Mother of the Year

It is official. I am mother of the year. And here is why.

Two weeks back, my dear Jack was given a language arts assignment. He was to pick a poet and then do a biographical research project on said person. Though Jack is an avid reader, he does not tend to love language arts assignments, particularly when they involve writing. I know. They all involve writing.

Overwhelm struck him over the head, and he declared that there were NO poets he could possibly study.

"Um, Jack, you have always loved Shel Silverstein."

"God, Mom, you are totally right. I'm doing Shel Silverstein."

I smiled peacefully. I imagined we had successfully hurdled all obstacles and that at some point I would read a nice piece about Shel.

Next day: "Mom, there are no books about Shel Silverstein in my school library."

"Doodle, you need to check the public library then."

"I did, Mom. Nothing there."

"Jack, when do you need the biography?"

"Tomorrow."

Mother of...WHY do kids inflict such pain on their parents?

"Jack, what do you suggest?"

"Well, Amazon."

Amazon had three biographies. One had three pages. Literally. I don't understand (but maybe now I do). Another received horrible reviews. The last scored a fairly mediocre 3.5 stars. But, it was our only choice.

"Jack, I guess we can order this but it will, obviously, not be here by tomorrow."

"Mom, we are not supposed to buy the book."

SWEET BABY JESUS IN THE SKIES. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? CONJURE A FREE, SUBSTANTIVE BIOGRAPHY FROM MY KITCHEN?

"Jack, please email your teacher and ask her advice."

Dear Jack, As you know, I was concerned about the lack of available information about Shel Silverstein. If your parents are comfortable buying the biography, you may go in that direction. You will need to have caught up by Monday. -Mrs. M

So, this was news to me, re: the conversation they had ALREADY HAD ABOUT THE SHEL INFO DEARTH. Mother of Mary! But now we're really behind and so after reading the reviews, Tom and I bought the dang book.

Saturday: the book arrives. "Jack, please start reading. You're a little behind."

"Ok, Mom."

This morning: "Jack, what have you learned about Shel?"

"Well, his real name is Sheldon, and he is from Chicago."

Excuse me people, is that $12 of information? Methinks not. But it was carpool time, and so we hurried to get ready. 

10:08am: I am wrapping presents, making cookies, and attempting to move at a slower-than-manic pace. I receive an email from Jack's teacher.

Hi Emily, I took a look at Jack’s bio on Shel Silverstein this morning. I was trying to help him determine which chapters would be most beneficial since he will not have enough time to read the entire book before the project is due. However, as I skimmed the chapters I realized that I would not be comfortable recommending any portion of the book. As it turns out, Shel Silverstein has a very interested past! He was quite involved with Playboy and there are a lot of references to sex and drugs throughout the book. There is also a lot of profanity. I do not have a problem with him reading the book as long as you are aware of this and feel comfortable answering some difficult questions. I explained my reservations to Jack in a very general sense and asked him to bring the book home to you to review. Let me know what you decide. Although Jack’s project will most likely be a bit skimpy, I think he can move forward without reading the biography. We will make it work. Thank you, Mrs. M

#PARENTINGFAIL

If y'all think that I did not simultaneously throw up a little for having sent a lengthy drug- and profanity-laced porn book into a Quaker fifth grade and laugh until I nearly peed and cringed because I really did read the reviews but clearly not well and it looks like I threw some money at my son's slight problem-o-laziness, well, I did. I did all of those things. At the same time. For a while.

I called my mother. We agreed this was the best of this sort of story since the children were returned by the FBI years ago for sneaking out to go find pinecones at 6am. I called two of my best friends. They wheezed and agreed it was a solid fail.

People, parenting is hard. It is always something. Who knew Shel was into such exciting things? Perhaps the school library as they have NO books on him which really should have been some sign to me.

In any case, this is pretty funny actually. And it's been lovely to guffaw like a lunatic. Hope this gives you a case of the shaking-chuckles too. It's good for us. Lordy knows most of us could use some lightness. 

Miscellany, mostly of the Christmas and feline persuasion

It is very cold suddenly. Winter! Things appear to be hardening all around. The ground, for one. Drivers are more aggressive. Fewer are smiling. Coats are zipped high and tight.

But I patently refuse because Christmas is nigh, and I am nothing if not a jolly g-damn Christmas reveler.

My entire dining room table is covered in holiday card- and gift-making supplies. Even Oliver, a serious crafting guy, is impressed. "Mama, you have a LOT of craft stuff." Tom, too, feels my Martha-parts are really living big these days. I think my use of his heat gun took him aback just a tad. But y'all, embossing powder is fun! Teachers, grandparents, friends, neighbors, "strangers" (those online friends you've not yet met in real life but intend to and so in the meantime, snail mail during the holidays!)...there is much love and gratitude to be shared. 

Lest you think my inner activist is quieting, she is not. There is much work to be done, and I have tried to do at least one action-item per day since the election. The orange yam continues to disgrace the office of the Presidency. It is shameful. I am ashamed of him. Stand strong everyone.

"When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Indeed!

The Nut and I spent a great deal of quality time together today. He is so delightful! Also, Big Boggle. Fun game for the whole family. I was competitive but only quietly. ;) Oliver repeatedly found "Ol" and "SOS." I'm not sure what to make of that- hidden message?

He lives a charmed life.

I finished Hillbilly Elegy, quite good not amazing; more on it later, yesterday and am continuing now with H Is for Hawk, masterful. Does anyone else feel totally overwhelmed by content lately? God, it's like a world-sized snowball.

Do: cook your salmon with lemon, olives, grilled artichoke hearts, salt, and a pat of butter in a foil pack. Serve with asparagus, quickly roasted until just crisp-tender, generously dashed with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt. A healthy, easy, winner of a meal.

When history repeats

I spent yesterday at the new National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Months ago, when the museum opened, my mother-in-law, Claire, got two tickets, and although I'm sorry my father-in-law wasn't able to join her, I feel awfully lucky I got to take his place.

It is an incredible place in many ways. The sheer number of artifacts housed there is astounding. Even if you simply looked at everything and ignored all placards, you'd need days to get through. But you would never want to do that because the enormous amount of written information enriches and gives context to those treasures. As do the interactive displays and videos. And the museum shop which has a deep, library-like book selection that I felt I only scratched the surface of.

Claire and I spent a good two hours, maybe more, on just the bottom three floors which starts a couple hundred years prior to the Atlantic slave trade. The museum does a phenomenal job of educating visitors about when slavery shifted from being something that affected people of many colors and faiths and was often a temporary status to a thoroughly racialized commodity exchange of black bodies to white hands. The concept of whiteness developed and in a depraved effort to continue profiting and gaining power off the backs of black slaves, white slave owners and sympathetic members of the government enacted increasingly repressive laws banning education, religious practice, the ability to move from place to place and so on. The rights to safety, privacy, personhood were completely stripped away. 

In 1705, the Chesapeake region made it legal to dismember any unruly slave and passed a law stating that "all negro, mulatto, and Indian slaves are considered real estate."

In 1730, Humphrey Morice, Governor of the Bank of England, said, "Negroes...are a perishable Commodity, when you have an opportunity, dispose of them for gold." 

Evidence of slavery's vast dehumanization efforts is, of course, prolific in the museum, and being surrounded by quotes and slave-for-sale signs and pictures of children being ripped from their mothers' arms and men branded and hung is deeply upsetting and moving, which is at it should be. The museum felt almost holy to me in some ways. I say that not from a religious perspective but from a spiritual one of profound sorrow and sadness and humility.

In many ways, the hardest things for me to handle were the sentiments and efforts to dehumanize and criminalize that were current hundreds of years ago and still feel awfully present today. We continue, in too many ways, to perpetrate entirely-too-similar ills on Black Americans now as we once did.

It is unconscionable and deeply shameful.

In 1864, Spottswood Rice said, "Whether freeman or slaves the colored race in this country have always looked to the United States as the Promised Land of Universal freedom." He must have been so hopeful then, just after the Emancipation Proclamation (EP) had passed. And yet, Reconstruction brought with it the Southern "black codes" and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and ferocious backlash after ferocious backlash.

In 1876, Frederick Douglass said, "You say you have emancipated us. You have and I thank you for it. But what is your emancipation? Bue when You turned us loose, you gave us no acres. You turned us loose to the sky, to the storm, to the whirlwind, and, worst, of all you turned us loose to the wrath of our infuriated masters."

As you know, it wasn't until 1965, a hundred years AFTER Lincoln's EP that Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act giving Black Americans the right to vote. Their attempts to register and act on that right were often threatened and repressed and made impossible. And in 2013, the Supreme Court (the majority view expressed and written by Chief Justice Roberts) voted to strip huge parts of that Voting Rights Act because "our country has changed." But has it?

Three years later, "our country" in some ways* voted in an unfit bigot with zero political experience and lawsuits of fraud and sexual assault hanging over him because they wanted to "take our country back to its former greatness." 

You can't not see how all this fits together. How we are not remotely post-racial. How in fact we are still a racist place that believes the myth of racial inequality created by white Europeans and Americans centuries ago. Race is a social construct and as it was once used to oppress some for the benefit of others, it way too often still is.

Sure, it's often couched differently, it might simmer rather than boil. Trump and the whitelash he inspired are eerily reminiscent of the rise of Jim Crow and the KKK following emancipation. Racism isn't the only reason Trump "won," but it's a big factor. 

When I hear Trump talk of forcing Muslims to register, and then I go to the NMAAHC and see Freedom Papers for which free Blacks had to register every two years and carry at all times, I shake in a seriously uncomfortable way.

When I heard Trump supporters scream about Civil War were Hillary to have been elected and scream about locking her up so that they could "take their country back" and then I read Douglass' words of having been turned loose to face the wrath of infuriated masters," I shake some more. 

When I read that more than 50% of every 100 slaves taken from Africa died before "being placed" and then I look at the outrageously imbalanced numbers of Black Americans now incarcerated, I continue to tremble.

We all should. It is time to rise the fuck up and own our history, America. It is time to figure out how to stamp out the insidious scourge of racism that bedevils and weakens us. Racism is not the only issue facing America. But it is a big one. We need to be and do better. NOW.

*I say "in some ways" because Trump lost the popular vote by a landslide, by nearly 2.7 million votes at last count.