The playground was typically urban, 1950’s, used-to-be-a-more-affluent-neighborhood-than-it-is-now plain. There was no grass yet we played baseball and tackle on the rough concrete and asphalt as well as hoops. The school was red bricked, with caged windows so the baseballs, basketballs, and errant footballs wouldn’t break them. Any broken glass was quickly cleaned, if not by the maintenance staff then by some concerned parent from the nearby houses. We lived there, in two different houses, from when I was born until the year I turned eight.
The house I remember was at 3839 North Gratz Street. The school yard was a block or so down my street. It was a great neighborhood, somewhat Norman Rockwell in it's feel. Everybody seemed to care about the way it looked, the condition of their house, and each other's children. Each dad was a coach of some sport and if not, certainly was interested in teaching you what they did know. I learned to throw a baseball and football there. I learned to ride a bike there. I learned that, to some of my neighborhood peers, I was a nigger there.
For the most part people got along in the neighborhood. It was lower-middle class with some working folks, like my dad, a cab driver, and the occasional doctor or dentist. There were more white folks than black; there were no Asians or Hispanics. That part of North Philadelphia had formerly been all white but that had begun to slowly change. Up until the time I first heard the word from the mouth of one of my classmates I hadn’t thought of there being any differences between any of us.
“Nigger” changed something in me. I remember asking my dad about it and hearing his response as if I were underwater.
“We’re negro, Chuck,” he said, “People use that word to be mean and ugly. It doesn’t mean anything to us, it’s not who we are. Do you understand?”
“But dad,” I remember saying, “I thought we were American!”
Needless to say, that conversation continued for several decades in various forms and with many being involved in the evolving dialogue. My mother used to say that in her lifetime she went from being colored to Negro, to Afro-American, to black, to African-American. But there is more than that to a person, isn’t there? People are concerned about psychological, social, political, cultural, religious, and personal ramifications around whether or not to use labels. We are separated by them as well as identified by them. We live in a world that is increasingly segmented by them even as it grows smaller and closer together.
I’ve looked at this issue even more closely lately as my children have been exposed to the penchant of older people, and their children, to use labels. I’ve looked at my own tendency to use them. It really strikes home when you hear a nine year old using your favorite expletive from when someone cuts you off in traffic before you have a chance to use it yourself.
Labels are ‘sticky’ in the way Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book “The Tipping Point”. Nigger's meaning is adhesive, especially to those of us who have been its target. That meaning is something that even those very young white hip-hop influenced speakers are mindful of. Nigger has the exact same sting for me now that it had over fifty years ago in that school yard, even when it’s used as niggah as in rap songs or spoken word. C. Delores tucker is probably STILL going off on the use of the word. But I wonder, as several of my readers have pointed out, just what we’re doing with labels in general, not just that one.
Does our society's use of labels help or hurt? As some of you have postulated, they have a lasting effect on children. That effect is seen by some as very positive, by others as negative. I will explore this issue here in installments as the subject calls for not only my introspection and consideration of your responses but there exists much in the way of serious, as well as humerous, material for me to read.
When it came time to identify which box to check for Robert when he was about to start kindergarten it was very easy to fill out the African American one. But what exactly does that mean? What, or more significantly, why do we do that?
Answering the question raises many issues for people for different reasons. For me I’d prefer that there be no category on the form for race, but I have always been somewhat the Pollyanna. People are people and their skin color, racial and ethnic heritage are not true indicators of who they are as I relate with them, nor them to me.
Some of you may snicker as you read that. So be it. I do know that as I walk down the street late at night that a woman, walking alone upon seeing me will feel nervous and perhaps cross the street. I may wonder why. I may question whether or not it’s because I’m a man, or is it because I’m a black man.
I listen to those of you have advanced the discontinuation of racial and ethnic labeling so as to eliminate the facilitation of affirmative action programs. I listen but I wonder how many of you would feel the same way if you were descendent from a family whose history included an introduction to this hemisphere through the notorious middle passage. The following chapters of that history would include being separated from blood and cultural roots through savagery and cruel status as chattel to be sold at whim.
I wonder if you could take a broad look at the wealth slavery created in this society, and how it was created, and not see that you had a claim to some small portion of that bounty. That claim being continuously invalidated by fiat, then law, then noxious custom followed by a belief that legislation alone can alter over four hundred years of repression and exploitation.
More importantly, I wonder how we can effectively dialogue, really talk as a growing community, about significant economic, cultural, and social issues without coming to an understanding that categorizing our positions one way or another is not the way to reach a process of clearly communicating our differences. Labels (conservative, liberal, radical anything, Christian anything, etc.) not only categorize us, they limit the way we see the world and how others see us, don't they?
But then that is what’s lurking under this question I have about labels. When I say I’m a black man it may mean something very different to me than what it means to you, or to some demographer compiling statistics on the educational and economic levels of middle aged men of color.
It may mean something wildly different to the young white woman on a darkened street in Washington DC some years ago than it does to the group of spoken word artists I hang with on Thursday nights.
Saying “I’m black” may mean something even more different to my son when he says it at various points in his life. It may mean something I cannot comprehend except in my optimistic dreams, for my daughter. But I wonder if they live at a time when they even need to say it.
More, later.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Race Mixing?
Now that I have your attention...
I have a question for you, dear reader.
First some quick background: I've been working on an essay (it started as a blog draft, but after awhile it was too serious a subject to just whip off as a blog topic) on labels. You know, like we affix onto people. Like, Black, European, Asian-Pacific, Native-American...
But specifically, the label I have been centered on is "mixed-race". This category struck me while filling out a form for Robert for a Fairfax County school program. It had always been there but we never got past the African-American box as Sheila agreed with me that that is how we would consider our children. (In case you missed it Sheila is Irish-American, another label, huh? Me? I check the AA box even though some consider me 'mixed' given my family background.))
So right now what interests me most is your take on this. Doesn't matter if your comment is short or long. I promise to present what I've written to this point as it is (ya knows I have some strong opinions in this area, don't you?) but I want to hear, and perhaps be influenced by, your thoughts on the matter.
I know, I know, I'm leaving this very open ended and haven't given you any parameters. But that's just it. There are some of us, that would be me anyway, that spend time alternating between what appears to be two main positions on this (no, I am not going to say what I think those positions are!), and some that feel very strongly on a particular position.
I've decided not to be flippant about this, and I've also decided that this is an issue I want to invite others to more actively participate in. I have no doubt that several of you will jump in. I promise not to use your names if you don't want me to.
I also promise to treat your feedback carefully and consider it fully. You all are important not only to me but to my children who will have to live in a world that still confers, fairly or not, labels on souls still young and beautifully ignorant of the pain some names can cause.
So, either post them here in the comments section or email me directly. I promise to gather them and publish the installment ASAP
Next up, after "Labels": who knows what'll strike me next?
I have a question for you, dear reader.
First some quick background: I've been working on an essay (it started as a blog draft, but after awhile it was too serious a subject to just whip off as a blog topic) on labels. You know, like we affix onto people. Like, Black, European, Asian-Pacific, Native-American...
But specifically, the label I have been centered on is "mixed-race". This category struck me while filling out a form for Robert for a Fairfax County school program. It had always been there but we never got past the African-American box as Sheila agreed with me that that is how we would consider our children. (In case you missed it Sheila is Irish-American, another label, huh? Me? I check the AA box even though some consider me 'mixed' given my family background.))
So right now what interests me most is your take on this. Doesn't matter if your comment is short or long. I promise to present what I've written to this point as it is (ya knows I have some strong opinions in this area, don't you?) but I want to hear, and perhaps be influenced by, your thoughts on the matter.
I know, I know, I'm leaving this very open ended and haven't given you any parameters. But that's just it. There are some of us, that would be me anyway, that spend time alternating between what appears to be two main positions on this (no, I am not going to say what I think those positions are!), and some that feel very strongly on a particular position.
I've decided not to be flippant about this, and I've also decided that this is an issue I want to invite others to more actively participate in. I have no doubt that several of you will jump in. I promise not to use your names if you don't want me to.
I also promise to treat your feedback carefully and consider it fully. You all are important not only to me but to my children who will have to live in a world that still confers, fairly or not, labels on souls still young and beautifully ignorant of the pain some names can cause.
So, either post them here in the comments section or email me directly. I promise to gather them and publish the installment ASAP
Next up, after "Labels": who knows what'll strike me next?
Friday, January 06, 2006
Mocha Hut
On so many different levels the place's name resonates with me. Mocha, like my skin color. Mocha like the name of my first truck. Mocha like beautiful brown skinned Ethiopian women with their beautiful faces, radiant with ancient, mystical loviness, accents with one of the oldest spoken languages on Mother Earth. They were there tonight. Served me OJ and a sandwich. Gave me a cup of espresso and made me feel right at home.
Mocha Hut on U Street, near where there used to be a thriving black rennaisance center in old DC, near where Duke, Count, Ray, Monk, Dexter played. Near the clubs my mom used to take me when I was a young teenaged boy come down to see her here after the divorce, where she opened my eyes, and ears, to cool cats and be-bop, post bop, big bands and small jazz combos playing shit that still rings in my ears.
Kelly was in town. Hadn't seen her in the flesh in way too long. (Go to my links and check out YellowGurl) Wanted to be there, wanted to say hi, maybe see her smile at me. Got so much more....gotta lotta hugs, gotta a big smile several times. Got to introduce her like I was Mos Def. Got to read myself.
Got to read myself. Damn, wasn't even nervous. More nervous at VONA but Mocha Hut, where many had spit some serious shit before me tonight, where many had ripped open veins and bled all over the floor, where the insides were on the outside in such fluid, beautiful, strong, angry, sonorous, haunting words. I spoke from my heart and my children's eyes looking at me look at the world, at my life.
One woman said I better show some more, wanted me to come do a set Sunday. Kelly said I was a natural performer. The brothers took me in and felt me, heard what I was saying and it rang true with them. I wanna do more, be better, say more.
All I know is that I'm showing there again. Kelly will be on the road somewhere else. But I'll feel her hugging me, saying that I had her weepy after my introduction of her. I can't remember that much of what I said about her. I do remember wanting to convey that I loved her way with words. I loved the fact that she is a part of my poetic family. I loved the way her face lit up when she saw me there, loved her thanking me over and over for being there. I hope she knows that she was my gift, my blessing tonight.
There were other gifts, other incredible artists there. Many blessings. I was honored and humbled to have shared the stage with them.
Droopy invited me back. My goal: To throw down like those young poets, no, not just like them cause I ain't that angry, that sensitive, that raw anymore. I see the world with softer eyes now. But as well as they. That I will have to work on.
And maybe one day I can take the audience places like Kelly did tonight. Exotic, far away places, places I could only have imagined before her words came to me. Places I had been but now saw with new eyes.
Mocha Hut, sounds like some far away, commercialized, tourist trap, drinking joint near a beach where little umbrellas stick out of rum drinks, huh?
Well, belly up to the bar. I'm buying!
Mocha Hut on U Street, near where there used to be a thriving black rennaisance center in old DC, near where Duke, Count, Ray, Monk, Dexter played. Near the clubs my mom used to take me when I was a young teenaged boy come down to see her here after the divorce, where she opened my eyes, and ears, to cool cats and be-bop, post bop, big bands and small jazz combos playing shit that still rings in my ears.
Kelly was in town. Hadn't seen her in the flesh in way too long. (Go to my links and check out YellowGurl) Wanted to be there, wanted to say hi, maybe see her smile at me. Got so much more....gotta lotta hugs, gotta a big smile several times. Got to introduce her like I was Mos Def. Got to read myself.
Got to read myself. Damn, wasn't even nervous. More nervous at VONA but Mocha Hut, where many had spit some serious shit before me tonight, where many had ripped open veins and bled all over the floor, where the insides were on the outside in such fluid, beautiful, strong, angry, sonorous, haunting words. I spoke from my heart and my children's eyes looking at me look at the world, at my life.
One woman said I better show some more, wanted me to come do a set Sunday. Kelly said I was a natural performer. The brothers took me in and felt me, heard what I was saying and it rang true with them. I wanna do more, be better, say more.
All I know is that I'm showing there again. Kelly will be on the road somewhere else. But I'll feel her hugging me, saying that I had her weepy after my introduction of her. I can't remember that much of what I said about her. I do remember wanting to convey that I loved her way with words. I loved the fact that she is a part of my poetic family. I loved the way her face lit up when she saw me there, loved her thanking me over and over for being there. I hope she knows that she was my gift, my blessing tonight.
There were other gifts, other incredible artists there. Many blessings. I was honored and humbled to have shared the stage with them.
Droopy invited me back. My goal: To throw down like those young poets, no, not just like them cause I ain't that angry, that sensitive, that raw anymore. I see the world with softer eyes now. But as well as they. That I will have to work on.
And maybe one day I can take the audience places like Kelly did tonight. Exotic, far away places, places I could only have imagined before her words came to me. Places I had been but now saw with new eyes.
Mocha Hut, sounds like some far away, commercialized, tourist trap, drinking joint near a beach where little umbrellas stick out of rum drinks, huh?
Well, belly up to the bar. I'm buying!
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Dispatch from Pennsylvania
Traveling from the hotel today...last night is still warm as we amble over to breakfast at Hank's Place on US Route One in Chadds Ford. Ah, last night: a spirited high school basketball game where Greg, our godson, was 'versing' (Robert's word) the team from Chester, the reigning state champs.
'We' lost by one point. I got to see Carl and Syd, my cousin and his wife, their youngest, Mike (accompanied by two of his friends), and Ashley and Lindsey (or is that Lindsay?). Short time in the parking lot passing the Christmas goodies that Sheila baked for them in the parking lot then Lee, his girls Grace and Rachel drove back here to Chadds Ford with Ashley and Esther, Robert, Sheila, and I drove back to Lee's with Lindsey, getting the lowdown on her time away at Hampshire College in Massachusetts.
Robert played a game of chess with Rae, and won! I got to talk to Ashley. Oh, and before I forget, I got to spend time with Lee's girls too. Grace, continuing a long family tradition, told me that the middle of my remaining hair line is catching up to the sides in the race to my neck! (Lovey girl, her, and even lovelier tradition, huh?) Lindsey played with Esther, Sheila rested and watched the whole affair pleased to be with the Robbins/Cuyjet clan youngsters.
Lee and I did the proud papa and brother/cousins bit.
We hung out until I pooped out and declared that anybody going back to the hotel with me better pony up and come with me.
We had a major throwdown at Hank's for breakfast, I was reminded of what real scrapple tastes like and Esther reminded us again that her eyes are definitely bigger than her stomach. But here's what strikes me now as I reflect on Christmas break.
I love my cousins Carl and Lee like they were (are?) my brothers. I grew up admiring Lee and competing with Carl in a brotherly way. Lee helped give me the opportunity to pitch in this year with Habitat for Humanity there in Chester County. The Robbins boys' children are my children in a way. So's their sister's kid, Aaron. They helped me over the years of their growing up prepare for raising my own kids. Being with them was great. We missed Aaron this holiday but spent time with him and Cecily over Thanksgiving. Next time we plan on spending more time with Carl and his crew. It was a great trip...more after we get home
'We' lost by one point. I got to see Carl and Syd, my cousin and his wife, their youngest, Mike (accompanied by two of his friends), and Ashley and Lindsey (or is that Lindsay?). Short time in the parking lot passing the Christmas goodies that Sheila baked for them in the parking lot then Lee, his girls Grace and Rachel drove back here to Chadds Ford with Ashley and Esther, Robert, Sheila, and I drove back to Lee's with Lindsey, getting the lowdown on her time away at Hampshire College in Massachusetts.
Robert played a game of chess with Rae, and won! I got to talk to Ashley. Oh, and before I forget, I got to spend time with Lee's girls too. Grace, continuing a long family tradition, told me that the middle of my remaining hair line is catching up to the sides in the race to my neck! (Lovey girl, her, and even lovelier tradition, huh?) Lindsey played with Esther, Sheila rested and watched the whole affair pleased to be with the Robbins/Cuyjet clan youngsters.
Lee and I did the proud papa and brother/cousins bit.
We hung out until I pooped out and declared that anybody going back to the hotel with me better pony up and come with me.
We had a major throwdown at Hank's for breakfast, I was reminded of what real scrapple tastes like and Esther reminded us again that her eyes are definitely bigger than her stomach. But here's what strikes me now as I reflect on Christmas break.
I love my cousins Carl and Lee like they were (are?) my brothers. I grew up admiring Lee and competing with Carl in a brotherly way. Lee helped give me the opportunity to pitch in this year with Habitat for Humanity there in Chester County. The Robbins boys' children are my children in a way. So's their sister's kid, Aaron. They helped me over the years of their growing up prepare for raising my own kids. Being with them was great. We missed Aaron this holiday but spent time with him and Cecily over Thanksgiving. Next time we plan on spending more time with Carl and his crew. It was a great trip...more after we get home
Monday, December 19, 2005
Have a Little Faith
Okay, today I got caught up in the whole shopping thing. The urge to forage, to find that dopamine rush wrapped up in the perfect thing to buy for...who? For me, for a friend, a family member, somebody to impress with my thoughtfulness?
It's about my patriotic duty to keep the economy afloat and strong isn't it. Pandered to by Madison and Pennsylvania avenues I am compelled to go out and be the 21st century version of the hunter-gatherer. My weapons: my keenly shaped sense of what's hip, cool, and appropriate, along with the various versions of plastic in my wallet.
Sarcasism aside, I really do like to acknowledge my loved ones and my friends (hmmm, aren't they one and the same?) with gifts. But, grinching aside as well, do I really need to go out and buy a buncha stuff to show my love and appreciation?
Okay, alla you guys that just said "Yes!" anywhere in your heart of hearts think about that for a moment. Really? Do you really feel that if I haven't gotten you a present that I either don't care or that Christmas (and you) means less to me?
Well, today I ended up buying something for Sheila and ink jet printer cartriges and then sprinting outta the store before I got a buncha stuff that would have made some people happy but would have been a real drain on my budget.
I was thinking how sad it was that some folks wouldn't have a brightly wrapped 'something' under their tree that said "From Chuck".
Well I got over it! I thought of some of my favorite Christmas memories. The top ten didn't include a single gift, either received or given. Number one was a bus ride to a Gothic chapel where the choir I was in sang for some senior folks who so warmly greeted us that even after decades I can still feel their heart felt thanks.
I'm thinking that warmth we gave to those strangers was sortta representative of the ultimate gift: God's love for alla us! So, regardless of the brand of religion you might sport around as a part of your personal relationship to a greater power I say Merry Christmas to you.
And when you next find yourself weighed down, like I was today, by worrying about what to buy for whom, just have a little faith.
It's about my patriotic duty to keep the economy afloat and strong isn't it. Pandered to by Madison and Pennsylvania avenues I am compelled to go out and be the 21st century version of the hunter-gatherer. My weapons: my keenly shaped sense of what's hip, cool, and appropriate, along with the various versions of plastic in my wallet.
Sarcasism aside, I really do like to acknowledge my loved ones and my friends (hmmm, aren't they one and the same?) with gifts. But, grinching aside as well, do I really need to go out and buy a buncha stuff to show my love and appreciation?
Okay, alla you guys that just said "Yes!" anywhere in your heart of hearts think about that for a moment. Really? Do you really feel that if I haven't gotten you a present that I either don't care or that Christmas (and you) means less to me?
Well, today I ended up buying something for Sheila and ink jet printer cartriges and then sprinting outta the store before I got a buncha stuff that would have made some people happy but would have been a real drain on my budget.
I was thinking how sad it was that some folks wouldn't have a brightly wrapped 'something' under their tree that said "From Chuck".
Well I got over it! I thought of some of my favorite Christmas memories. The top ten didn't include a single gift, either received or given. Number one was a bus ride to a Gothic chapel where the choir I was in sang for some senior folks who so warmly greeted us that even after decades I can still feel their heart felt thanks.
I'm thinking that warmth we gave to those strangers was sortta representative of the ultimate gift: God's love for alla us! So, regardless of the brand of religion you might sport around as a part of your personal relationship to a greater power I say Merry Christmas to you.
And when you next find yourself weighed down, like I was today, by worrying about what to buy for whom, just have a little faith.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Tribute
I have a great friend who has brain metastases, breast cancer that has spread to her brain. She is having a good day today according to her own report this morning. She said that she can see clearly. I was struck during our talk that many supposedly healthy folks do not. Certainly I know I do not always and feel very fortunate that I have friends like her who help ground me, help me see clearly.
Without going into detail (most of you know that I am not a detail oriented person, right?) I can tell you that she has had various forms of the disease. Courage escapes me to write about it but, I can write about what I feel about it and about her.
I have an immense sadness but it’s not for her. Actually it’s not for me either although I have to confess it does stem from a selfish impulse. I’m sad for the world, for the countless folks who may never come to know her wisdom and her joy in living. Her joy permeates each of us that have gotten to know her. I want her to survive and flourish as she walks in joy.
Even those who haven’t met her personally have felt the force of her happy way of being. She is a member of a support network and told me of comments she received in an email from a woman who praised her positive outlook.
I can tell you that there have been times just the thought of this woman in my life has given me immense satisfaction. If someone like her chooses to know me, to befriend me than I must be something and someone worthwhile.
No, it is not at all about my gratification or self image here but it is about how life presents us with gifts of example, of courage, of character. It’s just hard for me to express the level of gratitude I feel appropriate for her presence in my life. Sheila holds me and tells me how lucky I am as I cry. This woman told me that tears are cleansing but too many of them cause headaches.
This friend is teaching me again what my friend Lenny taught me years ago. Friends can suffer, some of them die but love lives on. Each day is precious and should be seen that way. I’m reading Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” to see if I should recommend it to a client. My friend is an exemplar of the truth contained therein that we can choose our attitude in the face of any circumstance.
She chooses to remain herself, to continue as always, joyful in her being and in her faith in God. She chooses to celebrate her life, each and every moment. She is a warrior of light, a standard bearer of love.
Her presence on this planet is a tribute to her dedication to her faith in God’s love and she is a gift of God to all who circle in her orbit or who brush past her in their life’s journey.
I can’t think of a better tribute to my friend than to live fully and love wholly and without reservation. She does so each and every moment.
Without going into detail (most of you know that I am not a detail oriented person, right?) I can tell you that she has had various forms of the disease. Courage escapes me to write about it but, I can write about what I feel about it and about her.
I have an immense sadness but it’s not for her. Actually it’s not for me either although I have to confess it does stem from a selfish impulse. I’m sad for the world, for the countless folks who may never come to know her wisdom and her joy in living. Her joy permeates each of us that have gotten to know her. I want her to survive and flourish as she walks in joy.
Even those who haven’t met her personally have felt the force of her happy way of being. She is a member of a support network and told me of comments she received in an email from a woman who praised her positive outlook.
I can tell you that there have been times just the thought of this woman in my life has given me immense satisfaction. If someone like her chooses to know me, to befriend me than I must be something and someone worthwhile.
No, it is not at all about my gratification or self image here but it is about how life presents us with gifts of example, of courage, of character. It’s just hard for me to express the level of gratitude I feel appropriate for her presence in my life. Sheila holds me and tells me how lucky I am as I cry. This woman told me that tears are cleansing but too many of them cause headaches.
This friend is teaching me again what my friend Lenny taught me years ago. Friends can suffer, some of them die but love lives on. Each day is precious and should be seen that way. I’m reading Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” to see if I should recommend it to a client. My friend is an exemplar of the truth contained therein that we can choose our attitude in the face of any circumstance.
She chooses to remain herself, to continue as always, joyful in her being and in her faith in God. She chooses to celebrate her life, each and every moment. She is a warrior of light, a standard bearer of love.
Her presence on this planet is a tribute to her dedication to her faith in God’s love and she is a gift of God to all who circle in her orbit or who brush past her in their life’s journey.
I can’t think of a better tribute to my friend than to live fully and love wholly and without reservation. She does so each and every moment.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Thank You 1955
The passing of Rosa Parks inspires a glance back to 1955. I was eight in July that year and until I understood what was really happening in Alabama I alternated between fear and joy in my own little corner of the world, fear of being black in a white world, joy in discovering things about myself, others, and baseball heroes.
1955 was a year of awakening for me. It was a year that helped define what being a baby-boomer was, of what being a growing child meant. And, in a very important way, it helped me understand how to survive.
Emmett Til was lynched that summer; I remember he died a bit later during summer break from school. I had moved from a relatively calm, middle class, integrated neighborhood into what became one of the country’s most notorious public housing projects. I met a white kid who is still a great friend to this day. I saw many baseball games at Connie Mack Stadium, my father’s way of softening the blow of losing our house and my group of long time friends in North Philly.
I saw the wonder of Roberto Clemente, El Magnifico, on the field of my dreams and lost the attachment every young black kid had for, first Jackie Robinson, then Willie Mays.
When school started I saw that the ugliness that black folks faced in the south was present here in the north too. It was rooted deeply in the hearts of my Catholic brothers and sisters. But there were those, like the Mouse, who stood up for me, stood by me and shielded me from the fists and hatred aimed at me.
Some may read this and pass it along as just a bit of history, something an old guy writes about a time existing long before their own births. That’s okay. There may be a time they look back and can say a year helped define them as that year helped define me. I hope they keep open to life and its wonders. Lessons come hard and are contained in painful moments as well as joyous ones.
The balance between the pictures of Til’s abused body and my first glimpse of Clemente running the bases is tenuous but completely self contained in my mind’s eye. The dignity of a seamstress in segregated Montgomery bolstered my young psyche against the taunts of Irish and Italian children as I entered their school and helps inform me as we guide our son and daughter as they enter new chapters of their lives.
Before this fiftieth anniversary year passes I want to offer my thanks to 1955 for helping me become the man I am today.
1955 was a year of awakening for me. It was a year that helped define what being a baby-boomer was, of what being a growing child meant. And, in a very important way, it helped me understand how to survive.
Emmett Til was lynched that summer; I remember he died a bit later during summer break from school. I had moved from a relatively calm, middle class, integrated neighborhood into what became one of the country’s most notorious public housing projects. I met a white kid who is still a great friend to this day. I saw many baseball games at Connie Mack Stadium, my father’s way of softening the blow of losing our house and my group of long time friends in North Philly.
I saw the wonder of Roberto Clemente, El Magnifico, on the field of my dreams and lost the attachment every young black kid had for, first Jackie Robinson, then Willie Mays.
When school started I saw that the ugliness that black folks faced in the south was present here in the north too. It was rooted deeply in the hearts of my Catholic brothers and sisters. But there were those, like the Mouse, who stood up for me, stood by me and shielded me from the fists and hatred aimed at me.
Some may read this and pass it along as just a bit of history, something an old guy writes about a time existing long before their own births. That’s okay. There may be a time they look back and can say a year helped define them as that year helped define me. I hope they keep open to life and its wonders. Lessons come hard and are contained in painful moments as well as joyous ones.
The balance between the pictures of Til’s abused body and my first glimpse of Clemente running the bases is tenuous but completely self contained in my mind’s eye. The dignity of a seamstress in segregated Montgomery bolstered my young psyche against the taunts of Irish and Italian children as I entered their school and helps inform me as we guide our son and daughter as they enter new chapters of their lives.
Before this fiftieth anniversary year passes I want to offer my thanks to 1955 for helping me become the man I am today.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Friday With Frank
(It's a cold Friday night here, the children are in bed and Sheila's off to a weekend away with her mother and sisters. And I'm reminded of evenings in Philadelphia, Friday evenings after my sister stopped going to dance rehersals with our Aunt Marion and we hung out at home listening to the radio like it was the thirties or something. We had one of those humongous console numbers, with the record player and radio, plus storage for a refugee family in it. It was a great time, just me and my sister, floating on the music and enjoying the last moments of our childhood together.)
It was heavy metal and had several locks and it opened onto a small, box like vestibule with one door just like it about eight feet across from it. The door was gray on the outside, off white inside, and when you turned right after stepping out through it there was an even heavier door, gun metal gray with a small, wired crossed window about three inches across and a foot long about five and a half feet above the floor. It looked into an elevator shaft. Across from that was a plain wall, blank with an industrial color you can’t remember to this day. The floor was that industrial, mostly black with white marble-like swirls linoleum.
You were on the eleventh floor…with three floors above you, and all up and down this particular shaft each floor looked exactly the same. There were seven other elevators exactly like it and two that had one more gray door around it on the either end of the building where you lived. If you were across the river, say riding by on the Schuylkill Expressway, the building looked like something a child would have designed and built with an erector set or kids’ blocks. It was ugly by the time you left but when you moved in as a kid it was wide open with possibility, full of new kids to get to know and play with. You remember, don’t you?
It’s gone now, torn down with its twin building and the smaller garden apartments to make room for yet another housing project, but this one was designed for more middle class type living, something less institutional, less foreboding. No more high rises. You were there a little while ago with one of your old friends from those old days, wandering through, inspecting the new buildings, each no more than three stories tall. None of them have elevators, none with heavy metal doors locking out the world, locking in young bodies, supposedly protecting them from the evils of the outside world.
Standing across the river from the new buildings you could feel the memories washing over you, could hear voices echoing in your heart. You turned to drive home, but you couldn't stop looking at the place where you had grown up, couldn't stop thinking about what the good times were like there...
“C’mon, dance with me!” she’d ask you, almost pleading, wanting a human touch, a human response to her moves.
“Naw, you know I don’t dance”, you said to her countless times, as many times as she ever asked you.
During weekends and some nights when your father wasn’t there you and your sister played the stereo-that-looked-like-a-piece-of-furniture just across the small living room from that heavy door loudly and she'd throw the latch on the door onto the locked position and use the door knob to hand dance since you were not inclined to do something you thought looked so damn silly. Hand dancing was bad enough, but the thought of doing it with your sister was too much to even think about for you. So you sat and watched, marveled at her, and listened to the music. Sometimes you even sang with it. Remember?
She could do wonders dancing with that knob and you were secretly jealous but you couldn’t decide if it was with the knob for its stoic presence or of your sister’s dexterity with such an inanimate object. You watched as she danced with girl groups like The Shirelles or The Marvelettes, or with Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, and Sam Cooke and others too bland to remember now but very important in that teenaged world you lived in then. You can remember, can’t you?
You can still see her twirl around and hit just the right move with the music. When she danced she was radiant and intense with the look of classical dancers on her face. She was so damn cool and so damn innocent. She was lost in the moment and movement the music inspired in her. She was captured by the steps she practiced, her body enslaved by style and sound. She couldn’t wait to get out on the dance floor. She practiced for when she could but you could tell she practiced just to be doing it right then and there; she was so complete, so herself, dancing with the metal door knob anchored so firmly by that front door.
But she didn’t always dance. Most of the time you both just listened. You listened to all kinds of music, catholic in your taste, so jazz and popular music, rock and roll, pop, yeah; you listened to all of that. But most of all it was just one voice that captivated the both of you.
Frank Sinatra.
Neither of you ever got enough of Sinatra and you never knew why ‘til lately when you came to the autumn of your own years. “Friday with Frank” found you in front of that old funky console stereo your father bought you even well after your friends started having things to do on Friday nights and you were old enough to actually go out with them without the old man going off on you when you snuck back into the apartment very late at night or very early the next morning.
No, you were in front of the radio, like some throwback to time before television, like a Norman Rockwell painting without mom or dad carving the turkey, sitting there listening to the master sing his visions of love, heartache, human folly and joy.
And you never told any of your friends, never invited them over to hear what you heard. Neither of you shared that time with anyone else…it was just the four of you; you, your sister, Sid Mark of WHAT FM in Philadelphia, and Sinatra; safe inside that door.
“Who’d you blow off to hang with me n’ Frank tonight?” She wanted to know if you had an answer when usually she knew that you made no plans other than to be right there with her and “Old Blue Eyes”. You were sitting there in your dad’s chair. It was dark in the apartment with just the table lamp switched to low. Mood setting, ready for the sonic journey.
“I couldda gone over to Haney’s with the Mouse. They wanted to watch the Friday night fights and sneak beer but…you know…”
“Teddy wanted to come over…”
“You told him?”
“No, he just wanted to come over. I think he’d like to do this with us someday, he seems cool.” She slowly moved across the floor to the couch, dropped her book bag and slouched down, reclining with her coat still on.
“So what? One day we won’t be able to do this, and we got a good long string going. Let’s not break it until we have to, until we go away to school or something like that, okay?”
“But he’s so nice to me…”
“A really long string, sis. Please let’s try to keep it just the three of us, you, me, and Frank, alright? We’ll be out of here soon enough on our own. Away from here and all of this.”
You remember, even now, so far away from all of that. You can remember how safe and warm it felt. Just the two of you and that fabulous storyteller and the DJ that brought him into your lives. It's Friday night. Go put on some Sinatra and remember.
It was heavy metal and had several locks and it opened onto a small, box like vestibule with one door just like it about eight feet across from it. The door was gray on the outside, off white inside, and when you turned right after stepping out through it there was an even heavier door, gun metal gray with a small, wired crossed window about three inches across and a foot long about five and a half feet above the floor. It looked into an elevator shaft. Across from that was a plain wall, blank with an industrial color you can’t remember to this day. The floor was that industrial, mostly black with white marble-like swirls linoleum.
You were on the eleventh floor…with three floors above you, and all up and down this particular shaft each floor looked exactly the same. There were seven other elevators exactly like it and two that had one more gray door around it on the either end of the building where you lived. If you were across the river, say riding by on the Schuylkill Expressway, the building looked like something a child would have designed and built with an erector set or kids’ blocks. It was ugly by the time you left but when you moved in as a kid it was wide open with possibility, full of new kids to get to know and play with. You remember, don’t you?
It’s gone now, torn down with its twin building and the smaller garden apartments to make room for yet another housing project, but this one was designed for more middle class type living, something less institutional, less foreboding. No more high rises. You were there a little while ago with one of your old friends from those old days, wandering through, inspecting the new buildings, each no more than three stories tall. None of them have elevators, none with heavy metal doors locking out the world, locking in young bodies, supposedly protecting them from the evils of the outside world.
Standing across the river from the new buildings you could feel the memories washing over you, could hear voices echoing in your heart. You turned to drive home, but you couldn't stop looking at the place where you had grown up, couldn't stop thinking about what the good times were like there...
“C’mon, dance with me!” she’d ask you, almost pleading, wanting a human touch, a human response to her moves.
“Naw, you know I don’t dance”, you said to her countless times, as many times as she ever asked you.
During weekends and some nights when your father wasn’t there you and your sister played the stereo-that-looked-like-a-piece-of-furniture just across the small living room from that heavy door loudly and she'd throw the latch on the door onto the locked position and use the door knob to hand dance since you were not inclined to do something you thought looked so damn silly. Hand dancing was bad enough, but the thought of doing it with your sister was too much to even think about for you. So you sat and watched, marveled at her, and listened to the music. Sometimes you even sang with it. Remember?
She could do wonders dancing with that knob and you were secretly jealous but you couldn’t decide if it was with the knob for its stoic presence or of your sister’s dexterity with such an inanimate object. You watched as she danced with girl groups like The Shirelles or The Marvelettes, or with Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, and Sam Cooke and others too bland to remember now but very important in that teenaged world you lived in then. You can remember, can’t you?
You can still see her twirl around and hit just the right move with the music. When she danced she was radiant and intense with the look of classical dancers on her face. She was so damn cool and so damn innocent. She was lost in the moment and movement the music inspired in her. She was captured by the steps she practiced, her body enslaved by style and sound. She couldn’t wait to get out on the dance floor. She practiced for when she could but you could tell she practiced just to be doing it right then and there; she was so complete, so herself, dancing with the metal door knob anchored so firmly by that front door.
But she didn’t always dance. Most of the time you both just listened. You listened to all kinds of music, catholic in your taste, so jazz and popular music, rock and roll, pop, yeah; you listened to all of that. But most of all it was just one voice that captivated the both of you.
Frank Sinatra.
Neither of you ever got enough of Sinatra and you never knew why ‘til lately when you came to the autumn of your own years. “Friday with Frank” found you in front of that old funky console stereo your father bought you even well after your friends started having things to do on Friday nights and you were old enough to actually go out with them without the old man going off on you when you snuck back into the apartment very late at night or very early the next morning.
No, you were in front of the radio, like some throwback to time before television, like a Norman Rockwell painting without mom or dad carving the turkey, sitting there listening to the master sing his visions of love, heartache, human folly and joy.
And you never told any of your friends, never invited them over to hear what you heard. Neither of you shared that time with anyone else…it was just the four of you; you, your sister, Sid Mark of WHAT FM in Philadelphia, and Sinatra; safe inside that door.
“Who’d you blow off to hang with me n’ Frank tonight?” She wanted to know if you had an answer when usually she knew that you made no plans other than to be right there with her and “Old Blue Eyes”. You were sitting there in your dad’s chair. It was dark in the apartment with just the table lamp switched to low. Mood setting, ready for the sonic journey.
“I couldda gone over to Haney’s with the Mouse. They wanted to watch the Friday night fights and sneak beer but…you know…”
“Teddy wanted to come over…”
“You told him?”
“No, he just wanted to come over. I think he’d like to do this with us someday, he seems cool.” She slowly moved across the floor to the couch, dropped her book bag and slouched down, reclining with her coat still on.
“So what? One day we won’t be able to do this, and we got a good long string going. Let’s not break it until we have to, until we go away to school or something like that, okay?”
“But he’s so nice to me…”
“A really long string, sis. Please let’s try to keep it just the three of us, you, me, and Frank, alright? We’ll be out of here soon enough on our own. Away from here and all of this.”
You remember, even now, so far away from all of that. You can remember how safe and warm it felt. Just the two of you and that fabulous storyteller and the DJ that brought him into your lives. It's Friday night. Go put on some Sinatra and remember.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Worth the Wait?
In our hurly-burly lives how much can we actually say is worth waiting for? I mean after all, if we can’t get it right away, is it really worth having?
The concept of delayed gratification has been lost, somewhere back in those traditional value days I keep hearing about. Come to think about it I have a lot to say about that expression but that’s for another entry!
There have been several things I discovered were worth the wait:
More than several years ago Sheila and I flew up to Massachusetts to tell my in-laws Sheila was pregnant with Robert. Anne, my mother-in-law, cracked wise with me about being a new dad at my age. She said something like,
“Why, at your age, would you want to father a child?”
Since she’s only nine years older than me I tend not to take the grief she sends my way. After all, she was crying and hugging Sheila with the initial report of baby-in-the-oven news. Why couldn’t she afford me the same weepy reception?
Regardless, I came up with a retort that still scores points, even if it’s only in my own mind. I said,
“Because I’ve always given Sheila what she’s asked, and this is the first time she asked me for a child!”
Scoring on my mother-in-law was certainly worth the years of aggravation I took from her. And it was something that wasn’t even intended! Plus now I was the one getting tears and hugs from the two of them!
The other day I was raking leaves, one of my least favorite activities with my allergies and all (really bad knees and worse lower back). Regardless, there I was, trying to beat the rain and cold. Being a good dad and husband, I was bagging the red, yellow, and rust colored reminders of fall so Sheila and the kids wouldn’t have to when they got home from having whatever fun they were enjoying. Wet leaves are a major pain to collect and bag.
I was using Robert’s technique for getting the leaves up into the yard bags: turning the rake over and using it as a shovel so I wouldn’t have to bend over that much to use my hand with the rake. He was about four or five when he showed me that trick! There I was in my fifties learning from a kid.
It was worth the wait.
I was thirty-six when I met Sheila. Definitely worth the wait! Probably the better timing too as I was a complete idiot when it came to the women I had loved before then. I learned some damn good lessons and had my heart broken a time or two (to say nothing of the hearts I busted up!). When I met her I had just broken up with a woman who had been a great friend for a number of years before we became romantically involved. She and I moved in together and I honestly thought I found ‘the one’.
Well six months later it was clear I hadn’t. I was convinced that I was going to be single forever.
Then I met this young, feisty (well, she was then!), intelligent, beautiful woman who seemed to like me. Twenty-two years later she still seems to like me. (And every once in a while she still shows flashes of her feistiness!)
Worth the wait, huh? No doubt.
While there may still be things I want (that forty foot RV will remain close to the top of my wish list!) I am very content right now. There are aspects of desire I hope I never lose but I’ve learned that being really attached to those desires only causes pain and suffering. Living with the openness I’ve learned has taught me that. (I still covet a lot of toys that I will collect, only I’ve learned that I can wait to pay cash instead of putting them on my credit card!) I am something more than my possessions. Way more.
I am a father, a husband, a friend, a colleague, a team mate, and a kid from the projects of Philly who has made a good, no, make that a great life for himself and his family. Yeah, I am a kid from the projects in Philadelphia. I still root for the Philly teams here in the heart of Washington, DC!
With things going the way they are though, I don’t think I’ll wait any longer this year for the Eagles to win the Super Bowl!
When they finally do though it’ll be well worth the wait. Just like when the Red Sox won it all last year. I remember when someone in Sheila’s family (they are all from the Boston area) asked my why I was rooting for the Sox I said I had been ever since ’67.
They said I was such a newbie! After all some of them had been rooting for them since the last time the Sox won the Series.
Worth the wait?
I think so.
The concept of delayed gratification has been lost, somewhere back in those traditional value days I keep hearing about. Come to think about it I have a lot to say about that expression but that’s for another entry!
There have been several things I discovered were worth the wait:
More than several years ago Sheila and I flew up to Massachusetts to tell my in-laws Sheila was pregnant with Robert. Anne, my mother-in-law, cracked wise with me about being a new dad at my age. She said something like,
“Why, at your age, would you want to father a child?”
Since she’s only nine years older than me I tend not to take the grief she sends my way. After all, she was crying and hugging Sheila with the initial report of baby-in-the-oven news. Why couldn’t she afford me the same weepy reception?
Regardless, I came up with a retort that still scores points, even if it’s only in my own mind. I said,
“Because I’ve always given Sheila what she’s asked, and this is the first time she asked me for a child!”
Scoring on my mother-in-law was certainly worth the years of aggravation I took from her. And it was something that wasn’t even intended! Plus now I was the one getting tears and hugs from the two of them!
The other day I was raking leaves, one of my least favorite activities with my allergies and all (really bad knees and worse lower back). Regardless, there I was, trying to beat the rain and cold. Being a good dad and husband, I was bagging the red, yellow, and rust colored reminders of fall so Sheila and the kids wouldn’t have to when they got home from having whatever fun they were enjoying. Wet leaves are a major pain to collect and bag.
I was using Robert’s technique for getting the leaves up into the yard bags: turning the rake over and using it as a shovel so I wouldn’t have to bend over that much to use my hand with the rake. He was about four or five when he showed me that trick! There I was in my fifties learning from a kid.
It was worth the wait.
I was thirty-six when I met Sheila. Definitely worth the wait! Probably the better timing too as I was a complete idiot when it came to the women I had loved before then. I learned some damn good lessons and had my heart broken a time or two (to say nothing of the hearts I busted up!). When I met her I had just broken up with a woman who had been a great friend for a number of years before we became romantically involved. She and I moved in together and I honestly thought I found ‘the one’.
Well six months later it was clear I hadn’t. I was convinced that I was going to be single forever.
Then I met this young, feisty (well, she was then!), intelligent, beautiful woman who seemed to like me. Twenty-two years later she still seems to like me. (And every once in a while she still shows flashes of her feistiness!)
Worth the wait, huh? No doubt.
While there may still be things I want (that forty foot RV will remain close to the top of my wish list!) I am very content right now. There are aspects of desire I hope I never lose but I’ve learned that being really attached to those desires only causes pain and suffering. Living with the openness I’ve learned has taught me that. (I still covet a lot of toys that I will collect, only I’ve learned that I can wait to pay cash instead of putting them on my credit card!) I am something more than my possessions. Way more.
I am a father, a husband, a friend, a colleague, a team mate, and a kid from the projects of Philly who has made a good, no, make that a great life for himself and his family. Yeah, I am a kid from the projects in Philadelphia. I still root for the Philly teams here in the heart of Washington, DC!
With things going the way they are though, I don’t think I’ll wait any longer this year for the Eagles to win the Super Bowl!
When they finally do though it’ll be well worth the wait. Just like when the Red Sox won it all last year. I remember when someone in Sheila’s family (they are all from the Boston area) asked my why I was rooting for the Sox I said I had been ever since ’67.
They said I was such a newbie! After all some of them had been rooting for them since the last time the Sox won the Series.
Worth the wait?
I think so.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
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