Blissed

There’s this girl in my life, this girl with a love of t-shirts that rivals my own, that will cry over anything and everything lovely and sweet, that laughs with all the zest of a child, and will defend those she loves with a terrifying vengeance. She is too beautiful for words, inside and out. She deserves everything life has to offer and more. And I love her.

Last year when I wrote Miss’ birthday post, I hadn’t met her yet. This year, that seems impossible. I’m trying to figure out what life was like before the first time I felt her arms wrapped around me, squeezing all the air out of my lungs because she’s surprisingly strong. Life before I caught those contagious tears, doubled over in fits of laughter with her and realized that we roll our eyes at the same things, the same way. She is one of my very best friends, having been my main source of support, love and kicks in the ass over the past year in ways and situations I have absolutely no interest in detailing. She knows, I know, that’s all that matters.

Our lives are so different now than they were then, in many ways. She and I don’t talk as much as we used to but, in a way, it’s a positive thing. There’s no more pain and uncertainty to support each other through. Our relationship is solid, built on so much more than instant messages and phone calls – it stands on faith in each other, on loyalty and pure adulation for one another.

She’d be pleased to know that I’m sitting here blinking back tears as I type this, it always amuses her when I admit to it. It makes me think of our goodbye in Chicago last year, when I was trying to tell her  and the rest of our friends how much they meant to me, but I couldn’t get it out,  the words choked back by my heart swelling out of my chest with the love I felt. She held my hands as I struggled and we both tried to still our quivering bottom lips before just engulfing one another in a hug because it just wasn’t coming out, but she and they knew what I was trying to say.

In a few months, I’ll see her again. It’s been too long. There’s only so many ways to tell her I love her from across the country and I plan on making sure she knows just how much I do when we’re together in New York. I’ve got the Chicago ready, all I need to do is press play.

OMG BITCH I LOVE YOU. Let’s continue driving each other insane forever, yes?

—————-
Listening to: Michael Jackson – I Can’t Help It

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Yesterday, I started to comment on my friend Cecily’s post but it ended up being a post in and of itself, so I figured it’d be best to make a post of it here.* She wrote about conversations she had with ladies in her neighborhood, where they planned to school their children, and how the fact that most of the children at the school were African American tied into their decisions. One woman she talked to didn’t want her child to go to their local elementary because she didn’t want him to learn ‘Ebonics’. Immediately after reading, I didn’t even really know what to say, but I wanted to comment. I felt that maybe, being a minority and having children that were mixed, and one child in particular that has been mistaken for fully white, I had a different perspective.

Ebonics is, inherently, a racist term. It implies that black (ie., “ebony”) people speak in a dialect so broken and incomprehensible that it needs to be separated from the rest of the English language and learned. It may not have been coined negatively, but regardless, it is a sweeping generalization that paints black people as uneducated and incapable of understand or speaking as  “good as the white folks do.” You don’t have to be a politically correct über-liberal to see how that’s a bad thing.

For her to assume that the children at that school all speak that way is prejudicial, and unless she plans to shield her child from all forms of entertainment, such as hip hop and Quentin Tarantino movies to name some off the top of my head, for the rest of his life, he’s going to learn it, at least some semblances of it, whether she likes it or not. And what’s wrong with that, really?

I’m not dense enough to suggest that many of the black people I know aren’t more likely to say “Y’all niggas done lost yo damn minds, fah real doh” (spoken exactly as I typed it) rather than “you guys are insane, seriously” but so what? As long as these same people know the correct way to say what’s on their minds, and when to use that wonderful, wonderful thing called code-switching, what’s the problem? I don’t speak that way. I used to, when I was younger, but now, I don’t really bother with it, although if you smack me in the middle of a group of black people, such as my cousins on my grandfather’s side,  after a while I’ll fall back into it. Just like if I spend too much time with my grandparents or my boyfriend, every little bit of Southern in the way I speak will be exacerbated too. Still, being as I normally don’t talk like that, I find it seriously offensive that if she saw me entering a school, maybe with a little boy or girl that was my skin tone, she’d assume that I did. Just the way that I’m sure people here in the South see my tattoos and piercings and wrongly assume I’m a bitch with a long criminal record. That – the assumption based on appearances – is what’s prejudicial here.

I won’t call her racist, because I’m very big on semantics, and there is an astounding difference between racism (ie., hating someone) and prejudice (ie., generalizing or having preconceived notions and opinions) in my opinion.  For a popular example of the difference  I consider between the two words, look at Ms. Morello from the show Everybody Hates Chris (an all around brilliant show). She frequently assumes Chris’ mother is a crackhead, his father is absent, he has a dozen brothers and sisters, and that he eats ribs and pig’s feet, but she doesn’t hate Chris or treat him unkindly or unfairly. She’s not racist, she’s prejudiced. I believe that White Privilege allows the average white person to believe things and feel things about other races that implicitly affect their view of the world, whether they are aware or have ill feelings or not.

The lady Cecily was talking with may not have any idea that what she said was offensive, although I strongly doubt that. Why? Because I don’t believe she would have used that term or even brought up the race:school thing in the discussion had Cecily been a bit more brown, but she MAY be sheltered. Which, to me, says something else about her. Cecily lives in Philadelphia, right? There’s no way she could have had so little interaction with black people that she not realize that term was offensive unless she was almost purposefully avoiding it. “It” being interaction with black people.

I worry about how parents like this, and the children who ultimately learn from them, will affect my children. Bella has a slight concept of color, and she calls herself pink and me brown, like Cecily’s daughter Tori does. For a while, she was seriously obsessed with the differences and somewhere along the way she learned that being pink was better than being brown. I don’t profess to be color blind – no one is, and if you are, you’re doing yourself and the world around you a disservice by ignoring the differences between the races – but a child should never get the impression that anyone is less than because of their skin. Which I guarantee you the child of that woman who doesn’t want him to ‘learn Ebonics’ is going to learn, listening to the conversations of his parents. It’s not too much of a stretch to think that eventually (whether coaxed or no) the child will learn to believe that since a school full of black people is inferior to a school full of white people, the same must be true as a rule for the general population. It is very possible for his parents and himself to be almost completely unaware of such a belief, too.

Hence, the perpetuation of white privilege in America, repeatedly passed down, even unknowingly.

I am hoping that no matter how black or white or Hispanic my daughters end up looking, or how gay or straight or bisexual they are, or how Christian or Muslim or Atheist they decide is right for them, that they are always not only tolerant and aware of the differences between them and others, but that they welcome situations that put them outside of their ‘comfort zones’, whatever those may be. How else are they supposed to grow or develop into tolerant individuals? I would hate for anything that I do, or anything that they pick up from other, more close minded people, to inhibit their ability to accept the world around them in a complete way.

*Whoa. This was long. See why it needed to be its own post?!

—————-
Listening to: Toto – Africa

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Notes:

• I say “um” a lot. I know. Sorry. I also have an issue keeping my mouth still when I’m not talking. Sorry about that as well.
• Chicago was his idea, I swear.
• He’s really good at making irritated faces. Don’t pay them any attention.
• Here’s a photo of his back, for reference (I don’t remember why he had a knife in his hand):

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For just about The Bella’s entire life, I’ve been regulated to listening to nothing but The Beatles. They are her most favorite, and for the first four years of her life, no other musical groups existed. I have every. single. released. The Beatles track. ever.  in my iTunes. About 10-15 GBs of ‘em.  All for her, and her sister.

Over the past year or so she’s been teeter-tottering between Michael Jackson and The Beatles, with a bit of Queen, David Bowie and Lady Gaga thrown in for good measure. It’s been better, needless to say, because while I fucking love The Beatles OMG PLEASE CAN WE LISTEN TO SOMETHING ELSE is what goes through my head every time we get in the car.

Anyway, recently, she’s been expanding her musical tastes. She proclaimed a while ago that she didn’t like the kind of music where “people talk when they should be singing” (ie., rap), but then she heard It Takes Two by Rob Base & DJ E Z Rock and she was won over. I was relieved. Since then, she bounces around to all the hip hop she hears in the car, and I love it.

The other day, she asked me to put ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ on her iPod. Cool. I obliged. Any child that likes Joy Division is awesome, needless to say. She was singing ‘The Crystal Ship’ to herself while she was coloring last week. The Doors? Girl you’re blowing my mind with this shit. I have a habit of playing The Smiths when I’m in the bathtub, and she has a habit of refusing to let me get any peace, and demanding I put ‘This Charming Man’ on repeat and bouncing around, singing along. I can’t even kick her out because really, that’s just amazing.

Then yesterday, she asked me to put ‘Say Aah’ by Trey Songz on her iPod when we were on our way home.  I was like, “okay, sure – glad to see you opening up to more than the classics”. When we got back, I was about to, but I decided to listen more to the lyrics because Trey Songz is a nasty (SEXY AS ALL HELL) dude. And, maybe I’m being paranoid, but am I wrong in thinking that this whole song is *really* about swallowing jizz, rather than liquor?

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I’m not sure I want her singing this. It’s a great song, but it’s weird enough to hear her singing “Why Don’t We Do It in The Road” at the top of her lungs. I’m pretty sure I can’t handle this, even if it’s not about that, because in the back of my head, I think it might be.

—————-
Listening to: Trey Songz – Say Aah ft. Fabolous

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The question was asked by OHMommy, and it’s about my religious beliefs and how they affect my parenting. Yes, I am resting my chin on her head for most of the video. I know it’s supposed to be pronounced ‘vee-log’ but I REFUSE to say that. It’s stupid and I hate it.

P.S.Read this. It explains why things look so different around here.

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