black, or the prison to school pipeline.  We don't address the way teachers deal with, or fail to deal with, racial issues in school, when school is the place where we can make real change.

A couple of years ago a teacher in Chicago was suspended for five days for discussing the word nigger with his classroom of sixth graders.  Lincoln Brown was white.  The students were primarily black and latino.  It was an educational discussion, what the teacher called, a "teachable moment," and by all accounts the students not only didn't complain about the discussion, but instead they said they appreciated the teacher's candor and that he treated them like mature beings capable of having this discussion.

Brown's situation is very different from the teacher who told his student "sit down nigga."

Brown treated the children like rational, thinking beings.  He opened up a discussion and asked for their input.  He did not dance around the subject or condescend to the kids.  We can only hope more teachers out approach race in this way, especially white ones, especially white males.  Brown has the opportunity to change the dynamic between white and black in his classroom.  He can be one less white devil, one less condescending hero out to save the savage beasts.  He treated the kids like real people who deal with real issues in the real world that they have to live in every day.

From all accounts he's a good teacher whose students respect him.  And I would venture to say they respect him because he's open and honest.

And he was penalized for it.  So what does that say to him, to the students, and to every other teacher who may want to have open dialogue about the very touchy issues around race in this country with the children who have to live it?

I tutor mostly white students in a very affluent neighborhood.  Many of them haven't been told much about Civil Rights, even less about slavery except that "it happened," and they know nothing about Jim Crow or the school to prison pipeline we live with today.  What they do know they have learned through rote memorization on a study guide to prepare for a test.  I, as a white face, can teach them things they would not otherwise hear, and they listen to me, a white face, in a way they may not listen to a person of color.  This is what Malcolm X meant when he said white people needed to work within our own communities to change minds.  Often my students tell me they wish I was their teacher.  Why?  Because I tell them the truth.  I engage them.  We discuss.

When we talk about slavery I tell them how slave children were fed from pig troughs, babies were ripped from mothers' arms, and mothers threw themselves with their babies off of slave ships escape the atrocities of slavery.  Because death was preferable.  When we discuss the holocaust I tell them that Nazi soldiers put Jewish babies in burlap sacks and threw them off cliffs, shooting at them for target practice.

And yes, when we are discussing media and politics I ask them if they heard the controversy around Rick Perry's family home previously being called Nigger Head Rock.  I ask them if they heard about the teacher who told his student to "sit down nigga."  We discuss.  We draw connections.  We move forward.

So, why am I not a history teacher?  Because, as I tell my students, I'm sure I would get fired.  Someone would complain that I had a discussion about how our president said he grabs women by the pussy.  No, I don't say "the p word."  Someone would complain that I ask my students what they think about Bill Maher calling himself a "house nigga."  And I would be fired.  Well, first I would be suspended, a lot, and then finally fired, I'm sure, like Brown, for "psychologically traumatizing" my students.

I look at these newscasters trying to figure out how to report on things when they say "genitals," or "n head rock" or "house n," and it just makes me shake my head.

If we are incapable of having an open dialogue about reality, how can we hope to move forward?  Dancing around language only gives it more power, and not the good kind.  It becomes a taboo, a mystery, a joke.

Yes, you should cringe when you say the word nigger.  It is arguably the most cringe worthy word in the English language.  I cringe every time I say it or write it.  But we have to deal with our cringes.  We have to face our violent past and present.  We have to talk, and we have to use real words, all of them.

On my refrigerator is a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. that says:

"One day youngsters will learn words they will not understand.

Children from India will ask:
What is hunger?
Children from Alabama will ask:
What is racial segregation?
Children from Hiroshima will ask:
What is the atomic bomb?
Children at school will ask:
What is war?

You will answer them.
You will tell them:

Those words are not used any more,
Like stagecoaches, galleys, or slavery.

Words no longer meaningful.

That is why they have been removed from dictionaries."

I believe him.  I believe this day will come, one day.  And my hope is that one day children will ask the same about the word nigger.  What is that?  Why would someone use it?  What does it mean?  Because it is so far from our vocabulary that it not longer holds meaning, or pain.

But now, when children ask that question it is typically because they have heard it used in a derogatory way, and many of those children have heard it used against them.

So we must continue to discuss it the same way we discuss hunger and racial segregation and the atomic bomb and war.  We talk about it, in real words, in order to move through it.

And move through it we will.

Right now, I'm looking forward to seeing how Ice Cube handles Bill Maher on the next show.

Wonder Woman Shows Us the Way

I took my five year old to see Wonder Woman the day it opened.

She talked through most of it.  She asked, many times, if it was over yet.  She walked down two steps in the aisle, then back up those same steps.  She sat on the edge of her seat.  Then got back down.  She put her feet up on the arm.  She leaned on me.  She kissed me.

She was, in short, a five year old in a theater watching a grown up movie for two and a half hours.

And I was not surprised by any of this.  I was not annoyed.  I knew all of this would happen.

And I brought her anyway.

Because when the music rose, when Diana appeared, larger than life, in full Wonder Woman regalia, when she flew into the air, into the fray, when she brought her bracelets together to ward off attackers,  when she slid across the floor with her sword through a crowd of enemies, when she spread her arms, bold and brave and saved the world, my daughter stood up in front of her seat, puffed out her chest with her arms at her sides, and stared, fixated, riveted.

Because of Wonder Woman, my daughter can imagine herself as a superhero.  My daughter can imagine herself saving the world.

The big, bold, heroic scenes captivated my little girl and the sad, war torn, bleak scenes will stay with her, I hope, for years to come.

I wondered, for a brief moment, if it would be too much for her, if seeing wounded soldiers and a mother holding her baby crying, starving would damage my child in some way.  Would it steal her innocence?

And then I remembered that there are children all over the world who are actually suffering through fates worse than those depicted on the screen.  There are actual babies in actual mothers' arms who are actually starving, homeless, enslaved as I write in this moment.  And that they are that way, they live that life, and die those tragic deaths, because of us, because of the world of men.

No.  I do not for a second regret taking my child to see Wonder Woman and letting her see those angst ridden scenes.  I am glad the movie depicted them the way it did, the same way it dealt with the love scene between Diana and Steve, tasteful and from a distance, so the audience gets the message without explicit scenes or, in the case of the war, gore.

I am often reminded as I watch my child growing each day of a quote I came across some time ago that has stuck with me ever since:  "We are not raising children. They are children.  We are raising adults."

I do not want to shelter my child from the realities of the world, especially this world, as it stands today.  I do not hope to extend her childhood into her teen years and beyond.  I want to raise a fully aware, fully cognizant, fully functioning adult, with compassion, kindness, and generosity in her heart.  And I want to provide her with examples, real and imagined, of the best among men and women because she will certainly, without a doubt, be faced with the worst.

Princess Diana of Themyscera embodies the best.  There are so many parallels between what we could do with our children, what I hope to do with mine, and Diana's storyline.  Diana has been told the stories of war and loss, of evil and violence, but she herself has never been subjected to them.  She prepared to fight, to defend, to protect, to save the world, her mother and her aunt hoping all the while that she would never have to use those finely honed skills.  But, like all children, Diana ultimately has to grow up and face the real world.

Diana, from the start, has an unwavering sense of what is right and an unwavering sense of her obligation to seek justice.  But this is not what makes her a superhero.

Bill Maher, on his show Real Time with Bill Maher, recently did an end piece on his distaste for the superhero genre of movies and television shows.  He begins by talking about how the superhero genre creates a mentality of "waiting for one hero to save the day" instead of, as he says, what we should be doing, saving the day ourselves. I completely disagree with him.

Hero stories do not represent our need to wait for someone else to save us.

Just the opposite.  Diana, and Thor, and Batman, and Superman, and Flash, and Arrow, and Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage, and, and, and, the list goes on, all inspire us to be heroes ourselves.  The message in these stories is absolutely not that a hero will save you.  On the contrary, the superheroes who have no super powers, like Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen, inspire us to save our own cities, to become heroes ourselves.  And the team that these millionaires put together to work with them quite often come from nothing, or very little, so we can't even use the excuse that we are not millionaires.  And the superheroes who do have superpowers are quite often both flawed and conflicted about how best to use their powers, which acts as a metaphor for how each individual must use the talents we are given.  For example, my super power is education and rhetoric.  I am skilled at speaking to crowds, at changing minds, and making people think about things in new ways.  I use my super power in the best way I can to save the world, based on my sense of what is right and what is just.

As Bill ends the piece and he expresses his frustration at how Donald Trump came to power precisely because of people waiting for one person to tell them "I alone can fix this problem.  I alone can make America great again," I understand where Bill is coming from.  This hero complex is quite similar to the way dictators and authoritarians rise to power.  People are hurting, desperate, hungry, watching their children suffer, and from the ashes rises what seems to be a hero to save the day.  This so far, is an accurate parallel to the superhero genre.  But Bill believes that the plethora of hero movies and shows creates this mentality and that it is what leads to the Donald Trumps of the world.

I disagree.  And here is why:  the rise of dictators came long before the dissemination of superhero stories.  Mussolini, Franco, Stalin, and even Hitler came to power before people were told by comic  books that a hero would save the day.  I would argue that systems within countries work to make people subjects to a higher power, and then that higher power becomes an absolute power and, as we all know, absolute power corrupts absolutely.  I would argue that the greatest weapons The United States has against the rise of a fascist dictator are our foundation of independence, our individual protections from our government, and our system of checks and balances as represented by our three branches of government and our federalist system (shared power among the federal government and the states).  The ultimate weapon we have is us, the people.  We have a government run for the people, by the people, and made up of the people.  We created a country with a government in this fashion on purpose.  Placing the power in the hands of the people was an intentional act of the founding fathers.  I would argue that while we have come as close to having a corrupt dictator as we possible can at this point in history, we will not fall precisely because of these greatest weapons.

I would further argue that Diana, along with her many counterparts in the many, many superhero movies and shows that surrounds us, reminds us of those weapons.  She reminds us that she is in us all.  I would even go so far as to say that Diana, as a woman, reminds us of this better than the men who have come before her and those who will come after her.

Diana, innocent, naive, and, until she meets Steve Trevor, still a maiden, nevertheless comes to represent a mother figure.  Not a mother figure in the way that would make us all her children, but in a way that embodies the ideals we imagine in the best mothers, nurturing, caring, empathetic, compassionate, and, above all, blindly, unconditionally loving.  This is not to say that men cannot embody all of these qualities.  It is to say that as a society, when we think of these qualities, we typically think of women, and specifically, mothers.

The very end of the movie shows Diana as a fully developed Wonder Woman.  Up to this point she has shown her strength, her compassion, her empathy, her wit, her intelligence, but her naïveté has kept her from the complete superhero she is destined to become.  It is only as her eyes are opened to the true evils of the world, and all of the complexity that those evils involve, as she discovers that the world is not black and white, simply good and simply evil, and finally as she accepts the world as it is, that she embraces the world of men and her place in it that the Amazonian Princess Demigoddess Diana can evolve into Wonder Woman.  

This last heroic scene leaves us with the best counterargument to Maher's misunderstanding of the symbol of superheroes.

Diana is given a choice between killing the god of war or joining him, between embracing a seriously flawed humanity or working toward its destruction.

She has seen the worst of humanity.  She understands now that all the blame for our war and strife does not rest on a war god, that humans ourselves are flawed.

Ares implores her to join him, telling her, "they do not deserve you, Diana."

And she responds:  "It is not about deserve.  It is about what you believe.  And I believe in love."

As superheroes and what they stand for go, this representation is by far the best.  And as superheroes go, only Diana could deliver this line believably.  It is not corny, as it could easily have been had it been delivered by Clark or Barry, two very good, very sweet male superheroes.  From Diana, it is only inspiring.

And it is something we can all aspire to.  We can all choose to embrace instead of reject, to give instead of take, to help instead of hurt, to run toward instead of run away, and to love instead of hate.

But in the end it is not to save us that we need Diana, nor is it why we need any other superhero.  We don't need them to rescue us from ourselves or from each other.

We need them to inspire us to be our best selves.

And Diana does this brilliantly.

What If?

What if we all just stopped?

What if time froze just before the man killed the two men protecting the two defenseless women?

What if the earth stood still right before the woman screamed at the people in the store to go back to where they came from?

What if the waves hovered suddenly above the shore just as the broken children prepared to mock and ridicule the little girl who said she was afraid of heights?

What if the leaves held silent their rustling in the seconds leading up to the husband's next abuse of his wife?

What if the birds' song was cut off mid tweet in anticipation of the enraged woman roaring at the man in the other car who cut her off?

We cannot go back.  I know this.  Too much to lose.  Too much progress that could go undone.  Too many consequences.  We cannot go back.

But can we just stop?

Breathe?

Think?

Feel?  Feel for someone else?  Feel for the person in front of us?  The person we will hurt?

What if we came at everything we did from a place of love?  What if we opened our hearts?  What if we actually turned the other cheek when we were slapped?  What if when our coat was stolen we gave our boots too?  What if instead of feeling insulted or offended we wondered where the potential offender was coming from?  How that person had been hurt so badly?  What it must be like to be so wounded that your first instinct is to hurt others?  What must it feel like to be imprisoned, trapped, to feel your freedom has been stolen from you?

Freedom.

What if we took back our freedom?

What if we explored our deepest joys, our loves, our passions?

What if we gave our children the freedom we never had?

What if we freed them from the shackles of a system determined to work them to death, determined to make them anxious, stressed, desperate, and angry?

What if we started a revolution?  A revolution of children who laughed and played, children that were kind and open hearted, children who love to explore, who give, who help, who hold hands, who sleep peacefully, free of worry, who are unencumbered by the stresses we have inherited.  What if we decided today to let the inheritance stop here, with us?  What if we just stopped?

What if instead of trying to learn anything, or teach anything, we shifted instead toward remembering?  Toward showing?

What if we stopped saying no?  What if we stopped saying "I can't?"  What if we gave up trying and we just started doing?

What if we all realized that life is meant to be lived?  That we came into this world to love, to laugh, to use our bodies in all the ways it was meant to be used, for walking, running, jumping, eating, drinking, loving, laughing, feeling.  What if we remembered that we knew all of this all along, but we forgot?  What if all we have to do with our children is show them how to find their truest selves, and what if the way to show them that is for us to find ours?

What if we remembered that it is infinitely easier to be happy than to be angry?  What if we forgave ourselves for everything we are angry at ourselves for?  And then what if in forgiving ourselves, we could extend that forgiveness to others?  What if?

What if?

What if we just let go.

Just.  Let.  Go.

I Want a Full Time Job with a Paycheck

This morning I lay down on the floor of my office and cried, silently, so as not to disturb the three people in the room with me who were watching me, disturbed.  Tears streamed down the side of my face, my fingertips rested on my forehead as my hands covered my eyes, and I just released all the crying I had pent up in me.  My five year old left the room and came back with a tissue.  I blew my nose.  She left again and came back with another tissue.  “For your eyes,” she said, softly.

I had my legs open in a wide V and my four month old was on her back on the floor in between my legs, chewing on her fists.  My husband stood on the other side of the baby.

“What’s wrong, honey?  You’re making me worried.”

What’s wrong?  What’s wrong???

Well, let’s see, I have a head cold, my four month old had a fever the night she got her vaccines that kept me up the same day I got said head cold, and now she’s officially rolling over, so I don’t sleep well because she sleeps with me, and now I’m stressed out that she will roll over in her sleep and somehow scoot down to the end of the bed, and roll off, or get wedged somewhere I haven’t thought of and suffocate.  We just passed peak SIDS age, and before I could breathe a sigh of relief, she flipped over from her back to her front.  So now I have images of her flipping over in her sleep, going facedown in the mattress, and suffocating, while I enjoy a heavy sleep because of this head cold.  And the more sleep I lose, the more I worry, because now am I sleep deprived enough to roll over and smother my baby?  Will I fall into a blissful sleep that keeps me from my natural tendency to wake with her every move? 

Also, my five year old has leapt into a more mature physical stage now, so she enjoys riding her scooter barefoot downhill and climbing to the top of rock structures in playgrounds that she would normally avoid. “No thank you,” she would say to her friends when they suggest a nice climb.  She has also leapt into a new level of challenging me and questioning me at every turn on every issue.  She is quite comfortable in the knowledge that I will explain myself and my reasoning whenever asked, which is exhausting.  I’m a mostly free range mom, so I let my kid develop at her own pace, find her way in the world, and explore her curiosities.  I also let her “be bored” and find her own ways to entertain herself that don’t involve screens.  So I come home one night to find a pile of mud swirled with paint and 5 opened bottles of sidewalk paint on my front patio.  At 10 PM. So I get to clean that up.  Or make sure I organize its cleaning. Well, I think, she was apparently entertained. 

Needless to say, being a full time mom keeps me on my toes.  And, sometimes, the toes are stressed.  The toes.  Are stressed.  

Then last night, after I kiss her good night, and remind her to go to sleep and not get out of bed, I get into the shower.  Five minutes later my husband comes into the bathroom to tell me she broke her nightlight.  “But it’s no big deal.”

First of all:  if it’s no big deal, why did you need to come into the bathroom, literally my only 10 minutes alone all day, to share that with me?

Second of all:  it is a big deal.  She was supposed to be in bed, not breaking a nightlight.  Also, the nightlight was an expensive gift from my husband to her when she was younger.  It is a Thomas Kincaid depiction of Winnie the Pooh bought from the gallery in Capitola when she was fully obsessed with Winnie the Pooh. 

So, when I get out of the shower, I head into her room.  The door is open, and my brother is in there.  “I asked Uncle to sing me one more song.”  She says quietly.

“How did you break your nightlight?” I ask.

“Well, I was pushing on it with my foot, like this, and kind of bending it back and forth, like this, then it just broke.”  She reports.

“Wait,” I say, barely holding on to my patience, as I hold onto the towel wrapped around my drying body, “so you were supposed to be in bed, I specifically told you to get a good night’s sleep because you’re coming to work with Mama tomorrow, and instead you were up, kicking your nightlight, a special gift from your father, which you then broke, carelessly, disrespectfully, and now you want another song from your Uncle.

“Do I have that right?”

My tone is serious, incredulous, and barely controlled. 

“Yes.” She responds quietly.

“Say goodnight to your uncle.  Get in bed.  All the way in bed.  Lie down.  All the way down.  Close your eyes.  And go to sleep.  Right.  Now.”

My brother left the room, and I followed shortly after, closing the door with a firm click.

I’m a terrible mother, I think.  I haven’t taught my child the value of gifts, the importance of respecting the things she owns.  I can’t teach my kid anything.  She’s basically raising herself and I’m keeping her alive.  I’m a terrible mother.

I nurse my four month old to sleep and head out to watch a movie with my husband and brother.

“Ugh,” I say, “I can’t believe she broke that nightlight.  I basically just shamed my child to sleep.”

“Babe,” my husband says, having no idea where my temper is at this point, “it’s no big deal.  You always tell her it’s no big deal when she breaks things.  Why should this be any different?”

I can tell from his tone that he is slightly mocking me, because this is true.  I don’t place a lot of importance on “things,” so Celaya draws all over her dolls faces, puts stickers all over her toys and the cabinetry in her play area, and scribbles all over the front patio.  When she accidentally knocks something over or breaks something and gets terrified that she is in trouble I calm her down and say, “honey, relax, it’s just a (insert object here).  It’s no big deal.  It can be replaced/fixed/remade.” 

“This is different because that was a gift, a special gift, and she shouldn’t have been out of bed, and she broke it.”  My temper at this point is just at about boiling point.

“Uh oh.” My brother, who is quite adept at picking up my tone, says.  “Am I going to watch someone else get shamed to sleep now?”

“She’s not scared of you, Shanna.  She does whatever she wants.  And shame doesn’t work on me.”  My husband says casually, slightly playfully.

So now I’ve reached full on explosion boiling over the top of the pot fury.

I spend every waking day of every waking hour raising children or worrying about how to raise my children, wondering if I’m doing the right thing in the right way at the right time to raise strong, independent, civilized, decent (hopefully liberal) human beings.  And my primary means of raising my children, directing my children, guiding my children, is through an abundance of love and affection, and, yes, through fear.  Celaya fears displeasing me.  It is one of my greatest points of pride.  When she is running with friends and I say “stop,” nine times out of ten, she stops.  When I use my mean voice, she comes to immediate attention.  She does, for the most part, what I tell her to do.  I don’t hit, I don’t yell, I don’t belittle or ridicule.  All I have are fear and shame. 

Don’t.  Tell Me.  She’s.  Not.  Afraid of me. 

I say this in so many words, and then we basically don’t speak again for the rest of the night.  He falls asleep on the couch as per his usual Friday night.  I go to bed with the baby and manage not to smother her in my head cold addled sleep, curling around her body in a protective position that all but guarantees her safety even in the event she rolls over.  It helps a lot that when her side is pressed against my front she sleeps deeply and doesn’t move.  And she’s pressed so firmly against me that when she does move I can’t help but wake up. 

All of the week’s worries and stresses spilled over to this morning.  To me lying on the floor crying. 

And I’m thinking to myself, this would all be so much easier if I worked full time.  If I put my baby to sleep in her crib.  If I left the bulk of raising and disciplining to someone else.  If I left the schooling up to an institution. If I got a paycheck at the end of a fifty-hour week that was a tangible reward for the hard work I do.  

My kids would be fine.  Kids with two full time working parents, who go to traditional school, who have another primary caregiver for the majority of their waking time, turn out just fine.  Many of my friends have attested to that. 

And, sure, it would be hard in its own way, time management, temper tantrums, sleep deprivation from trying to “get it all done,” figuring out how to manage a marriage and shared duties with both of us working, and on and on.  That lifestyle has its own struggles.  But I would be getting paid!!  An actual, regular, tangible, proof that my work is valued paycheck. 

But.

Would my five year old be the same kid she is today?  I am quite proud of her, even when she infuriates me.  I can say with complete confidence that there is no child sweeter, kinder, brighter, more secure in her place in the world, or more well-adjusted than my child.  I do not pretend that she is an angel.  She’s not.  Or that she and I don’t have battles of will.  We do.  But on any good day of the year, and I have very few bad days, more like bad moments, I can look at my kid and not wonder for a second whether I am doing all the right things. 

I may be in debt up to my ears.  I may not get tangible, or immediate, reward for the 24 hour on call work I do at home (that’s what the part time job is for).  I may not always have all my ducks in a row.  Okay, I rarely have all my ducks in a row. 

But my husband listened to me as I explained through my tears everything that I just wrote here.  He assured me that the house revolves around my command.  That, yes, of course, everyone is afraid of me (except my brother.  I’m still working on that one.)  That I run the household well and that my work is valued.  That our oldest is who she is because of what I do, and that, I if I can just remember what I did with my oldest and repeat it, the baby will turn out okay too. 

And my daughter finally understood the full impact of what she had done the night before, and she and her father put their heads together and figured out how to fix the broken nightlight. 

So yes, sometimes I want a full time job, with breaks, two tens and one thirty, Starbucks coffee on the way to the office, time alone in my car to listen to my own music, talk on the phone, listen to a book on tape, clothes to dress up in, colleagues to commiserate with, a mainstream to just naturally belong to, instead of having to seek out like minded individuals (and hope they're not too crazy), and a world that sympathizes with the plight of the working mother in America.  And money!!! 

But.

If I had all that, would I still have the daughter who brings me two tissues when I cry?  One for my nose, and another for my eyes. 

I obviously can’t know for sure.

But I don’t think so.