R-E-S-P-E-C-T: What Are You Saying?

I remember how I felt when I heard my grandmother use the word “Negroes.”

Confused, disillusioned, and sad without knowing what I was sad about.

She offered it matter-of-factly as part of an answer to a question.

Me: “What is a pickaninny?”

Grandma: “Little Negroes.”

My grandmother, my grandfather, my little sister, and I were outside eating slices of juicy watermelon. We were having fun spitting seeds far enough to clear their wide span of patio – a rounded section of cement that was covered in green, outdoor carpeting intended to look like grass.

The “Negro” reference came about halfway through eating and spitting when my grandmother told us “a little riddle” that someone – she thought probably her mother or brothers - had taught her.

Grandma’s rhymes and riddles were fun. When really young, one of my feet would have cows heading to market while the other would have piggies doing the same. And I absolutely loved my grandma’s story about the dam man selling dam water and the buyer telling the dam man to keep his dam water and that Grandma could recite the entire story “without swearing even once.”

A new riddle from Grandma sounded fun. She began.

“See if you can guess what this is. There was a green house. Inside the green house was a white house. Inside the white house was a red house. And inside the red house were lots of little black pickaninnies. Do you know what it is?”

I did not.

I did know something felt wrong.

My grandmother said the riddle again, but the entire scenario was too much for my elementary brain to process – my younger sister was equally lost. We held no reference to the word “pickaninnies” until Grandma defined it for us as “little Negroes,” and we held no stereotypical connection to link people who were black – the term we had learned to use – to watermelon.

Watermelon was the answer, but she had to tell us. My little sister had been puzzled; I had not even wanted to guess.

I remember watching Grandma point to the green shell of the watermelon, then to the white rind and next the red pulp before tapping a few individual black seeds as she recited the riddle a third time. I desperately wanted “pickaninnies” to be another term for seeds. When she said the word “pickaninnies” again, I asked, “Grandma, do people like being called that? Is it a good word?”

Grandma didn’t look at me. She was quiet and thinking, wondering how to respond, I supposed.

I wish I could remember what she said. I cannot. Probably because I knew the answer regardless of the words she chose. I did not want to be called a pickaninny. Why would someone else?

I regarded my grandmother differently after that riddle. Her riddle taught me that respect lived in layers.

I could respect my grandmother as the matriarch of my father’s family, but I also needed to respect her life in the context of its experiences. They had shaped her. That is how I regard the impact of that riddle now. Back then I merely catalogued it as something I needed to ask my mom and dad about on the car ride home. I wanted to watch their faces when I told them that Grandma had taught me what a pickaninny was.

Their reactions confirmed what I already knew. I was not to use that word–or the word “Negro.” Once upon a time, my father explained, people who were white used those words to describe people who were black, but we are not to do that anymore. I sensed my father’s awkward struggle with feelings about the word his mother had taught us. I sensed that children might grow up to understand some things better than their parents. Adulthood felt more mysterious. Rather exciting, but scary. Complex.

I am unable to place the watermelon riddle in a chronology with the first time I met someone who was black. I am fairly certain it was in 1971 when I was in first or second grade. My parents invited an African student from a nearby college to dinner, and he came along with his wife and baby daughter. I recall my parents’ nervous excitement. My father, a government and history teacher, helped me understand this type of dinner was extremely rare for a family like ours. No one black lived in our small Iowa town.

He wanted me to remember that they were just like us. I was to use my manners and be on my best behavior. Both Mom and Dad stressed manners – but there was nothing uncommon about that. The mantra shared before important public functions was “Remember: Be seen but not heard.” I could, however, speak when spoken to.

My favorite adults became those who talked with children, and I developed a habit of hanging around – being seen – until I had a chance to be heard. On occasions when I was encouraged to leave a room and “go play,” often my “play” became hiding and listening.

I learned a great deal listening to adults talk to one another and watching them interact. I learned more by asking questions when I got the chance.

“Grandma, do people like being called that? Is it a good word?”

Layers of respect. They could be seen – and felt. Those with the greatest allocations of respect could talk about anything with anybody at anytime. They understood humans were more alike than unalike. They understood when it was offensive to use words that did not apply anymore. They understood respect could be diminished by a verbal misstep, misunderstanding or miscalculation, but they took the risks necessary to communicate anyway. How else could they learn?

Some things when said aloud might feel right; some things might feel wrong. You have to say something aloud to find out.

I believe my grandmother knew that the term pickaninny no longer fit; but I also believe she had no other experience to draw upon when reaching for something fun to share with her granddaughters about watermelon. Life experiences had created the contours of who she had become. I learned to respect that. I also learned that I harbored a need to ask questions about topics that might make people uncomfortable.

Four decades after discovering that respect lives in layers, I no longer wait to speak until spoken to, yet I continue to struggle with how I should regard people who reach for new ways to interact and offer stories that leave me disillusioned and sad.

Who were they to me before?

Who are they to me now?

Who have I become to them?

Sometime in 2008, the year my grandmother died, my parents were sorting through the last of my grandparents’ things. They had both lived into their early 90s–my grandmother dying at age 91, seven years past my grandfather’s death at age 93. We grandchildren were given items that held sentimental value to us. Among my chosen items were Mammy salt and pepper shakers and a Mammy bell. I did not remember them specifically, but I remembered the watermelon riddle that seemed to match somehow.

I wanted to believe that the items were vintage, dating to the 1930s or 1940s, and safely part of an era where most American adults who had been born white did not yet understand that stereotyping black people was overtly racist. But when sorting, my parents found the items’ original boxes. They were manufactured in China in 1992, one year after the birth of my oldest child.

I never talked about race with my grandmother when growing up. Not even during a conversation when she told me about working with a woman who she always thought wore the darkest stockings she had ever seen. Grandma had said, “One day I asked her, ‘Where do you get such dark stockings?’ and the woman told me, ‘Why those are my legs.’” Grandma continued, “She was black. I could hardly believe it. Isn’t that something? What do you think of that?”

I could hardly believe what she had said either. I did not want to tell Grandma my feelings about her story, and I managed to hold back any questioning as well. I knew it would not have changed things. Not my grandmother’s understanding about the varying degrees of human skin tone, nor my respect for my grandmother – that had locked into a position a few layers from where it had existed during my childhood and had since held fast.

I am less than a decade from the age my grandmother was when she taught me the word “pickaninnies.” The conversations I have today that leave me disillusioned and confused are with people I respect and regard as my peers, and the words that make me sad … well, I cannot trust what might happen if I type them here.

I can share what remains: I am left wondering about the nature of respect.

We can respect people for who they are.

We can respect people for what they do.

We can respect people for how they behave.

Those forms of respect come easy.

But what about respecting what people believe? What does that form of respect look like? I honestly don’t know, for it bleeds into who they are and what they do. It certainly dictates how they behave.

If I want to learn more about what a person believes, may I ask without him or her becoming offended? If I want someone to understand what I believe, may I simply volunteer it and trust him or her to do the same? How can I tell if we share a measure of respect?

I believe the answer is this: We are able to talk about anything at anytime.

But, apparently, you can’t do that with just anybody.

I wish you could.

I really wish you could.

. . .

Sitting Close for Comfort

Because he uses a wheelchair, Stross, now 21 years old, is often able to sit close: stage productions, political rallies, concerts, weddings. As companions on his life journey, we - Skye, Mark and I - get to sit close as well. Today we had front row seats at 22-year-old Tad's funeral. Not exactly front pew, but the first row of seats in his church's choir loft overflow. Our elevated position gave us an unobstructed view of all primary actors and action.

Stross was delighted. He took in everything, interpreting scenery and scenes as the morning moved forward. His commentary - eager, excited and childlike - conveyed the disconnect we experience daily. His life, interpreted through a prism of intellectual disability, is locked in time even as it moves forward. The joy we see through him, illuminated by a similarly faceted prism, is ensconced with fears for his future - our future.

Today we watched a family - a mom, a dad and a brother - begin to reshape their future. They said a penetrating goodbye to someone they admired deeply and loved fiercely. A boy who had grown to need a walker and then a wheelchair. A young man who had figured out a way to attend college, while enjoying every life-changing experience possible regardless of perceived limitations. A man who had recently begun making plans for what might come next.

But before next things could come, his heart - a kind and free-spirited life force that had helped him collect hundreds of friends - burst suddenly and swiftly; so today we joined his family in saying goodbye.

I have imagined what such a funeral might be like for us. As in, I have imagined such an event - for us. Today I watched it play out in a familiar way. Not identical. But familiar. Close to what I've envisioned should such a fate befall us, but not quite identical in many ways. Of course, my imaginings reform as life reshapes me, but the grief, the pain, the loss - those remain. The greatest, perhaps, is the loss.

I have been watching Skye, already feeling the pain of separation that his own move to college will bring just one year from now, and have recognized how grieving has begun. Our family is acquainted with loss - the type that infiltrates a day's most ordinary tasks. Because life insists on moving forward, goodbyes are part of each day. Still, my heart hurt for Skye as I heard Tad's brother, Cody, talk about an ordinary Friday night spent with his brother, doing the kind of things brothers love to do together. I hurt as I watched Skye recognize and vicariously experience deep loss.

I hurt for Mark too. Fathers should not have to feel this brand of helplessness. Tad's dad could not have helped his son when he most needed him. Mark knows what that means. He lost his innocence about suffering long ago. Mark has lived the type of frustrating and near-debilitating helplessness that Tad's dad might be facing now, only our son is still with us. For now.

That's the most pain-filled part. Not knowing if we will outlive him or if he will outlive us.

No. That's not it.

The most painful part - penetratingly painful - is not knowing which scenario would hurt the least. For him. For Skye. For us - Mark and me.

Goodbyes are difficult. But the not knowing - that may be the worst of all. We know such not-knowing well.

Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. - Romans 8:24-27 (NRSV)

I remain grateful for the opportunity to sit close in life. To see scenes play out that others choose to view at a distance. I am also grateful for my capacity to vicariously live experiences that enrich life in divine ways.

And as for the young man who sat next to me today - the boy in a man's body who was delighted to watch and see and ask questions and wonder - I plan to keep sitting close to him and his brother and his father for as long as humanly possible, sighing with groans too deep for words to express.

In Memory of Tad Clovis Venzke . . .

Arachnid War Mentality

Spiders are fine by me as
long as they mind their business
while I am minding mine.
But sometimes,
maybe about two or three times a year,
I find a spider minding her business where
I am minding mine.
If I feel threatened and if help is nearby,
I yell for assistance, deferring responsibility for
the spider’s life to the whims of my assister.
Other times I choose to ignore the spider,
counting on the fact that she will
return my good favor by ignoring me the
remainder of her spider days.
But then there are days like today when
I employ a now decades-old skill first discovered after my
oldest child’s birth.
I transform into a ferocious warrior armed with
whatever I can grab.
I move quickly, before I lose will, motivated by
one powerful,
accusation:
Don’t harm my children.
Then, staring at what might remain, I attempt to avoid
this disquieting
consideration:
Was she thinking the same?
© Joy M. Newcom, June 27, 2012
. . .

From Bully to Good Neighbor

Tonight I am cleaning a closet that has been storing - among other things - more than a decade's worth of school papers for both of our sons. Parents know school papers. Each has unique importance and meaning, yet each is a building block of a colossal mess when mom and/or dad have neglected the act of treasure triage.

The challenges of Stross' school years made triage difficult in the midst of those moments. I wanted to hold onto memories of each educational victory. All large, none small. So I delayed decision making about Stross' school papers until after he graduated. That was three years ago; I may be delaying it again this week.

This evening Skye's stash has been serving as my warmup. I am determined to look at each precious piece of Skye's educational milestones and force myself into a decision. Some decisions have been easier than others. For instance, the stories he wrote - one after another. During preschool, kindergarten and first grade, he would sometimes write and illustrate multiple masterpieces a day. I am saving them all - for now.

I am also saving notes from teachers that provide early insight into the person I recognize in a more mature form today. So far this is one of my favorites. I have titled it "From Bully to Good Neighbor."

I hold no memory of the incident Skye's kindergarten teacher reported on the note. Apparently another boy in the class was organizing a bully group; I am not clear if Skye had been chosen to be part of this select entourage. I only know that he presented his classmate with an alternative after Mrs. Shirk said they could only form "good" groups. Skye's solution: the Good Neighbor Group.

I don't know if that is what happened on that promising Spring day in 2001, but I continue to hold such a hope for my son more than a decade later. When groups are forming and invitations are offered him, I hope he self-identifies as a good neighbor and then fulfills his self-appointed role. I hold the same hope for the boy who wanted to classify classmates as bullies that day, wherever he might now be living. The world needs to be filled with good neighbors. Every classroom, every home.

I am thankful for those who help teach these lessons in kindergarten. Don't be a bully. Be a good neighbor. Sounds pretty simple to me.

Time Passages

Our tree house defines our backyard. Before that, it defined much of our sons’ childhoods.

But our sons are grown now. Stross, at 21, can no longer maneuver his body up the climbing tower we designed to accommodate his physical limitations. The structure has become something he visits when his parents are hosting an outdoor event.

Skye, four years his junior, also no longer clambers up the tower during imaginary games invented by a cadre of confidantes similar in age. Confidential conversations still occur under the willow, only now they happen late at night while seated in the same spots grownups typically choose.

The photo of eight young men that looks like it was taken through a darkened, dirty window spotted with water was taken exactly that way. I clandestinely clicked and then posted it to Instagram for their review and comment. That is how life is lived now.

Our boys have grown up. Our sons are young men. I think the tree house has noticed. I certainly have.

A few weeks ago, I invited a friend and her two little boys, Zach and Cody, to join Mark and me in a picnic atop the tree house’s tower. They helped me pack a picnic basket before scrambling outside to begin an adventuresome climb to the top. The climb was also adventuresome for their mom, Mark and me.

Basket balanced. Steps well placed. Everyone safely seated with a view unimagined from the ground. The magic of the moment lived in their eyes: a bit scared, a bit awed, a bit eager to eat. And soon after their fun began, they were ready for it to end. There were more adventures to chase; more spaces to explore.

Time passes quickly where little boys are concerned: our boys, the little boys who were our guests, the little boys and little girls who will visit our tree house in the future or even call it their own one day.

That is how life is now. That is how life has always been.

Instagram moments. Captured in time.

Enjoy a look back: Terrific Tree House = Fun for All . . .

Moms in All Shapes, Faiths and Sizes

In the earliest part of May last year, I told bits and pieces of my motherhood journey at a retreat for moms of special needs children. The event, a ministry of Valley Church in West Des Moines, also included a facial, a foot exfoliation, a hand massage, a neck and upper back massage, a jewelry making session and a time to chat with one another over healthy snacks. Prayers were bookends for our extended morning, a time spent thinking about what it meant to be a mom alongside other moms who understood how complicated our individualized versions of this role had become.

While I wasn't chronologically the oldest mother there, I was the most senior member of our hodgepodge, not-so-secret-yet-oft-misunderstood organization. It is a club with unintentional membership and compulsory participation. After we are inducted by one of our children, our membership lasts a lifetime with daily rituals of our making. Once in a while, members gather in pairs for things like sharing coffee or a shopping trip. Sometimes, like the day of this Hand-in-Hand Mother's Retreat, we group to grapple with issues that are best understood by other moms like us. We don't have to use a lot of words to exchange information. Glances, smiles, and sighs often suffice. Tears tell more than stories, but we like to hear stories - even small pieces of what life as a "special" mom is like for someone just a bit like us. The stories validate what we hope is true: We are not alone.

Prior to this retreat, I learned that one of the moms who planned to attend had been a youth in the church where Mark and I served as youth ministers when Stross was born. Nearly two decades later, Heidi became the mother of a special needs child herself. Now as then, her beauty radiates from the inside out and back again. Her son, Sully, is growing up with a mom well-acquainted with unconditional love and dedicated to providing him the best life possible. But that's what moms do, isn't it? That's what makes every mom "special" and what leaves moms of special needs children wondering why many in the world-at-large believe this type of "specialness" lies outside the parameters of conventional exceptionalism.

I know I don't want think about what makes my life circumstances "special" at the end of any given day. I just want a restful night's sleep and a chance to dream of things I might have forgotten I ever wanted in the first place. I believe this is true for moms of all shapes, faiths and sizes. I believe this desire to freely dream is also true for women who never became moms and maybe never will.

Happy Mother's Day to all women everywhere. May we always feel special simply because we are, and may each one of us love the children who come into our lives in unexpected but potentially enriching ways.

The Day Life Changed

Happy Birthday, Stross.
You have planned quite a celebration for the first day of your 21st year.
As promised, your life has been "a wild ride."
I look forward to the twists and turns yet to come.
These are the only words I have today. 
I love you so much it hurts.
Mom

Missing Me - May 4, 2011
Stross-Your Birthday is Nearly Here - April 30, 2010