Saying Yes: A New Foster Son

“Is that pee or water?  Huh?  Pee or water?”

These words come floating in from the other room where Amy is attending to Thomas, our new foster placement.  He’s 4…and we really don’t have any idea what we’re doing.

It’s pee. I think in the other room as I’m drying dishes.  Of COURSE it’s pee.  It’s always pee.  Unless it’s poop. Sometimes it’s poop.

“Thomas?  Thomas!  Did you pee?”

“Noooooo….”

“Thomas?”

“NOOO-OOOooo…I didn’t…”

“Then why is it…*sounds of Amy lifting Thomas up and checking down the back of his pants*…why is it in your pullup?”

“I didn’t!”

“Go sit on the potty.”

“Noooo!”

“Thomas!  Go sit on the potty.”

“NO!”

“Do you need a timeout?”

And so it goes. 

After the girls were adopted, Amy and I kept our foster licenses up, leaving open the possibility that we would take in another foster kid at some point.  But every time a case would float our way, we’d think of the girls, all the shit we had to do, how exhausted we were, and how much it would turn our lives upside down.  I mean, we were getting to the stage parents dream about.  The girls were becoming relatively self-sufficient, allowing us to leave them on their own for an hour or two during the day without them burning down the house or murdering each other.  Some may believe them too young, but really it all depends on the kid, and these girls are ridiculously good.  I’ve never caught them somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, never caught them doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing, never caught them watching a TV show they weren’t supposed to be watching.  I’ve never even heard them cuss.  Not once.  Well, I guess Shay did accidentally “strike a pose” pretending to be a model the other day that involved the middle finger, but she surprised herself so much by her action that we only laughed.

At Mo’s age, I already had the mouth of a sailor (thanks to some colorful talk from the older boys in the neighborhood), had taken to spray painting swear words under concrete bridges, and was routinely riding my bike about five miles outside my supposed “boundaries,” usually because word had spread that some absurdly lucky kid had found a water-logged copy of a 1982 Penthouse in a creek somewhere. 

Ah, the creek.  The giver of crinkled, moldy porn.  There were few things that could get an 11-year-old fat kid breathlessly riding his bike further than the promise of seeing some naked lady with big ol’ boobies.  Just the thought of that centerfold dropping out from the middle of that ancient, mud-crusted magazine made my chubby legs pump faster.  (If only I had known earlier that my brother had some nudie mags stashed in a box in his closet, I could’ve saved a lot of time and effort.)

Amy and I had spent the past year or so easing the girls into staying home alone.  At first it was to take the dog around the block.  Started off at 10 minutes.  Then 20.  Then an hour.  Pretty soon we realized that they acted as if they had something to prove when we were gone.  Hell, they were cleaning stuff up when we were away without even being asked.  Mo went from annoyed older sister to Super Sitter each time we shut the door, left instructions, and set the alarm.  We’d test her by calling every so often, just to make sure she was listening for the phone and would answer.  She always did.

It was pretty awesome. So why in the world would we screw this up?

I’m thinking about this as Thomas is looking at me from the tub.  He’s just put a large toy coin up against the faucet and turned the water on full blast before I could stop him.  Now I’m soaked.  The floor’s soaked.  The damn DOG is soaked.  And he’s just laughing his ass off. 

Oh my God!  I think.  What the hell did we DO?

About six months ago, Amy and I realized that the girls were getting older and more responsible.  They were growing up damn fast.  Mo was growing lightyears at a time, her maturity level surging up in great, surprising heaves.  She had straight A’s.  She was in sports.  Her confidence wasn’t a problem (if you’ve met her, you know). 

We’d also noticed how good Shay was with little ones.  There are some younger kids in the neighborhood, and she watches over them like a Momma Bird.  She easily slips from being the baby in the family into a nurturer.  A caregiver.  We realized Shay would do well with a younger sibling.

“You know,” I said to Amy one night.  “I was thinking about how our foster care license is still up to date…”

 

“Yes,” she said, oddly reading my mind.  We were on the same page.  “Let’s do it.  I think we’re ready.”

And so, out of nowhere, it was time to say “yes.”
We had a talk with the girls.  We told them that we were thinking of re-opening our home for a new foster child placement, but that it had to be okay with them first.  I had thought we would run into a good deal of resistance, especially from Mo, but their reactions were not of protest but of excitement.  They asked a million questions at warp speed.  When would it happen?  Are we going to adopt again?  Who would it be?  They imagined cute scenarios of domestic bliss.

And they really, really wanted a little brother.

Now Thomas is jumping up and down in the tub, flinging more water around.  I’m trying to keep calm, telling him that “we don’t do that” and that if he keeps it up, he can’t watch Little Einsteins after his bath.  He is unconvinced, however, that Little Einsteins is more important than slapping his butt and singing about poop. 

“Poop, poop, I go poops in the potty!  Poops *pfft-pfft* go plop and swiiiiiiimmmmm!”

Uh oh.  We’ve got potty talk. Don’t laugh!  Don’t…you…laugh!

Now Shay is outside the door, pouting because no one is paying attention to her.  She thinks that it wasn’t supposed to be like this.  That she is supposed to be the baby, not this kid!  Shay has been on about this a lot lately.  At first Thomas was fun…but now…well, she’s the…ugh…MIDDLE CHILD.  One afternoon just after Thomas had come to live with us she had watched some Disney Channel show about the heartaches and hardships of being the…UGH! Middle child.

No one pays attention to you.

You don’t get to do all the cool stuff the older sibling gets to do.

You don’t get the attention that the baby gets.

You just fall between the cracks.

“Shay,” I said one day, trying to reassure her, “you know, I was the middle kid…”

“That makes it worse!!!” she wailed.

Well, shit.  That stings.

“I don’t think you understand how good you have it, Shay!  Being the middle kid means you get to fly under the radar all the time.  Parents are always focusing on the oldest because it’s the first time they’re going through stuff as a parent, and when they’re not focusing on the oldest, they’re trying to keep the baby quiet.  All the middle kid has to do is check in every once in a while, give the thumbs up, generally stay out from under foot, and you can do pretty much whatever you want!  What I learned from being the middle kid was that it pays NOT to be the squeaky wheel.” 

It is entirely possible that I will live to regret this conversation, but I figured it was worth the risk.  Time will tell I guess.

Four weeks ago we got an email from our foster agency.  Tanya has sent us the profile of a little African American boy who needs placement.  “He’s three, about to turn four,” the message reads.  “I know that’s a little younger than you guys were looking for, but what do you think?”  I open the file and see this kid’s picture and I’m done for.  I’m wondering if Amy is looking at it too.  My phone rings. 

“Did you see Thomas?!? Oh my God, Matt…That was my dad’s name! He’s adorable.”

“Yeah.  I know.”

So we put in our home study, and CPS decided that we were the best fit for the little dude.  Everyone was ecstatic.  We were going to have a new member of the family, rounding out at five.  And, there was finally going to be another BOY in the family!  I was getting tired of counting my neutered dog and cat as fellow standard bearers of household masculinity.  I had been so lost before when Christmas and birthday shopping.  I’d wandered the aisles at Toys R Us, thinking, “What the hell is this stupid thing?  Oh well, I’m sure the girls will love it,” then thrown it dismissively into my basket.

Now I can buy all kinds of crazy crap.  Ninja toys, action figures, kick-ass games, gross trading cards (I realize they don’t make Garbage Pail Kids anymore, but maybe, by the grace of God, there is something comparable?).  Hell I’m giddy at this prospect.  Glitter and tiaras will finally be mixed amongst dirt and Hot Wheels.  Barbies will comingle with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

Thomas won’t get out of the tub and is screaming.  Amy is busy dealing with Mo and a school project due (of course) tomorrow, and by the tone of conversation, I can tell they’re getting annoyed at one another.  And now I hear Shay quietly crying outside the bathroom door.  The damn wheels are coming off, just like every.  Single.  Night. 

God, I’m tired.  Again, the thought crosses my mind…what the hell did we get ourselves into?

So I stand up from the side of the tub where Thomas is writhing around in the cooling, soapy water, and look down at the surgical scar on his stomach.  It’s getting longer as he grows.  It looks like he had a liver transplant or something. 

That scar.

The point from which the doctors had to drain brain fluid from his skull when he was only nine months old because his biological father had hit hard enough to make his brain swell.  Apparently he had been crying too much.

“Shay, come in here,” I say.  Shay sulks into the bathroom and stands near me with her head down.  I put my arm around her and hold her with one arm and point down to Thomas with the other.  “Do you see that scar on his stomach?”

She nods.

“Do you remember why he has that scar?”

She nods again.  Thomas is laughing and slapping at his belly as we look at it.

“That’s why we said yes, honey.  That’s why.  And he wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t said yes, too.”

She looks at Thomas for a few long moments, considering this intruder, this interloper.

This little boy.

This little boy with a long scar on his belly.

I watch as Shay absently fingers her own surgical scar across her own stomach, her fingertips tracing along the small, hardened lumps through her flimsy pajama top.  Though not from the same thing—Shay’s is from a herniated belly button that had not been taken care of at birth—it is a place where they have both been laid open and again made whole.

“Okay, Dad,” she squeaks, starting to shudder with sobs.

“It’s tough, I know.  But you aren’t the first kid in the world to get a little brother.  In fact, that’s one of the oldest stories in the world.  You just have to tell me or Mom when you’re feeling left out and we’ll try to do something about it, ok?”

“Ok.”

“Tell you what.  Let’s me and you go on a Daddy-Daughter date next week.  We’ll do something fun.”

Shay lights up.  “Can we go mini-golfing?”

“If it’s open still, sure.  If not, we’ll see ‘Pelicans’ or something.”

Shay smiles at me.  “You mean ‘Storks.’”

“Yeah.  ‘Storks.’”

“Yes!” she hisses with an upturned fist of triumph.

“Good, glad you approve.  Now.  Let’s help Thomas get out of the tub.  Your brother is getting cold in there.”

So she coaxes Thomas out of the tub with efficiency, wraps him in a towel, tells him he’s a burrito and he laughs and squeals.  She asks him if he needs to go potty and he says no.  She asks if he’s sure and he says no.  She suggests he gets on the potty to try and he says no, but goes up to the toilet anyway, sits down, rips some crazy farts and poops.  The two of us congratulate him on his digestive prowess.  He laughs and sings about poops again.

“Dad, you better watch your potty talk around Thomas.  He’s picking up on it.”

“Yeah babe, I know.  I’ve got to do better.”

We get him into bed and Shay reads him a story, one that she enjoyed when she had first come to us.  Thomas falls asleep on her arm, and they lay there together for a long time, new brother and new sister.

We will be able to adopt Thomas in six months or so if all goes well.

I don’t think Amy and I realized the amount of room we had for Thomas.  We thought everything was filled up.  Our house, our time, or attention--even our hearts.  Especially in this aching time when everyone is so damn angry and scared and hateful.  But for some reason, one day, we thought, “Hey, maybe there is some room for this little guy.”  We opened a door and found there were still halls upon halls within our hearts and our lives that had been waiting for him, like some impossible house that keeps unfolding itself as you move through it, morphing and changing from a seemingly fixed capacity to a whole new shape and size, beautiful and dazzling in its new complexities. 

People think we’re nuts for taking on a third.  “Three?!?” they exclaim, incredulous, as if we had taken too many.  “You guys gotta stop!”  They’re smiling, but there’s an edge to their words.  Almost accusatory.  They wonder where we find the time or patience.  “My life is already so crazy!” they say, “I don’t think I could do it!” 

Well it is hard.  It really is.  Sometimes doubt sneaks in, especially when Thomas is screaming and Mo is pouting and Shay is crying and the dog is chewing up a wallet and Amy is rushing around trying to find a shoe or a sock or a backpack and we’re all very, very late... at these times I wonder if we’re doing everyone involved a disservice, because nothing is getting the individual attention it used to get.  We’re fragmented and frazzled, trying to keep a lid on chaos.

But we said yes.  And now we are five.  And the chaos is maddening and strange, yet somehow comforting, because it is our chaos, and out of this chaos comes deep love for one another, one the result of the other.

It feels good to say yes.  It feels good to open yourself up to something you know is right, even if it makes you vulnerable, threatens to tip your world on its ear.  Right now, ours seems to be a poisonous world, filled with fear and rage and dismay. 

A world filled with a lot of “no.”  Because saying “no” has become a kind of habit.

No is easier than yes, but in yes there is contentment. If you’re tired of hearing and saying “no,” then why not go DO something for someone you don’t know.  If you’ve been thinking of becoming a foster parent, talk it over with your partner.  If you’re both on board, don’t waffle, pull the trigger.  Start the process.  Get licensed.  Change the world for yourself and for a kid in need.  Yes it’s scary, and yes people will tell you you’re nuts, and yes, you risk getting hurt.  But so what?  I can tell you the rewards keep coming every day as you shape a kid that would have otherwise been cast aside.  The moment when a little kid tells you he loves you, or that you are “his hero,” or when an older kid begins to listen to you and you know you’ve made a real impact. Those moments are guaranteed to be among the most rewarding of your life.  If you aren’t in a position to help in that way, go do something else.  Go volunteer at a soup kitchen.  Go participate in Habitat for Humanity one Saturday.  Whatever.  Find some way to say “yes.”  Because remaining in a place of rage and fear doesn’t help anyone.  I realize some of us are actually pretty enraged and fearful right now and feel a duty to remain vigilant.  By all means, continue to do so (I know I will).  But at the same time, take what little control you can over some small piece of this world and make it a place for empathy and service.  A place for kindness and love.  A place for humanity.

A place for “yes.”   

I promise you’ll feel better.  I know I do.

Worries

For a dad of two girls, I guess I don’t do a ton of worrying.  There are so many clichéd things I guess I’m supposed to worry about, but really, I don’t actually worry in the true sense of the word.  Maybe it’s because the girls are at an age where they are pretty self-sufficient, yet aren’t operating outside of (nearly) constant adult supervision.  Sorta like going to the circus, seeing trapeze artists, but also seeing the big, bouncy net below them.  I mean, I obviously know there are a thousand things that require my attention, things that are extremely--if not direly--important.  And I’m confident that once they are out driving around, my worry-meter will skyrocket and I’ll get an ulcer.  And every time I see teenagers behaving badly on TV, like some naïve high school sophomore girl letting a hornball senior scale an inexplicably strong and bare rose trellis up to her room (why is that thing there?!?), I have a mild panic attack. 

I attempt to mollify my fear of the future by teaching them lessons that will prepare them for the world out amongst the wolves.  About honesty and integrity.  About work ethic.  About stranger-danger.  About self-confidence with humility (self-confidence is challenging for one, while the humility is nearly impossible for the other).  About good grades in school.  About leadership.  About what boys are starting to see in them (and the reason those boys keep adjusting their waistbands in the middle of class).  About acceptance and forgiveness.  About grace.  About underage drinking and drugs.  About competitiveness and sportsmanship.  About unconditional love and how to treat one another.

There are a number of things Amy and I try to teach the girls by example.  Amy serves as a role model by showing them what they can achieve if they study their asses off, work their asses off, and subsequently demand to be granted the same considerations as anyone else after having accomplished those first two things.  I’m not entirely sure what it is that I offer, other than how to scream at sports on the TV (I’m fairly certain the dog thinks his name is “God damn it, Royals!!!  Hit the ball!!!!) or how to cuss with panache in the car, but I’m sure I’m doing something positive in there somewhere. 

I do know that the girls notice how Amy and I are with each other.  They will occasionally say something like, “You and Mom are so nice to each other!”  We usually respond with something like, “Well, yeah, of course we are.  It isn’t magic.  That’s how good relationships work.  It’s what you should expect, too.”  I know Amy is careful to point out when I do something nice, even if it’s no big damn deal, saying something like, “See?  That’s what people do for one another when they love each other.”  They proceed to roll their eyes and make gagging noises, but I’ll bet it’s getting through a little, and it’s a pretty big lesson. Because of the few things I actually do worry about, one is how they demand to be treated by others in their lives, whether it’s by friends or boyfriends or whatever.  I actively worry about this because of what they’ve seen before they came to live with us.  I’m not entirely sure how things worked in their bio-mother’s household, but from what little they remember and have told us, I have to assume it wasn’t just a sparkling example of domestic bliss.

Amy and I teach the girls about the world as we see it.  We teach them through the lens of our own experiences and worldview, because that’s the only world we know.  It’s a world where you are expected to go to school, expected to behave, expected to work hard, and expected to achieve.  Overall, I think Amy and I are pretty good parents.  We have significant failings at times, but we’re doing okay.

The other day, I brought the kids to a friend’s birthday party at his house.  They wanted to say hi, tell him “happy birthday,” pet his dogs, give him a hug, then go back home with Amy where they would watch a few “girl movies” while I stuck around for a while.  It was still early evening, and the girls were sitting in his living room, watching a recording of “Inside Out” (when Bing Bong went missing in that damn pit of forgotten memories or whatever, the girls kept asking me to come in and watch, because they know it makes me cry and they think that’s just hysterical).  I was talking to the first few guests in the kitchen about God knows what.  The doorbell rang, and in came a middle-aged couple.  When the woman saw the girls, she told them she loved their hair (both the girls have box braids now, one with red extensions mixed in and the other with blue) and talked to them for a while.  The woman bubbled and asked them about school, about their summer, about going to the pool, about their friends, etc.  When the woman came into the kitchen, she asked me if I was their dad.  I said yes, I was, and she complimented me on how bright, well-mannered, and beautiful the girls are.  I thanked her, made my customary self-deprecating jokes, said that their good behavior has nothing to do with me and that she should thank my wife because they are that way despite my influence.  We all laughed.

Now, there is something I have noticed since becoming a father…particularly, the white father of black children.  I get these kinds of compliments a lot.  And sure, it could be because I am just such a stellar father and Amy is such a stellar mother and the kids are just so amazingly stellar that strangers just can’t help but notice.  I mean, the girls are freaking adorable, and they are smart, and they are well-mannered.  But at the same time, there are other kids at the party that are also well mannered and speak in full sentences to adults…so why aren’t they piling on the praise to the other kids, too?  Behind my smile and true appreciation for complimenting my parental skills, I can’t help having the surreal suspicion that the reason they are so enthusiastic with their praise is because they are, though surely unwittingly, a little surprised my kids behave so well.  But both kids are total suckers for positive reinforcement, and I’m a sucker for flattery, so it sure as shit could be worse. 

Later, after the girls had left and after a good amount of alcohol had been consumed all around, the same woman began asking me about being a foster parent.  I talked to her a bit about it, and then she talked about how she is a foster parent for dogs.  She then made a weird comparison between the two, saying that we all need to watch out for “strays.”  I laughed awkwardly and then gently told her that my kids aren’t “strays,” they’re children.  She said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s not what I meant, but…you know.” 

I did not know, but did not want to press the issue further.

A few minutes later, out on the porch, she was talking about people abusing dogs (she is apparently a very enthusiastic animal rights person), and then said something to the effect of “I got these two dogs now that some ni***rs were beating…oh!  I mean…black…people…”

And just like that, the whole party stopped and everyone stared at her.  Then at me.

Now, this is not the most sophisticated woman in the world.  I should remind everyone at this point, again, that I live in the Texas Panhandle, not universally known for its progressive agenda.  Abject poverty that knows no racial lines is not situated only at the far ends of some metropolis, but it is interspersed within and throughout the town.  This woman had obviously come from absolutely nothing and is still struggling day to day (she wanted to play dice that night, because if she won, she was “going to Walmart baby!”).  She has little to no higher education.  All she knows is what she has been taught by her relations, her friends, her immediate surroundings, and the hard lessons she’s had to learn throughout her life. 

She looked at me in horror, turned away, went inside, got another drink, and then came back out to apologize profusely to me.  “I’m so sorry I said that earlier.  I want you to know your babies are beautiful and wonderful and it just makes me sick to think of them when I said that word.”

I tell her that I’m fine, but that I’m glad the girls weren’t here to hear her either.  She nodded.

“You just have to realize where I come from, where I live.  I live out on the Boulevard, see.  And there are some good, nice Black People, and there are some hard…well…you know…”

I do know.  But I didn’t want her to explain the age-old white explanation of the difference between black people and [n-words].  I’ve heard it before, lady, and it’s ugly.  I don’t want to hear it again.

“Sure, I get it,” I say.

“Anyway, I mean, every one of my family members is on meth…” and so she dove into one of the most depressing stories I’ve ever had in my life.  I really wasn’t mad at her for saying what she said.  She’s a product of her world, and it’s an ugly, ugly world full of drugs and death and brutalization…it’s amazing this woman is still alive.  There is iron strength in this woman, iron that cannot be dismissed and can’t be anything but admired.  I don’t have that kind of iron.  I don’t know many people that do. 

“Anyway, hon, I’m sorry for saying that.”

“Don’t sweat it.”  As if I could say anything else at that moment.  How do I say it’s okay when it clearly isn’t?  But what else am I going to do?  Lecture this woman?  I could tell she really was truly sorry.  Maybe sorry just because I had heard her, but I wasn’t going to press it.  So I just said, “Sorry about your brother.” Within her litany of terrible stories, she had revealed her brother had just died from some kind of tumor on his spinal cord, one that had apparently been attributed to his meth addiction.  He had died poorly.

“Yeah, me too,” she said.  “I guess his birthday would’ve been coming up soon.”

At this point, I realized something that had never really occurred to me before, something that I might very well be guilty of.  Before, when I’d heard that word, it slid off like nothing.  I mean, sure, I’d think, “Man, that’s in bad taste,” but it did not affect me at a visceral level.  And now it’s like a gut-punch, because I can’t hear it without imagining what my daughter’s faces would look like if they’d have heard it too.

My daughters put a face to that word.  They take away the “otherness” of that word. 

I don’t feel that just because I have black daughters that I get some kind of limited honorary invitation to “the club.”  In fact, if anything, my daughters show me that there is no way I can EVER get it, because I don’t walk into a room full of people who expect less of me because of how I look or are surprised that I am “well spoken.”  I don’t elicit those same kinds of reactions, same kinds of expectations, or same kinds of emotions, based on my skin.  I also know there isn’t some kind of “club,” and that it shouldn’t be spoken about as such, because it allows us to imagine Blackness as some kind of privileged membership.  That they enjoy some kind of special treatment, thus validating the flawed narrative that there really isn’t racism, and that if anything, there is “reverse racism” (which is a total bullshit term). 

My girls don’t belong to a club.  There isn’t a newsletter that comes in the mail.  They don’t enjoy some kind of imagined Black Privilege.  They are simply navigating the world in which they are being brought up.  Just like I did.  Just like Amy did.  Just like the woman at that party did.  And that world will surely shape the kinds of people they will become.  I mentioned before all the things we teach our girls.  We instill our values in them and teach them the things we were taught.  We support them, do homework with them, go to their sporting events, go to their recitals.

Shit, we belong to a Country Club.  They’re learning golf.

Which begs the delicate, controversial question:  Are we raising them…white?

Is there such a thing?  And if so, what does that mean for their Blackness?  And is there such a thing as that?  Is there a shared cultural experience they are missing out on because we simply cannot give that to them?

And the most important question:  Are we failing to recognize the existence of, and subsequently failing to teach them, crucial lessons on what it means to be black in America?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, there are some racial issues going on right now, and in the end, I think the divide isn’t about whether or not you are on “the Blue Side” or on “the Black Side” (into which these issues have sadly devolved lately, because rooting for a side is easier than a discussion).  I think this side-choosing is a symptom of the real disconnect:  whether or not there is a different America that black people experience beyond the scope of white understanding.  Rudy Giuliani just got done espousing that there “is no Black America, just America” and was given raucous applause for it. 

To put it very, very lightly: I think some would beg to differ.

I’m not wondering if I need to get them tutors on “how to be black.”  Their experience will be unique, made up with their own set of privileges that come with middle class America, like extra tutoring for dyslexia, extracurricular activities, moderately active and engaged parents both with salaried daytime jobs, those kinds of things.  There is of course a varied spectrum of “the Black experience,” and there are probably people they will encounter who will tell them they aren’t “really black” because they were raised by white parents.  And we can’t protect them from that. It is something they will deal with when the time comes. 

But what about basic lessons that aren’t simply intellectual?  What about lessons that are as much about safety as telling them to use their seatbelt in the car, or stranger-danger?

There was a story I read about a white mother of a black teenager who raised her son much like we are raising our own daughters.  They didn’t talk much about race unless it came up, and then usually it was something like, “race doesn’t matter, you can’t change ignorant people, you’re beautiful inside and out,” etc. etc.  But what she had failed to teach him was that race shouldn’t matter, but that it does matter, especially when it came to personal safety.  One night when he went out with a friend they got pulled over (this is a very loose recounting of the narrative).  Since he had never had a bad experience with a police officer, nor had his mother ever said anything negative about the police, he had no real reason to fear what happened next.  The police found a baggie of pot on his (white) friend, who subsequently was put in handcuffs.  The black teenager said something “smart” I guess, and was beaten with in an inch of his life, threatened with a gun to his forehead, and called a “ fu**ing n***er” when he regained consciousness.  This wasn’t in Mississippi or something.  This was Denver.

This story shook me to the core.

My kids are smartasses all the time.  They’re smartasses because they’re kids.  And kids are stupid and willful and at times reckless.  But are my girls at increased physical risk because of their race?  If they say or do something stupid, are they going to get physically harmed?  Or killed?  I realize they are female and so their chances are lower than if they were male, but what about a situation later in life, and they maybe have a black boyfriend and they get pulled over? 

Do my girls have to “watch it” more than other kids?  Not just with police, but in every encounter with authority?

What if something happens and my daughter looks at me and says, “Dad, you taught me so much…why didn’t you teach me about this too?”

My kids aren’t afraid yet.  But should they be?

I don’t want to raise my daughters to be afraid of police.  As a matter of fact, when they first came to live with us, they tended to freak out at the very sight of a police car.  I assumed it was because of previous experiences.  I don’t know what those experiences were, but I do know the girls looked up and began to panic when a cruiser passed us or was tailing us.  It obviously wasn’t because my kids were holding drugs, or because they were in a gang, or because they had anything personally to worry about.  They were simply scared of police.

It could have been because they saw their mom hauled off by the cops at some point.  Or because their dad was in jail.  Or, it could simply be that someone, somewhere, taught them that the police were not to be trusted. 

Early on, I had to ask Shay to stop calling them “Po-Po.”  No kidding.

Whatever it was, it was deeply seeded, and they couldn’t understand why we were so calm about the whole thing.  I’ve actually said, “Girls, the police are not here to hurt you, and it is okay to trust them.  They’re just making sure no one is doing anything dangerous out here.”

Was I telling the truth?  And if so, who’s truth?

And honestly, I do believe that.  I am pro-cop.  I believe they do a hard job, a dangerous job, a necessary job, and an honorable job.  They are to be respected and revered.  But as with any job, there are people who are bad at it.  That have no business wielding that kind of power.  That have neither the intelligence nor temperament to serve and protect anyone.  I’m positive most police officers are wonderful people of the highest moral character.  It’s just that the bad ones can really, really ruin it for the rest of them.  And institutionalized culture within individual departments can overwhelm and defeat even the finest police officer.  It was the same in some of the military units I’ve seen during my time in the Air Force.  Some units were good, some were bad.  And it had nothing to do with the caliber of soldiers or airmen.  It had to do with the culture of the unit and its leadership. 

But those facts are cold comfort, and it’s easy to stand back and say, “well statistics show…” when it isn’t YOUR kid in that situation.  Last year I saw that video of an out of control police officer dragging that young black girl in a bikini around by the hair because the group she was with had crashed a pool party.  It made me sick because I could see my Mo in that situation, out with friends, probably where she shouldn’t be, as teens tend to do…and then being dragged by her hair in her swimsuit…screaming… 

Yes, I’ll teach my girls to be respectful of the law, which appears to be the panacea for all racial tension (said with not just a little sarcasm).  But to my friends who are parents of white children:  what would you say if your kid got a little glib with a policeman and they dragged her around by the hair and slammed her to the ground?  What if your daughter was at a traffic stop and beaten within an inch of her life for daring to roll her eyes in a moment of pubescent annoyance?  Or was even doing something that she shouldn’t have been doing with her friends?  What if you went to bail her out, angry as hell because she had snuck out of the house or something, and you see her face was a mask of blood and sutures and you couldn’t even recognize her?  What if her teeth were smashed out?  Well, I guess you should’ve done a better job raising her.  I mean, I know that with proper parenting, it would never, ever happen, because as everyone knows teenagers are always in control of their emotional reactions and never roll their eyes or say anything flippant, right?  And always make the very best decisions.

But what if one day she didn’t make a good decision and said something “smart”…

…and it was to a bad cop…

…who had had a bad day…

…what skin color would you rather she have?

Another Ten Days With Dad: The Mystery Turd and Mistakes

Because Amy is an art history professor down at West Texas A&M University, just about every year she has the opportunity to take a group of students to some far away land to gaze upon old paintings or statues with their dicks out.  This year was no exception.  In fact, this year she one-upped herself.  In fact, one could say she went to the place with the highest dicks-to-statue ratio of any place in the world: Greece.  All jokes aside though, this is an important opportunity for her and her students, and she works incredibly hard to prepare her class, secure the travel arrangements, schedule the tours, book the hotels, reserve the tickets, make special arrangements…just writing it out is exhausting.  But she loves it, and I love that she gets this opportunity to take these impressionable students from West Texas out to experience the larger world far away from these vast and dusty high plains…and see ancient wieners exquisitely carved in marble.

What this trip means, however, is that again I am being trusted to do some adulting and make sure our kids don’t die while she’s away.  Once again it’s time for 10 Days with Dad. 

Here are a few highlights so far.

The Mystery Turd

We have a problem with flushing the toilet in this house.  I don’t know why the hell this is the case, but it’s true.  I don’t have this problem.  Usually I can’t flush fast enough, as I am oddly averse to having any kind of human waste near me for any amount of time.  I actually have frequent nightmares about embarrassing fecal escapades.  Once I had a dream that I was in a meeting at my old job, and the chairs around the boardroom table had holes in the seats with a bucket underneath them.  For some reason in this dream, I decided to pull my pants down and relieve myself through the hole in the seat and into the bucket.  It was at this point that I saw the rest of the people around the table reach under their chairs, pull up the buckets, and begin to eat what I then realized were peanuts stored in the buckets as snacks.  Apparently the holes in the chairs were some kind of new, ergonomic design.  They were not for pooping.

I stealthily tried wiggle my pants back up, but my friend saw me doing it and yelled, “Oh my God!  Welch shit in his peanuts!”  And then I got fired.

I woke from that dream in a cold sweat (and needing to use the restroom, which I’m sure is why the dream occurred) and was weirded out the rest of the day.  The humiliation of crapping in a meeting still clings to my subconscious.  I guess you could say I have poop anxiety. 

In any event, after the girls had taken their bath the other night and were up in their room getting ready for bed, I passed the toilet in the master bathroom and glanced down into the oddly-dark water.  There, lying at the bottom of the toilet, peeking out from the hole, was an enormous swollen turd.  

I mean, this thing was a monstrosity.  Like the size of a toddler’s forearm.  I don’t say this [entirely] to be gross, but for the sake of clarity.  It wasn’t right.

And the worst thing was is that there was no toilet paper in there.  Just a lone, gently dissolving log.

 

What you should remember at this point is that I was already exhausted.  Amy had been gone for a few days and everything had come to a head.  It was the second-to-last week of school, which meant on top of soccer (of which I am the woefully inept coach), Girl Scouts (of which I am the woefully inept assistant leader), Sunday School (of which I'm a woefully inept teacher), volleyball, and various games, there were end-of-year orchestra recitals and parties...I mean.  It just.  Wouldn't.  Stop.  I know some of you out there are reading this and saying, "Yeah, well, welcome to my world, I've been doing that alone for the past six years."  To you, I say I admire the ever living hell out of you.  Because I'm beat.  I complain about this only so you can understand my state of mind when I saw this behemoth.  It was a literally shitty end to a figuratively shitty day.   

I immediately shrieked and flushed the offense down.  “Girls!” I yelled.  “Get down here!”  They slinked downstairs, recognizing my tone of mixed anger and revulsion (it happens fairly often) and entered the bathroom, wondering what they had done to incur such a reaction.

“What the hell?” I asked.  “Who pooped in here and didn’t flush?   And more importantly, who didn’t wipe their butt afterward?  Seriously girls.  That’s bad.  I mean, yuck.  For real.  Yuck.” 

The girls stared back at me, neither saying a word. 

“One of you did it.  It had to be.  There isn’t anyone else around here.  And I know I didn’t do it.  Fess up kids!”

I thought about the size of that bobbing monster, and shuddered. 

“I’m kind of worried about your diets, man.  I don’t even know how that was possible.  Is one of you in pain?”

Still, the girls stared blankly.

“Okay.  I’m sorry I’m yelling.  I was shocked is all.  But I really need to know who isn’t wiping.  You’re going to get sick that way.”

Shay piped up.  “But I did wipe!”

“Uh-huh,” I said.  “So it was you?  Shay, babe…really.  You have got to wipe.”

“But I did!  Maybe just the paper went down.”

“No, it didn’t.  That toilet didn’t do some kind of magic trick.  There wasn’t some strange bathroom physics going on here, some buoyancy-defying dynamics.  If you had wiped, the paper would have been on top.  And I…I don’t even know what to say about the size of that thing.  Are you okay?  When was the last time you went before all this?”

Shay just shrugged.

“Ok.  We need to eat more fiber or something while Mom is away.  That ain’t cool.”

“Ok.  Sorry Dad.”

“Don’t be sorry, just wipe your ass.”

“Daaaad!  Don’t say that word.”

“Fine.  Butt.  One more question, though.  Did you do...that...before or after your bath?”

Shay shrugged again.

“Ugh.  Ok.  Back in the tub.  Right now.”

She started to protest, but she saw I was serious and instead began to take off her pajamas.  So I left her alone in the bathroom to take yet another bath.  But before she got in I yelled “Now sit on the pot and try to go again!  And wipe for God’s sake!”

“Uuuugh!  Fiiiiiine!”

Man, kids are gross.

 

Mistakes

Next year, Mo is heading to middle school, and she’s already a hormonal mess.  She towers over the boys in her class and is 105 lbs of solid muscle.  Seriously.  You should see this kid.  Veins are jumping out of her biceps and what not.  When she complains about some little shit kid who thinks he’s cool by making fun of her, I just want to tell her that she could beat the holy living hell out of every boy in her class if she wanted to.  I once saw her climb a rope to the ceiling of a gym using just her arms for God’s sake.  It’s unreal.  I think back to when I was her age and I too was 105 lbs…but I sure as hell couldn’t climb any rope past 6 inches off the ground.  In fact, I remember the old Presidential Fitness Tests they used to give in gym class and failing miserably.  When I was in 5^th grade, it was the first President Bush, so I remember thinking that the kids who did well got a congratulatory note from Bush himself, while kids like me got a note from Dan Quayle telling us to “Keep on trying!”  The flexed arm hang was an absolute nightmare.  It was just my gym teacher struggling to lift me up to the pull-up bar, letting go, and after 20 milliseconds I promptly crashed to the gym floor with a boom.  And I think, really, it was all one fluid motion.  The 20 milliseconds was only as fast as the gym teacher could hit the start and stop button in rapid succession. I also remember lifting my shirtsleeve so he could pinch my arm chub with the body fat calipers (I can vividly see how he had to re-calibrate the damn things each time he pinched an inch, kinda like how one would adjust an old protractor to draw a wider circle).  A week later came the envelope that had our fitness scores inside.  The note that accompanied the dreadful metrics told my parents that I was very overweight, and that I was in the bottom percentile for everything. 

I remember going into the bathroom, trying not to cry.

Mom was pissed.  I thought she was going to go up there and tear my gym teacher limb from limb.  I might even remember her saying she was going to cut off his balls and shove them down his throat.

Yeah.  I had that Mom.  God bless her.

Now, granted, I hadn’t had a single growth spurt yet, and in high school I grew into it…sorta.  But regardless, my point is that Mo is vastly more mature than her classmates in many ways. 

The other day, Mo and Shay were engaged in their usual sisterly banter, which I usually tune out.  Because, you know, I have to or else I’d go insane.  But out of the white noise, something rose to the top and caught my attention.  I heard Shay say something about Mo’s “big butt.”  Mo retorted,

“Yeah, well…second place.”

I stopped the conversation and asked what she was talking about.  Second place for what?

“Nothing,” she said.  Then she tried to change the subject.

“No, Mo, second place for what?  Shay said something about your butt.  What are you talking about?”

Silence. 

Then a tentative, “You’re going to get mad.”

“Well, maybe.  But if it’s what I think it is, I’m not going to be mad at you, but I need to know what’s going on.”

Mo then told me about how the little bastards in her class had made some kind of ranking of the 5^th grade girls’ butts.  And Mo had “won” second place. 

Man, I saw red.  I never really thought I’d get so mad over that kind of thing.  I mean, I’m aware of her age and that boys in her class are starting to “like” girls and what not, and that kind of talk was bound to start sometime.  Even when I was a fat little shit getting pinched with calipers, I was looking at girls’ butts.  Not really because I found them so alluring, but because at that age girls became “a thing.”  The popular kids (popular for what, I don’t know) were always on about how “hot” girls were and who they had crushes on and who was “prude” (whatever that means in the 5^th grade) and on and on and on.  So what these boys did wasn’t very surprising, let alone shocking. 

In the past, I’d always scoffed at those dads who acted weirdly possessive of their daughters and talked about how “they’d kill any summabitch that comes near my little girl!” as if it were come kind of personal attack or insult.  So I wasn’t really prepared to feel that way.  But I think I kind of get it now.  And in my moment of (admittedly past-due) epiphany, I’m putting it all together.  The age.  The urge for maturity.  The need to be accepted.  The ache of hormones.  The pressure from friends. 

Jesus.  I need to talk to Mo.  Like now.

Later that night, Mo and I are driving to her volleyball practice and I’m working up the nerve to talk to her about gross stuff.  It’s gonna be awkward as hell, but it had to be done.  And it couldn’t be like all the previous ones, where I had only been present with Amy doing most of the talking.  I’d thrown out a few worn clichés at her, like “respect yourself!” and “wait until marriage!” feeling like I had contributed.  But this one had to be different, had to be real.  It had to deal with her actual world, not some clinical talk about the mechanics of sex given by some detached adult.

After all, she did win “second place.”

And by the way, who the hell won “first place?”  That girl needs a talking to her S.T.A.T.

“So, Mo,” I begin. 

She looks at me sideways, sensing my discomfort.

“Yeeeaaaah?” she asked.

“So, uh…look, I have to know.  Are any girls in your class, like, making out with boys?”

“Huh?!?  Why?”

“Well, just because.  At your age, in my school, there were, like, make-out parties and some of the kids’ houses and stuff.  And girls were kind of, I don’t know, seemed like they were pressured by their friends to make out with boys.  Is anything like that going on?”

She closed her eyes and began shaking her head back and forth, waving her hands in front of her face.  Like she had just opened an old refrigerator with a dead raccoon inside and was trying to wave the smell away.

“Ugh, God, Dad…when is Mom coming home?”

“Seriously, I want to know.  I need you to know I won’t ever get mad at you if you just tell me something straight out.  I mean, I might get mad, but you won’t get into trouble, and I won’t call anyone’s parents if you don’t want me to.  Well, unless it’s really dangerous, then…”

“DAD!  What are you talking about?”

“Dammit, I don’t know!  But I think we’re supposed to have this conversation.  And I know I’m worried about what’s going on with you and your friends.  I mean, you girls never seem too interested, so I’m not, like, worried-worried, but…next year is middle school.  Things will be different.”

“Yeah,” Mo relented.  “I know what you mean.”

“You do?  So is any of that going on?”

“Well, not with my friends they aren’t.  And I don’t think it’s going on at my school, but I do hear about things in middle school.”

“Ok, ok, good, let’s talk about that.  Like what?”

“Well, like…”

“Like…sex?  Is that going on?”

And just like that, the whole conversation changed.

“Stop, Dad, seriously.  I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Mo, honey, we have to…”

“No, we don’t!  I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Ok, fine.  Do you want to talk to Mom about it?  Is it because it’s gross to talk about it with me?”

“No, it isn’t like that.  It’s because...well...”

Mo started to get choked up, which is super rare for her.  Something was going on here, something I hadn’t anticipated.  Something personal.

“I’m sorry Mo!  I don’t want to upset you.  I know you don’t like to talk about it, but I just need to know…”

“Dad, it’s because sex made me.”

I didn’t know what the hell was happening, but I realized I was woefully unprepared for this talk.  We sat in silence for a minute, her getting herself under control, me trying to figure out if what she had just said was what I thought it was.

Cautiously I asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, sex made me.  And it was a mistake.”

Oh, God. 

My guts dropped and I felt like someone had just punched me in the chest.

“What the hell are you talking about Mo?  What put that in your head?”

Mo wrung her hands together and tried to subdue her sniffling, quietly shaking her head.  Mo isn’t big on showing emotion.  Doesn’t like to seem vulnerable or weak.

“Mo?” I asked after a bit.  “Why do you think you were a mistake?”

She sighed heavily, wiping at her eyes.  She was back in control now.

“Because.   Because my mom didn’t want me, and my dad didn’t want me, but they had sex and then I came out.  And then they had sex again and Shay came out.  And then my dad went to jail and my mom got on drugs and I had to go live with my grandma, which wasn’t even really my grandma, and she didn’t really want me either.”

The girls have lived with us long enough at this point that I forget they are adopted and that they have a past beyond Amy and me.  I have always, always taken for granted that my parents wanted me and loved me and cared for me from the very beginning.  I don’t have any real scars.  Not really.  But these girls do.  They have scars that I can’t see and can’t understand and can’t really help.  I forget because I can’t bear to think of a time when they were hurting and I couldn’t be there for them.  I can’t bear to think of a time when they didn’t have anything to eat or anything to wear or anyone around to give a shit.  I think it’s because I love them so much that none of it seems possible.  But it is possible.  And it’s a fact.  There was a time when they were utterly alone.  

“Mo, do you really think that?  Do you really think you were a mistake?”

“I guess so.”

“Oh, God, Mo, you weren’t a mistake.”

“Why not?”

“Because…I don’t know.  Because we have you now.  We have you and we wouldn’t be happy without you.  We’d be a mess.  We wouldn’t be whole.  Your Mom and I were so sad before you guys came to us.”

“Yeah, but, Mom and you would have just adopted some other foster kids maybe.  And then they’d have you guys.  And you guys would have them.”

“But they wouldn’t be you.” I said.  “And it isn’t worth thinking about ‘what-ifs’ when it comes to this.”

I could feel her eyes on me from the passenger seat as I searched for words.

“We all go to church most Sundays, right?  And we’re told to put our trust in God, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, what you probably don’t know is faith has always been pretty hard for me.  I struggle with it a lot.  I know I’m supposed to believe it, but sometimes I…well, I doubt.  A lot."

She looked incredulous.  I’d never said anything like this to her before.  Actually, I don’t think I’d ever said anything like this to anyone before. “Why?” she asked.

“I don’t know.  I guess because there are a lot of so-called Christians that have ruined Christianity for the rest of us, and it’s hard for me to separate the people from the truth.”

“So…why do we go?”

I sighed.  “Well, sometimes it’s just to get perspective on the week, to be part of the community, to listen to Mother Jo or Father Pace coach us toward being better people.  The ritual of it is comforting.  And there is truth in the words, in the prayers.  Some might say the truth is just words spoken from the best part of ourselves, from within, and not from some external deity.  That it’s all just some form of meditation.  But I believe there is more to it than that.  I do believe in a God that doesn’t make mistakes.  I believe I can’t understand what God’s doing and that He’s far more complicated than any one person’s definition or understanding, and that no one really knows the entirety of the true nature of God or even what He is.”

“What should I believe then?”

“Well, babe, you have to come to it on your own.  You have to look in your own heart, your own mind, and decide what rings true.”

“Ok.”

“I will say this, though: my faith has gone up a lot of notches since you two came to live with us."

"Uh, why?"

"Because," I explained, “I feel that there was something...I know there was something that knew you were supposed to be ours from the very beginning.  You two aren’t some side-story to Amy’s and my life.  You aren’t some happy coincidence that ‘just worked out.’  You are what Amy and I were put here to do, put here to love.  All our lives have led to this.  From Amy and I meeting in middle school to me sitting here, now, with you."

"Yeah, I guess, but what about my bio-parents?"

"Well, maybe your bio-parents ‘didn’t intend’ to have you two.  Sure.  That’s likely.  But you two are NOT mistakes.  You are not something that wasn’t supposed to be.”

“But why?” Mo was still struggling with making sense of my ramblings, and I guess I was struggling too.

“Because…because us.  This family.  If you are a mistake, then all of us together are a mistake.  And that simply can’t true.  Can’t you feel that?  Can’t you know that?  In your heart?”

“I guess so.” 

She stared out the window for a while, thinking.

When we got to the school gym, Mo began to get out of the car.

“I love you Mo,” I said.  “More than I can say.  Because I find new ways and reasons every day that surprise me.  So we’re gonna be just fine.”

“Ok.”

“Ok then.  And make sure you tell those boys ranking your butt that you don’t appreciate it!  And that you have a Dad, mistake or not, that can get pretty damn protective.  Ok?”

“Ok.”

Then I put on my hillbilly voice. “I’ll keel any summabitch that comes near my baby girl, dammit!  They’all better g'on n' git!”

Mo giggled.  “Sure, Dad.”     

This girl is no damn mistake.      

Heritage

The other night, Mo came down the stairs in a new, sparkly black dress.  Her braids were stylishly cascading down to her left shoulder, a tangle of barely-contained chaos.  On her feet she wore a sensible pair of flats (rather than the high heels she had fought us over), and a little bit of lip gloss.  She stood grinning sheepishly at me, embodying the past 20 minutes of deal-making, heavy sighs, eye rolls, and grudging compromises. 

In other words, she’s a “tween.”  And she’s pretty.  And it freaks me out.

“Is this okay?” she asked in a high, tentative voice.

“Yeah, I guess.  You just…well, whatever.  I wish you wouldn’t fight me over this stuff.  You’re in fifth grade for God’s sake.  You’re still a little girl.”  Even as it came out of my mouth, I realized I was a living cliché.  I just said the most Dad thing a Dad could say to a daughter.  It isn’t like she’d asked to wear a low-cut shirt or a skirt with her butt hanging out.  She’s just growing so fast that the clothes which fit her four months ago look ridiculous on her now.  She’s getting taller

boobs

and more muscular

boobs

and…well “filling out”

boobs.

There are not enough clothes in the world for her to cover my anxiety.  She doesn’t understand why sometimes she comes downstairs and I shout, “Nuh-uh!  Upstairs!  That dress is going to the neighbor girl!”

But today she looks beautiful and appropriate and I grudgingly say as much.  Her eyes light up and she twirls.  She’s been nervous all afternoon but this makes her feel better.  She’s been chosen by her school to present a gift from her class to a school-board member during their meeting, and tonight was the night.  Apparently it’s some big honor, one that can only be earned with good grades and better behavior.  I’m ridiculously proud of her.

Amy tells her it’s time to go.  They load up into the car and drive off to the Amarillo ISD building on I-40.  Shay and I stay behind.  Shay has homework to do, and she ain’t happy about it.

As I’m helping Shay with fractions (which, for some reason, I’m TERRIBLE at), I get a text from Amy.  They’re safe at the AISD building, but Amy is mad.  Her text reads:

“There are a bunch of people on the Bell Street overpass waving Confederate flags.  They even have one of those huge Perkins-sized flags hanging over the side.  What’s going on today?  Is it some kind of rally?”

Garrison flag.  I think the size she’s talking about is a garrison-sized flag.

“Mo got upset at it, but not too bad.  She’s okay.  She presented the gift and did great.  Be home soon.”

This is Texas.  We see a lot of Confederate flags flying around…especially in this political climate.  Usually on the front of houses or flying from the back of trucks.  The girls notice every time.  And it isn’t like they notice simply because Amy and I are fairly liberal and make a stink about it.  Amy and I know where we live and realize that it’s part of the deal.  If you live in the South, you’re gonna see the Stars n’ Bars (yes I realize that the battle flag of Northern Virginia is different than the official flag of the Confederacy…semantics). 

But the girls are old enough to at least be confused by its significance.  They’ve learned about it in school (even under Texas’ revisionist history books, but I won’t go into that) and understand that it is the battle flag of the Confederacy.  And the Confederacy fought against the North and Abraham Lincoln.  And Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.  So people who fly that flag today hate black people and wish there was still slavery…right?

Since the girls have come to live with us, they’ve been embraced by both of our families.  They consider my mom and dad their “Mimi and Papa”.  They consider Amy’s parents “MaMa and Larry” (not sure why they haven’t come up with a name for Larry, but since everyone calls him that it stuck).  My grandmother is, thankfully, still with us and living with my parents.  She’s 91 years old, and they call her Nannie, just as I do.  Nannie can’t see very well anymore and doesn’t know which one of the girls is speaking to her, but she always hugs them and loves on them and the girls are always forgiving when she mixes up their names.

And let me be clear.  The girls are loved by everyone. 

The girls eat up every family story, hungry to be a part of it.  They don’t care that it isn’t “their” family by blood.  They want to hear about the time Uncle Cole put their dad in the dryer (“it was only for a second!”).  They want to hear about Aunt Meghan and how I spoke for her for the first four years of her life…especially if it involved asking for a cookie (“Meghan wants a cookie….and I guess I do too”).  They want to hear about my Grandpa Jack, Nannie’s husband who passed over 15 years ago, and how funny he was and how he used to ask 20-something waitresses out on dates for his chubby 13-year-old grandson sitting right there in front of him, staring into his plate, mortified (“You’re pretty cute for a girl!  This is my grandson.  We call him ‘Toad.’  He needs a date.  Whatdayasay?”).  They feel connected to us through these family stories, and they know they too are part of this family chronicle. 

Heritage.

One day, when on Christmas break, Shay, with her shimmering eyes, looked up at me and asked if Grandpa Jack would have liked her, and if he would have liked her being his great-granddaughter.

I tell her of course he would have liked her and that he would have been very proud of her.

She nodded, smiled, and walked away.

I sat down and thought about the question.  Grandpa Jack was wonderful.  He was funny for sure.  There are very few memories I have of him that don’t make me smile and laugh.  But he was far from progressive, especially when it came to race.  I never saw him be outwardly racist to anyone, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have considered himself a prejudiced person.  He would have loved the girls.  Who wouldn’t?

But he sure was fond of the “N” word.  I never knew if he used it simply to get a rise out of people or if he truly harbored racist beliefs.  A lot of things Jack did were merely for effect.  I never heard him discuss race.  Only heard him use the word, which was usually followed with immediate admonishment from my mother or grandmother.  Usually, "Not around the kids!"  But the fact that he used the word, even as a joke, showed a lack of sensitivity stunning even for the mid-1980's.

The realization of this is jarring.  I’d never thought of him in relation to my black children.  Perhaps I’d been so fond of Jack that his faults (which, like most of us, were many) never tainted my memory of him.  Through the retelling of stories about how ornery he was, Jack has transcended the man I’m sure he actually was and become a family folk hero.  A character in his own tall tales.  When we’re all together, someone invariably brings up a Jack-ism.  The dirtier, the better.  Most of the stories end with sweet Nannie flipping Jack the bird at Easter dinner, the sight at which Mom yells, “Mother!”

Heritage.

Each side of my family has some crazy aunt or uncle that has conducted an inordinate amount of perhaps-iffy genealogy, so I have the benefit of tracing family roots pretty far back.  The Welch side claims they have an ancestor that came over from Scotland with Braddock’s Army during the French and Indian Wars.  In those long intervening years, my part of the Welch clan became staunch Methodists and settled squarely on the plains of Kansas, where they farmed. 

Someone was born in a sod house or a dugout or some combination of the two, carved out of the hard southwestern prairie.  I think it was my Grandpa Ray.

My mother’s side of the family is a little less certain.  Old books, strange antiquated maps, worn antiques, and illegibly-scrawled notes and ledgers mark their diaspora.  I even have an old clock on my mantle that is said to be a wedding present from my great-great-great grandparents to my great-great grandmother, given to her on her wedding day before she traveled by covered wagon from West Virginia to Missouri, never to see her parents again.  The clock still works, and I wind that clock every few days to keep the chimes going.  Most of my mom’s side considers Blue Springs, Missouri their ancestral home.  It was where Nannie’s father, my great-grandfather “Spot,” ran a corner drug store.

So, one half of my family is set firmly in Kansas, while the other side is firmly in Missouri.

Ever hear of Bleeding Kansas during the Civil War?

My great grandmother “Tate,” Nannie’s mother, used to tell a story about how her grandfather or whoever had fought Kansas Jayhawkers during the Civil War and would not pledge allegiance to the Union.  As a result, most of their property was “appropriated” by the pro-Union militia.  Once the war was over, my great-something grandfather sat down to a picnic with his neighbors…and was served dinner on his own family china.  It had been stolen from his home.  According to the story, he had been the one “true to the Cause,” while his neighbors had pilfered his property when he was out fighting for the Confederacy.

Tate loved this story.  It was full of tragedy and romance and an affinity for Dixie.  She wore it like a badge of honor.  So much so, in fact, that when Nannie married Grandpa Jack, who himself hailed from Kansas, Tate disapproved of her marrying a “Yankee.”

One day, when I was in high school, my mother revealed to me with a great amount of sorrow that one of my ancestors had noted in some dusty, inscrutable, hand-scrawled book that had come to Missouri with him that he had brought a wife, a child…and a house slave.

I have at least one ancestor who owned slaves.

Heritage.

Now, enter my children.  Children who want to know anything and everything about my family, who they were and what they were like.  They want to know because they want to feel connected to me and to some traceable line that makes sense to them.  They want to know why I laugh when I talk about Grandpa Jack.  They want to know about that clock on the mantle.  They want to know about that long-distant uncle who had a peg leg because he got run over by a train.  They want feel a part of the long family chronicle.

Heritage?

January 19^th is Confederate Hero’s Day in Texas.  It was designated in 1973.

Not 1873.  1973.  And it is no accident that it sometimes coincides with Martin Luther King Day.  Some people get off of work to wave flags on an overpass.

Heritage.

Mo came home that night and was quiet.  When I was putting the girls to bed, she asked if those people on the overpass hated black people.

My first inclination was to start talking about how dumb those people are, whooping and hollering and waving that bright orange flag with the blue, star-spangled cross back and forth.  I wanted to start spitting about hillbillies and goatees and no teeth and diesel trucks and guns and cousin kissin’ and chew-backie spit.  I wanted to vomit up my own vitriol.  Because now I see these people through the eyes of my own kids.  Before I’d just ignored it, maybe made a “yeeeee-haaaawww!” joke or two, but in the end it wouldn’t have bothered me much. 

But it bothers me now.  A lot.

Instead of entering such a tirade, one that would only perpetuate stereotypes that aren’t very kind or universally true, I choked back my desire to vent.  It wouldn’t have helped anything, and it certainly wouldn’t have helped Mo in that moment.  Because it’s lazy to just assume the “other side” is stupid.  It’s lazy and honestly dangerous.  If you can’t or won’t understand it, you can’t or won’t fix it. 

“I think it’s more complicated than that,” I say.  “This is Texas.  It’s the South.  I think they believe they are celebrating their Southern heritage, not necessarily protesting against black people.”

“But you don’t have a Confederate flag!  Why do they like it so much?”

“Well, first off, I’m not Southern so it wouldn’t make any sense.  Your mom and I are from Kansas.”

“But you live here.  Aren’t you Texan now?”

“Sort of…but not by heritage.  I mean, I live here, but I don’t root for the Dallas Cowboys, do I?  I still root for the Chiefs and the Royals.”

“But I’m from here,” she says.

“Yeah, I know.”

“And I don’t like that flag.”

“Yeah, I know.  Me either.”

“So if it is just about being Southern or Texan, why do they wave a flag that most black people don’t like?  Are they trying to tell me that I’m not really Southern or Texan?”

It’s the million dollar question.  We hear “Heritage Not Hate” all the time from Confederate apologists.  But what “heritage” is being celebrated there? 

I think about the duality of my own heritage.  I think back on how funny Jack was, how much we all loved him and how kind he was, but that he used the “N” word with ease.  I think about the clock on my mantle, a prized heirloom, but that it might have been in the hands of a slave owner.  I think about a multi-great grandfather fighting Jayhawkers during the Border Wars.  And I think of that long ago infantryman from Scotland, setting foot on new shores to kill Frenchmen.  And Indians.

It’s hard to tease the shameful out from the noble.  I can understand the desire to gloss over the ugly parts, even deny them.  I can understand that now, when I look at my kids. 

“I doubt they’re actively thinking about that part Mo,” I sigh.  “They’re just proud, and today they celebrate their ancestors in the Civil War.”

Mo took my hand, and she looked at our intertwined fingers. 

“But it makes me so sad,” she said.  “Don’t they know that it makes me and Shay sad that they love something that was so mean?  If I had walked up there to those people with the flags, would they have been mean to me?”

“Probably not,” I said.  “I think they probably would have been very nice to you.  Because you’re likable and friendly.  I’m sure they would talk to you and hug you and ask you about school.  Most of them anyway.  They’d probably hand you a flag and ask you to wave it with them.”

“But I don’t like that flag and I wouldn’t wave it.  Now I’d wave a Texas flag or something.  That’s a flag I can like.”  Her eyes darted about in the dimness of her bedroom.  “I’m from Texas too,” she said.  “Don’t they think about that?  Don’t they care?  Do I get to have some heritage?”

Mo and Shay both say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning to the American flag.  Afterward, nearly in the same breath, they turn and say the Texas State Pledge (something I find incredibly bizarre as a Kansan).  They say the same pledge as the kids of the flag-wavers.  They love the same things and identify with the same earth.  They have the same home. 

But not always the same flag.

“Sure you do babe.  But mindless attachment to heritage only keeps us from growing,” I say.  “I think the people waving those flags ignore some of the bad parts of the past.  They ignore these bad parts because they love their grandparents, and their grandparents’ grandparents.  I think they’ve been told for so long not to forget where they came from, to be proud of their ancestors no matter what, that now they can’t admit there were things that were dark or shameful or wrong.“

“But they know slavery was wrong, right?  So why…”

“Well, sure they do.  I mean, most of them.  There were probably a few people up on that bridge who were white supremacists and who believe black people are inferior to whites. But I’m sure there were also people up on that bridge with good hearts and souls.  But they have trouble admitting to themselves that something they are so fond of fought to maintain something so awful.  They can’t admit it because to them, it would mean they would somehow have to personally apologize for themselves and for their entire lineage.  And that goes against everything they’ve been taught, so they get very defensive.” 

“So is heritage bad?” she asks.

“No babe, not bad.  But one has to be careful not to put too much stock in it.  What your ancestors did doesn’t run down to you through birth.  Good or bad.  And it's good to have reverence for your ancestors, to remember all the good things about them.  I know I would want to be remembered fondly.  But no one is perfect, and their sins aren’t yours to atone.  No one should be asking you to apologize for something in the past over which you had no control.  But what you are asked to do is care.  And pay attention.  And be honest.  And learn."

Mo looked at the wall.  “I don’t know anything about my ancestors.  Not really.”

I gently took her hand and said, “It’s out there.  You just have to find it if you want.  But realize it might not all be pretty.  Some of it will hurt.” 

She rolled back over and stared pensively at me.

“Do you have any bad things in your heritage?” she asked.

“Sure I do,” I said, thinking of what my great-something’s house slave might have looked like. 

Had she looked like Mo?  Or Shay?  Had she had a husband somewhere?  Kids? 

“We all do.  No one is perfect.  And neither are we.  But,” I said, pulling the blanket up over her.  “We’re making new heritage.  You and Mom and me and Shay.  We can be proud of that.  That can be our story.  And your grandkids and their grandkids can read about it in old records and tell stories about how our family came to be.  I hope that one day something of ours is on their mantle, and that they are proud of it.  Proud of us.”

It was quiet for a few moments, and I thought Mo had gone to sleep.  When I got up to leave Mo mumbled, “I love you Daddy.”

“I love you too.  See you in the morning.”

Heritage.