For New Old Moms to Learn Old New Tricks
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Since I’m old and sometimes lose the plot of my own stories, let’s start with the end of this story: When you turn fifty, don’t hide anything. Because you will never ever find it again. Upon turning 50, I bought myself a simple gold bar earring made by the exquisite minimalist, Kathleen Whitaker. I was content to buy only one, not only because it was…
Words cannot fully convey the embarrassment, shame and helplessness one feels when adoption lawyers, social workers and even one’s own mother urges one to ‘make black friends’. Of course, one does know black people and consider them friends, or friend-ish… and one has phone numbers and emails and Instagram and Twitter accounts to back this assertion up, but when one examines one’s soul, especially after…
It’s the aisle I’ve never been in before. Actually it’s not even a whole aisle. Somewhere after the Do-Rags, one is suddenly intently staring at replacement wiper blades. Odd how abruptly Ethnic morphs into Automotive. I’m kneeling in the Ethnic Aisle because my mother cursed me, long ago. As a kid, I begged my mom to let my limp, fine hair grow long like the…
When the conversation in the car (why does all the serious shit-shat (before Grace it was chit-chat) always happen when I’m driving the car?) starts with- GRACE: No one in my school likes black. Everyone doesn’t like black. ME: (freaking out, eying my daughter in the rear view mirror, which makes me narrowly avoid t-boning a There-Will-Be-Blood-mustachioed-hipster-in-an-ombre ’93 Allante) What do you mean? What does…
Been fuming over the Oscar Nomination bullshit and the resulting social media sandstorm. While waiting in Hollywood Urgent Care due to my head being about to explode, I made the mistake of reading Charlotte Rampling’s comments on the nomination backlash. Really, Charlotte? The uproar and boycott is ‘racist to white people’? (Cue a freaked out publicist maniacally drafting Rampling’s “I was misinterpreted, misinformed, mis-medicated and/or…
Hand-Foot-Mouth is about as literal an illness name as one can get. Imagine a world so literal that pregnancy is called ‘baby-in-belly’ or (less reliably, these days), ‘I-got-f$@ked’. I almost prefer the poetry of pneumonia to hand-foot-mouth disease. Alls I know is trick-or-treating with a little girl with a fever and mouth ulcers, in a cootie-ridden, strangely smelling Batman Returns costume, while telling all her…
This Opinion Piece in the New York Post is bothering me. In the spirit of turning the other cheek I tried for days to pretend I didn’t read it. I told myself that no one really reads these pieces except the people who already agree with the well-known-agenda of the New York Post. But that didn’t make me able to un-read it. My critical thinking…
In my ever-crunchy attempt to create a present and aware child who lives in the moment as opposed to say, a tiny, tireless consumer constantly clamoring for my phone to endlessly loop the Chipmunks cover of ‘What Does The Fox Say?’ on Youtube- let’s just say I’ve made a few tactical errors. I thought I was smart ( and knew I was being lazy) by…
1. Look back and examine how your racial attitudes were formed. Maybe you are an oldster like me and you remember Senor Wences or Speedy Gonzales and you didn’t realize these caricatures shaped how you see people. You also grew up loving What’s Happening, Good Times, Sanford and Son, Sammy Davis, Jr., The Jackson Five, Stevie Wonder, Ella Fitzgerald, and Jimi Hendrix. But you also…
“There is not one thing that woman accomplished that she couldn’t have done as a white woman.” — Dave Chapelle “Everyone wants to be black until it’s time to be black.” — Paul Mooney I’m still pondering the magnitude of what Rachel tried to pull off. She attended Howard University, the predominantly black university, as the whitey she was born. Apparently Howard University doesn’t have…