Finally

I called my grandmother tonight on the phone just to see how her brother was doing.  Of course I have other things I want to tell her and I also want to see how she is doing.  I call her a few times a week now.  I never used to do that.  As my grandfather became ill, about 6 months ago, I began to call her once a week.  As he worsened my calls increased.  Now that she is a widow, I try to call 3 times a week.  

The calls are short.  I don’t want to be a burden to her.  I know that so many people call her all day and, in being such a classic and lovely woman, she will put her best smile on even for a phone conversation.  Recently I did call her because I needed her.  I felt really hesitant to do that, especially because the call had to do with my own marriage troubles.  I didn’t want her to hear about my marriage (even in its state of disrepair) and then consequently long for her marriage.  But, I have to realize that she will do that anyway.  And then something incredible and surprising happened, but also not so incredible and amazing, I suppose.  I poured my junk out for her to see.  I knew she would understand and she did.  She empathized with me about how hard marriage is.  And then she was able to tell me how hard it is for her that my grampa is gone.  Then we both cried on the phone.  

Back in December we threw this huge party at our house for a family member.  It was too much for me.  I can plan these things, but the execution makes me itchy.  I played the perfect hostess and tried my best.  The next day I called my grandmother and I told her that I don’t know how she did that for years with my grandfather.  And for some strange reason it cracked her up.  She just laughed and laughed on the other side of the phone.  It was hearty, belly, tear-producing laughter.  It was contagious and we both just laughed.  I called to tell her about it because as I was in the midst of serving appetizers, I thought of my grandmother entertaining in the 1950’s.  Her and I are so much alike.  We are best suited in the work place and out of the home.  I am a much better cook than her, but we are wild women.  We need to be free range.  We will do things that we have to do, but it will kill us.  We will serve our nicest food to the biggest bull-shitters and roll our eyes fiercely as we stroll back to the kitchen for more.    

I told her about my experience out of exhaustion and we connected in this funny little way.  And then she just couldn’t stop laughing about how ridiculous it was.  I know exactly what she looked like on the other side of the phone.  Her breath got wheezy she laughed so hard.  

This evening, during our phone call, I shared with her another thought that I knew she could relate to.  Again she laughed and laughed.  My mother and aunt were with her and they didn’t know what was going on.  I laughed with her.  I laughed because she was laughing, and because life is ridiculous, and because I knew that her laughter was genuine.  I didn’t intend to make her laugh, I never do.  But I am so glad I did.  She told me that she will probably wake up in the night and remember and laugh some more.  I believe her.  I have seen and heard her do this.  It’s like she stores little bits of funny jokes in her pocket for a late night snack that she can enjoy on her way to the bathroom to sustain her for the long night of darkness and loneliness.  

In the moments after laughing where you sigh, and giggle remnants pop up, my heart felt full and glad and satisfied.  You see, it is not just that my mother and I have a strained relationship, it is that out relationship is non-traditional.  My mother is biologically my mother and she carried me in her womb and she has the cesarian scars to show for it.  But for all intensive purposes, she was not able to be the mother I needed when I needed it.  We do not have a traditional relationship.  I am her peer.  She is my peer.  She did not mother me.  In fact, I mothered her.  So our relationship exists because we have a similar family circle.   

I have always wanted a traditional mother, though.  Everyone does.  When we don’t have one we have a huge hole in our souls.  I am lacking in the parental unit department.  It has been a long and lonely road.  Yet my grandmother has been my constant.  She has been my sun.  I can safely orbit her and know where I am and where my home is.  I have realized that my grandmother is my mother.  When we share these moments and they make me feel whole, I have these tastes of pure happiness and completion I have been looking for.  It doesn’t make up for the times that I have felt like I have been hurled toward a black hole, or a concrete wall, but it helps.  Those moments where we are so strongly attached over the phone, draw me out from the event horizon of the black hole.

In my college anatomy and physiology course I remember the day we learned about gametes.  Males produce sperm constantly.  Their bodies are on a clock where they constantly make new, fresh, sperm.  This is why Larry King has tons of babies and he is an old, wrinkly, man.  Females produce a fixed number of eggs and these are always with us.  We are born with these eggs.  All of our ovum that we are ever gonna have are in our little baby bodies before we are born.  This means that the egg that made me were once in my mother's ovaries whilst she was in her mother’s womb.  My grandmother once carried me in her own womb.  That shit is profound.  When I heard that in class I thought, well at least the woman I love the most carried me in her womb.

I feel so glad for my snippets of joy that I get to have with my gramma.  I appreciate all of the memories and I cling to them.  I am so happy that I get to go through the relationship evolution and maturation with her that most children go through with their parents.   

Thank you, more please.

I hope and pray so desperately for all the motherless children out there to find someone that can bring them this feeling, too.  I hope for you, I really do.  I pray for you, I really do.  

Biracial Baggage- more on race...Surprise!

I was dealt this hand.  It is a strange hand, or at least that is what I think about it.  I am biracial.  My mother is white and my father is black.  To be an american with that parentage is no walk in the park.  I will not explain any of that in this post.  That is hard and exhausting.  But I will explain my experience, which is also hard and exhausting.

I do not look like my parents.  If I am in any store with my mother or any member or her family, it is not assumed that we are together.  If I am in a restaurant waiting with anyone in my father’s family, it is not assumed that I am one of their party.  I am brown.  I look Latino.  I look Hispanic.  I look Mexican.  I do not pass for Black.  I do not pass for white.  It was not a problem for me that I did not look like anyone in my family (except for my brother and my sister), until I was 5 when someone so kindly pointed it out to me (proof that race is a social construct; but a construct that is given so much weight).  

It was hard to feel anxious as a child.  I felt anxious because I didn't look like my father.  I was afraid someone would take me from him.  It was hard to have people admire my mother for adopting brown siblings.  I hated explaining myself and my existence.  I mean, who likes to do that anyway?  No one.  No one likes to explain who they are or how they are.  It is dehumanizing.  

I knew that I belonged to them and they knew that they belonged to me, but everyone else needed convincing.  That quickly tires a child.  Grown ups thought of me as a pleasant child.  I had good manners.  My hair was always creatively displayed.  I was energetic, witty, and talkative.  I could engage adults in a conversation.  And then suddenly they would look at me and say, “what are you?”  This continues to this day.  As an adult, I get it less, because I intimidate people (this is what friends tell me).  But I will occasionally find a brave person whose curiosity gets the best of them and they blurt out, “what are you?  what is your backround?  what ethnicity are you?  what is your heritage?”  They try to be diplomatic about it.  But once you open your mouth to ask a stranger these things, you can no longer be considered a kind person or a diplomat.  

You are being a nosey shithead.  

I know that people hear the way I speak and they see my skin and the 2 things do not sit right with them.  They want to know about my race because then they can categorize me and put me in a box.  They want a cheat sheet on how to treat me.  Latina, Middle Eastern, Native American, Indian, Southeast Asian- who knows?  

But, oh my, they are curious.  Then they find out that the only language I speak is english, and they really get confused.  I recently found out that was another way for people to ask about my race. I thought it was kind of genius of them.  But my answer only confused them more, which pleased me greatly.  

I used to answer people, gladly.  Or I would have them take a guess.  Now, I just sigh in exasperation.  I should just come up with some smart ass answer.  But I was raised to be more polite than that.  And I also know that I am still a minority, so I need to be kind and diplomatic so people won’t judge other minorities harshly because of me; the of the many burdens for People of Color.

Once when I was in high school my mother and I were at a large craft store finding a pattern for a costume.  A woman with a cart wandered over to look at patterns, too.  In her cart was a little girl, all of 4 years old.  The woman looked at my mother and I and said, “Can my daughter meet your daughter?  Can she meet you both?  I want her to see people that look like us.”  The moment was profound and charged with a kind of electricity I have never felt before or since.  Sometimes I feel something similar when I see a biracial family, but it is not as poignant as this moment was.  The woman was white and her daughter was brown like me.  The woman saw us and immediately knew what we were.  She truly saw us.  And she wanted us to see her and her child.  Most importantly of all, she wanted to give her child a taste of seeing people like them- a person like her.  My mother said, “Sure,” and we walked over to wave at her daughter sitting in the cart.  The mother said, “Look!  This girl is just like you.”  And she smiled at her daughter who shyly glanced at me.  I was glad that this woman was brave enough to speak with us.  Seeing them together was just as important for me as it was for the girl.  When we see people that look like us, we feel less alone. 

It is just so rare that I see someone just like me.  

My sister always says that she feels complete when we are all together as a family.  Or at least, when there is a heard of brown people orbited by a stray white or black person, we are better equipped to handle the side eyes or the comments.  Together it more easily rolls off our collective brown skins.  Together we can laugh about it in the car afterwards.  Together we can joke about how we couldn’t put an entire spanish sentence together if our life depended on it.  Together we can make jokes about race to lighten the mood, and our laughter eases the tension because we all understand how awkward the jokes are.  

Thinking of this moment, with the young girl and her mother, makes me weep.  I know what that loneliness feels like and I know that insatiable desire to fit somewhere.  This thirst is not often quenched when you inhabit the kind of skin that I do.  I never feel black enough.  I never will be white enough.  Alas, I am not Latina and I never pretend to be.  I straddle these 2 divided worlds and I have to make my home somewhere in between.  And I know that no matter where I rest, someone in my family doesn’t quite get it or doesn’t understand why I placed myself here or there or anywhere.  

It is quite lonely here.