A Mother’s Hopeless Fantasy -- Guest Post

I don't usually run poetry, but this piece is raw, honest, and spellbinding. Thanks to N. Lei Walker.

...

Every mother wants to protect their child. 

Maternal instinct will have you be their shelter from the rain

Without any hesitation, jump in front of a train 

Run full speed into a blazing fire

Be their triple AAA, Geico, and spare to their flat tire

But how do you shield them from words?

Words can be more painful than 3rd degree burns

How do I preserve his innocence from the ignorance?

When stigma precedes actual contact

The sad realization is prejudices has too much of a profound impact

Keeps the world all contained but not intact

I guess in a way I want him to stay ignorant to the world

Let him think glass ceilings are actually glass ceilings

No need for it to be broken by a woman or a girl

So what do I say to my son?

A brown little boy with beautiful nappy hair, you know the hair that makes bubbles at his hair line before comb,

The child who knows wherever mommy is, he is home

How do I explain that in this day and age his reality of his beautiful friend who has bold brown eyes, stringy blonde hair that surpasses his chin

has more privileges, to win

I question, should I be the one to invade his candy land with the bitterness of this world?

When it’s the 11 year anniversary of Trayvon Martin would I tell him,

There is no iniquity in humanity

 It wasn't anybody’s fault on that rainy day of February 26, 2012

The gun malfunctioned in the rain

but don’t worry Trayvon didn't feel any pain

Zimmerman’s intent was to simply show off his rocket

In exchange for the skittles that were in Trayvon's pocket

There is something precious about the innocence of child. Who waves Hello on a crowded New York City subway without any intrepidation

And not show bias because of class, race, gender, and or education

I want him to stay inculpable and still manage to defy all odds, crush misconceptions, jump over obstacles, and just taste rainbows

Even the one’s in Trayvons pocket

When its the16 year anniversary of Mike brown 

The summer before college, to get him safely to his dorm

Should I explain to him the respective way to greet the cops?

Post up and surrender

Without mentioning, he maybe the assumed offender

 Should I tell him there is no such thing as the right place at the wrong time?

Its only right place at the right time

But be home a hour before the street lights

And don’t wear black and yellow together, blue and orange, and forget about red

Neutral colors compliment your skin

OH, and there are places where the sun won’t shine

So don’t cross that city line

Inform him, war is a form of protection

From New Orleans Hand Grenades

And the KKK are dressed up as ghost for the city’s Halloween parade

And then I wake up

To realize I will be his biggest enemy

My fantasy world has a huge penalty

Shaping a man to have no identity

In order to recognize the bloomed flowers

We have to be aware of their nonexistence in winter time.

To be continued…

N. Lei Walker

 

Riots may be a necessary part of societal change...until we change society

Riots are a necessary part of the evolution of society. Unfortunately, we do not live in a universal utopia where people have the basic human rights they deserve simply for existing, and until we get there, the legitimate frustration, sorrow and pain of the marginalized voices will boil over, spilling out into our streets. As ‘normal’ citizens watch the events of Ferguson unfurl on their television screens and Twitter feeds, there is a lot of head shaking, finger pointing, and privileged explanation going on. We wish to seclude the incident and the people involved. To separate it from our history as a nation, to dehumanize the change agents because of their bad and sometimes violent decisions—because if we can separate the underlying racial tensions that clearly exist in our country from the looting and rioting of select individuals, we can continue to ignore the problem.

While the most famous rant against the riots thus far comes from Kevin Sorbo, where he calls the rioters “animals” and “losers,” there are thousands of people echoing these sentiments. Sorbo correctly ascertains that the rioting has little to do with the shooting of an unarmed black man in the street a few weeks ago, but he blames it on the typical privileged American’s stereotype of a less fortunate sect of human being—that the looting is a result of frustration built up over years of “blaming everyone else, The Man, for their failures.”

Because when you have succeeded, it ceases to be a possibility, in our capitalist society, that anyone else helped you. And if no one helped you succeed, then no one is holding anyone else back from succeeding. Except they did help you, and they are holding people back. So that blaming someone else for your failures in the United States may very well be an astute observation of reality, particularly as it comes to white privilege versus black privilege. And, yes, they are different, and they are tied to race, and that doesn’t make me a racist, it makes me a realist. If anything, I am racist because I am white. Until I have had to walk in a person of color’s skin, I will never understand, I will always take things for granted, and I will be inherently privileged. But by ignoring the very real issues this country still faces in terms of race to promote an as-of-yet imaginary colorblind society, we contribute to the problem at hand, which is centuries of abuses lobbied against other humans on no basis but that of their skin color.

Sorbo is not alone. One of the Tea Party’s pages has hundreds of comments disparaging the rioters, bemoaning the state of our country, and very much calling skin color on the carpet as the culprit of this debauched way of dealing with the state of our society.

“To hear the libs, one would think that burning and looting are a justifiable way to judge negative events that effect (sic) the black,” commented Ray Hause. “I intentionally used black because of a fact that you do not hear of these events when another skin color is in play. It is about time that the blacks start cleaning their own backyards before they start on ours.”

However, the conservative group to which Hause belongs gets its name from the founding riot, The Boston Tea Party. For those who need a quick history brush-up, in 1773 American protesters dumped an entire shipment of tea into the Boston Harbor to protest The Tea Act, which colonists maintained violated their rights. In response to this costly protest and civil unrest, the British government enforced The Coercive Acts, ending local government in Massachusetts, which in turn led to the American Revolution and created our great country.

Samuel Adams wrote of the incident, claiming it “was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their constitutional rights” according to John K. Alexander, author of “Samuel Adams: America's Revolutionary Politician” (pg. 129).

That protest back in 1773 was meant to effect political and societal change, and while the destruction of property in that case may not have ended in loss of human life, the revolution that took place afterward certainly did. What separates a heralded victory in history from an attempt at societal change, a cry for help from the country’s trampled, today? The fact that we won.

In terms of riots being more common in black communities, that is true only when the riots are politically aimed.

The obvious example here is the L.A. Riots of 1992, after the Rodney King beating and verdict. I would put forth that peaceful protesting is a luxury of those already in mainstream culture, those who can be assured their voices will be heard without violence, those who can afford to wait for the change they want.

“I risk sounding racist but if this was a white kid there would be no riot,” commented Thom Nielsen on the Tea Party page. “History shows us that blacks in this country are more apt to riot than any other population. They are stirred up by racist black people and set out to cause problems. End of story.”

Blacks in this country are more apt to riot because they are one of the populations here who still need to. In the case of the 1992 riots, 30 years of black people trying to talk about their struggles of racial profiling and muted, but still vastly unfair, treatment, came to a boil. Sometimes, enough is simply too much. And after that catalyst event, the landscape of southern California changed, and nationally, police forces took note.

And the racism they are fighting, the racism we are all fighting, is still alive and well throughout our nation. The modern racism may not culminate in separate water fountains and backs of buses, but its insidious nature is perhaps even more dangerous to the individuals who have to live under the shroud of stereotypical lies society foists upon them. 

Take Jerry Lister’s comment for example:

“I believe the only way to stop the blacks from rioting is to film every person involved and prohibit them from receiving ALL public assistance for life.”

Instead of tearing down other human beings who are acting upon decades of pent-up anger at a system decidedly against them, a system that has told them they are less than human for years, we ought to be reaching out to help them regain the humanity they lost, not when a few set fire to the buildings in Ferguson, but when they were born the wrong color in the post-racial America.

 

End

There's nothing I can say that's appropriate. Nothing I can put forth that would hold any meaning, make sense of the wrong, erase the gruesome hurt that I refuse to even imagine for fear of doing nothing but cry all day.

I picked my own children up from school just now, and as they sang me Christmas carols and blathered on about their friends and day, I just hugged them close.

Even saying you're not going to say something about ____ is saying something about it. It's still expressing some right / wrong moral or political angle. Who cares more about whom and what at a time of crisis and need, etc.

I'll post pictures that my kids took of each other this morning, and I'll be so thankful that I have more than those pictures to look forward to at the day's end.

I am so, so sorry.

 

Preschool Pointers - 14: Get to the Bottom of It

Problem:

You know, you never thought you'd have a child who lashed out physically as a way to combat overwhelming emotion and four-year-old strife, but here you are, at the school again, because your little one apparently has a healthy distaste for authority. You've told the kid a million times that she needs to use words. You've sympathized with her. You know how upset she can get. You've set up reward systems, you've disciplined, taken away privileges, and she'll be fine for a few days, but it seems almost every week she forgets at least once and allows the HULK SMASH to come out. What do you do?

Solution:

Wouldn't it be awesome if the kid suddenly got the point and just stopped with the kicking or hitting? Just behaved like the other kids? Just understood that innate fear that you know you always had of grown ups?

Well, saddle up, because I've tried that, and it ain't happening.

While it's not okay to defend your child's brash actions to the death no matter what the circumstances, it is really important to look for clues and follow cues. If you know you have a child that triggers on a hair, it's up to you to help those around her not trip that trigger (while you continue to work on it at home. Ultimately, the kid has to stop throwing screaming tantrums when she doesn't get her way / can't verbalize her feelings. Never stop working on that at home.)

In our case, one of the girls will, about once a week, dissolve into a raging mess and physically hit or kick whoever tries to stop her. Both teachers and now the principal have been victims of it. She's not a bad kid (haha, says the mom), she actually loves all these people and will hug them and apologize when she's calmed down. She considers them friends.

So what's happening?

The problem is (well, besides the real problem which is my child's inability to keep control of herself when she gets frustrated), is that she doesn't want to move until people have heard her. But she's not talking. She's just crying. The teachers usually have to move to another area or room, and they can't just leave her there. They don't know how to get her to stop, so they try to physically move her. They go over to a kid who's out of control and try to pick her up. And they get a foot...somewhere. Because the girl doesn't want to be moved.

And she has a really strong sense of right and wrong and good and bad. When this happens to her (or when she does this...for those of you who are all about accountability in four year olds), she knows she's not doing the right thing, and yet feels powerless to stop it. This compounds her original problem and she jumps onto the nobody-is-going-to-like-me-now-anyway boat, making it her against the world.

As a parent, I can break through to her pretty quickly. Sometimes, I'll clash with her, show her that she's the child and I'm the adult and she needs to calm it down. But more often, I'll soothe her (without trying to pick her up or move her until she's ready). She wants to hear that she's still a good girl, that people still like her, that everything will be okay. She wants someone on her side. And once you can get her on board with that, the rage passes and you can work through it.

Is it ideal? No. Like I said, we're working on it.

But it's something at least. She doesn't want to lose control, and it's never aimed at a person. Even when she's fighting with her sister, if that rage thing kicks in, the sister is forgotten. It's just the one and her emotions, fighting each other.

I guess, the solution is to show your child that you're on her side, but you need her to work with you. If you can approach these situations with a little gentleness, you can usually stave them off or stop them before they even get off the ground.





 

When Is Violence Okay?

Do you remember these days?

I saw it on my Facebook feed and it got me thinking. Now, I'm going to skip past all the normal stuff, like, how would the originator of this image know that my childhood was awesome just because I remember this episode of Tom and Jerry? Perhaps every child born from 1975-1987 did not have an awesome childhood just because Looney Toons were on TV, right?

I'm going to get right to the point. Is the violence acceptable or not and have we wussed out as parents or not? And is it adversely affecting our kids?

 In the acceptable column, we have arguments such as the ever valid:

"Well, I grew up with it and I'm fine."
"It teaches kids to stand up to bullies and outsmart them."
"It's funny."
"Kids are smart enough to know it's just television."

In the not acceptable column, we have such gems as:

"I don't feel like explaining why a cat is pummeling a mouse with a frying pan while getting hit in the knee caps with a pipe, only to turn around to get beaten by a bat. I'll let Uncle Vito do that." (Just kidding, Uncle Vito.)
"It's scary."
"It teaches children to be violent and that hitting people is okay and hilarious."


Both of these sides have been done to death and I'm not going to flesh out either one of them. That's why we all went to 6th grade debate class, right?

I think the real issue is that we try to fit all families, all kids and all parents into one generic mold. You know what your kid can handle. You know what you want to explain. You know the maturity level of your child and his ability to tell reality from make-believe. You know your situation in life and how the cartoons would affect your particular children. So, go for it. Or don't.

But, really, stop crying about it. You don't like Sid the Science Kid? Go out and buy some old-school DVDs. They're funny and awesome. I remember them.

We'll chill with PBS for now because I have a hard enough time answering my kids when they ask me why Rapunzel's mother died when she fell out of the tower, why Ursula gets so big when she takes over the ocean, and what the heck that green stuff is leaking out of Maleficent. Also, why do the trees grab Snow White, and do they have to be afraid of trees, too?

They're old enough now where they're simply curious. They're not actually confusing the videos with reality...meaning they don't really think the trees are out to get them. But they do love their questions, and I just don't have the energy.

In my opinion, it doesn't matter if you show the violent cartoons or not. It's not going to make your kid into a wimp or a serial killer. What's important is how the real people in that child's life act. The real-life fighting, how does it go down? The real-life discipline.

Because you're already working (supposedly) on teaching your kids that what goes on in the TV isn't real, I would think that lesson would sink in. What will also sink in is how you, personally, treat your kids and your partner in front of them.

The danger isn't in the television. It just isn't.

___
If you like this blog, please vote for it here at Babble's Top 100 Blogs list. 


 

Women Stay

Women stay.  Not all women, of course, there are some who break away, who take off despite the risks, who take the first step in liberating themselves from a violent situation and bettering their lives.  But the fact remains that too many (even one is too many, but we're talking thousands, millions, of women) stay in abusive relationships.

Many see no alternative, or the alternative they do see seems even worse than where they are.  Those who have children are in an even more precarious position.  They fear for their children's wellbeing, both while they remain in their relationship and even moreso should they choose to leave.

When you are a parent, your decisions directly affect your children.  For me, that means dealing with excess whining as we board a plane home for the Christmas holiday.  For others, it means being painted into a corner with no way out.

How will a woman with no car, no income, no friends or family, and no shelter be able to provide for her children out on her own?  How will that woman be able to survive in hiding, should her partner choose to look for her, find her, bring her back?  Will her children bear part of 'her punishment' for leaving?  How will she be able to feed them, clothe them, care for them if she's on the run?

It's easy to type this from my warm living room on my laptop as my babies sleep.  When I'm done with this piece, I'll start dinner in the crock pot.  I'll set up our Christmas tree.

Easier still would be for me to simply write: make the call.  Call a shelter, an ambulance, the police, your mother.  Call someone.  Act.  Get out.  This message, while best intended, is completely lacking in empathy.  Women in violent situations cannot just make a call.  Something that seems innocuous - simple - to someone like me, can be a matter of life or death to a woman surrounded by such volatility.

For all I know, that woman's phone is tapped or her computer is keylogged.  Even reading this post could set off a chain reaction of abuse.  And that's assuming she even has access to a phone or a computer.  One doesn't need to be locked in the basement to be held prisoner.

Remember that.  If you are in a violent situation, and you think that it's not bad enough to attempt to get out, if you worry that the consequences of your attempt will make life worse for you and your kids, remember: one doesn't need to be locked in the basement to be held prisoner.

Abuse is rarely as concrete as basement walls.  It permeates.  If you are being abused, it sullies every pocket of every safe space you think you might have in your mind.  Do you think you are good?  Do you think you are good enough?  Do you think he is right?  Do you think you deserve better?  These are the important questions.

More important still:  Do you think your children deserve better?  Because they are worth that shot in the dark.  You are worth that shot in the dark.

And maybe it's not so dark after all.  Of course, that is my entitlement speaking.  It is that dark.  But it is still worth it.  This essay is worthless.  It is rhetoric, it is lip service.  Pretty words on a page do not dial phones.

What we need to do in the face of violence against women is act, not speak.  Speaking is useful only in its capacity to bring about action.  The readers here don't have to donate money, they don't have to hold signs in rallies to promote awareness, they don't have to change their Facebook pictures.  They simply have to think.  If each of us thinks hard enough, I bet we'll each come up with at least one person we know, personally, who is suffering some kind of abuse. We cannot sit idly by and callously tell them to call the people.  We must show them that it can be done.  We must personally illuminate the path for them.  Not for all of them - that is daunting, that is impossible.  For that one person we know.  For her kids.  We must act, not speak.  We must be there for her.  We must help her emerge from the trap of her own esteem and thinking.

One hand outstretched in the darkness is worth a million words on this computer screen.  Call your friend.  Stop by for a visit.  Help her.  She needs you.



(This post is in participation with the One Wee Voice Violence Against Women Campaign.  Please visit Life - Inspired by the Wee Man for more information and links on this issue.)