…use their blogs as a baby book. A way to record the events that happen. Sort of like scrap booking. And that’s what I’m doing here. A public scrap book.
Tonight Little Bit asked me what was so great about being a best man. Not sure how we got from there to crying. But we did. It took at least an hour of me saying “I want to know what upset you enough to make you cry.” And him saying “Nothing.”
But what I finally found was that he worries about the future. And the fact that I’m not married. And the fact that I have, in the past, mentioned that I was lonely before I had him (a true enough fact but certainly not the sum total of my existence before he came into it). And he thinks that he will not get married, and he will not have children, and he will be lonely but he doesn’t KNOW if any of these things are true and if he really will be lonely and sad and everything bad and nothing good. Also? It looks like families are a lot of work.
And while I was not happy to see him being unhappy about all of these things, I was happy to know that he wasn’t worried (for example) that I would abandon him to an uncertain fate, or that he would – for whatever reason – be unloved. His issues are not those. Those are the worries that I project upon him. His worries are that he doesn’t know what he wants and doesn’t know what he will get from life (at age 12!). He is an old soul. He is a worrier.
That sort of thing is the kind of thing I can deal with. Yesterday, he saw a picture of me at age 12ish, coincidentally. When he asked how old I was in the pic, I told him and he was aghast. “Mom, you look younger now that you did then.” And he is not incorrect. I AM younger now than I was at 12. I was an old soul. I was a worrier.
So I did my best to reassure him that I, at age 39 (looking and feeling younger than I did at 12!), do not know what I want and definitely don’t know what I will get. And that’s A-OK. We, the two of us, are worriers, but we’re going to be fine.
Now I just need to convince him.
I had a little “do” at my house last night amongst my more liberal friends. I went through my whole facebook list and invited everyone who was both local and likely not a republican, even if we aren’t exactly close. I ended up asking 7 adults.
It’s lonely out here y’all!
We had a good time yelling at the teevee every time a state was called for Romney. Including ours. And every one that touches our state. I’d have to go a looooooonnnnngggg way to get to a place that didn’t break right.
But none of that was unexpected (at all).
An hour or so before people started gathering Little Bit and I had this conversation:
Him: I don’t think Obama is going to win.
Me: Really? All the polls say that he probably will.
Him: I don’t think that very many white people will vote for him. And most of America is white people.
Me: Most of America IS white people, but that was also true 4 years ago and he won then. A lot of white people voted for him.
Him: Really!? I didn’t know that.
I honestly don’t know where that level of cynicism came from. I don’t think it was me (I hope it wasn’t!), but it made my heart very small. It was the saddest thing I heard yesterday.
I’m pulling the blog out of retirement because I’m sure that I’ve worn out my political welcome with my facebook friends.
I went to perform my civic duty yesterday and voted. In my county early voting is at the Yarborough Community Center which is right next door to Yarborough High School. For those who don’t know (um, everyone reading), YHS is an almost exclusively black high school. A friend of mine was moving last week and found his ’91 YHS yearbook and gave it to me to flip through. As I was laughing at the hairstyles thoughtfully perusing its contents he said, “Every single one of the white kids you see were in special ed.” I have no idea what that means or why it would be but, well, there you have it.
Anyhoo, I turned into the complex and, as there were no cars going in any particular direction, I ended up in front of the high school instead of the community center. There were 8 or 9 kids sitting on the steps. I knew I was close so I figured they could point me in the right direction, much to Little Bit’s chagrin (when you’re 12, the horror of having your mother stop to ask high school kids for directions cannot be overestimated). One of the guys told me to go on down the lane behind the school and I’d find the center. I had already rolled up the window and was driving off when I heard one of them yell “Vote for Barack Obama!” So I honked the horn in solidarity.
Every one of those black high school kids stood up and cheered as I drove away. And yes, I got a little misty.
Maybe I’m generalizing and perhaps I’m totally wrong, but I have the feeling that none of those kids would have cheered my choice of presidential candidate if this were 8 years ago. I doubt they would have cared much at all. Say what you will about Obama, even if you hate everything he stands for and even if he never accomplishes anything again. He has given a sense of pride, a sense of hope, a sense of investment in America to pretty much every black kid and every black family in America. It means a hell of a lot that my kid has never lived in an America where a black man couldn’t get elected to the presidency.
I will adore him and his whole family forever just for that.
“Every time you see a mugging on a surveillance camera or they get the old lady in the alcove, it’s a kid wearing a hoodie. You have to recognize that this whole stylizing yourself as a gangsta, you’re gonna be a gangsta wannabe? Well, people are going to perceive you as a menace…When you see a black or Latino youngster, particularly on the street, you walk to the other side of the street. You try to avoid that confrontation… I’ll bet you money, if he didn’t have that hoodie on, that — that nutty neighborhood watch guy wouldn’t have responded in that violent and aggressive way.” – Geraldo Rivera
UPDATE: ”I apologize to anyone offended by what one prominent black conservative called my ‘very practical and potentially life-saving campaign urging black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies,’”
What an ass.
Little Bit: I want some of that gum.
Me: It’s mint, you don’t like mint
LB: Yes, I do.
Me: Since when?
LB: Can’t a man change his mind, Mom? Can’t a man <dramatic pause> change his mind?
Cons: It looks like something exploded in my kitchen.
Pros: It smells and tastes like it was a bag of berebere.
….or do you see pictures of a family that is all the same color and think “How boring is that?”
Totally subconsciously.
I spent an hour or so shooting the breeze with a client’s son yesterday. The home inspector was there looking over the house she wants to buy and while we were waiting for him to finish, I chatted with the guy who’s making sure his mama understands how everything works. He told me about how he works two jobs and how hard his mom has worked all his life.
She owned a house back when he was little but when she & his dad split up the house was sold. A couple of years ago she decided that she wants to own her own house before she dies. She’s been working on getting there for these last couple of years. She doesn’t want something flashy. Just something she can call her own.
I had to walk away to check on the home inspector for a minute so the tears in my eyes wouldn’t be seen. And that’s when I love my job.