A Neighborhood

I grew up in a poor family. Until I was thirteen I shared a room with my two little brothers in a 4 room apartment in Norfolk, Va. Naturally, like everyone else in a poor childhood, we didn’t know we were poor. No one in our apartment complex had money. But we had free run of our apartments which faced the Lafayette River. Woods ran down to the inlets of that river and we played there and in the large open fields throughout the apartments until our parents yelled for us to come home for dinner. After dinner we ran out again. “You all better be here when the street lights come on!” our mothers would warn us.

We went to a high achieving school with the richer children whose homes surrounded the complex. We walked to school like everyone else. We brought our lunches like everyone did. I was so sheltered that I didn’t know until junior high school that my clothes were ten years out of date, hand-me-downs from my older cousin Lois.
When I was 13 we moved to a small town in North Carolina. Once again, we rented but this time it was a house in an old section of town, across the street from an even poorer neighborhood. While still poor ourselves, we lived on the fringes of another world. Yet my brothers and I were never afraid to walk through that section of town. We went to school with kids from there. We went to the same little neighborhood credit grocery stores they did. We played softball and baseball and basketball with these kids. And we were never afraid to be in that neighborhood. The worse thing we saw was old men in the alley behind “RB’s Independent Grocer”, drinking out of brown paper bag covered bottles and hooting and hollering occasionally. Or the old crazy woman who took her reclaimed Piggly Wiggly shopping cart around the neighborhood to pick up bottles to turn in for the deposit.
Drugs. Drug users. Drug dealers. Drug buyers. That’s the major difference I see in the poor neighborhoods now from the poor neighborhoods of my youth.

When I was a little girl, we could live in a poor neighborhood and not be afraid. If you were poor, you could raise your children there and not be afraid they would end up in a morgue. You worked to get your kids out of there. Like my mother, you expected your children to work so they would have it better than you did. You sacrificed for your kids and over and over and over again let them know that there was another way out of poverty….education and hard work. Now, I’m not sure hard working poor parents in poor neighborhoods can get that message to their children.
Today I read that the murderers of a bright 15 year old teenager were sentenced to life in prison. The child, a twin, was killed as a substitute for his brother, who owed drug dealers $200. And because “You can’t be seen as sweet,” one of the killers said. So when they couldn’t find the brother who owed them money, they took the next best thing.

Would you live in this neighborhood? Where no one would come forward to the police, even though they see a murder? Where many people know who shot a 15-year old but won’t tell? A neighborhood where you’re not sure you could let your children play with someone else’s child because you wouldn’t know who would be hanging out at that house? Where you were afraid to stay in your own living room if it faced the street because of stray bullets? Or you worry every time your child walked to the school bus stop that they would see someone getting robbed or accidentally shot in a shower of drive by retaliation?

You would if you were poor.

Truth and Facts

Is a fact truth? I’ve been pondering that a lot for the past several weeks.
Our minister seeded that thought in my mind on Easter Sunday. Unitarian Easter services often revolve around re-birth, the coming of spring and renewal. He chose to talk about Wanda the Fish, who’d died but came back to life as she was about to be buried. He told the children the story of Jesus, who’d not been a popular person with the authorities, had been tried and sentenced to death by them, and then born again. Each, an allegory about being born again.
Every culture has stories of rebirth. But was the story of Jesus’ resurrection just that, a story? Or was it a fact?
A few weeks ago I posted a message on my Facebook account about a Christian church group picketing outside a high school with signs that read, “God hates fags.” That sparked a lot of debate from friends and family weighing in on the issue. Many quoted the Bible and that popular phrase about men lying down with men. A few sent me messages about the inconsistencies within the Bible and “how can people believe in a faith where one minute you should take an eye for an eye and in the next, commit a mortal sin if you murder someone?”. Some wrote that God hates the sin but loves the sinner. Others wrote that the church doing the picketing isn’t really a Christian church despite those members’ claims. Quite a few of my Unitarian friends just nod their heads and tell me it’s hard for them to be tolerant of such intolerance of others. Communion is flesh transmogrified, but no, it’s just symbolic
So what is the truth here? How can so many people have such different views about this and so many other volatile subjects? And why would anyone rely upon a book written 2000 years ago to justify wars and killing and hate towards others? How can people I know be so unremittingly sure of themselves about something that’s contrary to what millions of other people believe?
I think, like the allegory of Jesus’ birth and death and resurrection, it’s a matter of truth versus fact. For some reason known only to them, the religions they’ve chosen meet their needs. If it didn’t, they search for something else to meet those needs. That search might or might not lead them to their own or another religion. They may have to re-think the way they think about beliefs.
Burt Keller, a Congregational minister, once told me that people have their beliefs and they swim along quite happily until something comes along to jostle that belief. It could be a war, or someone’s death, an illness or a natural disaster. And once shaken, they’re never quite the same again. Their faith may be stronger, or it may weaken. They may look around at the diverse world we live in and wonder how so many faiths others than theirs can be wrong. And once they’ve thought about that, perhaps they will be able to see their beliefs as not a literal fact, with only one person’s interpretation, but perhaps, just for a moment, they may be able to see a message. Not a fact. But a truth.

Vanity

Isn’t it ironic that the things you’re the most vain about are often the very things you lose? Ironic? Or justice? And if justice… from whom or what?
When we lived in Florida my ex husband used to remark that the only group of people of whom he was prejudiced was the group of people he’d be a member of --if he was lucky…old people. How ironic.
No one could ever have been as vain of her legs as was I. They were my best feature. But now… now they have those teeny tiny red road map lines travelling from my knees across to my inner thighs. And a strange sort of knot has arisen from my shin… the result of too many track meets when I was in high school and not enough warm ups. The cellulite on my thighs laughs out at me when I try on bathing suits. Why can’t they make those pantaloon suits, so popular in the roaring ’20’s, popular again? I have bursitis in my hip which wakes me every night as I lie on my right side, facing away from my husband so he doesn’t have to listen to me snore in his ear. At least one of us should get some sleep. Yes. My legs are gone. I can camouflage them in the winter in black tights and still look stylish. But come summer, its long skirts for me- eccentric is beginning to look good.
As my legs have deserted me, however, a stranger vanity has replaced them. I have never been proud of my hair. Its’ limp curly strands never behaved like the shampoo ads promised. Now, however, just when it’s definitely time to start thinking about abandoning the hair color aisle, my hair starts to do exactly what I always wanted it to do. It’s become straighter. And a bonus! Thicker. And even better… it’s gotten long. OK, I agree that the long thing has something to do with me. A few years before my mother died she commented on my hair, “You can’t be letting it grow out. Old women don’t look good with long hair.” Some part of me believed her because after that conversation I chopped it all off and up until now have never let it get longer than my chin.
But a few months ago I decided to let it grow. Defiant of my mother I thought, “Mom, I’m letting it grow to my ass.” I like that vision- my long half-gray hair swinging down my back in one long braid. Or wound, grandmother style, around my head.
Ironic? Now that my hair is graying and probably getting finer and definitely falling out a little… to decide to shake my fist at my mother and all other naysayers… and, yes, to my knees too… and let it be what it wants to be. Is it vain to enjoy something about yourself that you know will leave you? Does it make one a little shallower to be proud of something which you surely don’t have any control over… be it knees or hair or skin or eye color? And if you’re proud of it, will you grieve when it waves goodbye?
I’m sad that my good looking legs aren’t what they were when I was 20. But they’ve taken me places that I never could have envisioned. They’re worn and the knees sag a little. But they’re me. And the hair? That’s me, too. A wiser me that knows not to kick a gift horse in the mouth. And not to get too attached to something that can detach with a few snips.
I hope my Mom can see me. And I hope my Grandmother is standing beside her somewhere… her own hair, which I would brush for her, wound in braids around her head. And I hope they’re both smiling.

Take a breath and let it go

Not only have I turned that corner of Fifty and Forty Street but now I’m flying down Highway 53. And it’s dawned on me that I am loving this ride. I love the wind in my face and my grayish hair blowing wildly about the car. I am comfortable in this seat and the steering wheel feels at home in my hands. I have learned, not completely but better, how to take a deep breath and to let go.
It started in my 40’s, I think when I took a drawing class. I have no natural art talent yet I love art and museums. So when I saw an ad in our local paper for a community drawing class, I thought I’d give it a try. It was cheap. It was in our local high school at night. I could walk there. No reason not to go. And I loved it. I loved it because I let myself love it. No expectations. No Picasso wannabe or even a Grandma Moses. No requirements for a grade. Just me, drawing a circle over and over and over again. It was the first thing I remember attempting, in my life, where I allowed myself to not even try to be the best. Just to enjoy. It took a long time to get to this one point. Like 3 years of weekly classes.
And the lesson I learned there has bubbled over into other areas of my life. I can see it in my relationships with people.
A young woman came into my office today slightly tearful. She is deeply in debt and desperate for a solution. She asked my opinion about making a dramatic move in her life. She needed to act.
I listened to her and then asked her to take a deep breath. And to imagine the very worst thing which could happen. And what would her life be like if that thing she dreaded happened. To take a breath and to let go.
Lately I’ve noticed I’ve become better at listening to the other side of an argument. I think I’ve gotten more patient. And I’m smarter about knowing which battles to fight and which ones won’t matter. It’s a lot less stressful to little things go.
Lydia was one of my dearest friends. She was at least 50 years older than me when we met. She lived across the street from me when I was a young mother and I idolized her. A sort-of-family member distantly related to my husband’s mother, Lydia took an interest in me. Eccentric and independent, a staunch liberal and highly educated, she was and is what I would like to be. “Never get in a battle of wills with a two-year old,” she told me. “Dishes don’t have to match,” she said on another occasion. And my favorite advice was this: “Don’t worry about something unless it will matter when you’re Eighty.”
Dearest Lydia, thank goodness it only took me thirty years to absorb this.

Publisher's Clearinghouse

From the time we were able to watch TV and understand the commercials, my sister and brothers and I were convinced that we would win Ed McMahon’s Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes. Our mother assured us that this would happen. It was a given.

We sat in her cozy kitchen, drawing endless designs of the houses we would build once we cashed the check. Our houses were always set on compounds not unlike what we envisioned the Kennedys owned. THE Kennedys. As in Jacqueline and John F’s family home. A compound where we would each have our own little house and my mother would rule supreme in a matriarchal style. When we heard a knock at our door- very uncommon since my mother didn’t encourage drop by guests- our hearts would pound and we’d push each other down to get to the door first. We knew as soon as we opened the door we would have to battle balloons and reporters while the Sweepstake van idled at the curb, spilling Ed out with that giant cardboard poster of a million dollar check made out to Us.

But usually the only person knocking at our door was someone to read the electric meter, little old women trying to save our souls or Aunt Julia Mae with her yipping dog who never failed to bite us. The dog. Not Aunt Julia Mae (who, if she could have gotten away with biting us, would have I am sure).

So we waited. And Waited. Filled out multiple subscription and entry forms. Spent uncounted hours arranging the furniture in our imaginary houses. Imagining the cars we would drive…. The horses we would raise on our huge estate…. The parties we would hold! The optimism and hope we stirred up among ourselves.

So we Waited. And Waited. And we lived in limbo for years, always expecting that we would win and be transported from our modest poverty into “A Comfortable Life.” And yet, we did not win.

There was a time when we each realized that this money was not likely to come our way. We set about going to school or joining the Air Force. Having babies and making homes. We moved on. But we could see no plans our Mom was making to take care of herself after our father died. She never lost the conviction that she would win it big. After we grew up and moved away she traveled, gypsy style, between our houses, living with first one and then another of us for several years before moving on to the next child’s home, the next grandchildren to spoil and pamper.

She sat at our kitchen tables drawing diagrams of extensive family compounds and pulled her grandchildren into her spell of expectation. Soon it was the grandchildren running to answer the door, imagining a giant cardboard check.

And while none of us ever did win that million dollar sweepstake, Mom did achieve her fondest wishes as if she’d won. She had her family around her. She lived A Comfortable Life, out of poverty and fear of where the next dollar would come. And she reigned her own little kingdom, Matriarch Supreme.

Happy Thanksgiving

Yesterday I went into a natural food store. I love going into this store. I buy milk there, in the glass bottles which remind me of when I was younger and the milkman twice a week left our order by the front door. I buy yogurt there and cheese. I can always find vegetable broth in the big cartons. The produce is organic and the meat is free range and hormone-free, the breads whole-wheat and natural, boasting no preservatives. I know this food must be good for you. And yesterday it was brought home to me- only the well to do can afford to eat these healthy foods.
The woman in line in front of me was buying a fresh 12 pound turkey. The cash register: $51.53.
Fifty dollars for a turkey.
My frozen turkey, bought at Piggly Wiggly, was $7.87. Full of hormones, I’m sure, and probably raised on a turkey-mill farm. But affordable to many.
I was stunned, to be sure. Then I looked at the people around me, buying last minute Thanksgiving goodies. WASPs, all of them. White Anglo Saxon Princes and Princesses. Well-dressed- and I know this because they wore very expensive shoes….Danskos and Naots and Keens and Merrells….( I’d just been in the shoe store next door which, once upon a time, used to carry shoes which were much less than $259 and $112 on sale). The women carried expensive handbags in their manicured hands. No one was overweight. Everyone looked well-cared for.
They carried their purchases, in environmentally friendly reusable bags, out to Mercedes and Volvos. Not one car in the parking lots showed rust. None of the cars looked older than 5 years. None were held together with baling wire and pop rivets. Only the well-to- do can afford to visit this store.
But even in the chain grocery stores the more healthy foods are expensive. Whole-wheat bread is more expensive than the white type. Hormone-free eggs are more expensive than the Piggly Wiggly brand. Vegetables marked “organic” cost almost twice as much as the ones without that designation. Brown rice is pricey.
So you’re poor and you have a limited budget. You have a family to feed and you must take a bus or walk to the grocery store. The “health food” grocery stores in my region are not located in poor neighborhoods. Neither are the farmer’s markets. Neither are the truck farm stands, set up by local farmers, on little vacant lots or in church parking lots, offering fresh, locally grown produce.
Fifty dollars for a turkey. At least that store collects donations to our local food bank.
This Thanksgiving I’m thankful for my health and that of my family and friends. I’m grateful my family has steady jobs. I’m glad I have a church community where my liberal ideas are not only welcomed, but encouraged. That I’ve found friends with whom I laugh and cry. And that I do not have to battle poverty in order to make sure my family lives in a safe and healthful place. Even if we will be eating a seven dollar turkey chock full of hormones.

Lifting Up Your Face

OK. I’m jealous. Not normally the jealous type, but I have to admit that deep down, I’m jealous. Of the type of woman who Takes Very Good Care of Herself. Perhaps you know the type. Perhaps you’re one of the types.

This woman can wear very short skirts at any age and extremely high heels and not look ridiculous. She pays A LOT of money for high and low lights at the salon and she does that very frequently. If she works, it’s at a job that encourages her to have weekly acrylic nail things done. Her makeup is flawless. She drives expensive sports cars and looks good doing it. She is thin and petite and her clothes come from an upscale store in downtown Charleston. Probably that Pulitzer woman's place and I’m not talking about the writing prize.

She plays tennis fairly well, not competitively well, but socially well, once or twice a week. She does not golf. She has a sprayed on tan so that she looks good while lying by the pool at the club and still protecting herself from damaging UV rays.

And she has had work done. Every woman I know understands what that term means. None of my friends have had any work, but we all know women who have.

And today I realized some part of me envied those women.

It hit me pretty unexpectedly while my daughter and I were in a crafts store. We were in line at the checkout. I was scrounging in my beat up leather handbag to find a coupon so I could save a few pennies. And my daughter mentioned that the mother of a friend of hers looked really good at 50-something then offhandedly remarked, “She’s had some work done, though.”

BAM! A ton of bricks landed on my head. I wanted to be that woman who looked great at 53 and wore cute little dresses and didn’t have to hunt in the bottom of my bag to save a buck. The woman who doesn’t work but who has Married Well and has time and money for expensive personal pursuits.

“Where in the hell did THAT come from, " I wondered to myself because I’m usually pretty happy in my skin, sags and all. I can only imagine that it was a leftover ghostly desire from my weekend. I spend this past weekend at a conference in Hilton Head. I enjoyed it and the company I was in: nurse educators from all over NC and SC. Most of us at the peak of our careers. Most of us definitely over 45 years old. Very similar in backgrounds and careers, we all spoke the same language. Yet in the ballroom next door to ours, I think the women spoke a very different language.
It was a conference of cosmetic saleswomen.

They women were young and wore beautiful blue suits and 3 inch heels and their makeup, well, all I can say is, they DO sell makeup…. We could hear them clapping and laughing and music blaring. Our lectures were "How to give presentations when money is tight," and "what are the new NNSDO standards for career specialists." Not the sexiests subjects.

During one of our breaks these women were also on a break. A colleague turned to me as we walked down the hall behind a group of these women. “Ever wonder if we did something really wrong?” she asked. “I have torn discs in my back so that it’s hard to get out of bed. I must have gained weight but since I wear scrubs to work I didn’t realize it and when I was packing, and couldn’t find anything to wear, I had to run out to the only store open, Wal Mart, and buy an outfit that actually fits. I’m too tired after work to try to work out and I eat crap because that’s all the cafeteria sells.”

“I hear you, sister,” I told her. And I did. But today it really hit home. I could spend $44,000 on a brand new gas guzzling SUV if I wanted to, I guess. I could spend $180 every 6 wks at the salon if I really wanted that. Or I could have bought a book on how to land a millionaire husband.

Yet somewhere on earth a child starves to death every 7 seconds. Every Friday my Unitarian Universalist church provides 40 students with back packs filled with food to tie their families over until the next Monday when school, and free meals, is available to them again. Instead of knitting blankets for cancer patients or driving elderly people to social events or building Habitat Houses or providing a safe haven for a woman fleeing her home, my friends and I could be engaged in weekly "all about me" days and save our money for $7000 boob jobs and $15,000 face lifts and tummy tucks. But somehow it just doesn’t feel right. Perhaps I operate from a warped sense of guilt over my own life's good fortune or maybe I suffer from a wacked desire to feel good by helping someone else.

So I haven’t pampered myself and the real reason is probably that I really haven’t thought about it. I look in the mirror when I brush my teeth and hair in the morning and don’t look in the mirror again that day. I am too busy with life to even wonder if I have crow’s feet.

“I can’t imagine you getting any work done, “my good daughter nonchalantly told me in that checkout line. Had she seen the brief look of longing on my face? “Because you know that kind of stuff isn’t important. Besides,” she went on, “How would we know if you were smiling?” Then she gave me her own megawatt grin.
My daughter has an impeccable sense of how to bring me back to reality.