Gratitude

This is one of those weeks that is always difficult for me, as it is for many Americans. One of those moments in American history that none of us will forget, assuming we were old enough to understand what was happening.  9/11 happened just three weeks into my freshman year of college.

I was asked to share a remembrance of 9/11 at my alma mater and place of employment this afternoon.  One of the great things about working in higher education is that we place great value in processing experiences. In sharing our stories. And though these events are often targeted for our students, those of us who participate find ourselves thinking and weeping and learning right alongside our students. Which is a great blessing.

I spent the latter part of this week trying to figure out what I was going to talk about. How I could even begin to stand in front of others and talk about this moment that has changed my entire adult life. My 18 to 28 years. Because 9/11 infuriates me. It makes me incredibly sad. It confuses me. It makes me feel uneasy and sick to my stomach. Still. 10 years later. And not just because it happened. But because of the decade that was born out of these attacks. A decade of fear and polarized politics and racism. A day that forever changed our definitions of words like “security” and “terrorism”. A day that would change virtually every practice we had in traveling and entering and departing public spaces. In our assumptions that we were safe here. Always. And a day that would forever impact the average American’s perceptions of “other”.

And yet this was a day that our whole country stood united. That everyone stopped. And watched. And grabbed the hands of those around them for support. For some security that we were indeed safe. And we built communities inside communities inside communities, like tight concentric circles, made of human hands and warm embraces and candlelit vigils.

Here’s what I remember: I woke up on a Tuesday to a beautiful clear morning. Unaware that I should watch the news, I didn’t. I dressed and walked to class. Finding the academic buildings mostly empty, I walked back towards my dorm, confused about what holiday I had missed or what time change I had failed to make, and found a small group of people standing near a television. I stopped to watch an unbelievable scene on the television. The eery silence of the academic quad began to make sense. Though I couldn’t quite make out what was happening yet, or just how significant it would become, there were billows of black smoke and people running in fear. Alarms and noise and chaos. Buildings were crumbling in flames and chunks of concrete and bodies jumping from windows. I watched, with my heart in my throat, never expecting to see New York City in the background. And later, the Pentagon.

What I remember most clearly, however, was that there was an immediate community in that group of people. And an immediate and overwhelming sense of patriotism, fear and anger. A loss of words. A numbness that overcame us all: Was this really happening? Could it be true?

Within the next hour, the whole campus was awake. We had found ourselves in small huddled groups all over our wooded campus. It felt like everyone was crying. All day. Our shoulders heaving in unison, hands holding each other tight. Two of the girls on my floor had parents in the towers. Almost a whole day later we’d learn that they had actually not gone to work that day. Others weren’t so lucky. My dear friend Devita lost her brother, Romeo, in the Pentagon. Others lost family and friends. It seemed everyone knew someone in New York or Washington. And all of us knew someone who had been affected. Someone who had survived. And sadly, someone who hadn’t.

Keep in mind, this was my freshman year. I was nearly twelve hours away from my home in the deep western mountains of North Carolina. Just three weeks in to my first year of adulthood, I suddenly questioned if I should have ever left my beautiful blue-green valley. Or its deep purple hills that would have protected me from these planes and these loud noises. But that morning confirmed that I was in a place that would quickly become more than just my school; this place became my home. The rest of the day quickly turned into weeks and it was all a blur from there. What events I attended, how we found the strength to go back to class or to take anything else seriously; I can’t remember.

In reflection, I now can say that 9/11 was the first time I was able to place the word “gratitude” in my adult vocabulary. It was the first time I acknowledged my Americanism. My privilege. While it seemed like the whole world was falling apart, I had landed in this small community of thoughtful people. Of people from different places and backgrounds and cultures. I felt safe here that Tuesday. And so lucky. Like so many communities across America, we became one campus that day. One body of grieving souls. One community. For which I remain grateful.

Here’s where it gets hard for me. At this point, I can’t always dissect my life experiences from one another. 9/11 was an integral part of my first year of college, but moreover an integral part of the emergence of my adulthood. That same year, I lost a grandfather and a dear friend, David. I met hundreds of people and made thousands of mistakes. Over the next four years I'd travel abroad and meet thousands more. I'd watch a friend succomb to suicide and another battle with serious mental illness.  I'd begin and end (and begin again) relationships that would teach me the capacity with which I was capable of loving.  Over the last ten years, I’ve lived a lot of life in a short number of years. This community has been the backdrop for most of that life and in this space I’ve learned how to process the things that don’t make sense. To grieve. To grow. To laugh at myself. And those first weeks, and those first relationships, have remained so significant.  Perhaps because this was how we started.  This was my very first big thing.

In my ten years in this community, we’ve watched towers fall and gasped as two wars have been declared. We’ve protested and rallied together. We’ve learned how to define big grown- up words like “community” and “justice” and “inequality”. We’ve watched presidential elections and debates. We’ve heard the voices of famous politicians and policy makers. We’ve debated controversies and we’ve shared great stories. We’ve laughed until we’ve cried. We’ve listened to world-renowned musicians and held small, intimate conversations in our rooms and classrooms and offices. We’ve struggled through moments of ignorance and misunderstandings together. We’ve grieved losses and shared humility with each other. We’ve been outraged by each other and ourselves. And we’ve helped each other process it. And though we don’t always agree, we celebrate the freedoms of academia.

And for me, this day of remembrance is a remembrance of all the things I’m thankful for. For this community where we have the freedom to think critically about issues like social justice and kindness and humanity. For the grace and courage to ask hard questions. For the multitude of opportunities we have to learn about ourselves and the world. And how to make it a better place.

I’ve always loved that our College seal references First Thessalonians, chapter five, verse two: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” I find this fitting because this is what our students have always done so very well: ask questions, dig deeper, challenge the status quo, seek solutions.

On this day of remembrance, I’ve challenged myself to have deeper gratitude. For my work. For my students. For my family. For my experiences. For the ability to dig deep on the issues that I care about. For the freedoms I have to learn as much as I can and to share that knowledge back out with my community. An endless ebb and flow of knowledge seeking and information sharing.

For our greater community, I challenge us to transform a decade worth of confusion into action. To allow our anger to motivate intellectualism and compassion. To allow our discriminations to motivate democracy and justice. Our apathy to motivate empathy and civic engagement. That we move into the next decade not discouraged by our lack of progress, but encouraged that there is still great work to be done. Motivated that we are the dreamers and the thinkers and the activists and the policy-makers for the next generation. And that we all have the ability to do something. To be a part of it.

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.

Orange Trees

The trees that line the path to my office have suddenly turned a fierce, fiery orange. It’s disgustingly bleak out; the sky is grey. The skies are blessing us with a cold, icy rain. A chill has set into my bones that indicates winter is coming, fast and furious. All around campus, most of the other trees are shedding the final remnants of this season. They didn’t even really bother being colorful this year. Piles of brownish green leaves cling to the trunks of trees; but these five trees are holding strong to autumn. They aren’t willing to let go of the lusciousness just yet.

This orange is so passionate. So fierce. So defiant. I’m impressed with the courage these trees have to be so bold today.

For the last few weeks, I’ve sensed that the whole world is struggling to survive. All of America seems to be struggling with itself; struggling with the economy, with unemployment, with war. More bad news keeps coming out of Washington and the hope I felt so passionately this time last November has begun to tumble down, slowly. Sometimes right before I fall asleep at night, whatever program I’ve been watching will end and I’ll catch the first twenty minutes of the local news. The news is nightmarish. I know full and well that I live in a city with a high violent crime rate—but sometimes it’s easy to forget. The Baltimore I know and love doesn’t look like that. The Baltimore I call home feels safe and cozy and familiar. The news reminds me of things I’d rather not think about; the dark side of life. But the news creates this sensational message—that we’re all slowly sinking. I turn it off and try to find something light, pure, uplifting before I go to sleep. Something that encourages me to sleep well so that I can wake up the next day, rested, and ready for a new day in the world. But sometimes that message sinks in before I can erase it.

This has been one of those weeks. The message is blinding. I’d even call it disheartening. And I’ve been in a funk about it. I can’t quite pinpoint the source of this bad energy but I know part of it has to do with all the bad things happening around me. There have been several school shootings/stabbings in schools close to my home and my time in the schools this week has been chaotic, disjointed, and frustrating. I’ve spent a lot of time this last few weeks talking about why so many of these kids are slipping through the system—why so many fail. It’s hard to talk like this. It confirms things you don’t want to believe in.

When I first started working with kids in Baltimore, now almost six years ago, I knew I’d stepped into something that was going to be messy and dark and unbelievably challenging for my heart; but I also knew that I was doing something so right. So many things felt so good and fell into place that I ignored the rumblings in my belly. I knew that I had stumbled into work that few have the tolerance for; that I had fallen in love with kids that most people have given up on already. And some days are harder than others. Some days it’s not the kids and the work so much as the rest of the world—the way people respond to my kids.

Sometimes it’s the fear that people have about these kids that gets to me the most. The way most people look at these kids like savages; like criminals. The sideways glance, the disapproving stares—they see something in these kids that I just don’t see. It disturbs me that people have allowed these messages to sink into their cores—to transcend basic logic about the way children work. Every now and then I catch a glimpse of someone I work with or someone I know and see something in them that frightens me—something that sends a chill down my spine. Someone will say something or do something that makes me realize how most of us really do live dualistic lives—we put on a face for work and then we’re this other person when we are at home, in our sweatpants, saying what we really think about other people. These people are why the system is so hard to change. Why we can’t ever seem to make any progress. It’s real easy to say you support these kids—and believe in them—but without action, words are empty.

I never knew how hard it would be to witness this stuff. How difficult it would be to digest systems breaking down. It almost hurts to see how all the pieces move together and don’t always match up—like watching this enormous machine break down. Wheels stop turning, things fall off the conveyer belt, parts malfunction. Smoke billows from a part where moisture has seeped into a seal; something metal goes flying off the sides. It’s messy. And it’s even harder to recognize that the parts we work with aren’t chunks of metal or giant wheels, but people. Small children. Families who get caught in the crossfire. Is it possible that these very systems that are working so hard to save these children are in fact hurting them?

It feels like there are too many people trying to come up with the biggest and the best strategy for urban reform—too many people trying to take credit for fixing it (this illusive thing that involves poverty and race and class and other -isms that no one seems comfortable enough to really define). There is too much ignorance. Some people have the capacity to ignore otheres in a way that dumbfounds me. And it seems there are not enough people paying attention to the people who are being broken as a result of this race to the top—the people jumping to their demise from these gaping cracks. It gets pretty overwhelming; very heavy.

So these trees have some audacity to shine orange today. They’ve got some guts to attempt to remind me of hope, in the middle of all this bleak, grey despair.