Monday, January 21, 2019

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Martin Luther King, Jr - March 8, 1965


I wanted to titled this post with another Tom Petty quote, but I honestly couldn't imagine sitting down and publishing something on this day without honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.

I was two years old when Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke those words, and there's a very real probability that I actually heard him speak them. We watched TV at my house, thank you, Jesus. I love TV, and I don't mind admitting it. ANYWAY. More than likely, I either heard those words as they were spoken or shortly afterward on the news.

Back then, watching the news was a family ritual, and it certainly was at our house at 609 N. E Street (the wrong side of the tracks, I'm compelled to add) in Duncan, Oklahoma. I was able to toddle around the outside boundaries of that probably 900 sq. foot, white frame house pretty much as I pleased.  I was spanked daily, and sometimes more than once, for going outside the boundaries set by my very strict (and wisely so in my case) mama. A good day was a day not spanked which just meant I didn't get caught going outside the boundaries. I still did it, I just didn't get caught on those days.

I started learning from a VERY early age that growing up is about getting bigger boundaries until finally, you're able to set your own. But, those were "the good ole days" it doesn't happen like that anymore because everything's different now and wah wah wah. I hear that all the time. My generation of people love saying it. They say they don't love saying it, but they continue to say it all the freaking time. I don't believe in the "good ole days." It's ridiculous to me we can't learn from history any better than to have figured out that EVERY generation looks back and sees "good ole days."

My daddy taught me better. He's the one who taught me to be progressive. He's as wise as any person I've ever known or probably ever could know. He used to take the time to answer my questions (and I had so many) when he took me to ride horses with him every day.  I remember specifically asking him if things were better in the old days and he was quick to answer, "No." He told me that things were a lot better for him NOW-this was the 70s-than then because he was able to give me and my sister more opportunities than he had. He'd grown up poor. What you'd call "dirt poor." Daddy was born in Coalgate, Oklahoma and graduated from Clarita High School with a class of maybe 9 people in 1953. He broke his first horse when he was 12 and used his passion for horses to earn money for our college tuition. He'd work as a mechanic at Carl Campbell Chevrolet all day until 6, arrive home in greasy boots and coveralls, clean up, eat dinner, then boot back up cowboy style and head to the barn. "The barn" was always a rented patch of land with a barn on it, and he always kept a Shetland pony or other small horse there for me to ride while he worked. We went through a couple of different "barn"locations during my childhood. I loved changing to a new one because it gave me a new place to explore with my horse while Daddy did his work. It was during the pickup ride to and from the barn that I'd ask him questions.

When you watch your parents work and toil and save to provide you with an opportunity, you don't waste it. Getting a college degree was never an option for me if for no other reason (and there were plenty of other good reasons) than I could never allow myself to see all the time and effort my parents put into something end badly for them. But I'd trade in my college education altogether if it meant I had to give up that time I spent with my daddy at the barn. I totally would.

 He'd tell me stories about how it was for him growing up. His "old days." One of my favorites, probably because it sounded like an Old West story, was the time he'd almost seen a man killed outside a barn near Coalgate. From what I could tell, they'd meet up at barns out in the country to drink, dance, smoke, and generally chase women which sounded exactly like a nightclub to me. Due to our strict religious upbringing, recalling the days of smoking, drinking and dancing was pretty frowned on by my mother, so I always had to piece together a lot of the details in Daddy's stories. On this particular night he'd heard someone was coming to exact justice (I think over a woman) and left the scene before it all went down. Smart man, my dad. Apparently, vigilante justice was pretty common back then and many times people didn't even go to jail over things if the consensus of the general community was just to "let it go." That sounds rough. But does it? Really? It seems to me we do the same sort of thing in different ways today.

Daddy also told me stories of racial injustice he witnessed firsthand. Sadly, I can tell you stories like that myself. I don't have to hear real life stories about lynchings to know things are better now than in any past time. I remember how the black kids in Duncan had their own swimming pool and their own elementary school named after a Confederate general no less! How messed up is that? I remember hearing the n-word come out of peoples' mouths as if it were this benign thing, just a regular descriptor of a certain type of folk. And most of those people were related to me.

Our world of political correctness drives me crazy at times too-I get it. But seriously. We've got to own our authentic past and move forward and be HAPPY about moving forward. I had a wonderful childhood riding my bike all over the mean streets on the wrong side of the tracks in Duncan, Oklahoma. Those mean streets were actually very kind to me. It was idyllic in many ways, and I wouldn't trade it for any other way to grow up. Yes boys and girls, I used to buy an entire lunch bag of candy(bigger, better candy than we have now) for barely a dollar. But I guarantee you, my experience in the dime store buying candy was not at all the same for me as  the child from Robert E. Lee Elementary going into the exact same store. It. Just. Wasn't. I think they had a grocery store over in "colored town" back then. Yes. It was named or at least openly referred to as Colored Town and if anyone wants to argue with me that it wasn't that way you're insane. I was there. It was a real thing, and I heard it and saw it for myself. Heck, I may have even said it myself. But if I did, it's only because I didn't know better. "When you know better, you do better," said Maya Angelou.

I should probably add to all of this that I can only assume that my little town knows better and does better now. I know for a fact that none of those ugly things I mentioned above still exist there. The school was closed in 2006. I'm sorry if it hurts anyone's feelings that I'm willing to speak openly about something that basically happened in every small town across the Southern states. Duncan was no different than any other town like Duncan.  As far as I can see, they've made progress. I don't live there or vote there. I feel privileged to have grown up in Duncan and been afforded the opportunities provided to me by my hard-working parents. They picked a great place to raise kids. Duncan is part of my American dream because it's my history, and I love it. I love it best from afar, but I still love it.

But now I understand that the "good ole days" are just a perception that exists only in the minds of the people who perceive it that way. All we really have is today. Right now. This moment. And if we continue to imagine some delusional, comfortable past, we'll never move forward or we'll move so slowly that we become part of the problem instead of the solution.

It also makes complete sense to me that things would seem worse now based on sheer numbers of people and our advancements in technology. We've grown at this tremendous pace technologically while ignoring social and emotional human development. We're so busy playing with our toys that we've become developmentally stunted, causing us to USE our toys to hurt each other. It's so sad. Society is full of toddlers who can't get along.

We can't just keep claiming that the good ole days were better. They were exactly the same. And while I'm at it, kids haven't gotten worse these days. They are the SAME. The raw material of children is basically the same as it always was. We expose them to different things and it changes their development. WE do that. Kids don't do that. None of this is their fault, they just have to try and learn to navigate it, and we suck at teaching them how because we're still learning ourselves.

For as long as we don't look back and actually LEARN from the past, this cycle will I guess eventually become the vortex that takes down humanity as we know it. But it doesn't have to be.
We can face up to facts, own our authentic past, and stand up for things that will make a difference long after we're gone. We have to speak up about things that matter. If not us, who will do it?

I imagine my mama hearing Dr. King speak those words back in March of 1965 while her maddeningly curious, refuser-of-boundaries two-year old played in the floor, talking to baby dolls and stuffed animals, arranging them just so for whatever two-year-old scenario might be playing in her head. I can almost hear Mama say out loud (Who knows, maybe she did.), "No one has to worry about this one remaining silent because she never shuts up." And she was right.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Thanks for reading. Whoever you are.

peace&love and grace,

pam





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Friday, January 11, 2019

You don't have to live like a refugee.-Tom Petty

I was thinking about deleting my last post, but I decided against it. I'm just going to be real. I'm going to write things here "on the fly" and let it go. Why shouldn't I? I mean, we're only talking about grammar problems for the most part, and a lot of the people who may actually read this won't recognize those problems.  I'm not a great writer when it comes to grammar. I want to be. I'm still learning. And yes, I'm a public school teacher. I think that statement alone inhibits me from being free with my writing....in more ways than one. LOTS more ways.

Maybe that's what I should write about. I don't know. I'm still figuring it out.

I'm writing all of this here for C and K and D. My grandchildren. And they're just the beginning. Those initials represent individual lives who will one day be my age. They'll be 55 years old and wondering how the heck they arrived at the place where they are. And if they've learned grace...even if it's willful grace (the kind you have to pretend to extend until you're able to actually extend it) it will be enough. And that's all any of us really need. Enough.

I've been attempting for a good while now to figure out WHY the heck I married T-dub in the first place. I'm pretty sure I've figured it out. And I've forgiven any perceived (by me) wrongs done to me that resulted in my decision to marry him. I'd go so far as to thank them, but that would be making a commitment to willfully hurting others in the same way. I can't do that. But I can thank GOD for allowing me to live and learn through the situations that I've been through.

I could rewrite the previous paragraph with the name of my first husband replacing T-dub. That's tough for me. WAY tougher than dealing with the reasons I married T-dub. But I do understand now exactly why and how I decided to make that choice as well. And I don't regret it because I understand fully why I did it. And because that marriage produced two of the finest human beings who will ever grace planet Earth.

I'll stop for now. I have school tomorrow.

Thanks for reading. Whoever you are.

peace&love and grace,

pam


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