Deeper Roots

“Storms make trees take deeper roots” –Dolly Parton

It’s been a long time.  Which sounds like the cliché beginning to every love song.  And I’m sorry about that.  I just didn’t know how else to begin after so many months of silence.  But I suppose if I’m going to return to writing regularly, I should start with a piece inspired by a Dolly Parton quote. 

I don’t always know how to restart after a long hiatus from writing. I just know I need to cleanse.  To empty my heart and soul in a different way than running my brain all night long, instead of sleeping.  Because, turns out, I need to sleep, too.

I’ve just returned from an impromptu trip to the mountains.  A 1400-mile excursion that provides me with 20 hours alone in the car, with nothing but me, the dog, and my rambling mind to keep me occupied.   And a random assortment of cds I keep stashed in the glove compartment for when I can’t handle my own noise anymore (Jay-Z and Gillian Welch…pick your poison).

As much as I’ve come to love Baltimore over the last twelve years, there still is something magical about hitting the road, and heading south towards the mountains.  Maybe they just make me feel safe, or comfortable.  The drive through the Shenandoah Valley is just the teaser, as I wind my way down through Virginia, and creep in the side door of Tennessee.  When I hit that North Carolina line in Madison County, I frequently force myself to stop at the “scenic pullover” stops, designed for tourists, but used most frequently by this used-to-be-local-girl.  To take a deep breath.  And look at the panorama of mountains that surround me on all sides.  It’s truly breathtaking.  Most likely the first true “pause” I’ve taken in weeks.  And I feel it in my heart.  This deep pang that could almost be mistaken as arrhythmia or heartburn or some other ailment; but I know better.  

The mountains are home.  In a small valley wedged between the lavender purple and deep blue hills, where I spent the first 18 years of my life.  Those hills are filled with people who make my heart complete; my sisters, my family, my friends.  And though a trip home is rarely quiet, or uneventful, they’re always full.  Full of life.  And love.  And little kid hugs.  And usually cupcakes.  And probably BBQ.

The last few years have felt particularly complicated.   Between the health of my family and my close friends, and truthfully my own health, and the seemingly never ending string of national and international tragedies that seem to rock my very core, I’ve been having those cyclical conversations with God.  The ones where you challenge what else could possibly be added to your plate (which is always the cue for just a few more things, which is basically just a cruel trick to remind us that we really are stupidly strong and capable of handling pretty much most things that come our way; one of those life lessons that I’d frankly rather put on a poster and hang in my office instead of “living through it”, but whatever, I’ll bring that up with God later). 

And in the last few months, I suppose I’ve found myself somewhere between overwhelmed and incredibly grateful and blessed.  Another trip to West Africa.  Some new challenges and new opportunities.  Another semester down and grad school is all but under my belt, and I seem to have survived it all with minimal scarring.  Which is proof for me that God still listens to my prayers, even if I haven’t been his best advocate over the years. 

And as we just wrapped up another commencement, and I’ve said my tearful goodbyes to another incredibly amazing class of young people ready to take on the world, I’m finding myself feeling reflective.  And emotional.  And perhaps a tad bit vulnerable.

I turned 30 this year.  Which is one of those things you think about almost every day of your twenties.  Like the ticking clock in Peter Pan.  And then all the sudden it happens, and really nothing earth-shattering occurs.  Except I do feel a bit more comfortable in my skin.  And maybe I feel a bit more ready for what the world will throw at me.  The anxiousness and nervousness of my twenties, and the looming sense of not being “good enough”, has all but subsided.   And I’m hitting this interesting little stride in my life that I don’t want to preemptively label as confidence in myself, or trust, but maybe they’re the little saplings of those words.  Just starting to take root and grow.

I’m learning life is hard and unfair.  The Rolling Stones didn’t lie to me.  It doesn’t always let up, just because it should.  And I can’t always get what I want. 

And I get tired.  Which perhaps is easier to admit now that I’m thirty.  Partially because I love the work I do so deeply, that I actually find myself with heartache.  And frustration.  And aspiration.  Like actually being in love.  And partially because its hard work.  Maybe not hard like lifting heavy things all day, or hard like being a school teacher.  But there are endless conversations about how to be better people, and how to really create change.  How to look at the world with new eyes, and see new possibilities.  Work that requires the brain to be in connection with the heart.   And lots of flip-chart paper.

But also I’m tired because I have had too many burners burning.  Too many big things going at once.  Which gets exhausting.  Juggling and peddling at the same time. 

I haven’t really allowed myself the space to process all the tragedy that has happened this year.  The world we live in that seems to get nuttier by the minute.

Generally when terrible things happen, my guttural reaction is to get in my car and drive to North Carolina and squeeze the faces of my nieces and nephews until they know, in their deepest cores, that they are loved so hard by so many people (okay, especially me, I’m a little bit obnoxious about being their “favorite”).  Or to build an impenetrable bubble for all four of them to live inside and give it to them for Christmas next year so that I never have to think about something happening to their innocence.  Their sweet smiles.  Their goofy moments of ultimate silliness.   But driving home isn’t always an option.  So I settle for a phone call, or a quick text message.  A connection.

Because I’m deeply troubled by what this world holds for them.   And not just them, but all of my students.  All of my “kids” (most of whom are indeed over 18, and are, for all intensive purposes, considered “adults”, unless I’m talking, in which case they’re absolutely my “kids”).

Especially just after graduation, just as we begin to release, I want to be able to explain it to them.

I want them to understand why it is so complicated.  Why things aren’t always just black and white.  Or good and bad.  That as much as I’d like to dream of a simpler world for them, sometimes the complicatedness of our humanity is our greatest weight and asset.  And that there is beauty embedded in what is difficult to understand.

Through some of the darkest times, we humans seem to find our greatest strengths. The journey through the dark and complicated can deepen our roots, and challenge our assumptions.  And it can also leave us scared.  And raw.  And confused.  And sometimes we just have to live that pain for a bit, until it gets better.

Through our struggles, we uncover unlikely communities, friends, and connections.

I want them to understand that the human capacity to make mistakes, and also to forgive, is a wondrous fact of life.  That our bodies and hearts have the ability to heal.  To transform.  To adapt.   But that we are also vulnerable to pain.  And heartache.  And suffering.  And that vulnerability is where we do our best growing.

Sometimes it won’t be so easy to understand what to do next.  The decisions won’t always be simple.  It’s a delicate dance with the line.  A fine piece of thread pulled taut between right and wrong.  Okay and not okay.  An infinite line; pulsing, moving, under the constant pressure of life.  And it will be stressful sometimes, but that they aren’t doing anything wrong.  In fact, it means they’re doing it right.  

Things will happen that we can’t explain.  And that sometimes life can feel really unfair.  But that it all happens in balance.  And when you’re lucky, you have to remember just how lucky you are.  And be grateful. 

Humility is not just a word.  It is something you must learn.  It is hard.  It takes work.  But it pays off.  Being honest.  Being willing to be wrong.  Open to the discovery.  Prepared to let someone else win sometimes.  Prepared that others might see something differently, and that you might both still be right. 

There are some basics, though.  You should be nice to people.  Be kind.  Be generous of heart and spirit.  And no promises, but generally, the scales will always try to tilt back to some kind of equilibrium.  The good days will counter the bad.  But it will take patience.  And genuine bull-headedness.  And sometimes the formula won't work.

But maybe these are things that you can only learn as you go.  Perhaps my desire to protect them won't really change anything, other than remind them that they're loved.  Because some things only make sense as you live it.  And survive it.  Storms make trees take deeper roots.  

Dolly’s always right.

Resolutions

I suppose late January is a tad late for real resolutions.  The truly dedicated and focused resolutionaries (like revolutionaries, but more focused) starting working on their lists of things to resolve back in November, allowing December for tweaking, editing, and reflection, and published that sucker at midnight December 31^st, 2011 so that January 1^st, 2012 could start with a bang and genuine determination.  They checked box one.  Two. Three.  And by now they’ve already lost 10 pounds and said “I’m sorry” to at least five people.  And probably sponsored a starving child in Somalia.  Or something.

Which would be awesome if that’s how my brain worked.  But it doesn’t.  And that’s okay.  And at least I’m self-aware of that, much to the detriment of my highly-focused and hyper-organized friends and colleagues.  Instead, I’ve somehow survived the first month of 2012, in my rogue state of dis-resolve.   I also have invented at least three words already in this post, and am likely to invent at least three more.  Which is also okay.


I'll start this rambling self-indulgent post with an existential idea:  In the first few weeks of 2012, I’ve come to recognize that time is nothing but numbers, cells, memories, life, air, nouns, action verbs, and breathing.  2012 has also started with chronic tonsillitis and an ear infection, which has perhaps influenced my judgement.  Allow me to re-focus.  Here's what I hate about January: bacterial infections and resolutions.

The thing is, resolutions are basically goals, wrapped in guilt and laced with reflections on bad choices made in “previous lives”.  I always joke that I don’t believe in goals, which is only partially true.  I do believe in some goals.  Like I want to be rich.  And go to Africa always.  And do work I love.  And be happy.  And get access to Rachel Zoe’s accessories closet.  (Oh, and marry George Clooney, which is less of a goal and more of a challenge).  But I do kind of find myself fighting against the norms of things I “should” do.  Especially if I “should” do them because I’ve already done whatever it is I “should stop” doing, and have already learned that whatever it was didn’t kill me, or hurt me (well, not that I can SEE anyway), made me feel awesome, but is socially unacceptable (bacon-wrapped jalapenos, stuffed with cheese, por ejemplo).

Other examples:

1. I refuse to work out in January because I should.  If I work out in January, it’s because I want to.   It’s never for health.  Ever.
2. I refuse to give up smoking or cursing or drinking because I should.  If I give up smoking or cursing or drinking, it’s because I want to.  Or because I'm dying and they told me I had to.
3. I refuse to stop eating butter on my bread, cooking with bacon grease, or eating red-meat, gluten, or lactose because I should.  If I give up those things, check my pulse.  I’ve probably died.

I just read this great book for a community book discussion at work, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  The book is actually intended for young adults, is super-short, and a really quick read if you haven’t read it yet.  Technically, I think I still fit in the young adult category, in the same way I still think I can buy accessories from the junior’s section of Nordstrom.  The book is sweet and poignant.  A tale of a young man growing up.  We readers watch him struggle with his racial identity as he transfers schools and battles adolescence.  We watch him grapple with grief and manage the addictions of those around him.  The story made me laugh, cry, and smile.  Mostly, it made me remember my own struggles and quiet accomplishments in childhood.  Not because I was quiet (ever), but because growing up is sort of this silent process that just happens.  And before you know it you’ve traveled all these miles and covered all this ground (and blown out all of these candles) and your accomplishments start to pile up, quietly.  Serenely.  Unostentatiously.  Parts of it are loud and glaring and ostentatious.  But others, almost silent.

In looking back at high school, and middle school, I mostly remember the anxiety of it all.  While I was a very lucky kid, with many blessings, I, like most people, had my fair share of loss and tragedy.  These years are hard for everyone—some more than others.  I’ve never met someone who doesn’t reflect on middle school and high school with a kind of warrior-like stance, almost congratulating themselves on surviving those years, and reflecting on how many times something really bad could have happened, or perhaps, did. 

I remember sitting around with my friends, something we did a lot of in a small mountain town with little else to do but sit and think and talk and watch and laugh, trying to imagine what the world held for us.  We’d spend our summers in the rivers, chasing tadpoles and leaping off waterfalls, trying to imagine what the rest of it would be like.  It.  Life.  I had wild dreams about the kind of person I would become someday.  When I grew up.  Words that make me laugh now.  Grow up.  When does that happen, anyway?  We’d be architects and teachers and artists.  Doctors and lawyers.  And obviously, writers for SNL.  Because we assumed we were the funniest teenagers on earth (and we might have been).

For most of us, these dreams were largely shaped by characters in movies and television shows that we compulsively watched because we had nothing better to do respected.  I was that teenager who, rather than watching the forbidden early days of MTV or Jerry Springer (which I also watched, don’t be fooled), watched black and white movies from the 40s and old episodes of SNL over and over again, memorizing to heart the humor of greats like Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin.  And the newly emerging names—Molly Shannon, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey.   Chris Farley.  Phil Hartman.  Tracy Morgan.  My friends.  (They understood me better than most).

Because of the movies I watched, and the people I idolized, naturally, I assumed my first car would be a Scout.  Like Sandra Bullock in Hope Floats or Renee Zellweger in Empire Records (movies, and women, who defined what it meant to be young and female in the 1990’s).  I envisioned my Scout would be red.  And old and rusted in just the coolest of places.  I’d cover it in bumper stickers, ensuring that everyone in our small, largely conservative town would know I was liberal, pro-choice, and really interested in world peace (or whirled peas, because I was also very clever).  I’d wear my homemade tie-dye, and my overalls, and look shabby chic awesome all the time (and not like a chubby-Asheville-lesbian).

Before I understood anything about Sallie Mae or Toyota Financing Services, I imagined my future professional life would be some blend of Flora Poste from Cold Comfort Farm, Laney Boggs from She’s All That (before she got all de-geeked and prom-queened), and Amelie Poulain from, well, duh, Amelie.  And I’d be the mountain version of all of those women mixed together in a very Gillian Welch kind of way.  I’d travel the world.  And write stories.  And be published by twenty.  I’d have an art studio in the mountains and a cabin by the sea.  I’d paint.  And reupholster furniture.  And have a pottery studio.  I’d be smart, wispy, artistic, and unbelievably likable.  I’d be pretty in that way that everyone says, wow she just woke up like that.  Unbelievable.   

I’d drive around the windy mountain roads in my Scout, in my tie-dye, collecting junk from trash heaps, taking it to my art studio, magically transforming it into something from Anthropologie, and sell it for $2,500 to rich tourists who wanted folk art.  Half of which I would donate to Sierra Club.  Or Planned Parenthood.  Because you know, money didn’t make me lose my values.

Or maybe I’d move to New York and become best friends with everyone from SNL.  And become the funniest woman alive.  And be filthy rich and marry George Clooney.

Or maybe I’d go to art school.  Or architecture school.  Or medical school.  And become a pediatrician in rural African villages.

And I actually thought all of these things, and a million other dreams that were equally as elaborate and ridiculous and filled with “what-ifs” and “then-I’ll-bes” and “after-that-I’ll-gos”.  Dreaming on the side of a rock next to a river in Western North Carolina.  Because being a kid is all about dreaming.  And trying on different people’s shoes and shirts and pants (or skirts).  And trying to find who you are in the sea of all the choices of what you can be.  And negotiating the choices you don’t have—your race, your gender, your sexuality, your zip code—with the choices you do have—are you kind, are you generous, are you fair.  Are you a good person.  Do you brake for squirrels.

And the older I get, the more I recognize that my wants in life are fairly simple, despite my growing taste for couture.  I don't need it to be so fussy.  I just need it to be functional.  And happy.

One of my sisters recently moved to the mountains with her husband and daughter, and despite the fact that they had to fight snakes out of their walls before they could move in and don’t have cell phone coverage anywhere near their home, I’m actually quite jealous of the simplicity of the choice they’ve made.  Of the life my niece will have growing up on her very own patch of mountain.  Learning rules and cues from nature and from rivers and even snakes in the grass.  Of the opportunities she’ll have to learn about how powerful those mountains are in grounding our spirits and growing our wings.  Us mountain girls know secrets about the world that others don’t know.  And I feel confident they’ll be whispered to her while she sits in her backyard and dreams about what the world holds for her someday.

And here in 2012, I drive a Toyota.  Not a Scout.  And if I had money, I’d probably drive a Lexus SUV (hybrid, duh).  And while I do have overalls, they make me look pregnant and I only wear them when I’m house-painting.  Or if I get up really early for the farmer’s market in the hottest parts of summertime.  And I have my old tie-dye tucked away in a drawer, but every time I wear it someone cracks a Bob Marley joke and asks me to pass the bowl.   I ditched pre-med freshman year because I discovered my social life (and my real life calling, urban education).  And somewhere between 1995 and 2012, I discovered Marc Jacobs.  And Michael Kors.  And conflict-free diamond jewelry.  Which means that my ideas of being a crafty mountain woman went down the drain when I discovered quilted leather and couture.  Plus I moved to Baltimore and there is totally NOT a market here for mountain folk art.  And I’m not married.  And I don’t have babies (that I’ve birthed, although I have many that I’ve claimed as partially mine).  And I do work that fulfills me.  I’m proud of my education.  Even if it means I’ll likely turn 30 without a husband.  Or a baby on my hip.  And these things are all okay.   

And if I had made resolutions in November, and edited them in December, this might be what they’d look like:

• To spend more time with my family and friends.  Nothing is more important than those you love.
• To spend more time doing the things I love—reading newspapers, writing, and creating art.
• To travel freely, without schedules.  To explore as I can, when I can.  To meet new people.  Be nice.  Learn from others.  And that it's totally acceptable to get lost on purpose.
• To choose to be quiet more often.  To watch and listen more.  Talk less.
• To keep it simple, stupid.
• To walk the dog more.
• Okay, okay.  To probably STOP eating cookies for breakfast.  Whatever.  

A Christmas Post

Over the last few years, my trips to the mountains have become few and far between.  Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, I can’t decide which, I’ve become increasingly more embedded in Baltimore.  It was just a few short years ago that I made threats of all levels (serious, idle, petty, etc.) that I’d pack up my shit and move back to the Carolinas where life felt quieter; more peaceful and tolerable.  Where I was sure the grass was greener.  And though I joked about the double-wide on the back of my mom’s property, it would be a lie to say I hadn’t actually thought about how to make it look “less trailer-y”, just in case.  But now that Baltimore is home, it has become harder to pick up and head south on a whim.  It’s no longer as easy as unplugging the refrigerator in my dorm room, shoving all of my dirty clothes into the backseat and drinking three red bulls to drive through the middle of the night.  Oh no.  Now there are bills to pay before I leave town.  And phones to forward.  And a dog to worry about.  And “out-of-office” email statuses to put in place.  Not to mention the compulsive need to clean my house before I leave it—because apparently once you become a “grown –up”, it no longer becomes acceptable to bring home dirty clothes for the holidays (and heavens knows, no more dirty dishes…last time I did that I really got the stink eye).  Prepping to go out of town for anything more than overnight requires at least three days of planning and list-writing.  Oh the epic lists I’ve written. 

Yesterday I began one such journey, and made the ten-hour trek south for Christmas.  Winding down the Shenandoah and into the Blue Ridge, I was remembering how beautiful this drive was just a few short months ago.  Back in October, autumn had taken those hills hostage and turned every last leaf a vibrant color before letting them go.   Now those leaves were gone, quickly turned into dust and mulch.  Now, in December, the hills were speckled with the slightest dusting of white snow, as if a baker had been flying above and had accidentally dropped a pound of confectioners’ sugar gently over the rolling peaks. 

And though I despise these long drives, mainly because I despise driving, I’ve almost become dependent on the built-in reflection this time alone in the car affords me.  This time to let my brain talk as much as it needs to, without anyone calling the cops to report a crazy lady talking to herself.  I just assume everyone driving past me thinks I have on a wireless handset, or that I’m singing out loud to the radio.  The drive north is much less satisfying.  Once I get about halfway through Virginia, the landscape becomes increasingly less interesting and the mountains get smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror.  But heading south is another story all together.  The mountains get bigger and more beautiful with each mile marker.  By the time I get to Tennessee I often have the urge to pull over and just get outside.  I want to inhale deeply and purge all the toxicity that builds up in my little city brain.  I want to find a way to wrap the purple-blue mountains up into a little marshmallow that I can eat.  Like wonka-vision. 

And because these trips are seasonal, they often coincide with a holiday, which generally involves family, which generally means things get complicated, which generally means I’m anxious for days leading up to my departure.  By the time I hit the mountains I’m desperate to release my anxiety.  To just pour it out in the river and watch it rush away in the blue-green murk of the rapids.  To feel comforted.  To let the mountains absorb my burdens.  To carry what feels so heavy.
 
Christmas has notoriously been a hard holiday for me.  Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy Christmas.  In fact, it’s quite the contrary.  I recognize that I’m almost 28 years old, but I can’t make that six year old girl inside me contain my excitement over Christmas morning.  When I was little, I’d wake up at 4 in the morning and was forbidden to actually touch the presents.  Instead, I’d quietly tip-toe my wild-curly-haired self out into the living room and sit on the couch and just look at them all with awe.  All the precious boxes so tidily wrapped and carefully stacked.  Then I’d sit and watch black and white movies on the television until it was bright enough outside and I could get away with waking up my college-age sisters without them biting my face off.  Come to think of it, it’s probably no wonder my siblings didn’t have kids until their 30s.  I probably was the best birth control they could have had.  I was totally oblivious to any signs of hangovers or a lack of desire to “care about Christmas”.  Oh no.  I cared about one thing and one thing only.  PRESENTS.  And I’d like to think I’ve finally put that little girl to bed, but to be honest, I’m just as excited to open presents tomorrow as I ever was.  Although perhaps far more aware of what presents COST now that I have to pay for them, too.

But in more recent years, the holiday has become harder, despite the little girl inside me who still believes.  For my family, it isn’t as simple as everyone gathering in one place to celebrate.  Christmas, and most holidays, get spread out over several days (sometimes weeks), and several cities, and I sometimes find myself eating three or four “Christmas dinners” before it’s all said and done and the ball drops for the New Year.  We’re the modern American family, facing the modern American dilemma, in all our re-married with kids glory.  Christmas gets more complicated, too, because it’s no longer the focus of the other 11 months of the year.  Other obligations pile up, you run out of time to properly Christmas shop (and you never had the money to begin with), and you start to realize just how much crap there is out there to buy and by given (and just how much YOU DON’T WANT any of it).


In just a week, I head back to West Africa with 18 undergraduates.  While I’m so excited, this simultaneously makes me enormously anxious because I’m basically responsible for ensuring that these guys all come back in one piece, and that they’ve all had a relatively awesome experience, and that no one is pregnant or married.  This requires months of planning, hundreds of neurotic, alphabetized, highlighted lists, and lots of white wine (for consumption during planning, not teaching).  But it’s also more than that.  Though I’ve traveled back and forth many times now, I can’t ever seem to quite prepare myself enough for what really happens to my spirit in this place called Ghana.  I have to begin to prepare my heart for what I see, for the unthinkable poverty I encounter and for the breathtaking beauty that I see.

And I’m preparing myself for the next few days of siblings and too many cookies, and the noise of children happily ripping open wrapping paper.  And drinking too much wine and eating too much butter.  And trying to make sense of it all just a week before heading to a place where what I have can make me feel heavy and glutinous.  Where the giving I’ve done in the holiday season can leave me feeling shallow and vain.  But where I feel alive in a way that is raw and enlightening.


And somehow it's already Christmas day (although it is still very, very early).  And frankly, I'm in a bit of a state of disbelief.  At my feet, the dog has buried herself under a handmade quilt and snores in a slumber that is deep and heavy.  I've just come home from midnight service, wrapped a few last minute gifts, and am sitting awake in a fit of anxiety trying to make myself go to sleep.  Trying to remind myself about the six year old girl in my soul who will wake me up in just a few hours to go and sit and admire the gifts.  About the little girl inside me that still believes. 

Merry Christmas, friends.  Wishing you and yours a blessed Christmas and health, happiness and peace in the 2011.  And may we all believe just enough to keep us honest.

Africa is Hell

Since I was a little girl I’ve had this bubbling desire to do something—to help people and to make things right.  I remember the first time I recognized class:  I was a little girl and went home with one of my classmates after school.  Being a kid, I didn’t really know the difference yet between new furniture and old; I didn’t know what to look for in a kitchen or a bathroom for signs of new-improvements.  I didn’t even know the difference between a house and an apartment.  I was focused on the Barbie dolls and the glue sticks and the make believe.  I guess I didn’t really comprehend it, but it was something I felt—this place was different than my house.  When I got home and started asking questions about the difference I quickly was told to be thankful and polite—furthering my suspicions that something other existed.  I suddenly felt overwhelmed with this new knowledge and uncomfortable about how to deal with it.

Throughout my childhood, my father was the director of Social Services in my small, southern, mountain town.  I would go to his office and see people I knew in the lobby.  Years later I would understand what this meant—friends of mine that were in the lobby because their parents were applying for food stamps or welfare.  I didn’t understand how lucky I was.  As I become more conscious of this lucky place I had landed in life, I also learned how to feel guilty about it.

When I got to college, this only exacerbated itself.  I discovered not only my guilt about class—but my guilt about race, as well.  I suddenly become aware of what it meant to be white and privileged.  I read book after book about how evil I was—an honorary white, female member of this budding bourgeoisie class coming from the small, private, liberal arts colleges of the world.

And in my sophomore year, I decided to go on a three-week study abroad program to Ghana.  That first trip rocked my world.  I experienced these things every day, all day for a month.  I felt my white skin, for the first time, as a minority.  I was questioned, out right, about my class and my guilt—didn’t I feel horrible for what had happened to the African man?

On this first trip, walking through the slave castles, a young Ghanaian stops me and asks: Don’t you feel terrible for what your people did to us?  His question is so blunt and so forthright that I stumble on my words and can’t answer him.  Here I am, walking around feeling heavy about this whole experience, and this total stranger pins the whole thing on me.  I'd never thought to ask myself if I felt responsible for slavery.  He walks away with a smirk on his face.  He had won.

I searched my soul for a response to the young man's question.  I sought some kind of a reaction that would illicit some large scale change in myself.  I arrived home with a false sense of simplicity.  I threw away clothing, I scaled down my possessions—seeking solace in a temporary reduction of the stuff I felt cluttered my life and my vision.  I felt almost pious about these acts.  As if these reductions had somehow made me a better person.  In truth, the possessions crept back in to my life, over time.  After all, it was never really the possessions that bothered me in the first place.  It just seemed like the simplest place to start.  The least messy place to begin.  If I didn’t start with my stuff first, I’d have to actually look into myself for answers.

But the question, and the thousands of new questions that stem from that first one, have sat on me for eight years.  Don’t I feel like I need to do something?  Is there something I can do to help?  To make amends?  To change things?

On each of my trips, I watch children with distended bellies reaching out for my hand.  Grown men and women beg for money.  Young men run scams for the tourists, desperate for American dollars or something from our luggage.  Women in markets offer you their children (mostly as a joke, but some not so much), begging you to take them to America.  Posters in shack-like store fronts proudly display images of America—red sports cars in front of McMansions—referencing the American Dream.

And each time I struggle with myself.  How can I have so much and be here with people who have so little?  And most of all, how do I even begin to understand—to empathize—what this space is about?  How do I cope with who I am?  How could I sit comfortably with myself, knowing what I now know about how wrong the white man did Africa?  And even worse, I'm always met with questions when I come home that I don't know how to answer.  Why do you like it there so much?  Why doesn't it scare you?  Questions that make me angry and I don't always know why.

My work with urban youth in Baltimore has helped; these kids have taught me an awful lot about the realities of race and class in America.  And I’ve learned a lot about my own skin.  I’ve become sensitive to the way people talk about others, as if somehow ethnicity, class, and race affect a person’s humanity.  I haven’t just read about poverty in textbooks—I’ve seen these things.  I’ve felt it.  It’s a different beast all together to feel these things.

So today while I'm packing a bag with my designer white jeans and my malaria pills and my expensive arch-supportive sandals, I’m struck by how far I’ve come since that first trip.  How much more comfortable I’ve become with my status.  I guess I’ve become more comfortable with myself, in general, and most importantly I think I’ve gotten over the self-righteousness that comes with being a “do-gooder”.  I spent too many years of my early twenties feeling really, really proud.  It wasn't doing me any good.

I feel a distinct difference in my heart from the first empty hand I turned away.  I feel that my guilt has shifted to a new space.  I still feel like shit, at times, but I have a different understanding of things like community and wealth and race.  I’ve come to love these communities—these places I travel.  I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons about history and a human’s capacity for forgiveness.

I also have a new understanding, and perhaps appreciation, for what my role is while I’m traveling through these communities.  I’ve become more okay with who I am. I am a white woman of privilege.  I am American.  I remember on my first trip wanting so desperately to be somewhere where I didn’t stick out.  Where I wasn’t the subject of everyone’s conversation.   Where I wasn’t the white girl.  It was another first encounter with other.  I didn’t know what to do with the feelings I was having.  I couldn’t find words to explain myself.  I didn’t know how to get over myself.

When I was working in the Baltimore City Schools, I had hundreds of moments where I felt like this.  Where I wanted to be liked.  Where I wanted to blend in.  To not be the white lady.  To not carry the baggage of all the horrible things the “white people” seem to do around here.  And I learned, as most of my friends who teach in schools where they are the minority, that this was, fundamentally, my issue.  The kids didn’t really understand what it really meant—they barely recognized me as a white woman.  It was me who recognized myself as a white woman.  As a contrast.  And I had to sit on it.  I had to feel uncomfortable for a few months.  And it eventually changed--but I think it was me who changed.  Not the situation.

And the kids helped me cope with myself.  One afternoon, a small child, we’ll call her Jada, was sitting next to me in the cafeteria.  For some reason she’d been calling me “Godmama” all week.

She asks, “Godmama, can I have another cookie?

“No, Jada,” I reply, “only one for every one.

Another child walks by, sucking his teeth, “Man, she can’t be your godmama! SHE WHITE!"

Jada, without skipping a beat, replies to him without the slightest bit of hesitation, “SHE NOT WHITE! SHE LIGHT-SKINNED!"

She then quickly and innocently turns to me, places her hands on my face and says, “When people call you white, it hurts your feelings.” 

Breakthrough.  Not white, light-skinned.  All about perspective.

And I’ve had to dig deep on what these things mean.  And I’ve learned that I’m not afraid to feel hurt or scared or to get my hands dirty.  I crave to understand.  Yeah, those things suck when they’re happening but what comes out on the other end is something that I often can’t name (although I’ll probably try).

And yes, I still have moments when I feel terrible, but I am who I am.  I must start from this point.  I can’t be anyone but who I am and I cannot continue to make excuses for where I come from.  We all have a role to play in this world—the question becomes: what do we do with the power we have?

I know now that I'll never really save the world, despite all the liberal idealism I once had for myself.  I've learned too much.  I've had to get over myself.  These last few years of traveling back and forth, I know I’ve been taught a lot more than what I’ve brought with me.  I’ve seen more in these small self-sufficient villages that will educate me about community, about living, about humanity, than I would ever get from a lesson in a classroom.  But it doesn’t make turning away those hands any easier.

I recently flipped through a travel book preparing for my site visit.  Stuck between a paragraph on volunteering in Africa and safety tips was a sub-chapter entitled “Africa is Hell”.  At first I read the short paragraphs waiting for the punch line—for the intended joke.  There wasn’t one.  The author was being genuine.  He wanted to remind his readers not to get caught up in the fantasy of Africa.  He wanted to include a reality check—a remember the-AIDS-rate-and-the-fact-that-civil-wars-erupt-overnight message.  As if anyone whose ever really gone and known what it feels like could forget that.  I'm not sure the editor really read this book before it went to print.  Or maybe he did because he fundamentally believes this. 

I've spent weeks laughing about this "Africa is Hell" chapter.  And just today, as I'm packing and thinking and anxiously blogging, have I really processed what it means.  I guess I can't blame the guy for including the chapter.  I've seen the hellish parts.  I've walked past people in such unfortunate situations that will permanently sit on my heart; I've seen images that I'll never shake.  The place has changed me.  The Africa is Hell message ringing true.  And there are so many Americans who buy into the fantasy.  Who go to "Africa" (a place to many think is a country) to find their roots and to go on Safari and to dance with other just long enough to feel excited but not really digging deep or asking questions.  Africa is Hell, he wants to tell these people.  Don't go.  Don't ruin it.  Don't exploit it.

I can't ignore the facts.  No amount of sugar coating can take away the simple truths of what poverty really looks like.  Hunger does horrible things to someone’s eyes.  But I can’t shake this feeling that there is something more important happening under the surface of this pain and devastation.  If Africa is Hell, why do I feel changed?  Different?

And I struggle with myself.  Am I one of those Americans?  I don't feel like I am, but can I possibly be anything but that American?  I feel like I've got an exemption pass.  That I've earned my place here.  I've asked all the questions and I've cried and I've kept myself awake at night riddled with guilt.  I feel like I've had breakthrough.  Perhaps in this space, I'm light-skinned.  Because I've also seen the opposite.

Crashing parties is West Africa has become one of my favorite activities.  Between shots of local gin, and the hundreds of libations made to the gods (and to the elders), my liquor-soaked eyes observe smiling faces and joyful dances.  Women proudly prepare mounds and mounds of food, asking you to help and teaching you generations-old lessons on pounding yams, and everyone happily shares.  Small children hold onto your thumb and giggle when you repeat words in your terrible Twi and Yoruba.  This couldn't possibly be Hell.   

And of course all of this rationalization serves one purpose: to make me feel better about what I’m doing.  To make me feel more comfortable in my expensive jeans and pearl earrings.

As I'm packing, I'm remaining positive.  I'm looking forward to another few weeks in this place I've come to consider a second home.  I'm packing the gifts I'll bring to the people I've come to consider family.  The children I've watched grow-up.  The women I've become sisters with.  But the guilt never subsides for long.  It creeps back in with a mighty fist, demanding answers.  Questions that I’m not sure I know just yet how to answer.

Don't Talk to Strangers

I’m a pretty intuitive person.  Maybe it’s the storyteller in me, but I love to listen to other people’s conversations.  I think it might drive some of my friends nuts that I’m almost always double listening, but I can’t help it.  I take the way a person holds themselves, the way a stranger’s mouth wraps around her words, the silent messages she sends with her eyes, hands, body, and the tales she chooses to tell out-loud and I wrap it all into a story; an existence that I believe I’ve cracked in five minutes or less. 

I guess some people would call this being judgmental.  But trust me, the stories I conjure up aren’t always bad.  Granted, I prefer the ones where I determine someone is having an affair or I overhear bits and pieces of domestic spat and I determine in a matter of moments whose side I’m taking and why.  I’ve probably watched too much television in my lifetime. 

But I also decide lots of wonderful things about people all the time.  Like when I meet someone and I can just tell between the way they hang their laughter at the end of a sentence and the way their eyes light up when they tell a story that I’m going to love them.  Or when an accent touches my heart—a deep, southern accent with long drawn-out vowels and indiscernible consonants.  Reminds me of home.

Perhaps I notice these people because I genuinely like people.  I like the mess they make.  Even when life is riddled with despair and one piece of bad luck after another, people still do incredible things.  Really beautiful, poignant things still happen.  And even when it’s not pretty, it is often funny, instead.

I think it might be why I like kids so much.  Kids are just like adults, minus the learned traits of bitterness, political correctness, and racism.  Have you ever spent much time on a playground?  Have you ever watched the way these little people interact, before they’ve been taught not to like someone for the way they look or before they know its inappropriate to make honest, bold statements like: “You’re fat in your belly” or “Why do you have hairs in your nose?”  Once we’re grown up, we learn to only discuss such matters as fat bellies and nose hairs in doctor’s offices or in closed bedroom doors once we’ve secured the person to whom we’re about to disclose such outrageously controversial information through marriage vows (or the promise of such vows).

It’s wonderful.  Children go around playing whatever game comes to mind, regardless of how absurd, with whomever they find available for the game, making up rules as they go and proudly, boldly declaring statements that have a high chance of being entirely false.  They don’t hold back on what they want—what they like and don’t like and what they actually want to do.  And when proven wrong, they giggle at the irony (even though they can’t define that word just yet).  Or they spontaneously burst into tears, which is perhaps an even more honest response to the shit life hands you.  How many times a day would you love to either a) laugh at something inappropriate until you fall in the floor or b) burst into irrational, big, fat, salty tears over something silly?  I’d average in at about 15 times, most likely.  On a good day.

But people are funny.  I love the way we all layer in on top of each other.  I find it fascinating in places where there are no barriers—no restrictions on the kinds of people that travel to and from a place.  Places like grocery stores, hospitals, train stations, and airports.  At some point, we all gotta use these places.  Everyone from the schizophrenic middle-aged man to the elderly couple to the emo tween.  People from all walks of life uncomfortably settle in with each other, standing in lines or clumps waiting for something to happen.   And this is when the people listening is at an all-time premium.  These spaces make some people so uncomfortable that they’ll say and do ridiculous things, sheerly out of nervous discomfort.

Recently I’ve spent some time in airports and hospitals, and each time I’ve been struck by this same idea.  We’ve created all these spaces in our lives where we’re surrounded by the people who make us feel most comfortable.  We choose where we live, where we eat, where we work, where we go to the bar or out dancing.  It’s pretty unlikely that we’ll consciously choose a place for any of these activities that makes us uncomfortable—unless your yogi has told you to do it as a part of some bizarre meditative practice. 

So when we get into these spaces where we didn’t choose our company, some people flip out.  Some people carefully mask it with fake smiles and short, artificial small talk.  Some people I think are truly immune; unmoved by such shifts, perhaps because they’ve spent too much time in spaces like this, or perhaps because they simply don’t care.  But others are visibly uncomfortable.  Looking around the room casting glares and judgments, holding nothing back from their cold stares.

Coming back from Charlotte several weeks ago, I was standing in baggage claim in the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, I was up to my usual shenanigans.  Traveling alone is perhaps the best opportunity for listening to other people’s conversations.  I’m not distracted by trying to listen to the conversation I’m actually in—I can just listen, unabashedly, to others.

The baggage claim is taking a very long time.  I steal a quick glance around the room.

The couple I sat next to was returning from a vacation in the Caribbean.  They couldn’t stop touching each other.  They were older and so in love.  It was so nice to see an older couple like this clearly still loving life and confident that they’d made all the right choices along the way (even though I’m sure they didn’t always feel right at the time). 

A young girl in her early twenties, far too over-dressed for flying, was on her way home to see someone for the first time in a while.  Maybe from college?  Maybe she ran away to join the circus and was trying to return, looking freshly dressed, so that they’d all say, “You look amazing!  The circus did wonders for you!”  She fidgeted in her high heels and kept looking at her cell phone.  Perhaps wishing someone would call her.

There was a newlywed couple, so young and so J.Crew pretty.  They were fidgeting with their backpacks, practically just unloaded from last semester before being filled up for their honeymoon, nervously touching their new rings.  You could almost sense the fear they had about coming back home and giving this “just married” thing a go. 

An older, upper-class couple stood uncomfortably towards the back, hoping no one would look at them or worse, touch them.   They had their matching monogrammed totes between their legs and she clutched onto her Coach satchel like it was rare water in the Sahara.

A young man stood eagerly by the belt, unashamed to have his self-help-genre book How to Win Friends and Influence People tucked under his arm.  He rocked back and forth on his practical, black loafers.  I was pegging him as a young store manager of some corporate chain with aspirations of getting an MBA and being a CEO.   

The unfit mother of three fed her kids a happy meal, her loud, whining kids who needed anything but high-fructose corn syrup, salt, and fatty fried food.  She loudly asked them to shut-up when they started crying and the older, upper-class couple physically turned their bodies away while shaking their heads quite visibly.

A kind, middle-aged woman stood near me.  We chatted about how long it was taking and how miserable it is to fly these days.  She had a soft face and a sweet voice.  I assumed she was a nurse or maybe a teacher.  Or maybe the really nice administrative assistant at an attorney’s office.  No ring.  I’m guessing no kids.

This.  This right here.  Is just a five minute wait at a baggage claim.  Such a small part of a day but with hundreds of interactions, unspoken words, and physical exchanges.  So much to learn about the world around us in just five minutes with strangers.

I laugh inside because I think how many times a day we navigate spaces like this.  And how we teach our children to become indifferent.  To be cautious of strangers and to stay alert.  To place our monogrammed totes between our knees and hold onto our purses with death grip.  How we teach that it's rude to eavesdrop and to stare.  How we teach not to point or laugh.  Or to be honest with the things we really think.


I laugh, uncomfortably, because our purpose in these messages isn't evil.  We want to teach our children about compassion and acceptance and how not to be cruel, but unintentionally we teach another kind of cruelty.  By creating rules for unruly spaces.