Posts tagged “racism”

The Power of Language

Posted on September 30, 2017

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never break me.   The rhyme rattles around in my memory, the words a threadbare security blanket I used in grade school to keep the tears from breaking through. I had an image to uphold. I notice the same tendency in Finley. She doesn’t want to be seen upset and she works hard at it, sometimes even here at home. Tears are for private. Finley is acutely aware of the power of language. She has the words that she’s collected and categorized as hurtful. She bans them from her vocabulary and is vigilant about defending anyone who she witnesses them being used on at school. I try to model behavior that she can be…

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Categories: Roar

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It’s You

Posted on September 23, 2016

Sometimes when I am driving by myself I turn the radio off to ride in silence. This morning as neighborhoods passed by in a blur I thought of how I told Finley after we straightened her hair that it “Looks so long!’ I said this because that’s what she wants, and it does actually look longer when it’s straightened. A few blocks later it hit me that almost all compliments to people, women in particular, seem to be about how something about them is different. “You look so skinny” “You don’t look 40” “You look taller” It’s weird, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be great if we said, “You. You are wonderful.” Are we only better when we change? I don’t have the answer, but…

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Categories: Roar

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Use Your Pulpit

Posted on September 21, 2016

Turns out that heartbreak and horror taste like bile. I am not talking about the election. I’m specifically talking about race in this country. Black people. Black lives. Black lives mattering or not mattering and the people who fill rooms with the reasons another black person is dead. So many reasons that don’t include the person who shot, choked, or abandoned them. “If only they had…” “Why didn’t she…” “He had a record…” “She was rude…” This Instagram post, which I saw through Amy Vernon, hit me. I know not everyone is black, friends with a black person, aware that black people aren’t inherently thugs or angry, everyone is not me, but everyone living int his country is a part of what is going…

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Categories: Random

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Too Fast to Track, Too Late to Hope?

Posted on July 8, 2016

Time is moving with little regard for my hopes or desires. The predictable chapters of dating, marriage, first house, first baby, jobs, deaths, second baby, then third baby blur, pages racing faster than I can read or write. I didn’t imagine time would slow, but maybe I thought I could catch up to it. I was going to sign my daughter up for dance, then it was too late. “Most girls are already beyond intermediate, she’ll never catch up.” I was going to create a plan for spring outings, but the season passed. I was going to make dates with my daughters, my husband; I was going to go back to pilates. I didn’t. I haven’t. Not sure that I will. I’ve gone from saying, “I promise”…

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Categories: Random

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Be One More

Posted on June 23, 2015

The other day I was sitting in our backyard soaking up the sound of the leaves  in the wind, the rustle like water to my ears. Blades of grass danced with beads of water from the soaking I’d given them. I looked at the yellow blossoms popping along the cucumber vines, the soil rich with coffee grounds and molasses water. Pink chive blossoms bobbed in the wind from their perch in the whiskey barrel, along with the cilantro and mint I’d planted. Then something caught my eye, a little blossom that I hadn’t planted, a volunteer, my mom would call it. It had sprung from the crevices in the stone wall—never planted, never intentionally watered, and having to strain for its place in the sun.…

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Categories: Me

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