Seven tomorrow

Clare turns 7 tomorrow.

I just read this short but lovely piece by Melissa Harris-Perry and her daughter Parker, and can't help but think about how closely this describes my feelings, too, as I watch Clare growing.

It's such a strange thing to see her, tall and strong and fearless, running or riding her bike or swinging from the rigged up bedsheet hanging off her bunk bed like Tarzan, and think, that little body used to fit in my lap--in my arms--in my womb. She's all legs and pointy elbows now, even if she does still have the rounded tummy of a little kid, and her sweet baby face looks completely different with her new, still overlarge front teeth.

She's learned a lot this year, my first grader. She's discovered that she loves reading after all, and that she's really great at math. She's had a revolving door of BFFs and even talked about her first crush though I think that was probably just the result of peer pressure and our unfortunate cultural inability to handle cross-gender friendships. She loves dancing and making up her own melodies on the piano. She loves the backyard, except for the mosquitoes, and digging for worms--the bigger and fatter and slimier the better. Yesterday she found a really good one, and announced proudly, "LOOK! It just pooped in my hand!"

She's an attentive big sister; sometimes too attentive, and I find myself repeating "give Zadie her own space, please" altogether too often. And yet Z shadows her every move with her own clumsy toddler version of whatever Sissy is doing, and her favorite time of day is 3:15pm, when we hop into the car to pick up Clare from school.

Sometimes I look at her and see the baby she used to be. Last night, after finishing our chapter in The Hobbit, I looked at her and saw the lovely, lively, intense and, I pray, still completely fearless woman she'll be. I don't know if she'll grow up to be the astronaut dirty-ologist theologian mother who takes her children with her to live on the moon that she's currently planning to be, but I do know, whatever it is she does, it will be magnificent.

Mondays are awesome

Mondays are awesome at our house.

Mondays are Brent's real day off. (Saturdays don't count. Too much stuff happens and there is, inevitably, the sermon.)

Also, I get to take Clare to school on Mondays, because it's Brent's day off. The tradeoff for having to get up (remember, JTB =/= morning person) is conversation with Clare over breakfast and in the car on the way to school. Most of the time, with both kids, conversations consist of "hands to yourself" "get out of your sister's face" "what is this mess and when did it happen" "why is your underwear/socks/entire school uniform in the middle of the living room floor" and "what just happened and why is she crying about it." So getting to have a real conversation with my brainy and unpredictable conversationalist is a treat.

In the car she spotted a high school kid on the sidewalk, walking to school, smoking. "That boy shouldn't be smoking!" she said.

Discussion of smoking being bad for your body, etc. Then, "did you ever smoke, Mom?"

"Yes, honey. I tried it when I was a teenager."

"But why? Didn't you know it was bad for you?"

"Yes, I knew. But my friends were smoking and I wanted to try it too. It wasn't really fun. So I didn't keep doing it."

"You did it because your friends were doing it?! Maybe you should have told your friends it was bad for them instead."

"I should have! But I wasn't really a very confrontational person back then."

"Oh." Pause. "Are you a confrontational person now?"

"Um...yeah, I'd say so." Laughing to myself that this is seen as an unquestioned positive.

"Do you think I'll be confrontational when I grow up?"

"I'm pretty sure of that, honey."

First Day of School!

This morning we woke up to an alarm. For a long time Clare herself has been our morning wake-up service. Her techniques have varied from pouncing to simply picking up midsentence with whatever conversation we were having prior to her falling asleep. It sounds lovely but in reality, it's just as brutal as having an electronic thingy yell at you from the bedside table. Worse, actually. You can turn the electronic thingies off.

But not today, and maybe not ever again. This morning was the First Day of School and from now on, for the next thirteen years, everything will be different. Clare's not so aware of this, but I am. She's a Big Girl now, for realz, even if I still can't break the habit of calling her "baby." From now on, we have a schedule, a place to be, and a place we have to be on time. And this place will be what defines her day: shaping her conversation topics, her interests, her friendships, her moods... And who knows what-all this is going to change? It's the First Day. We'll have to wait and see.

But for now, Brent is back to work after his time off, Clare is at school, and it's me & Baby Z hanging out at home, wondering what our days will look like together as we slide into our own new groove of working-from-home and playing-with-baby. Possibly on Wednesdays we might go put in some office hours at NBTS together--but not today. Today is for contemplating the First Days of School and enjoying the sound of the rain. And doing some laundry. :)

and in case you were wondering, this is the next little project we'll be undertaking: http://babytoolkit.blogspot.com/2007/12/clear-unsightly-blemishes-case-of.html

I'll keep y'all posted on whether or not I have as much success with the acne cream + sunlight solution to the ballpoint penned doll face issue.

the turnaround

So, I have to be "dangerously maternal" for a bit and relate this marvelous conversation with Clare from a few days ago.

Clare's request for her new room was that it have rainbows on the walls. She asked for this months ago, so I called my interior-designer sis and got her advice, which was: wall decals. I found these online at a ridiculous discount--spent about $15 total for 2 packages of rainbows, clouds & stars. And so, last week, at the top of the unpacking priority list and second only to "find the damn dinner plates already" was, get the rainbows up in Clare's room.

I also consulted her about where she wanted the rainbows and how she wanted them to look. She was very specific: she wanted 2 full rainbows on opposite walls. And I said okay.

And then I didn't do it like she said.

Instead, the wall opposite the one pictured above has 2 half-arches, one beginning in the corner and coming down, and the other coming out of the window. It looks great.

But it's not what she wanted. And she let me know. Like I knew she would.

She was super excited about coming home after school to see her rainbow room. And she walked in and saw the first wall: rapture. Then she turned and saw the second. And turned to me, mad face on, and said, "I don't like it." Pause. "It's not what I said." Flopped down in the chair, very prissy-pissed-off-princess. Longer pause. Then: "It's not all about you."

Oh, I knew it was coming. I was tired, I had put off other things to get this done, my arms ached, my back ached, I had spent all day putting together this beautiful room just for her...but she was right. I had asked what she wanted; she had told me exactly what she wanted. and I hadn't done it like she said.

So I said to her, "You're right. It's not all about me. What is it all about?" She looked at me and said. "Me. I get to give the instructions." Then, "You didn't do it like I said." And I said, "You're right. I didn't do it like you said. I did it this other way. Can I tell you why?" She looked at me darkly, but didn't object, so I went on. "I tried it your way, and the wall with the window is smaller than the other wall. It just didn't look the same and I thought it would be prettier this other way. I know it's not what you said, but I wanted to make your room the prettiest it could be. So I did it this way instead." There was silence. And then, after about a minute:

"Okay, mom. I see you had a good reason." Then: "I think I could like it." Then: "Those can be the baby rainbows hugging the window, and this is the mama rainbow smiling at them from over here."

I mean, damn. "You had a good reason"?! She's not even 5, and it took her about 5 minutes to process personal disappointment and outrage, listen and understand another point of view, and come up with some forgiveness and acceptance. I know so-called adults who can't seem to do that.

Today I got my first open-mouthed, total shock reaction from someone when I said I was moving to Newark.

happier things

So, because lately this blog has been such a downer...

Baby #2 is due sometime mid-to-late April. Official due date at the moment, April 21. (Naturally, this falls right in the middle of Holy Week. Not the best timing for a priest, but I keep reminding Brent, Clare was 15 days post-date, so I'm decently sure baby #2, officially designated "Tinkerbell" by guess-who while in utero, will stay put till after Easter...but, of course, no guarantees.)

That puts me about 10-11 weeks along at this point, our first appointment at Avalon Midwifery went nicely, although since Tinkerbell is still snugged under my pelvic bone we couldn't hear the heartbeat. Mostly what we heard was my stomach growling...

I find myself hoping Tink's another girl, but of course it'll be awhile before we know. As a fem-cyborg-mama I am a judicious technophile--not all technological doo-dads associated with pregnancy/birth are actually beneficial--but the 20-week-ultrasound is IMO the awesomest!

despicable me

So, I'm on the train coming home from CCfB brunching and this family of four settles in 3 seats down from me. The older kid, a girl, between 2 and 3 is my guess, reminded me of Clare--all garrulous and girly, she was. And at first, for say, a good three minutes or so, I really enjoyed getting a sense of the family dynamic. A sorta crunchy mom, with a bag full of farmer's market produce and 7 mo. old babe, a quiet dad, a curious toddler. The first thought I had was, wow, that mom interacts with her daughter like I do with Clare--on a good day. Encouraging curiosity, conversing with her, lots of teachable moments, lots of silly wordplay, even, yes, silly impromptu song-singing.

Then I thought, okay, that mom is like me--if I were really extroverted, loud, and on speed.

Then I thought, okay, this lady is annoying.

But the thing is, she really was like me. I mean, eerily like. As in, even our favorite colors are apparently the same. And her pet peeves about punctuation misuse. And her penchant for using outsized vocabulary with her toddler ("I'm a pedant," she says. Pedant?!)

So I spent the rest of the train ride home pondering how I could recognize both this woman's similarity to me and her annoyingness. Do I annoy myself? Do I secretly think that I'm an annoying person? Is there a kernel of self-hate buried deep within my psyche?

This didn't seem quite right. Sure, I'm as screwed up as any GRITS but I do love myself pretty sincerely.

So finally it hit me: what annoyed me about this woman is the same thing that annoys me about any group of obnoxious teens on the subway--that pseudo-unself-conscious performance of the idealized self for the benefit of the audience within earshot. I'm not part of her family. I'm not supposed to be the target audience for the performance of super-smart-crunchy-mommyness. But me and everyone else around me were co-opted into it, just like you are when giggly gaggles of teenagers are oh-so-nonchalantly proving to everyone who can hear how cool they are. Blurg.

Anyway, that's my best guess. And I suppose the take-away for me is to make sure I don't over-perform my own pedantic-ecofriendly-breastfeeding-feminist-super-PhD-mommy self in public places for people who would really like to be able to sleep on their train.

iftar

(In case you don't already know, iftar is the evening meal during Ramadan when Muslims break fast.)

I don't have a lot to say about our evening, in part because I've scarcely had any time to sit and think--about anything at all--over the last few days. St. Stephen's doesn't begin for Clare till the 31st, and until then, she's got Mommy's 100% attention and energy, until it runs out (typically, at about 10:00 a.m., sigh). But I am determined to share something about it, since it is a rather nifty idea on the part of the IDC to organize these "cultural exchange" type opportunities for people.

It was a bit awkward (how could it be otherwise) to just go to someone's house when you've never met them before and share a dinner, especially such an important (and lavish!) one as this, but awkwardness is a small price to pay. And it's kind of a crazy thing to do, sign yourselves up to entertain total strangers in your home, so I reckon if you're going to do it, then you're ready to welcome whatever crazy lot shows up on your doorstep. And we were probably an intimidating crew: me with my visible tattoos and bare arms, my husband with his priest collar, our wild-eyed 4-year-old in tow. And we were, absolutely, welcomed without reserve.

Our hosts took their teaching role very seriously, offered a lot of information and answered all sorts of questions. Wikipedia can now teach me nothing about iftar I didn't learn firsthand. :)

It occurred to me while talking about the Quran, and the translations of it for personal use and study versus the use of liturgical Arabic for prayer, that there must be some really sophisticated and interesting discussions on hermeneutics in Islam, and in interfaith or comparative religion discussions drawing in an Islamic perspective on the notion of interpretation. Something to look into. I said something about it before I could stop myself--the sort of theology-nerdy thing I do. :)

I didn't, however, talk much religion or theology (whether Christian or Muslim) with the women. Mostly, we talked about kids (our hosts had a daughter slightly younger than Clare), teaching (one of the women was a high school science teacher in Turkey), travel (wish I remembered more about my long-ago trip to Turkey), and whatnot. It didn't feel any more awkward, to me, than trying to get to know people outside my teensy nerdworld of theological acedemia generally does. Brent wondered--asked me on the way home--if the general silence of the women (not total) during the general conversation at the dinner table and during dessert bugged me. To be truthful (should I tag this #badfeminist?) it didn't, particularly, because 1) I wasn't given signals that I shouldn't contribute, and 2) I more or less assumed that the women's unease with conversing in English had more to do with it than anything else. I could be wrong, of course. But these men were proud of their wives, spoke of their accomplishments and (former) careers in Turkey with respect, and showed a lot of regret that relocating meant starting over and a lot of social isolation for them.

And frankly, as I said to Brent, I have a hard time faulting another religion for its symbolic manifestations of patriarchy (modest dress, hijab, possibly, silence) when I grew up in a tradition no less patriarchal, only our signals of it are so culturally acceptable to us that they are invisible. We'll call it a problem when we see it in a hijab, but we'll gloss right over it when it comes to women speaking with a mic from a pulpit. What's the difference? Who gets to throw the stone, here? I'm certainly not going to generically condemn a whole religion as hopeless and evilly sexist...because I'd have to condemn my own right along with it, just to be consistent.

[aside: I'm bracketing violence against women here. but again, I suspect it's easier to see and condemn violent acts against women when they confront you in unfamiliar forms. and, of course, Christianity is not blameless in this respect either--the stats on battered woman seeking shelter and advice from pastors, for example, are dismal, and the advice they often get justifies why.]

Anyhow. That's not much of a description of the evening as a cultural experience, I mean, I haven't bothered with talking about the food (delicious, unbelievably delicious) and whatever. But the whole point, as far as I can see, is less all of that than just the act of "breaking bread together in peace" (Abilene Interfaith Council's motto, and I've never heard a better).

summer: a busy of monotony

So, it's summer. And I like summer: I like hot weather, I like being outside, I like the idea of "vacation," I like hanging out with Clare (mostly) (and this mostly reciprocated). But arrrrrrrgh.

Because "vacation" is theoretical, it's been hellishly hot here just like it has everywhere else, and it seems like I've been on my own more the past two months than any stretch of time so far in a decade of marriage. It's a big deal just to extricate myself from Clare's proximity long enough to go pee, and generally, she scouts me out while I'm still mid-stream.

In an hour and a half, I will have some much-needed time to do some pressing and important work--my Science for Ministry elective course, "The Human Person in a Technological Age," starts Monday. I am counting the minutes. This blog post is happening only because I am delaying the inevitable trip to the playground while my iPhone rewrites itself from scratch (no idea why this is necessary but it is taking forever).

In other news, I remain a theologian-at-large and heretic-for-hire, so if there's anyone you know in need of faithfully irreverent God-talk...well, I could use some word-of-mouth buzz. It would be so nice, and not just for practicalities like paying student loans, to do work I actually get paid for.

Time for the playground!

unHappy Meal

Warning: this is going to be one of those miscellaneous, personal complaint posts. But honestly...just wait till you hear this!

So, Sunday morning, after working through some massive attitudinal issues with Clare, we rendezvoused with Ally and Jarrod and kids at 4th Avenue CofC in Franklin, and had a lovely morning there. Not least because I was agreeably surprised to listen to a sermon on the necessity of creative non-violence! Which is lovely in itself but also relevant to what follows.

After church, it began to rain and so we revised our lunch intentions to take the kids to McDonalds so they could run around on the inside playground area. And while I am no fan of McD's, this is a compromise I am willing to make on occasion because it's way better than the consequences of three restless kids unable to play outside all day. So, we walk in and the kids immediately join a beautiful girl about Clare's age at the toy display and start identifying which one they want, which causes some kind of ruckus with Clare who starts bawling for reasons I have to try to figure out and satisfactorily address, which I do. Then we hustle them off forthwith to playground area before any more hungry energy causes another ruckus, and then I go to the counter to order. There's a couple standing in an ambiguous place, not quite in line or at the counter but standing around sort of in the general area, hanging back, so I ask, "are y'all in line?" and they say no, so I get in line behind my bro-in-law and place my order right after him. As we're clearly together they put our trays up and start putting stuff on them, six adult meals and six kids meals all together. Then I notice a little bottle of milk, which I'd ordered for Clare, right next to my tray, and I think, why isn't this on my tray? So I start to take it but then I notice it's chocolate, which I didn't want, so I put it down and consider whether it is worth pointing out the mistake and asking for plain milk. While I'm pondering this they put a kids meal sack on the counter and announce "cheeseburger" which I'd heard Jarrod order for Levi, so I pick it up to hand to Jarrod. And out of nowhere this blond woman comes up, practically shoulder tackles me, snatches it away and says, "That's ours, and thanks for putting your hands all over it," in a super nasty voice.

Now, if you know me at all, you know that I am absolutely supremely unobservant and often almost comically stereotypically professorishly absentminded, so, it shouldn't surprise you that the obvious 2 + 2 here that these were not our items totally did not occur to me. From my point of view, it wasn't at all obvious, and even in retrospect, I feel like there was some logic to my mistake. And of course, as she said, "this is ours," I immediately handed it to her and started to say, "oh I'm sorry, here you go," but she talked right over that instinctive reply with the nasty "thanks for putting your hands all over it" as she stalks off. So I'm greatly astonished, but, like the moment with the lady in the grocery store parking lot, I'm no longer one to let these things go by internalizing shame or accepting the notion that somehow I deserve to be treated like shit. So I try again with an innocent and sincere, "I'm sorry," but she snaps back with the same nasty statement, and I say (not particularly conciliatory here), "Look, lady, I was nice to you, I even asked if you were in line, what's your problem?" But she just walks off.

I turn back around, and the employees behind the counter, who got a free front row ticket to this drama, are all looking at me and at each other with big round eyes and shrugged shoulders. One of them even said out loud, "what was that about?!" And the girl putting our order together grinned at us a few minutes later and said, "Now, I just want you to know, I'm putting my hand into this bag to put your food in it, I'm touching your food, hope that's okay," and as I left she said to me, "I mean, I'm pregnant and hormonal and I don't act like that!"

Of course, it was too much to hope that we would sit on opposite sides of the place where we could easily ignore each other. Turns out they chose a table right next to where we'd plonked down our stuff already. So, I felt like it would be remiss of me to not attempt some sort of reconciliation with this blonde nutjob. And I did my best--after all, I felt bad about calling her "lady" which is very dismissive. Plus, it had occurred to me that maybe she was pissed about something else--maybe she had seen Clare do something to her little girl while they were swarming around the toy display, and maybe there was something actually problematic that needed to be addressed, which I should know about but somehow missed.

So I approach the table, and before I even open my mouth, this woman rolls her eyes and says to her husband, "OMG, can you believe this?" So I say, "I'm sorry to interrupt your meal, but I feel like I just don't know what I might hve done to offend you, so I'd like to say that I'm sorry but I sortof need you to tell me what to actually apologize for." And she's interrupting every few words of this simple statement to say, over and over, in that same nasty tone, clipping off the ends of her words, "I--don't--want--to--talk--to--YOU."

So I give up, because she's a brick wall and not even hearing that I truly am trying to figure out what the problem is, because clearly, she's got some sort of massive problem with me. But as quickly as I turn away, I turn back again, because this is so absurd and so totally unsatisfactory. And I begin again with acknowledging that I am interrupting their time together, and sorry for that, but in case she missed it, I am genuinely trying to apologize. "What is it that I did?" I say, and stops her robotic litany of "I don't want to talk to you" to say, as if she can't believe she has to explain it, "you TOUCHED the BAG." And I said, "really? That's it. Really? Okay, then I guess I'd like to say that I'm sorry for touching the bag." But she's gone back to the "I don't want to talk to you" thing, and so I just can't manage to filter out my last comment.

"But you know, I do wash my hands after I pee."

Oh, the irony of listening to a sermon on creative non-violence and walking into this crap. I think I failed to remember the take-home phrase, "don't hit back." But honestly...as Anne Shirley would plead..."if only you knew how many things I want to say and don't."

A final irony: we're all sitting there letting our kids romp around the plastic wonderland together, and at one point Clare comes running up to me in mad-tears because "Sol hurt my feelings because she growled in my face. And she won't say sorry." Me: "well, did you tell her you were hurt and why and ask for an apology?" Amswer: no. Of course not, my child is only almost 4. So I say, you have to tell her, and this is what you say. And when Sol comes up, straightway my little girl says, clearly and straightforwardly, "Sol, you hurt my feelings when you growled in my face" and Sol blinks and says immediately, "I'm sorry, Clare," and off they run together back into the plastic wonderland.

My four year old can do it. Take that, you blonde basketcase.

defining marriage (not for the faint-hearted or easily offended)

When a three year old asks you "what is 'married,'" it sends you down a surprisingly difficult and philosophical spiral. Just what is the basic "essence" (in quotes, because I hate this word) of this particular human relationship, which we set apart from other human relationships as unique, and grace with special social status and legal rights?

Now, I am not one of those parents who is squeamish or reluctant to chat to my toddler about body parts and where babies come from. When Clare made the intuitive leap that babies in big round bellies exit from their mama's bellybutton, the cuteness of her toddler logic did not stop me from correcting her misunderstanding of this important biological process. Babies come out of vaginas, and she will gladly tell you so, and add that that is a-MAZ-ing.

But for all that, when Clare asked me to define 'what is married,' my toddler-sized definition did not include an explicit reference to sex, or where babies come from. I think I could have managed a version for her that was not alarming and made some kind of sense, but I didn't.

Instead I cobbled together something like, "when two people love each other so much, and they want to be together all the time, they get married and live together in the same house and share everything." Clare's first reaction, after digesting this information for a couple days, was to let me know that she wanted to marry me. Actually, she clarified, we're like, already married, because we love each other and live in the same house and share our things. And now, as I've noted, I've been replaced--she is determined to marry her BFF S---- from school. Because if that's what getting married means, well, that's how she perceives these relationships.

Obviously my definition has some flaws. My little toddler polygynist is just logically applying the information (though she seemed to miss the part about 'two people'). But to be honest, I like it. Particularly because the sexual aspect of the marriage relationship isn't entirely missing--it's implicit, rather than explicit. Share everything.

In the context of these toddler dialogues, NPR's recent piece on challenges to DOMA just highlights the way in which opponents of "redefining marriage" are themselves seeking to literally "redefine marriage." It seems to me that to arbitrate which relationships count as marriage and which don't, on the basis of what sort of sexual acts are engaged in, is to discount as irrelevant everything I included in my definition of marriage for Clare. Is that a "defense of marriage?" (And, let me pause for a parenthetical tangent and note how absurd the name for this law is. "Defense" of marriage? Because people who love each other so much that they want to be together all the time and live in the same house and share everything are the metaphorical equivalent of a terrorist threat? Yes, clearly these people sound horribly deranged.) I thought that marriage is supposed to be a unique and sanctified human relationship, something that the biblical text dares to use as a metaphor for our relationship to God and God's relationship with humanity and Jesus' relationship to the church--but it seems to me that in so vigorously "defending" marriage, the definition of what it is that's being defended has been stripped down to the bare naked sex act. Defense of "marriage" is just defense of the holy and singular privilege of penile penetration of female passivity.

This is not a marriage my daughter would recognize as marriage. And I intend to keep it that way.

on what it means to be invisible, from the other side of the racial divide

In high school, I was invisible. But not in the way you might think. I don't mean that no one noticed me, or that I had no friends (strangely enough, I did have some friends, and very good ones, and how awesome is it that I am now Facebook-friends with almost all of them that I care to remember!), or that I felt some keen sense of not being quite counted as a full responsible person and citizen. I mean, my body was invisible: I never thought about the particulars of my body as having any sort of effect on my life or my future. My gender and my race were irrelevant to my ambitions. Invisibility was a privilege. And an invisible privilege at that: a privilege I never even knew I had.

I certainly wasn't racist. I mean, I had like, three black friends!

But I did notice, and fume, those times when my smarts and talents and invisible privileges were not enough to get me what I wanted and totally deserved. Like the time I was nominated for the North Carolina Governor's School, for Choral Music, and made Darren drive me all the way to wherever that audition was. I didn't get in. And while I knew, and knew right away even during the audition, that I had bombed the sight-singing test (I was so nervous I didn't even sing the octave jump right, and sang a fifth instead), what I focused on in my rejection letter was a sentence inserted, I suppose, to make the let-down easy: something to the effect of, you were a qualified applicant with the necessary skills but due to other considerations like diversity of race and ethnicity, we cannot invite you. The invisibly privileged high school kid that I was translated that into: a black kid got my space. It's not that I'm not good enough; it's that I'm too white, thought I.

I know now--actually I knew then, but now I am grown-up enough to admit it--that my nomination was a sort of fluke, and that a completely untrained singer like myself really just wasn't good enough, and I bombed the audition. There's no mystery here. No conspiracy. No systemic social dysfunction.

But I fumed. It was easier to believe that someone else got a space I deserved than accept that sometimes I would come up against a challenge I couldn't automatically ace.

A few years before that, a much younger and more naive teen, still new to my NC junior high, I auditioned for the senior high school musical (Finian's Rainbow, if you're curious, and yes, I still have the bright yellow T-shirt). During that fantastic experience, the 14-year-old me met a marvelous guy with a speaking role and crazy trumpet-playing skills, as well as a sense of humor, incredible smarts, and an unaccountable habit of paying attention to me. He was fun to talk to and easy to hang out with, despite the fact that he was a couple years older than me--a significant difference after all exists between 9th grade and junior year of high school. My first clue that he "liked" me was that all of a sudden he was kissing my ear, on the stairwell between scenes (definitely the first time anyone ever kissed my ear. I didn't know quite what to think about that). All of a sudden that put the easygoing relationship into new and strange and exciting territory.

But that territory didn't get explored. Because he was black.

And it wasn't that I cared. I was thrilled--I already liked him, and was floored that he was even paying attention to me at any level--but I got confronted, by a boy a friend was dating. And told that if I dated that n*** that I would be ostracized and I would certainly never speak to my best friend again. And he meant it. And I knew that because he was in my face, with the crazy eyes.

And so I told that marvelous boy I really liked that it just wouldn't work. I believe the phrase I used was, "it would just be too difficult."

My senior year of high school--and why this happened is still somewhat of a mystery to me--I would eat my lunch out on the lawn in good weather with a few friends. And for whatever reason, we started being attacked by flying fruit. I mean, someone or multiple someones were throwing apples and stuff at our heads--hard baseball throws that really hurt if the aim happened to be right. It seemed to be coming from a group of black guys not too far away, at least, they were aware of what was going on and found it amusing, so they were easy to blame as the culprits. I went and found the assistant principal inside the cafeteria to complain after it had proven to be a regular menace and not just a one-time thing. His suggestion was that we go sit somewhere else. I found this inadequate.

I was pissed. And I was the op-ed editor of the school newspaper, and I launched a full page spread on violence in schools and let the venom fly. It was a symbolic and impotent protest. It was also--I know now--subtly racist, in ways I was completely unaware of, though I suspect that's why Mr. Cockerell made me re-write that thing more times than I can even remember at this point. But what bothers me most, in remembering my outrage, is that I never once thought to ask, why is this happening? I never reached a point where it could even occur to me that there was some reason that might make sense--if not from my point of view, from someone's point of view. I never questioned the assumption that we were lily-white innocent victims of undeserved ire. It wasn't just that we personally were completely innocent--it was that even if it were nothing else than an explosion of racial tensions, that was their fault and had nothing to do with us.

Why tell these stories? Just to publicly confess? To make myself feel bad because white guilt is addictive? To make other people involved feel bad, or to publicly plead for forgiveness or prove, hey, I'm different now?

It's not that, although, of course, the whole premise of "rude truth" is that truth is best shared, crude and unvarnished. It's that I would have been horrified if anyone had ever called me a racist. Or the slightly less condemnatory, "prejudiced." Or suggested that I carried around some bias. Or, suggested none of those things, but pointed out that I was privileged in ways others were not.

It's embarrassing how long it took for me to put all these things together. The turning point was a moment in an ACU prof's office when a classmate came in, typically cheerful demeanor very subdued. Why? Apparently he'd been driving home, past campus, the night before and had gotten pulled over by a cop. Not just pulled over, but asked to get out of the car, and was patted down. Why? No particular reason. He didn't get a ticket, he hadn't done anything wrong. It's just that it was late, and he was black. I realized, listening to that story--told in a completely resigned tone of voice, not particularly angry, just sort of defeated, because after all, it had happened before and it happens all the time--that this would never, never happen to me. I've gotten pulled over. I've even gotten pulled over for no particular reason. But I have never been asked to get out of the car. I have never been searched or patted down. And if I were, I would sue the pants off of whoever violated my rights as a citizen. Because I have the privilege of expecting that these things won't happen to me. I'm not a black man.

A couple years later I tried to lead a discussion about race in my summer "Christianity in Culture" class. One memorable moment: having to stop a comment that began with the ominous phrase, "I'm not racist, but..." I know that phrase. I know what comes after it. "I'm not racist, but, I didn't date a black guy in high school even though I liked him, because he was black." "I'm not racist, but, it was totally unfair that I didn't get into Governor's School just because I'm white." "I'm not racist, but when scary black dudes throw apples at your head for no reason, it's clear that they have a problem and something needs to be done about it." 

This is not new stuff, people. This is just my personal version of a conversion story that ought to be everyone's.

This week I've gotten to see the best and the worst of our difficult public discourse on race. The same week that Arizona passed what is, to my mind, an undeniably xenophobic and racist immigration law, I attended a forum at New Brunswick Theological Seminary hosted by the ARTT (Anti-Racism Transition Team) group. It's a weird, schizoid week for me on this issue, and it has me wondering, how do we get from AZ to ARTT? How did I get there? How can we talk about these things directly, honestly, personally, narrativally, in ways that get people to see the invisible?

a conversation

"Mom, I love S---. She is the best. She is my bestest friend in the whole world!"

"I'm really happy you and S--- are such good friends, Clare."

"Yes. I love her. I'm going to marry her because I love her and she is my friend." Pause. "Mom, can girls get married, like a girl marry a girl like a girl can marry a boy?"

Pause.

"Sure, baby. Why not?"

on the art of rejection

I'm a pretty thick-skinned individual these days, so racking up a nice collection of rejection letters from the very few institutions even offering theology positions this past year has not been devastating. Still, I can't help but notice the amazing qualitative difference in the rejection letters so far received. Compare:

"Thank you for your kind interest in our tenure track position... We received a record number of applications for this position, and so many of them are from such wonderful and thoughtful candidates. I wish we could hire them all. Of course that is impossible. Unfortunately, after review of your credentials by our search committee, it has been determined that we will not be able to pursue this process any further with you. I'm truly sorry to bear this news, but I do thank you sincerely for your interest in our position. I know that the future will bring its own share of success and blessings for you, perhaps even in ways you did not expect."

"...is grateful for your interest in our job... We can now announce that we are offering the position to ----. Again, we thank you for your interest and for the thoughtfulness of your application.  We all think highly of you and your work, and wish you every success as you move forward with your career."

Now, it seems like letter #1 is attempting to say the same thing as letter #2, but in fact, what you get is something more like "we had lots of people apply, some of whom really good but we're not saying whether or not you were one of those, we looked at your credentials and were frankly horrified, sorry to say so, but hey, thanks for applying and just as a parting shot, maybe you should start thinking about a different career path altogether."

[Note to self: JTB, if you ever find yourself writing one of these letters, remember to look up this post in the ol' blog archive before composing it.]

you gotta be kidding

So, yesterday evening at about 5:30, after an hour+ of some extended and touch-and-go non-cooperative toddler negotiations, I come out of the grocery store (having saved $20 of my $78 trip, BTW, thanks to my cuz Renee's tip about coupon.com), with my cart loaded down (with my own tote bags instead of grocery store bags, I love going green, plus, you can stuff a lot more groceries in your own unbreakable bags!), Clare riding on the front like a big kid, and I round the corner to our little green car ready to unload and get home pronto to start dinner. And witness the lady parked next to us in the big new shiny Lexus SUV push her cart directly behind our car and walk off.

I mean, I know that probably half the people that grocery shop don't bother corralling their carts, but most people seem to park them in reasonably out of the way places. Not directly behind neighboring parked cars.

You gotta be kidding me, I said out loud, but she was already starting her car and gettin the hell outta Dodge.

A few years back, I would have fumed silently, thrown a dirty look that didn't land, and been even more furious than warranted because of feeling impotent and helpless. A couple of years back, I would have probably lost it completely and gone overboard in explaining to this woman exactly how awful she is.

Yesterday, I managed (I think) a good, moderate, middle-ground response. Here's how it went down:

Me: [on seeing the cart, to self and Clare] You gotta be kidding me!

[I push my cart past my car, up the aisle to her driver's side window, and tap on it. She rolls it down and gives me a what the hell look.]

Me: Did you just leave your cart directly behind my car?

Her: Which car is yours?

Me, incredulously: The green one right next to you with the shopping cart behind it!

Her: Yeah, I could have done that.

Me, even more incredulously: Why would you do that?

Her: I'm in a big hurry.

Me: Really? Yeah, so am I. And I have a three year old and a cart full of groceries to unload, how am I supposed to deal with this?

Her: I figured the guy would come take it away. And I'm in a hurry.

[I just stare--can't figure out how she could be caught red-handed and not be the least bit repentant. I stare until she rolls her eyes, sighs, and makes like she is going to get out of the car and deal with her cart.]

Me, dripping with sarcasm and really mad now: Oh don't bother. Don't worry, I'll handle it. You're in a hurry. You just go on and have a great day.

[I get no reply. No thanks, no sorry, no nothing. I am so shocked at this that I shake my head and exclaim, "Jesus!" which, I hasten to explain, is not a curse but my shorthand habit of my preferred prayer for patience in absurd and stressful situations, the "Jesus prayer"--"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."]

She ought to be thanking God I'm back on Zoloft. Things could have gone a lot worse for her. As it was, I had to push her cart away from my car in order to unload mine, and her car was so big that she had to execute an extra point in her turn in order to pull out of her space and go past us without hitting her own cart. She refused to even look over the whole time she maneuvered her way out of her spot. So she was minorly inconvenienced by her own mean sneaky laziness, but not enough for me to get any schadenfreude-ish satisfaction out it. So I find myself hoping that deep down inside she felt really bad, even if she couldn't bring herself to show it. I mean, I'd like to think that she's basically a decent person and not a totally depraved wretch.

And my sis thinks I should have just pushed the cart over behind her car instead. There's some really satisfactory poetic justice to that solution. Wish I'd thought of it.

belated tribute to genius

Finally, I am uploading some (sort of fuzzy, sorry, the camera is not behaving well lately) pics of my uber-awesome biz cards from Virgil O. Stamps Letterpress. In case you were wondering, YES, a handful of my cards are backed with a vintage SPAM ad. I'm not giving those away. They are too cool. Others are backed with B&W images of 50's housewives holding big baskets of laundry, or washing dishes, and looking, frankly, a little pissed off. And others with pics of 50's paradise-suburbia. Because Virgil knows, I like irony.

AAR, Montreal 2009

Saturday morning, first session: other than the general enjoyableness of hearing Dr. Sarah Coakley be her incisive witty awesome self, and some really genuine intellectual exchange in the best sort of collaborative spirit, I loved that my AAR started with a session that displayed some really interesting gender dynamics...the chair of the sponsoring group for the session had both her young son and her spouse with her, and the little boy's presence was (for me) all positive--not at all disruptive to the proceedings at hand, and I loved it that "real life" was also visibly present in what is so often a surreal cerebral "warp" world in which all that supposedly disappears through the magic of social convention. And then, one of the first questioners to approach the front to use the mic was a gorgeous, very visibly pregnant woman, a fact which could not be missed but, again--like the presence of the little boy--did not at all detract from the intellectual exchanges. Awesome. Unfortunately, those things were counterbalanced by the way in which a later questioner, old and male and very WASPy, ignored the etiquette protocols we had been implicitly constructing, and strode decisively to the mic without looking around to see if anyone else was approaching and without asking for or waiting for recognition from the panel--the body language was clear: he owned the right to take it when he wanted it, and "permission" from anyone, even the authoritative panel, was superfluous. Shudder.

The Job Center is dead to me. The message board is an instrument of psychological torture. And it's even worse to call in and ask if there's a message; the answer is no, and please, don't add that you're sorry. That just sucks.

But a couple of really fun incidents: I attended the session on transhumanism that I presented at last year. Stephen Garner was presenting again, and I was looking forward to that because I am now quite familiar with his work, having devoted a whole section of the dissertation to summarizing and critiquing his theological engagement of the posthuman. And I knew enough from just the title of his presentation that the question I would need to ask at the session was [a paraphrase in retrospect], "while I love your phrase 'the hopeful posthuman' and agree wholeheartedly that cyborg hybridity is the hopeful bit, I disagree that the cyborg should be classified as part of transhumanist discourse but constitutes its own very different feminist discourse...can you respond to that?" And he replied [again paraphrasing in retrospect], "yes, that's a good question...that reminds me, wasn't there a panelist last year, a woman named Jennifer Something..." Whereupon I said, "yep, that would be me. Hi!" And everyone chuckled. It's a riot to get referenced to yourself, I have to say.

And--of course!--my business cards, a la' Virgil O. Stamps Letterpress (a.k.a. Sarah Coffman), were a hit with everyone. But I was totally unprepared for this response, as I handed my card to a friend/potential future employing-type networker: "You are the hottest woman I've ever seen." Whereupon I said, nonplussed, "um. Yeah, they're great cards, aren't they!?" (Wish I'd thought to say, "yes, I'm really smart too," cueing from my sis Ally's habit of supplementing all compliments of my niece's admitted beauty with "and you're smart and funny too.") Thank you, Virgil. I have no job offers, but apparently my biz cards have exponentially increased my hotness factor.

And I loved having three days of Jen Bayne all to myself. Awesomeness. And seeing Rick and Anna. :)

And of course, as with any roadtrip, I had to spill coffee on myself at some point. But never before have I spilled a boiling hot full cup of just purchased Dunkin Donuts coffee in its entirety in my lap. All of it. Did I say boiling hot? I had to shuck down to my skivvies in order to stop the agony. Thank God Jen is completely unflappable and also someone comfortable enough with embodiment in both philosophical and pragmatic dimensions that she didn't even freak out when I realized halfway through taking off my short that I'd skipped on wearing a bra that morning...and after all that, I had no coffee to drink. (Talk about insult on top of literal injury!)

That's it, glad to be home. Missed Clare, missed Brent, and found it hard to be absolutely incommunicado for three days, and not thrilled about getting back on the road (in other direction) in a couple days, but definitely looking forward to TN...

Notice

what's in a (roller derby) name

Lately my sister and I have been having some fun with brainstorming roller derby names. It's made a stressful week--of paradoxical 1) having nothing to do, re dissertation other than avoid overthinking the defense on Monday and 2) having too much to do, as every night this week someone is off doing something, plus a packed weekend--much easier to handle. Sort of like doodling alternative anagrams for "WWJD" in first year Greek (also a fun distraction, still, if you're stuck somewhere in desperate need of mental diversion).

I'm not sure what Em's going to finally decide on, and besides, that is for her to reveal.

But of course it makes for an excellent collaborative blog invite. Post your roller derby name or suggestions and let the wild rumpus start!

I've also been thinking about the many people I know who, for one reason or another, have changed their names as adults, and wondering why I've never made that move myself, despite years of wishing I were not just another of the ubiquitous 1970's Jennifers. I had so many opportunities to do this as a young adult: moving to a new high school, starting college, getting married. Of course, it's a bit difficult to change the name people actually call you all the time. But I know people who have done it. And my middle name, which, though orthographically deviant, I share with my grandmother, is similar enough to "Jennifer" that people could still call me Jen and there wouldn't be too much difficulty with that. So I am seriously pondering it--once again. Brent thinks this is a bit silly. But I am beginning to realize that this is a lot more common than you'd think, and a lot more serious than frivolous. Name-changing when you get married we take for granted in our culture (most of us) and maybe forget that, in the end, it signals something akin to the "ontological change" we talk about in the context of ordination. In marriage, you're not just signing on to live with someone and share the household bills--you're making a decision about who you are, and who you intend to be in the future: an ontological decision about personal identity. It seems appropriate to signal that with a name change. It does not seem appropriate that only women signal that in this way, but that's another discussion. When I got married, I realized that I wanted to signal this ontological change with a symbolic name change--but also, to my surprise, found that I wanted to hold on to who I already was and didn't want to lose my name. At this point in my life I think I just want to recognize the de facto reality that I've never felt quite comfortable as a Jennifer and have always treasured being a Jeanine.