My Two Cents on Ukraine

 I haven't written in a while because I've been out having a life.

Dramatic new developments in the world - and particularly the agenda of our president-elect - have prompted me to jot this down.

I believe we are mistaken to view the situation in Ukraine with the arrogance of a mere benefactor. In my view, Ukraine is more than we are talking about; it may very well be America's canary in the coal mine.

Trump cannot visualize a scenario where WE need allyship or places for American refugees to go. If Putin's alliances are emboldened enough, we could soon regret all the goodwill Trump has already ruined during his political career and promises to continue disrupting.

About a Man Who Died Twice

After reading an online discussion that ensued when an adult child of an alcoholic posted to an advice column, I was prompted to share my feelings.  So often, the child is left without hope.  

I am one of the lucky ones, but it is not a rose without thorns.  Even a good turn of events, such as when hope actually pans out, can have its issues.

I watched my father go through the process of forgiving himself for the hurt he had caused me as a drinking man. It was an eye-opener that showed me his considerable candor, discipline and humanity, because he didn't try to blow it off. I was still mistrustful and conflicted, so my observation could only take place after the relationship had reached a point that allowed observation. 

I made him work to reach that point, and he did his penance without complaint. 

He had been sober maybe 30 years when he died. He used much of that time to be a friend, and a very good one at that. Even so, it takes a while for bitterness to end because long-term dysfunction changes a child's trajectory and potential and, as an old child - aged fifty - I had my own issues of whether I had a right to hurt like a child. 

In spite of our enormous progress, Dad's death was anticlimactic.  After all, I had already lost my father to drink so long ago.  Remarkably, his death marked the point where I could end my mourning instead of beginning it.

A Little Too Much About Me

 

I was born in Baltimore and lived in D.C. and Wheaton before relocating to the West Coast as a young adult.  My parents grew up poor and still acquired college educations.  My mother became a nurse after I left kindergarten, and my father was a social services executive, having earned an Economics degree from Howard and done some post-grad work at Johns Hopkins. My parents ultimately raised me in what was then the upper middle class in an ethnically and nationally diverse area known at the time for good public schools.

I’ve never heard it expressed but upwardly mobile people often belong only superficially to any community, as elders are often outliers who escaped from something they felt it best to leave behind and kept leaving behind, loosening tethers that would never be reestablished in their new class.  This is how something like educational attainment - usually thought of only in the most glowing terms - can become divisive and isolating.

Education surely opened important material opportunities for my parents – and for me and my children by extension - but even in an environment where most of my parents’ friends had professions and most of my friends were college bound, it didn’t work out in my case.  For many years, I shouldered much of the blame for not having my head in the right place but now I think that I was also raised in an atmosphere where I had already seen much of what was behind those doors that proved so alluring to my parents, and the sense of wonder wasn’t there for me.  It was more like watching sausage being made.  You can sweep a lot of problems under the rug of achievement.  Confused and unhappy, I dropped out of college before beginning my senior year. Over forty years later, I have no regrets about that decision, even though I was not particularly mature when I made it.  Rather, I was frustrated, emotionally unsupported, poorly mentored and didn't have sufficient grit to recover or separate the hype from the opportunity.

My teachers up to college seemed to want to teach and seemed to actually want to teach me.  In contrast, college was the first time I experienced a level of both racism and self-doubt I was unprepared to handle.  It is no secret that the previous generation was tough, so neither my opinion nor my injuries were important – they didn’t get to whine.  

This isn't to diminish any bad karma of my own making - my attitude was instrumental in my failed first marriage and I sometimes wonder how I was able not only to keep my jobs but leave them of my own volition.  Yet, in spite of righting myself to craft a deliberate life, travel the world on my own dime, raise two successful men on my own and finally be able to purchase my homes, I was fifty before my father stopped speaking to me in a manner that made it clear that without a degree, I had somehow managed to be an only child and still not the favorite.  My membership in Mensa did not prompt him to soften his view of my inadequacy although he worked tirelessly to earn my friendship in his last years of life.  

What about my career as a high school graduate?  Eventually, my level of literacy led to lucrative work that increased my level of literacy and experiences that put me in touch with better thinkers from many walks of life instead of one. 

As the years marched on, I discovered what was left in the day for me.  In one of the Universe’s strange twists, being a perpetual outsider had allowed me more time to think and more room to be. 

So, while my disconnection had been very costly, very painful, and very lonely, I have no regrets about who I have become.  My children and grandchildren afford me a great deal of celebration; my second marriage is an oasis of peace in a world going to pieces.  My neighbors are friendly and social media has allowed me to maintain relationships with far-away friends.  A continent away from my granddaughters, I love my current volunteer service working with children.

A once avid writer, I did not become an author of note, but you are nonetheless reading this.  

At the end of the day, I have made peace with the past and am happy with my place in the world.

Ladyship

One of the things I loved most about living in the Seattle area was that it was a good place to live if you were a middle aged chick.  Idiosyncrasy is better than tolerated, menfolk are mostly respectful, and there was more of a live and let live culture than the one I left in the DC suburbs - and make no mistake, you can get away with almost anything in DC's burbs if you can either pay or stay cool while tongues wag.  It was a very prescriptive and judgmental place where anything goes under a thick layer of conformity.  Money, appearance, and affiliation were key.  By "affiliation," I mean membership in a group, well-known if possible, or at least being an aficionado of some pursuit that attracts others.  In the DC burbs I grew up in, if you said you were an aficionado of Civil War reenactments or Japanese floral arrangement, it might be asked where the other aficionados were; validation came from membership in a club of similarly interested persons, whether you were an active participant or not.  Seattle, on the other hand, was more about being than seeming; authenticity was the lingua franca. An esoteric loner could come and go in peace.

It was a comfortable life for a lady like me.

But I have something in Baltimore that doesn't exist in Seattle.  Let me explain.

While I was walking to the bus stop after work, a lady asked me if I was a pastor.  She had seen me walking other days and got that impression.  I thanked her for the compliment and told her I just liked long skirts.  She said, oh no, it wasn’t the clothes; it was how I carried myself.

That surprised me, but it shouldn’t have.  While it was never my intention and I do not live the lifestyle, I am walking under the aegis of the “cutter lady,” a term used by a character on The Wire.  A “colored lady” is usually an older lady who is known for being the strong willed, God-fearing foundation of the family, bearing up under devastating conditions, generation after generation.  When I am allowed to wander too near a card game in an alley or walk through a knot of rough men who actually part for me to pass and excuse themselves when it should be me excusing myself, I am receiving the karma of one of these respected women, my unseemly proximity tolerated much like that of a cow in rural India.

It is a comfortable life for a lady like me.

An INFJ Experience

In a conversation regarding the Myers-Briggs temperament type, someone asked what it's like to be an INFJ.

I only know what it's like to be me.  Like being black, sixty, or anything else, it should not be construed as speaking on behalf of anyone else.

Here was my response.

I could do worse, I guess. Here’s a little bit about my INFJ experience.

Because I am outwardly very accommodating and affable, people sometimes don’t discover the moat until they are wet.

I like my space and if I get to be me, I expect you to be you. Whether I like you or not, authenticity matters and I respect it and hope you feel it in our association. I believe in a clean fight if there must be one. I will answer almost any question you ask, even if it is embarrassing to me.

But even if you are my best pal, you will not be invited inside my head.  You will see the inside of my home infrequently.

To illustrate, a really awesome friend I reconnected with after forty years told me her favorite musician. I didn’t like his music so I looked up the artist’s lyrics and with enormous delight and nostalgia, recognized at once which room in my friend’s soul I was now entering. I had been there before and, even after a 40-year separation, I experienced relief that her essence was intact and we could almost start where we had left off.

This longtime friend has as good a chance as my own children, who know me well, of seeing something like my favorite passages and wandering into my soul.

Yet, as an INFJ, I can assure you that will never be allowed to happen. 

My revolution will not be televised and I will not send out a poison cloud or lethal pulse. What I will absolutely do, however, is go missing in action on anybody who wanders too close to the works.

I'm not sure I can even help it.

What's In A Name?

I responded to a Quora question:  should women take their husband's surname after marriage?  Why, or why not?

It is up to the woman what she wants to be called, just as it is for a man.

I never stopped using my maiden name, although I did hyphenate it with my first husband’s name, which I ultimately felt was just too much name to drag around, so I dropped the hyphenation upon divorce. Since I had always used my name, my children didn’t experience any confusion.

Although I have never particularly liked my name, I do associate taking a man’s name as a sign of ownership and am of an age where people often felt that way in the past. I also did not, and do not, identify with my inlaws, although they were all nice people.

Now that society has changed and people are free to take any name they like, they might see my choice as baggage, and perhaps it is, BUT choices like mine did lead to today’s freer trends. I approve of today’s choices for people to be called whatever they prefer for their own reasons, but it was different for women my age and my right to my name is one thing I decided to stand up for.

Here is a point of view people do not often discuss: I felt that if the law said I was no longer the property of a planter, why should I be the property of a husband? Speaking only for myself, I didn’t see how a husband’s name, taken after slavery, was any better than my birth name. However, now that I am married to a man whose name has never been mixed up in American slavery, I admit it has put some of my old thoughts to the test. Since we are both singular with family dying off or far away, I can now understand how a couple can bond over a common name and, no longer having anyone in close proximity whose opinion matters, I can also understand taking a person’s name just because I like it. But as you were kind enough to ask why, this was my process.

Living The Dream

Perhaps thirty years ago, Estelle Getty, in her "Golden Girls" role as Sophia, stated, "I'm old; I can do what I want."

I was primed.

Recently, someone on a public forum asked if it was hard to be elderly, and I decided to answer:

I’m in my early sixties and retired last year without any money to speak of. My knees are shot and I’m working on other things that I think are reversible.

Even with what I seem to lack, I’m living the dream. I have a stable marriage and great kids from a previous marriage. As a retiree, I have time to work on myself when I care to. I am happy and free and because of that, I’m okay with my physical condition and mentally prepared to manage as best I can physically and financially.

I live in a neighborhood with a lot of poor people and while I did not consider myself a specimen of robustness, people look at me on the bus because many of them are in very poor health. Even on Social Security, I can afford better food and a dentist now and then and while I wish I had taken better care of my teeth, the differences seem notable to some.

In the looks department, I never had much in the way of looks to lose but find that as an elder, I can honestly consider myself a handsome woman. Strangers remark on my smile.

In spite of tobacco and alcohol use, less developed medical care, and more fatty diets, my parents were more hale at my age than I am although between mid-sixties and seventies, they started to run into problems. My late mother, a nurse, would have summed it up by saying that we now have the problems we have because, unlike past generations in our family, we are living long enough to have these particular problems.

With her advice in mind, no matter what physical or financial condition you are in as an elder, attitude goes a long way, and my parents were very good scouts, setting my expectation that I will prevail in some manner.

So, is it hard being elderly? In my case, no or at least, not yet. Instead, I’m living the dream. 

In Fairness to Our Heritage

Another two cents, perhaps my life savings.

I would like for those who equate Confederate statues with heritage to understand something:  this heritage did not exist in a pristine vacuum of only entitled people.  Due to circumstances beyond the control of women in subjection anywhere throughout world history, the statues became a symbol of my heritage, too. 

Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. discovered that “A whopping 35 percent of all African-American men descend from a white male ancestor who fathered a mulatto child sometime in the slavery era, most probably from rape or coerced sexuality.” (blackdemographics.com)

You have a lot of cousins you do not acknowledge – one Facebook page alone has 2,000 members who, like me, track their existence back to one slave owner and one slave.  It isn’t likely that all of us have had DNA tests or Ph.D.s in biology and it is likely some cousins married in, so let’s decrease that number by half.  I’ll even decrease it by half again.

Is it really any better?

When men and especially women who glorify the men of the Confederacy without qualification or restraint are willing to cull their family histories and erect statues in public spaces celebrating men who raped their foremothers, I will gladly reach into my rag bin and stand next to them to polish these symbols because then and only then, it will be fair.