All too often, like so many people I encounter, I get caught up in the rush of all that is present and pressing. Until a few weeks ago that meant getting my three teenagers off to school on time, shooing them out the door armed with the most fashionable incarnation of book bags, wearing the right eye shadow, clutching a quickly jotted note explaining the every-once-in-awhile malady that caused yesterday’s absence, and—of course—my car keys.
They are, it should be said, bright and capable young people. And although I am still fearful each time I send them out into the world behind the wheel of a motorized, gas-sucking ton of steel and rubber, I trust them with the world– even if I don’t always trust the world with them.
Thankfully, they’re off seeing that “world” right now. Until they return, I am alone with myself. And that’s a good thing. Well, at least it’s getting to be. I am not accustomed to living moments for myself. I have been a parent all of my adult life, and for most of it, the last 15 years or so, a single parent. I came to this willingly, if not naively, believing that we could not only survive, but we could flourish on our own. I wanted something unspeakable then, for myself and for my children. I wanted after the education that had been, until then, out of reach for me. I wanted a livelihood that far outstripped the ghastly poverty I was raised in, a world bigger than the one my husband swore we were confined to our birthright.
I should tell you that I grew up in East St. Louis, an overwhelmingly African American city, situated on the banks of the Mississippi River in southern Illinois– a city devoid of meaningful opportunity and beset with crime. There were few college degrees among us, nothing more than hourly wage earners and welfare dependent households trying to survive, cope and make it.
The city continued to deteriorate over the years. Factories shuttered, commerce fled. Dilapidated homes and empty, weed strewn lots checkered the streets. It is hard to believe now that people lived in those houses, structures worthy of condemnation and a bulldozer. By the early 1980s, crack cocaine had wreaked havoc on our community. No family was spared. Every household was hit with addiction, incarcerations, disease and homicide. Taken together with other pathologies, such as HIV/ AIDS, heart disease, sickle cell, stroke, diabetes, alcoholism and cancer, the city was stripped of its most power economic engine: its families.
Ours was not immune.
Today, at 17, my son Joshua is the oldest man in my family. There are no fathers or grandfathers. There are no uncles. No male cousins left to talk about. They are all dead. My father was murdered in 1973. Years later, my brother Christopher was murdered as he lay on the living room floor playing a video game. His assailants pumped two bullets into the back of his skull. My oldest brother Don was diagnosed with HIV in 1996, after a full career in a watery culture of casual sex and drug use. He fought for nearly a decade before he died.
It is hard to dream when everyone around you is dying. When the opportunity presented itself, my mother moved us to Atlanta. I was 17 then and very much afraid of leaving the only thing I knew–even if it wasn’t all that good.
Several years later, after a stint in the Marine Corps, marriage and children, I found myself headed back to the life I’d left. I promised myself, no matter what it took, I wouldn’t go back. Hope woke up and I started to dream.
I remember the day I received the letter of admission. Based a cast of things, including test scores and a very personal essay (not unlike this one), I was admitted to Emory University and given a full scholarship/ grant package to pay for it. I remember the wave of excitement that took me over. But more than that, I remember my husband’s sadness. I know now that he did not understand what a prestigious institution Emory was or the opportunities it could and would afford. He only saw his fears. Fears that with his high school diploma, a $7.00 an hour job cooking in a restaurant and an inability to see anything beyond that, that he would someday lose his wife. His sadness displayed itself as anger, enough anger to make me fear the man who swore his life to me, and enough fear to make me pack our bags.
That was yesterday.
I do not allow it to consume me, but rather I use it as a book mark on our history, our journey to get up, over and through. I knew that if I allowed my hope to sleep again, the dream would die.
Because I dared to dream and never allowed hope to sleep on my watch, life is different now.
This morning, I read the Sunday New York Times, page by wonderful page, and later lost myself between the covers of this month’s Vanity Fair. Time being so plentiful with the children away, I slipped on a bathing suit, went out to the pool, pulled up a chair and baked as I lulled myself into bliss, one sentence, one word, one syllable at a time.
My son is sunning on a Florida beach, writing (I hope) the next Great American novel—or at least reading one. When he isn’t doing that, I know he, my favorite artist, is painting. I cross my fingers and pray to God that he is using store bought canvasses rather than those “supplied” by the local city and county governments. On the rare occasion that the phone rings, I shudder to think that it might be a country sheriff demanding a ransom to liberate my free spirited, man-child who thinks poetry lies in the bottom of an aerosol can of paint.
My daughters, 16 and 18, left for Cincinnati last week to visit some of the friends they met during our brief residence there. According to the ever more frequent text messages, they’re bored stiff, and would rather be home draining my bank account to fuel the summer social season in Atlanta.
My oldest, Katie, will leave for Harvard later this month and then on to Brown University this fall. For all that we went through to get here— a prior life blighted by divorce, foodstamps, child care subsidies and periodic homelessness—I cannot help but believe she is a better, stronger young woman despite and because of it. Somewhere between then and now, we all got to be a little better, if not a little stronger. That strength, that resilience, I hope, will carry her through life’s storms. If nothing else, I hope it delivered the gift of perspective.
Accept the minor and mundane for what they are and move on, I tell her. Tackle life’s true obstacles with a passionate, unyielding charge until they are unable to rise even to their knees to confront you again.
This summer, I will watch her nurture and mend her own broken heart. I will help her, if I can, pick up the pieces that a good looking rascal—formerly known as “the best thing that ever happened to me”–shattered and left behind upon his college departure last year. Soon enough, he too will be a “minor” player in her beautiful unfolding life and she’ll move on. Her own father will play a big part in that healing. It was he who told her not “to make someone your priority who sees you only as an option.”
Like I said, we’re all better. He’s a good man, a good father with the best intentions.
I am committed to spending more time with my youngest, Haley, a sometimes rudderless creature with far less ambition than sheer guile, helping her find her way and teaching her (by example, I hope) the value of authenticity, respect, hard work and humility. If I’m lucky, she’ll teach me something about letting go.
No, the world won’t fall apart if the dishes aren’t properly stacked in the cabinets. The ground will not shake if your socks aren’t mated and rolled Marine Corps style in your underwear drawer. And certainly, the earth will not stop spinning if I miss Anderson Cooper 360° because she wants to watch another mindless reality show on MTV and I don’t have the patience to learn how to work the DVR. I will, with any luck, “get over it” as she says.
For what it’s worth, we did okay. I’ve had a great career as a journalist at a big city daily, political consultant to several great and not so great candidates, practice director for a couple of global PR firms and led corporate communications for a Fortune 500 or two. I am most proud to have been the chief architect of P&G’s “My Black is Beautiful” campaign and the work I am currently doing for CNN’s “Black in America.” It’s important work. Work I would do (and sometimes have done) for free, if only for the opportunity to tell the story of a people. The people I grew up with in East St. Louis, the people who despite the statistical odds, decided they too could survive and even flourish in a world that sometimes in its indifference saw them as small and inconsequential. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I managed two write and publish two novels and, if God is listening, a third.
As I lay there, watching other people’s children laugh and play in the warm pool water, soaking up the noon sun, our road replays itself before me like a picture show. I remind myself to enjoy this time alone. One by one, in the coming days and weeks, my own children will return and with them their assorted agendas and ever pressing needs.
I remind myself that I’d better get busy with the final edits of my current manuscript, before the house lights up with the noise of everyday living. Soon enough, they’ll burst through the door like cattle being whipped on the ass and I’ll be a mother again. Which is still, in my opinion, the best job on earth.
And despite the broken hearts, nights spent terrified that my son will be picked up for spreading his poetry (also known as vandalizing public property), figuring out how in the hell I’m actually going to pay for the Harvard/ Brown adventure, and wishing the dishes would magically disappear from the sink, my hope does not sleep.
It cannot. Not even now. From here I know that there is a debt to be paid, a meaningful contribution back to a world that allowed a few of my dreams to come true. I am not bitter or racked with blame, nor am I stumbling in grief over what was lost. Rather, I have a heart of gratitude for the gift of witnessing my children bask in the promise of a better day.
Survival does not fuel their hopes, as it did mine. To the contrary, because of our journey, theirs is wrapped in promise.
