Author Archives: Tess M Perko

Newly Married and Sheltering-in-Place

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” my new husband has told me about a thousand times.

That’s nice, I think, but now we’re sheltering-in-place. 

Bob and I married in April last year and just celebrated our first wedding anniversary.  One of our goals was to spend the rest of our lives in a relationship that forever stayed in a “honeymoon stage.”

We both have grown children, and this marriage promised to be a time just for us, not for raising children.  Just our time.  Bob retired before we got married, and this January, I changed my job from full-time to part-time so we could spend more time together.  (Being a college professor is so much fun that I just couldn’t retire completely.)

What a nice idea, but whoever thought that we would have to spend 24/7 with each other.  This shelter-in-place requirement is the ultimate test of our new marriage.

Back in the old days when I was single, I would teach all day and then come home to my quiet little library and finish work at home.  My desk looks out onto my back yard where the roses bloom, the hummingbirds flit in and out of the trees, and the Adirondack chairs beckon to me.  A wall of bookcases stands within arm’s reach to help me plan my courses, research literature and lecture topics, and grade my college student papers. 

Now, my once lively courses, glowing with the energy and over-ripeness of young adults, have been forced online.  Gone are the daily face-to-face smiles and overwhelming questions.  In exchange are hours of planning, documenting, emailing, and recording course instructions—all over the internet.  Even though I talk to my students in videos and see their eager faces via Zoom office hours, the days are quieter, less exciting, and all at home.

Bob wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.  When my classes got transitioned to online, I could see the joy in his face as he realized I’d be home with him every day, every hour, every minute, and every second.  Apparently, he decided that, since I had to stay home, he’d get to spend all that new time with me. 

If I sat at my desk to record a video, he stared from the perch of his leather chair just outside my library.  He didn’t seem to care if I was grading essays, talking to students or colleagues via Zoom, or answering emails; he sat and ogled at me with a smile on his face. 

First, I closed the double doors between the library and the family room so I couldn’t see him and he couldn’t see me.  That worked fine except my sensitive fourth dimension could still feel his energy pulsating my way like a friendly and happy alien with blinking eyes and beating heart. 

Then, he’d turn on the television, which is right outside the double doors. 

The hardest part of being a college English professor is grading essays.  Professors don’t just write a grade on the essay; if we want our students to improve their critical thinking and writing skills, we have to offer them detailed advice about how to improve their work.  If I had known about the stress of this part of my job, I doubt if I would have chosen it.  (Some things, like raising children, should never be explained ahead of time, or no one would do them.)

So critical thinking and writing advice takes time and thought, and, when a television is blasting just outside the door of my workspace, I can’t think. 

Earlier this year, we’d already bought a new television for the spare bedroom so that Bob could go upstairs to watch tv if I was working at home.  Why wasn’t he doing that, I wondered?

What I have learned in the last thirty days of this sheltering-in-place episode is that wives have to tell husbands exactly what they want them to do and when they want them to do it.  And just because they told them yesterday does not mean that they won’t have to tell them the same thing today.  

I stick my head out of the double doors.  “Honey, would you mind watching tv upstairs.  I’m grading essays and I can’t think,” I say.

“I’d rather watch tv down here so I can be with you,” he replies.  Fortunately, even though he’s pretty intuitive, he can’t read my mind that is swirling with fantastic visions about how I’d like to see him in outer space light years away, floating like a fat-suited astronaut in between the stars.  Up, up, and away.

“Remember, we bought that other tv so you could go up there and so I could work without being disturbed,” I say sweetly, with a syrupy smile on my face.  “I’d really appreciate it, Sweetie.”

“O.K.” he says with a glum look on his face which makes me feel just terrible.  Why does he have to be so sweet?  Just once, I wish he’d stand in front of me and say, “I need some time alone right now.”

The other irritating thing about my husband, especially now that I am prevented from socially distancing from him, is that he’s dervishly handsome.  You know, the kind of guy that’s tall, lanky, long arms and legs, with a bad-boy grin.  When we used to go to church on Sundays, he’d sit down, lean back, and cup his elbows over the back of the pew like he was watching a basketball game at a stadium.  Who does that in church?  If I turned to look at him when he did this, he’d lean over and kiss me. 

Bob is a former basketball player and he’s so knowledgeable about sports that he makes the calls even before sportscasters when he watches games on tv.  Which brings me to another recent wrinkle in the fabric of our honeymoon marriage.  No sports on tv right now.  Steph Curry and all his friends are sheltering-at-home too. 

If this Corona Virus Pandemic hadn’t happened, Bob would have flown to Las Vegas in March for four days of betting on March Madness, and I would have had four days of girl time and solitude.  If Steph Curry and LeBron James weren’t evicted from the basketball courts, Bob would be watching the Cleveland Cavaliers and their NBA colleagues two or three nights a week, and I would have time to read a book while the crowds cheered and yelped in the background.  

The other sports that I miss is Sunday afternoon golf tournaments.  Not that I watched them, but Bob loved to watch the last day of these star-studded tournaments with Phil Mickelson, Rory Mcilroy, and Tiger Woods.  What a great time for me to go out browsing the furniture consignment store or go wine-tasing with my girlfriends.  Those sweet Sundays once upon a time. 

This man just won’t leave me alone.  Before this whole tragedy happened to our marriage, I used to fall asleep at night and dream about my new husband, just like I did before we were married.  In my dreams, we’d be walking on the beach holding hands, drinking a glass of wine at the counter of a winery, leaning over the balcony of our stateroom on a cruise on the Danube, sharing calamari at the bar of a golf course, or laughing on the Adirondack chairs in the back yard. 

Now when I sleep, I dream of being alone. 

I’ve been working on developing more cultural humility so that I can become a better professor to my students.  Developing cultural humility entails putting yourself in the shoes of the other person so that you can empathize with their situation and feelings. 

I’ve been wondering how I could use cultural humility to deal with this new development in my marriage.  This means I would have to think like I’m wearing a salt and pepper mustache that curves over a sensual mouth and a polo shirt striped across broad shoulders.  How would I think if I was Bob?

Someone once told me that men think through their stomachs, so I guess, if it was morning, I’d want to eat my banana and bowl of Cheerios.  If later in the day, I’d want a cup of cashews while I was watching the news or a hamburger for lunch.  If it was 7 o’clock at night, I’d likely be thinking about having that sniffer of brandy. 

Wait, this isn’t helping me.  I don’t think that embodying Bob’s stomach will help me understand him any better. 

All I can think about is my own perspective during this hopefully once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.  I need alone time.  I want space.  I yearn for quiet moments where no one asks me what I’m doing, or when I’m going to be done, or what I just put in the washer, or what I think about this or that polo shirt. 

This is going to require an intervention.  I need to get all the individuals affected by this crisis and sit them down together to resolve the predicament of t-o-o m-u-c-h Bob.  Everyone is going to have to express how they feel and how they think we can solve our problem. 

So tomorrow I’m going to get everyone in the same room—that would be, I guess, Bob and me—and have a big family meeting.  I’m going to tell Bob that I don’t want to be the bad guy anymore.  I don’t want to have to ask him to turn off the tv and go up to the spare room to watch his annoying news shows.  He’s going to have to take more responsibility from now on, so I know he’s thinking about me and leaving me alone at the same time.

What a wonderful solution.  After our little family meeting, we’ll be able to resume our honeymoon marriage, and I’ll be able to fall asleep and dream about Bob again. 

Sometimes, cultural humility not just about perspective, but also about honest communication.

My Mother, the General: Sheltering-in-Place

Photo by Damir Bosnjak

I asked my 91-year-old mother if the Corona Virus Pandemic was as bad as World War II.

“It’s worse” she said.  “During World War II, we could go outside.  We worked.  We played.  We walked in the sun.”

She was in eighth grade when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and a junior in high school on May 8, 1945, the day the Axis powers surrendered.

“When we heard the war ended, everybody ran outside and celebrated.  We partied all night,” she remembers.  “I don’t think that’s going to happen this time.”

What I heard in my mother’s voice was hopelessness.  As we talked on the phone, she sighed over and over again, anxiety filling each breath with fear. 

During the last six months, I’ve been on a clear journey of trying to develop my own cultural humility so that I can become a stronger college professor and help my marginalized students better succeed.  When I heard my mother’s sighs, however, I recognized that I could work on developing some cultural humility within my own family relationships. 

Two and a half years ago, when my mother became unable to care for herself at home, I and my siblings helped her move into an assisted living facility.  Since we have a LARGE family, all of us have contributed to visiting her regularly, taking her shopping, driving her to her doctors and dentists, paying her bills, completing her tax returns, buying her supplies, taking her shopping, and planning family holidays and birthday parties for her to attend.  From the perspective of being loved, she has been the luckiest mother and grandmother in the world.    

My mother, however, has macular degeneration, can’t read small type, and finds it difficult to sign her name.  Instead of engaging in activities such as reading, she has created a new life for herself at her assisted-living home by socializing with other 90+-year-old women, exercising, playing BINGO with giant BINGO cards, and participating in discussions about topics found on Google.  I am impressed with her ability to form relationships with new neighbors and, also, with her caregivers.  She keeps track of their lives and even gives them some of her firmly-expressed advice.

“Don’t go on walks by yourself, Miriam,” I saw her tell one of her new friends. “You could fall and break your hip.”

“Did you run that marathon last weekend, Sylvia?” she asked one of the waitresses at lunch when I was eating with her one day.  I didn’t even know my mother knew what a marathon was and was even more surprised that she was interested in people who ran them.

My mother never was a strong reader.  At one point during her retirement, she joined a Bible group at her church.  She attended two of the meetings and then gave it up.  “Why’d you stop going?” I asked. 

“I didn’t understand anything,” she said.  “That’s why we have priests.”  Instead of thinking too much about spiritual values, my mother is comfortable just following rules and using already-prepared prayers to get her into heaven.

Clearly, she is not the philosophical type, but she’s excellent at belting out orders to her children or care-givers.  If she had been born later in the twentieth century, she would have made a formidable general in the military; she knows how to command and expects complete compliance. 

She’s strong at math as well and likes to think about how much money she has in the bank and plays Solitaire.  She also loves to pull the handles on slot machines whenever she can manage to get a ride to a casino.  A numbers gal, for sure. 

Which means, when the Corona Virus Pandemic forced her assisted living facility to shelter-in-place, her strengths did not prepare her for staying in her apartment all day by herself.  She’s a social animal, not a solitary thinker. 

She’s endured the slowly-dwindling social activities at her facility.  First, visitors had to use hand sanitizer, then they were locked out.  The residents played BINGO while sitting six-feet apart, then they perched in chairs at the doorway of their apartments and followed their exercise leader while using their own personally-assigned exercise props.  Now, all social activities are terminated, and, if residents want to talk to each other, they have to make a phone call.

The trouble is, unless my mother has your phone number programmed into her cell phone, she can’t phone you.  She can’t see well enough to punch in a new number on her phone, and her children can’t visit her in order to program new numbers for her.  This means she can only call people who are already in her phone, albeit, she has nine children, numerous relatives, and several friends already ready to dial. 

But as we’re all finding out, a person can only spend so much time on the phone, watching movies, or doing whatever it is he or she has found to do during this shelter-in-place. 

It’s hard being old, and harder being aged when you can’t even fill your days with pleasant activities.  Being cooped up in an assisted-living facility might feel like being in prison.  You’re probably not planning on going on a vacation the next summer or even buying a new home.  The activities that you can look forward to—going out to lunch, visiting nearby lakes and theaters, or shopping at Raley’s once a week on the facility bus—all have been cancelled until further notice. 

My siblings and I are sending letters to my mother in large type (48-point font) so she gets more mail that she can actually read.  A few of us have sent her flowers, which she loves to watch bloom on the desk in her room.

Two of my sisters have created word puzzles for her; unfortunately, word puzzles are related to reading, and not one of her favorite things to do.  She admitted to me that she tries to cheat on the puzzles by asking her care-givers to look over the puzzle and point out a word or two.  I thought she taught me not to cheat, but I never experienced a pandemic during my childhood, so maybe there are exceptions. 

This is why my mother is making heavy sighs over the phone.  She has played too much Solitaire, watched too much news, listened to too many soap operas, and spent too much time waiting listlessly for the next meal. 

My quest for more cultural humility seems to apply here.  I might be able to help her weather this shelter-in-place.

Cultural humility encourages me to develop empathy for how my mother feels and what she is experiencing, not as I would, but as she does. I asked myself, what can a person do if she can’t see or talk to another person very often?  In addition, what would help my mother attain a greater level of peace while she socially distances during this pandemic?  Since my mother is a doer and socializer, not a solitary thinker, my ideas must keep that in mind. 

Perhaps I can also consider what her life achievements have been; in my mother’s case, she grew up on a farm, worked as a bookkeeper, was married for 52 years, raised a brood of children, served on the school board and church council, worked in voter polling places, and practiced traditional Catholicism her whole life. 

As I thought about ideas for her, I kept seeing that red recliner in her apartment, situated so perfectly in the corner of the room, so she can hear sounds from both outside her window and from all parts of the apartment.  I also thought about how to help her decrease her anxiety.

Since she is a doer, I felt that short activities would be best, and, for the anxiety, I thought that I could suggest activities that encouraged a meditative state—because, on her own, she would never engage in meditation, thinking it was too foreign and too hard.  This is a woman, remember, who wants fast results. 

Also, my ideas would have to be typed in 48-point font, meaning that I can only list as many large-type activities as I can fit onto one or two pages. 

So, at four o’clock in the morning, when my sleep was interrupted by my thoughts about her, I got up to type my suggestions.   I set up my computer to 48-point font in a landscape layout and typed up “Corona Virus Shelter-in-Place Things to Do.”  Here is a sample:

1.        Pray the rosary for your own intentions.

2.        Breathe slowly 5 times.

3.        Stretch your fingers and toes, one at a time.

4.        Picture flowers,one at a time, and name them out loud.

6.        Think about people you love, one at a time.

7.        Create math problems for your great-grandchildren, then call them and tell them to solve them.

8.        Create a new prayer and say it out loud.

9.         Compliment a care-giver.

10.      Lift your arms 5 times.

11.      Close your eyes and think about a candle burning.

12.      Remember funny events, one at a time.

13.      Tell a joke to a care-giver.

14.      Watch a talk show on television. 

I typed half of these suggestions on one page, put them in an envelope, and mailed them today.  I put the other half in a second envelope to mail to her next week.

I’m not sure if my attempt at cultural humility toward my mother will help her navigate through this crisis.  I’ll have to wait until she lets me know. 

Oh, believe me, General Mom will be letting me know.    

A Novel Approach to a Better America

“There is no faster way to change your circumstance than to open a great book,” writes Lisa Wingate in her book The Book of Lost Friends. 

I agree.  People who read stories can transform their lives.  When they read fiction filled with complex characters, they develop empathy; they learn that people have vastly different emotions and needs and how to interact successfully with people who are different from themselves. 

In my journey for cultural humility, I’ve been reading books by Black authors, Middle Eastern writers, gay historians, and other writers whose histories are vastly different from my own.  Through my reading, I have learned that I lack a complete understanding of other people and hope to reduce my ignorance, step by step.  The more I read, the more I recognize how much I have to learn.

Scientific studies prove that reading stories is powerful.  David Comer Kidd of Harvard University and Emanuel Castano, a sociologist, have studied the effects of reading fiction.  What they found is that reading about multifaceted characters is a social process.  As she reads, a reader analyzes, understands, and interacts with the characters, developing her own ability to engage in complex social relationships. 

Sadly, many contemporary Americans hardly read at all.  Instead of reading books, people chat, text, browse, emoji, and tweet about all kinds of topics, but not about the in-depth feelings and emotions of each other. 

Nothing substitutes for the benefits of novels where men and women, Blacks and Whites, rich and poor, parents and children, bosses and employees interact, develop bonds, rob, murder, and love each other.  Through books, reader learn how humans feel and act with each other. 

What can readers learn specifically?  They can learn that the history they thought they knew is incomplete.  Viewing history from only the perspective of people in power is inadequate since the perspective of the oppressed or disempowered is what leads to future events such as revolutions, laws, protests, violence, and, hopefully, an eventually-improved society.  In the past, history was only told from the perspective of the privileged in society, and this view is biased and flawed. 

Stories set in America before the Civil War can help readers understand the suffering of the slaves and how they exhibited extraordinary courage under horrific physical and psychological conditions.  This, in turn, can evolve into empathy for contemporary African Americans who live without knowledge of their African heritage, but, instead, descend from a group who lacked equality or respect in the American society.  If White people have no patience for the condition of African Americans, they can put themselves into the African Americans’ shoes and experience how the struggle for respect and dignity feels.  Toni Morrison and Colson Whitehead both write vivid stories about the African American’s quest for equity in America.

Readers can become better spouses, parents, brothers, and sisters because reading helps people to recognize that other people are not the same.  Not everybody has the same ability or aptitude, even when they come from the same family.  Some people understand math innately while others are natural healers.  Some people have low self-esteem which they exhibit in their behavior toward others, and other individuals have poor boundaries and lose their identity in romantic relationships. Humans are complex, contradictory, ordinary, and extraordinary.    

The U. S. Constitution promotes equality, but we have never achieved equality in America—ever.  Our major weakness is that a majority of Americans do not possess empathy for their fellow community members or value the contribution that each individual brings to our diversified society.  White males hate Muslims and Blacks.  Voters distrust candidates who wear Hijab scarves.  Blacks and Hispanics are repulsed by Whites.  Women fear men.  Men are afraid of losing their power privilege, and Christians feel entitled over Jews.  The list of empathy-deficit attitudes is long and painful.  Many people live in fear of other Americans, and fear inhibits their ability to grow and nurture their community. 

Reading can help people let go of their misunderstood fears of people who are different by enabling them to see that, even when people are vastly different, they are humans with the need for validation and love. 

As we shelter-in-place during this Corona Virus Pandemic, we have an opportunity to take the time to become better members of our society.  We can read novels. 

Amazon is not shipping packages, but it is delivering e-books.  Costco is still open and has a whole aisle of well-priced books. People who want to borrow paper books can ask their neighbors about the location of a book-share library, a tiny cubbyhole that people install in front of their house where they freely exchange books with others.  People can check their cupboards for books hidden and forgotten.  They can ask friends to trade books with them and set up Zoom meetings to discuss them. 

Social distancing is an opportunity to become socially familiar.  Novels are stories about humans.  Mexican immigrants who struggle to cross the border to find work to provide for their families.  Philanthropists, such as Melinda Gates, who travel the world to alleviate poverty, improve education, and fight disease.  Blacks who live in poverty but strive to attain a college education.  Muslims who come to America, attain citizenship, and then run for office in gratitude for their freedom.  Gays, who sometimes marry women, have children, but struggle with their gender until they discover and accept their true calling as homosexuals. 

The wonderful, incredible character of America is diversity; however, because we have been blessed with a society that is so complex and varied, Americans have a responsibility to become better citizens—nonjudgmental, empathetic, open, and accepting of all people with whom we live. 

Let’s read stories and grow together.  A better nation reads. 

Corona Virus Integrity

Photo by Eduardo CG

Pope Francis claims that the Corona Virus Pandemic is presenting humans with an opportunity.

A few weeks ago, right after the San Francisco Bay Area was ordered to shelter-in-place, I signed up to receive his daily email messages as a way to continue my journey toward cultural humility. 

I’ve always respected this pope and believed that his spirituality reflected a mature connection with God.  He never judges.  He never criticizes.  He accepts responsibility for his mistakes and, since he is the Pope, he recognizes the mistakes of the Catholic Church and works to heal the pain caused by the Church in the past. 

He also understands the power of joy in life and the profound goodness it can achieve in helping someone develop a stronger spiritual life.  I watched the movie The Two Popes; at one point, Francis tries to teach Pope Benedict how to tango.  Pope Benedict never learns to dance well, but, while dancing, his face lights up with pleasure, a delight that he didn’t often feel before Francis arrived. 

I’m impressed.  I really am.  Pope Francis brings joy into the lives of many people; he behaves as a human being of integrity. 

Today, the day of Easter, his message is thoughtful and profound.  He advises his readers to become inventive, creative.  This makes sense.  Creativity is the origin of life, the basis of growth, and the source of expanded understanding. 

The Pope suggests that Christians use their creativity “in opening up new horizons, opening windows, opening transcendence toward God and people.”  In simple words, for humans to love one another. 

Before the sheltering-in-place order, many people attended Mass, and then, after leaving the church, they thought nothing of discriminating against other people.  Some disparaged the LBGTQ+ community by criticizing pictures of gay marriages on television.  Others labeled Muslim women as terrorists simply because they wore Hijab scarves while shopping at Safeway.  Others accused people of sinning just because they didn’t follow the same “rules.”  Some angrily rebuked people who had different political values.  This is hypocrisy, not love.

Pope Francis asserts that today’s crisis puts “a spotlight on hypocrisy … It’s a time for integrity.” 

To live a life of integrity is to love all human beings, and no one can fully love someone else unless they try to treat that person as they, themselves, would like to be treated. 

This is cultural humility.  A person cannot assume that they fully understand anyone.  They, instead, must open to learning more and more each day about people and their lives. 

Here’s an example.  A heterosexual cannot fully love a member of the LBGTQ+ community unless he or she treats that person with respect and kindness.  This does not include judging the behavior of that person; instead, the heterosexual can attempt to better understand the other person’s life without any prejudice at all. 

People who claim that they don’t condemn the person, just their behavior, are not loving.  They are living lives of hypocrisy since integrity does not include any type of judgment.

Pope Francis explains that the Corona Virus Pandemic does not discriminate against the rich or the poor; all humans are vulnerable to its deadly seed, and humanity can learn how to develop better spiritual lives if they strive to practice integrity—wholesomeness, oneness in action, unity. 

Pope Francis also shares an idea that he gleaned from reading the Aeneid; don’t “give up, but save yourself for better times.”  He asserts that humans should use this shelter-in-place time to become better, more trustworthy companions to their fellow sisters and brothers.  He says that we should be “coherent with our beliefs”—make sure that our actions imitate what we claim to believe. 

Amen to that!

If people are honest with themselves, they know when they are loving vs. prejudiced. 

I realize that I am in the midst of my own journey toward cultural humility, and I’m sure I’ll be on this path for the rest of my life.  Yet, I’ve learned how to achieve more cultural humility, another word for integrity, by practicing the following.

When I meet believers of Islam, I engage in a conversation with them.  I learn about their histories, their daily lives, how living in America might clash with some of their rituals, what their goals are, or how they have experienced prejudice from other Americans.  If they offer to share their foods with me, I accept them with eagerness and gratitude.

When members of the LBGQT+ community share their gender status with me, I welcome them into my life with open arms.  I accept their lifestyle as a natural condition, and never question why they have chosen that persuasion.  I also read about their lives and listen to their stories to reduce my ignorance.  Finally, I show them respect by including them in my life; for example, I listen to the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus to hear incredible singing. 

I befriend people of all races and treat them as valuable contributors to my life.  During this crisis, I have financially assisted some people so that they can maintain their small businesses.  I know that my concern for them strengthens our bond and friendship.  If I didn’t have the money for helping them, I would have helped establish a Go Fund Me page or found another way to provide some help.

I actively seek the beauty in members of races different from me.  For example, I love the braided hairstyles of African Americans that demonstrate their creativity and African culture.  Whenever I can, I compliment a man or woman on his or her hairstyle. 

Another attractive trait I’ve discovered are the traditional costumes of Indian citizens with yards and yards of glittering fabrics swirled around the female body.  When I meet a woman of Indian heritage on the street, I tell her she is lovely.

The Corona Virus has brought danger, but also opportunity—the chance to become a human of integrity.  I am not beautiful if I don’t see the inherent, non-judged loveliness in my sisters and brothers.  Only if I accept them completely will I ever achieve integrity—the pinnacle of spiritual life. 

Bridges of the Heart

I met an interesting guy in my doctor’s office this morning.

“I build bridges,”  said a sixty-year-old man, dressed in work pants and steel-toed shoes.

I thought he was being metaphorical.

“Really?  That’s so interesting.  Which bridge are you working right now?”

“I’m building a pedestrian bridge in Emeryville, right by Bay Street.  The bridge crosses the railroad track.”

“I love pedestrian bridges.  Usually, they’re artistic.”

“You want to see a bridge that’s artistic?  Pretty soon I’ll be building a bridge at the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, right on the San Francisco Bay.  You can look up the rendering of this bridge on Google—just type in “the least functional bridge in the world.”      

When I was alone again, I googled this prospective addition to Facebook’s campus.  The new structure will be a flat zig-zagged bridge that will follow the Bay for a while, then make a ninety-degree, right-angle into the Facebook property where it will meander into a few more forty-five degree turns on its way through the buildings.  Bikers will abhor the turns, which will make them contort their wheels into unfamiliar angles in order to avoid careening off the bridge.  Walkers will likely find entertainment in the cantilevering, yellow rails that line the sloping up and down pathway. 

This bridge was designed by Frank Gehry, one of the most famous architects in the world, and, despite its uniqueness, it will connect Facebook to the Bay, and invite the public to share Facebooks glorious Bay view. 

It won’t be dysfunctional. Bridges connect human beings to one another. 

The best part of a human community is where bridges exist—some are physical structures, but most bridges are invisible spans that connect human beings through their hearts.

The most successful humans understand the influence of bridges.  An oncologist’s medical knowledge has no worth if she cannot cultivate in her patient the will to live.  A judge’s sentence is not fair if she does not consider the accused’s state of mind when he committed the crime.  A government official’s actions are untrustworthy when he fails to consider the well-being and desires of his constituents. A teacher’s expertise in chemistry has no value if he fails to ignite in his students the motivation to learn. 

No amount of brainpower substitutes for a lack of social connection, empathy, and compassion.  The heart is the motivator for living.  The brain is but a vessel of information that the heart may use to either grow or die. 

Because I want to develop positive and nurturing connections to the people in my life, I pay attention to their stories, the ones they tell with their words and their actions.  I am a teacher; therefore, I must inspire students to use their hearts in addition to their brains, but I can’t teach them this skill until I understand where their hearts are. 

I have learned to be humble, but not better than anyone else.  I’m not better than anyone else, and I’m O.K. with that.  I focus on others in order to grow a beneficial relationship with them.  In order to grow into a better human being myself.

Books instruct us to understand other human beings.  Stories demonstrate how people act when they’re hurt, betrayed, abused, and supported.  Stories illustrate that human beings act according to the well-being or the insecurity of their hearts—their peace, nervousness, confidence, shame, or fear. 

One of the most riveting and profound books that I’ve read lately is Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Brian Stevenson. 

Stevenson graduated from Harvard Law School and started a non-profit organization in Alabama—the Equal Justice Initiative—to help people who’ve been wrongly convicted, end unfair sentences in criminal cases, and stop racial bias in the criminal justice system.  A intimidating objective, to be sure, but isn’t everything worth fighting for daunting?

What Stevenson reveals in his book is that African Americans have received the harshest sentences for the least crimes.  More than any other part of American society, Blacks are more often wrongly accused of crimes they did not commit, and, oftentimes, for these erroneous crimes, they receive death sentences. 

I learned a lot by reading about Stevenson’s clients, such as Walter who was wrongly accused of killing a white girl inside of a cleaner’s store.  I also learned the horrendous facts about the death penalty process—repentant faces, faulty electrical connections, jerking legs and arms, and burning human cells.

But what I learned more than anything else was how to be a better human being.  Stevenson writes, “There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.”  What this means to me is that if I do not always treat other human beings as I would like to be treated, then I am not worthy of anyone’s respect.  

Sounds simple, right?  It is when I’m with people that are like me.  But, when I interact with someone who is not like me and whom I don’t understand, it’s not.  I am White, female, financially stable, employed, and supported by friends and family, but most of humanity is not like me.  This means that I must take the first step in being reciprocal to other races, genders of all kinds, the financially unstable, the unemployed, and those who lack supportive communities. 

I can’t claim that I am wholly human if I don’t exert the effort to understand another person’s position, especially when their lifestyle or life situation is unfamiliar to me.  Stevenson makes this message clear; some of his clients are guilty of crimes, but he still defends them in trying to secure fair sentences and views them with mercy while helping them back into society. 

My life provides me with a great opportunity to learn how to be a more expansive human being.  I don’t work in an office where everyone is female and White.  I don’t live in a community where everyone is white-collared.  I don’t limit my religious experiences to groups that sequester power to the few and judgment to the rest. 

Instead, I teach at a diversified community college and my charge is to educate students from all backgrounds and economic conditions.   For example, this semester, about 5 percent of my students are White and the majority are a mixture of Hispanic, Black, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and South American.  About 75 percent of my students are heterosexual and the other 25 percent identify as LBGTQ+.   My classes include Catholics, Methodists, Jews, Islamic, and agnostic persons.  

I am blessed.  Being forced to work in an environment where I am challenged to understand differences every day forces me to be open-hearted.  Stevenson’s grandmother told him this: “’You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. You have to get close.’”

My job allows me to get close.  I learn by intimately interacting with people who are as different from me as a redwood is from an oak.  Here are a few of my close encounters.

Sota comes from Japan.  He plans to obtain a business degree in the United States and then go back to Japan to become a successful businessman.  Several times during this semester, Sota has visited me in my office to get advice on his essays.  He asks detailed questions and works hard to improve even though he struggles with the mechanics of English. 

Recently, Sota has been coming to my office to get advice about his application essays to U. C. Berkeley.  For at least four half hour sessions, I have read his essays, advised him on his content, critiqued his sentences, and praised his hard work.  He has learned a lot from me.

This is what I have learned from Sota.  I’ve learned that when someone is willing to work hard, my best compliment to him is supporting him with sound advice and generous time.  I have learned patience, awe, and humility when reading that Sota has endured failure, but has responded with self-examination, and come back to the table with wisdom and optimism.

Alona was born in Martinez, and her beloved father died suddenly last June.  Despite her grief, Alona has stood in front of the class and shared her opinions about adversity with her classmates.  She has shared how she and her sisters spend time together talking about their father’s life and how they miss him.  They cry and heal.  Sometimes, her voice has faltered, but I’ve seen her square her shoulders with the confidence that she is living for a higher purpose.  What I’ve learned from Alona is that using grief as the cornerstone of wisdom is beautiful; the lessons of grief are permanent and strong. 

Ariel comes from Oakland, and, when she entered the classroom, she wore an attitude of entitlement.  Instead of working hard to do her best work, Ariel complained to my Dean when I gave her a failing grade for poor work; she wanted credit for just showing up. 

When I found out about her complaint, I spent more time beside her, coaching her in her thinking and writing skills, turning her away from herself and, instead, toward the perspective of her audience.  Word by word, sentence by sentence, day by day, week by week, Ariel’s eyes slowly, slowly opened wider and her self-orientation transformed into confidence and openness.  What I learned from Ariel is that sometimes it takes a long time to learn how to grow into a more flexible human being, but the journey is still beneficial. First, we must understand what we don’t know. 

Katerine was in a car accident when she was young and sustained a brain injury.  She’s the sweetest, most kind-hearted soul, but her reading, speaking, and writing skills were so poor that she was unlikely to even achieve a two-year college degree.  When Katerine missed classes, I told her that I missed seeing her, and I gave her second chances to complete her missed assignments.  When she demonstrated the need for specific writing lessons, I developed lessons that would benefit her and the whole class, and I told her that she was my inspiration for striving to be a better English teacher.  We bonded.  She worked harder.  We spent time in my office talking about the issues she loved such as global warming.  I convinced her to register to vote.  She finally started earning C’s instead of F’s on her essays. 

What I learned from Katerine is that the most beautiful qualities of a human being center in the heart, not in the polished manuscript of an essay or the mathematical genius of a brain.  But, when the loving qualities of a heart are shared through speaking and writing, they spread like wildfire. 

My students help me build bridges every day.  The bridges that we build are sometimes traditional, sometimes avant-garde, sometimes eccentric, but they all are connections. 

This is what I know now.  Whenever I cross one of these bridges into the heart of another human being, I am designing more bridges of my own, and I am better with more bridges.

Shelter-in-Place Love Letters

Being in love requires true humility.  Loving someone means that you show your vulnerability and reveal your imperfections.  For someone like me that strives with great effort for perfection, admitting that I make mistakes only follows a very large and irritated sigh. 

Loving well also takes commitment, even when the other person has a perennial runny nose or forgets to put the toilet seat down.  Ugh.  Maybe commitment is even more important than romance because, when your beloved gently comments that you’ve overcooked the halibut, the romance flies out the open window.   He can’t even boil an egg.

I must be pretty humble because I truly am in love.  I’m in love with the man with whom I’m sheltering-in-place. 

Love Letter Box

I met Bob about seven years ago and fell in love with his picture on the dating website.  There he was, dressed in short-sleeve shirt and dress trousers, a security clearance badge draped around his neck. 

Oh, I’d met handsome guys—one, a tall sailor with a ruddy smile and thick, brown hair that rippled in the wind as we zig-zagged over the San Francisco Bay in his 32-foot sailboat.  A less-tall jeweler who dressed impeccably and wore a gold chain around his neck.  A dashing pilot who sensually danced the rumba.  None of these, however, wore a security clearance badge. 

What did that badge say to me?  Intelligent.  Trustworthy.  You don’t get issued a badge like that if you’re a dunce or irresponsible.  By standing in front of his assistant’s camera that day with his badge around his neck, this man passed Level 1 without me even meeting him.  Not just smart—intelligent.  Not just dependable—trustworthy.

He didn’t have much written on his profile, so I asked him to write about himself.  He said, “No, let’s just meet and see if we like each other.” 

Damn!  I liked conducting preliminary research before investing actual time.  Still, that badge shone like a golden ticket in his photo—beckoning me like a male siren. 

Bob called me one weekday from work, and I was teaching class, so I couldn’t answer my phone.  Later, I called him back.  “He’s at his 3:00 meeting,” his assistant said cheerily.  “May I tell him who is calling?”

“Tell him that Tess is returning his call,” I said, thinking that going to a meeting every day at 3:00 was ridiculous.  What if no one had anything to discuss?  What if the world was just perfect that day?  Absurd.

“Oooooh, Tess,” the assistant crooned, with emphasis and elation, her voice lilting up and down like an alto singing in a musical. 

Geez, they must gossip in his office.  She knows my name already, and I haven’t even met him.

A few days later, I drove up to Black Angus Steakhouse at 5:20 p.m.  I was early, so I sat in my car for nine minutes, smoothing out my polka-dot sleeveless blouse and navy tiered, knee-length skirt that swished as I walked.  My makeup was perfect.  My hair was brushed and shining.  I was ready for this.

When I walked in the door, Bob was sitting in the restaurant’s lobby, and he looked up expectantly.  Mm, I met his expectations apparently.

We sat in the small bar at the first high table.  I ordered Chardonnay, and Bob ordered a dry martini with a twist of lemon, up!  A hard liquor type, I thought.  Old-fashioned. 

I had memorized my first-date checklist, so I expertly chatted about some fluffy topics while weaving in my questions.  He seemed shy, but got more social after he had downed half of his martini. 

“Where do you live?”

“Pleasanton, a great town.”

“Where do you work?”

“Lawrence Livermore Lab.”  I had guessed that.  You see, I had dated another guy that had worked at the lab, years ago.  I also once had worked at Lockheed Martin and had proudly worn my own security clearance badge.  I knew Lawrence Livermore Lab was the only government facility in the lower East Bay. 

“Enchanted,” I said.

           

I finished my glass of wine over the next forty-five minutes, and was focusing on how to end the night, but also to ensure a call for future action.

“Would you like to have dinner?” Bob asked.

We both ordered the salmon that night and took that as a sign of compatibility, and we spent the next seven years cleaning out the baggage in his life and hiding mine pretty well.  At first, he didn’t know what baggage was, but once we agreed that our lives were knitted together permanently, he called up the “Got Junk” people and they took it all away.  All of it.  Wow. By that time, I had cleaned out my hidden baggage too, or at least sent its energy into outer space. 

Last April 6th, Bob and I married each other at Peace Lutheran Church, a small but beautiful dwelling set upon a wooded property.  Our family and friends came to celebrate our late-in-life blooming love. 

They recited prayers and rang the chimes as we exchanged our vows, and now we live together in my 1950 square-foot, two-story house in a charming neighborhood.  We take walks, go out to dinner, stroll nearby beaches, read books, learn Spanish, and watch movies—all together.

Life was going along swimmingly until recently.  After we got married, we took an Eastern European cruise on the Danube from Budapest to Prague, through Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, and Czechoslovakia.  This was Bob’s first trip to Europe (amazing) and my first trip to Eastern Europe.  I especially loved seeing Czechoslovakia since I am part Bohemian and proud of this wild heritage. 

In January, we just finished planning this summer’s trek to Italy and Slovenia.  Oops.  Poor timing for going to see Pope Francis who is holed up by his lonesome in St. Peter’s Square.  Even Slovenia has been hit by the Corona Virus, but Italy has been devastated. 

Now, our first anniversary is coming up on April 6th, and, according to the news reports, we still will be sheltering-in-place.  No going out to our favorite Bridges Restaurant.  No visiting our favorite beach town, Pacific Grove.  No wine tasting in Napa, Sonoma, Livermore, or Paso Robles.  Nada, but sheltering-in-place.

I suggested that we celebrate by having a ceremony at home.  Bob couldn’t imagine what kind of ceremony we could have without an official coming by. 

“We don’t need an official,” I said.  “Nobody helped us fall in love, so we don’t need anybody to help us celebrate our first anniversary.” 

He agreed pensively. Maybe he needed an official more than I thought–maybe he was thinking about that life coach that he had hired to teach him how to date. I hope he didn’t pay her too much.

“What to do?” I queried.  “I know, you could teach me how to dance,” I chirped.

“You could teach me,” he said.  “I’m no dancer.”

I laughed, but then got serious inside.  Why would I want Bob to change the way he dances?  When he puts his long, strong arms around me and shuffles around with a miniscule rhythm in his hips, I’m in heaven.  Any dance step that I would show him would require us to pull out of that pose of perfect bliss where I feel loved, cherished, and wanted. 

No dance lessons.  He’s a perfect dancer already.

Ever since before we were married, I’ve been asking Bob to write me a love letter.  I have a little ceramic box in my living room with an angel perched on its lid.  Inside the box is enough space to store a love letter, and it’s empty now. 

“I’m no writer,” Bob’s always declares.

I think it’s true that the more you advertise a product, the more likely you are to sell it.  Don’t just advertise your decorated rocks on Facebook one time–show them a hundred times, and someone will buy one. I must have done a good job of selling my idea about this love letter because this is what Bob said next.  “I’m not exactly a strong writer.”

“But, you’re the perfect love-letter writer for me,” I responded. I can be charming sometimes.

“Ok, I’ll try,” he said from his arm chair, his hands holding his coffee cup like it was a vanilla ice cream sandwich made with chocolate chip cookie wafers.  One side of his mouth turned up like a bad-boy grin underneath his neatly-trimmed gray and dark mustache.  Dervishly handsome he is.

So, we’ve agreed.  For our first anniversary, we are going to write each other love letters.  I’m a writer, but I know when I start writing mine, I’m going to feel vulnerable and shy. 

What I can do to build my confidence? 

I have the advantage that the object of my love, now retired, once was trusted enough to be issued a top security clearance badge.  If Lawrence Livermore Lab could trust Bob with its secrets, then I can trust him with my heart. 

I’ll take out that picture of Bob from the dating website and focus on the badge. 

River Lullaby

Langston Hughes’ poetry uses words like musical instruments. Themes leak out of every line. Images grow out of every stanza.

When Langston was eighteen and on his way to live with his father in Mexico, he was sitting on a train that crossed the great and almighty Mississippi River. 

Photo by Justin Wilkens

He turned over his father’s letter and wrote this poem on the back:

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

     went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy

     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

By virtue of being a human being with hopes, dreams, and a history, anyone can understand this poem. Even though Langston writes about the African American, this human being represents the humanity of each and every one of us. 

While thinking about these beautiful words, I decided that the best way to relate to this poem is on a soul level, a level of feelings, creativity, and emotion.  Here is what my soul created while I mused.

My hair is black and long with tight curls.  I sit in a kitchen chair, and my sister takes tiny strands of my hair and twists them into braids with beads: red, yellow, orange, pink, and green.  She braids hour after hour until my whole head is a bouquet, braids fanning out like spokes in a parasol. 

We take a break and stretch our bodies into yoga positions.  Downward dog. Plank.
Warriors that we are, our bodies strong and lithe.  We are women with poise. 

Then back to the chair.  Sister gathers my braids and turns them into a sweeping updo, the beads popping out like happy jewels.  After she is done, I smile into the mirror and love my vision.

 My braids represent our heritage.  We are from a long, line of female warriors.  Our grandmothers once lived beside great rivers.  They gathered wheat beside the Euphrates to feed their families, and ground this wheat into brown flour, and with this flour made bread.  We sat with our husbands and children and shared the bread and talked to each other with joy.

Our grandmothers picked fruit from boughs beside the Congo River.  With this fruit, they made curries for their families and communities, carried the curries to their neighbors’ huts for sharing, and built relationships of mutual trust.

Their daughters and grand-daughters built pyramids to help the Egyptians bury their dead.  They did not eat with the Egyptians, but they watched reverently as the Egyptians wrapped their loved ones in swaddling cloths and laid them into stone tombs. 

Their great-great granddaughters picked cotton beside the Mississippi River.  They tanned their backs during the day, and served their Masters’ families meals in the evenings.  They smiled at them even when they were tired.  They sang to their children when they took them to bed.

Our grandmothers, their daughters, their grand daughters, their great-great granddaughters and we are nurturers.  We care for our families and our communities and help those whom we know, but do not fully understand.  We love. 

We learned how to love by watching the great rivers.  The great rivers drift and stream and flurry—their waters continuing downriver over stones, rocks, cliffs, logs, fish, and beavers.  That is what great love is—it builds and flows and washes over insults, prejudice, judgment, ignorance, anger, and sickness.  Keeps going.  Nothing stops it reach a greater body of water—the ocean of humanity where we are all connected like pearls knotted together.  In our communion, we are even more beautiful. 

All human beings can learn how to love like the great rivers, even those who don’t have braids, those who have never seen a river, those who have never picked wheat, plucked fruit, quarried stone, or sung a lullaby. 

Langston’s river poem is a lullaby about the love and connection of all humanity.

Reducing My Social Distancing Even While Sheltering in Place

Photo by Naassom Azevedo

I’m traveling right now even if I have to shelter in place, going to places where I can gain lots of new friends and learn how to be a better friend myself. 

About five years ago, I decided to be more proactive in helping my African American college students stay in class and pass college English.  Many of them were registering for class, but somewhere in the middle of the semester, most, almost all of them, were dropping out or just never showing up again. 

I knew that almost all of our literary canon was white male-based literature, so, for one summer class, I decided to use readings that were all written by African Americans. 

Sure, every American student has read Martin Luther King Jr., but I didn’t just want a typical super star; I wanted my students to read other authors who wrote about other African American experiences.

When you look for it, there is lots of literature written by African Americans, just not generally chosen for the classroom.  Besides Martin Luther King Jr., I picked works by ZZ Packer, Langston Hughes, Melvin Tolson, and Lorraine Hansberry, to name a few. 

To be honest, I was afraid.  I wondered about the young, white men feeling ostracized and getting angry.  I wondered about whether I would even have any African American students in my class who would appreciate my effort.  I feared that I may incur a backlash of negative feedback for my assertive plan, but made the decision, figuring I would never know whether it was a good idea unless I tried. 

This was a summer class at a large community college, which means that my class consisted of not only community college students, but also students from four year colleges who were home for the summer, living with Mom and Dad, and taking some extra classes which are hard to get at their home school.  One white male was a student from U. C. Davis who was majoring in biology so he could go to medical school after Davis.  Two young females, one Asian and one White, were psychology majors home from U. C. L. A.  

Another student came from Oakland; his mother was Filipino and his father was Black.  I didn’t know how he would identify.  Sometimes, this student, let’s call him Moses, didn’t show up.  The class was full, however, and, along with his peers, Moses finally established a rhythm and got to class regularly.

My prediction about the white males feeling insecure was accurate, so our discussions included an analysis of what the suppression of one part of the population reveals about the dominant culture.  Along with learning that a dominant culture usually maintains power with cruelty and self promotion, we discussed what “privilege” was and why it does not promote a just society.

Instead of lecturing in a classroom that is teaching critical thinking, the teacher helps students come up with answers to issues themselves.  I ask open-ended questions; students volunteer answers, build on each other’s words, and finally hash out a thorough analysis. 

So my students figured out what “privilege” was and how it harms society.  They determined that it is when one group is favored over other groups because that group’s “culture” is favored. 

For example, if students in college only study literature written by white-male authors, they will come to think that white males are the only talented members of society.  The white-male authors will be “privileged.” 

Or if an English-speaking and a Spanish-speaking person both need medical care, but only the English patient is able to communicate with the medical professionals, the English-speaking patients will be “privileged” over the Spanish speaking patients; therefore, the Spanish-speaking patients will not have equal access to health care. 

In America, we value equality, but we don’t achieve it when we allow privilege to rule our society.

I’ll come back to this summer class in a while, but I want explain what my next steps were that fall. 

I signed up to participate in a special program called the “Equity Project.”  As part of the program, I had to take a three-hour class each semester to learn about “equity” and then offer 17 hours of additional office hours to help my students achieve more success.

The first thing I learned as part of this program was the difference between “equality” and “equity.”

The word “equality” is always on the tip of the American tongue.  Yet, I now know that I didn’t really understand that the old version of “equality” is just not enough in a country as diversified as ours. 

Equality assumes that everyone is the same, everyone has the same physical capabilities, mental capacities, and economic opportunities, amongst other characteristics.  Americans, however, are not homogeneous.  We are a spectrum of races, a rainbow of genders, a hierarchy of economically endowed peoples, and a collection of internationally-originated cultures.  We are the most diverse assemblage of humans on the planet, and I, for one, love our variety.

If we treat each person as equal, however, they will not be equal.  For example, if we make everyone sit in the exact same type of large wooden chair at a restaurant, children would not be able to reach their plates.  Grandma, who is confined to a wheelchair won’t even be able to sit at the table.  These unfortunate individuals will have to stay at home and not participate in family celebrations held in restaurants. 

I have a another example of this.  Last semester, my freshman English class included a large, bulky, strong, tall African American college football player.  I found out that–let’s call him Noah–Noah was an extremely talented football player who had won some coveted football scholarships, but he still had to keep up with his school work to stay on the team.

Noah, however, wasn’t turning in his writing assignments.  I asked him to come to my office so that I could find out what was going on.  What I found out was that he didn’t have a computer at home or wifi, two requirements that he needed to type his essays and post them to our course’s electronic site. 

If I hadn’t intervened and worked with his coach to loan him a computer and find him a wifi hotspot, this student would have failed.  I didn’t do this for any other students; they didn’t need it.  For Noah, I used “differential intervention” to help this economically disadvantaged student get what he needed to succeed. 

What I was practicing is “equity.”   I was getting Noah what he needed to create fairness for him.  Another word to substitute for fairness is “justice.” 

As I continued to participate in the Equity Project, I signed up for my three hour classes every semester.  Finally, last fall, the instructor of my equity course was a professor from Foothill Community College in Cupertino, California.  I remember she sported a ready smile; coifed her hair in short, tight black curls; wore frayed jeans and an attractive black blouse; and once worked in Human Resources for the giant, nearby Livermore Lab as an intern.  Let’s call her Sandra.

Sandra taught me about “cultural humility.”  When I heard the word, I stopped taking notes and just looked up at her–she put into words what I had been searching for my whole life.

Sandra explained that “cultural humility” is a social attitude that is other-oriented.  In order to engage in cultural humility, I have to look at the world from the other person’s perspective—and what could be more loving than that?

Cultural humility is the antithesis of “privilege.”  Instead of promoting the status or beliefs of myself, I take a humble stance and stay open to the possibility that other people’s opinions, needs, ethics, and perspectives are as valuable as my own.

I can engage in cultural humility for the rest of my life because to understand the perspectives of everyone else will take forever. 

My journey to cultural humility is not only good for the others in the world, but also for me.  While I am learning about the morals and viewpoints of others, I will reflect on my own values and how I formed them and how I can change them to become a better person.  Through my participation in this quest, I can grow and develop beneficial relationships and release judgmental attitudes that only cause privilege and injustice. 

Now back to that summer class.  Moses wasn’t my best student.  The biology student from U. C. Davis probably was.  Yet, when the class was over and all the students walked and skipped out of the classroom, Moses was standing in front of me. 

“Thank you for teaching my culture,” he said.  “That has never happened to me before.  Because you chose those readings, I got intrigued, stuck around, and now I’ve passed the class.  I got a “C,” but it’s the best class I’ve ever taken.  I’ll never forget this summer.”

Wow.  Long before I even knew the term for cultural humility, I was on the right path. 

Now that I have to shelter in place, I have even more time to reduce my social distance from others, and when this persistent Corona Virus has waned, my passion for achieving cultural humility will have kept my hope for equitable living alive and vibrant.   

Faces of God

When I was thirteen, I walked slowly up to the priest giving out Communion.  Decked out in a green robe with a white stripe down the front, he held a gold chalice in one hand, his other hand resting on the cup’s lip, holding a white wafer between his thumb and index finger.  He looked up into my face, opened his eyes wide, and formed an “O” with his lips. Staring deeply into my eyes—I remember his eyes were brown—he exclaimed, “The face of God.”

I have always wondered what he meant.  Did he think that green eyes were particularly pretty? Did he see God in my eyes where he looked so deeply?  Did he think that I had some higher power present in my face, a power that he recognized out of his own wisdom?  Did he see my soul? 

All that I know is that I have always carried on a conversation with my soul. 

As part of my relationship with myself, I have thought deeply about my relationships with other human beings.  This is why I always have wondered about the issue of racism.  When I was little, my parents acted like racists.  They learned these hateful attitudes from their narrow-minded parents and relatives who lived in Northern states surrounded by the descendants of Europeans—Swedes, Polish, German, and Irish.  When you live in such a closed community, it is easy to label people who don’t look like you as “the others.”

My soul told me that these “others” that my relatives insulted were like me.  They had feelings, hearts, and souls like me.  Yet, as I grew older, I learned about the great chasm that divided Whites and Blacks.  So much distrust.  So much lack of understanding.  So much violence.  So little peace on either side. 

So I read about the history of the people of whom I was once taught to distrust.  As I read and learned about the untold history of the African American, I watched my parents change their attitude as well.   

After retiring from the Air Force, my father went back to school to earn a degree as a building contractor.  His biggest job as a contractor was to build See’s Candy Stores in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii.  He had to manage all the contractors who came to work on the remodeling and building of the stores.  Some of them were Black. 

I remember one night when he came over to my house for dinner after he had worked all day in a nearby store.  We sat on the patio.  The sun had set into night, and the porchlight lit up his big face like a full moon.  “Two of my electricians are Black,” he exclaimed.  “What good workers they are.  Not only that.  They are friendly and can joke around just like the other guys.” 

He was fifty years old, and I realized that it had taken him more than half his lifetime to learn how to trust people who were different from him on the outside.  I was amazed, but I also hoped that it wouldn’t take me that long to learn my own lessons. 

By the time my mother was 76 and my father had died, a Black family had moved in next door to the home where my parents had lived while raising their large family.  Now, my mother lived all alone.  When her Black neighbors went on vacation, they asked her to take in their mail.  She agreed.  She also found out that the father was a professional painter, so when she needed some painting done, she asked him to do the job. 

Pretty soon, their little girl came over in the afternoons to visit her “grandma” next door.  She drew pictures for her.  My mother bought the little girl little trinkets from the Dollar Store.  When I spoke with Mom on the phone, she described her visits with Lily and mused about the next trinket she would buy for her.  I felt jealous.  She wasn’t Lily’s real grandmother.  Mom belonged to us.

Finally, after a few years, my jealousy waned as I watched my mother turn her love toward more and more people, never judging them, and loving them for what they brought into her life. She did not only belong to me, but she belonged to everyone that she chose to love.

When my mother turned eighty-six, she couldn’t pass her driver’s test.  She sold her car and asked a fellow church-goer to drive her to church on Sundays.  By the time she turned eighty-nine, her eye-sight was so bad that if she dropped a bottle of pills on the floor, she couldn’t see well enough to pick them up and put them in the correct bottle again.  So we moved my mother into an assisted-living home.  She gave her most precious piece of furniture—a mahogany marble topped washstand that she had purchased in England—to the Black family next door.  “My friend Vivian,” she said, “has always loved that table.”

I never witnessed my father’s interactions with his Black contractors, and I never heard him talk about his experiences with my mother.  I rarely was around when my mother interacted with her Black neighbors, but, over the phone mostly, I listened to her transformation from a racist to someone who embraced her African American neighbors as special friends and trusted people. 

Both of my parents learned that African Americans were not the “other” people they couldn’t trust.  My parents became walking miracles.  Their attitudes underwent a revolutionary change—they learned to see African Americans as men, women, and children with souls—with the faces of God. 

Achieving Belovedness

The African American woman has the most to complain about in America.  She, after all, was brought here against her will in the bowels of a ship, raped by her master before she turned fourteen, bore his illegitimate children, fell in love with her lighter progeny, lost her mind when her children were ripped away and sold to other plantations, lashed across her back and legs when she did not submit, and forced to smile day after day beside her master’s wife.   

To understand the African American woman’s plight, we must contemplate the plight of all women in America.

Most still have not achieved equity.  This is tragic, especially for a country that pats itself on the back for its individual rights.  No, American women don’t all wear veils and burkas, but their voices still are silenced and subjected to the will of men in power. 

Blatant examples exist all throughout American society. 

One example: American Catholic women have no voices.  The power of the church is carefully guarded and only granted to males through church “laws” that maintain male power.  When Catholic women speak, they are expected to follow the strict rules set down by Catholic men ever since the church was first adopted as the official Roman Empire religion.  Never mind that, prior to the Roman take-over, Christian prayer groups were once led by women.  Catholic women are not encouraged to think independently; instead, they are coerced into following orders.  Like soldiers in the military: valued for their obedience, not their wholesome humanity. 

In American culture, women are raped and blamed for their acquiescence. They are prevented from rising above the glass ceiling while blamed for having children. They are paid less than men who hold the same jobs and blamed for not working harder.

Even First Lady Melania Trump walks like a voiceless doll next to her husband.  When she is asked a question, her answer is amended by the opinion of her husband.  And so, she is silenced, muzzled. 

But the African American woman has suffered some of the greatest indignities.  Perhaps this is why Toni Morrison chose to be her voice.  In interviews, Morrison said that she wanted to tell the story of the female slave: what being a woman was like under the yoke of bondage, the lack of having a voice or will, the scourge of being at the mercy of selfish and insensitive men. 

I first read Beloved by Toni Morrison when I was a mother of two young children.  Much as I wanted to appreciate the story, written by this African American professor whom I admired for her achievements, I was confused.  Trying to understand how a dead daughter floated in and out of her mother’s life and then lived and haunted her mother, sister, and friends for over a year was intriguing, but what was the author’s point? 

I was frustrated that I couldn’t understand the story.  Was my white privilege so strong that my heart was unable to empathize with a slave woman’s experience?  Was I too comfortable in my white prosperity that I didn’t really want to understand?  I knew that slavery was immoral, but what else could I learn?  Clearly, Morrison had pondered about the African American story for a long time.  She knew a story that I didn’t know, and I longed to overcome my ignorance.

After I read Beloved, I read every Morrison novel I could find: Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, The Bluest Eye.  I also read essays which spoke to the aspects of Morrison’s writing such as “Toward the Limits of Mystery: The Grotesque in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” by Susan Corey.  Then, finally, I read one of Morrison’s own essays, “The Source of Self-Regard,” in which she supposes that Beloved is an intimate version of history.   

Much to my surprise, Beloved is based on a true story of a run-away slave named Margaret Garner.  While being pursued as a fugitive slave, Gardner slit the throats of three of her children so they wouldn’t have to return to the cruelty of slavery and endure the abuse and torture that she knew too well.  One of those children died.  Remarkably, Garner wasn’t tried for murder; she was tried for the theft of her master’s property.  Proving that history is carved by those in power.  

In Morrison’s fictional version, the protagonist is Sethe.  Sethe escapes from Sweet Home Plantation with her four children across the Ohio River to Cincinnati.  When the slave-catchers find her, she grabs her kids and hides in a woodshed where she slits the throats of three of her babies.  Her two older boys live, but her oldest daughter dies in her arms.  We never learn this dead baby’s name, but Sethe has the word “Beloved” etched into her tombstone.  Her younger daughter, Denver, is uninjured.

Abolitionists succeed in securing Sethe and her three remaining children’s freedom, and she moves into a house in the community.  When the boys become teenagers, they leave home, tired of their mother’s grief for Beloved and wanting to become men. 

One day, neighbors find a strange adolescent girl sleeping outside of Sethe’s house, and they believe it is Sethe’s dead daughter Beloved.  Sethe becomes enamored with Beloved; she cooks for her, bathes her in affection, and ignores her other daughter. 

A former fellow slave, Paul D., escapes captivity and finds his way to Sethe’s house.  He, at first, removes Beloved’s ghost from the house, but later, when Beloved has transformed into a more physical presence, she seduces him and becomes pregnant with his child. 

Once I understood that Morrison wanted to tell the story of the female slave. I decided to read Beloved again.  To hear the female slave’s voice.  To feel her pain and sorrow.  To experience her fear and dread.  I finally felt like I was ready to understand the meaning of the story that had eluded me for twenty years. 

This is what my second reading of Beloved taught me. 

When Sethe is attacked in the plantation’s barn by the Schoolteacher’s grown nephews while her husband watches from the rafters, I feel her indignity—a knife thrust into the pin cushion of her femininity.  They drink the milk from her breasts that she needs for her infant.  Not only do they rob her of her intimacy, but they harm her child’s viability.  These men violate her center, the core of her femaleness.   Tragically, her husband, her one-time protector, dies from insanity, not having the power to save her, and she loses his partnership. 

When Sethe takes the life of her daughter, her already weakened core responds, and she acts out of distress—trying to save her children from all the abuse that their parents have endured.  At least in death, they can find peace; in a slave’s life, peace will never come. 

But Sethe suffers dearly for her actions.  Psychologically, she lives in anxiety, questioning whether or not she made the right choice for her child.  No matter what the child’s name, the child is her “beloved.” 

The pain of Sethe’s conscience is so deep that she believes that Beloved comes back to her, so that she can make up for depriving her mother’s love.  This is a manifestation of Sethe’s guilt.  Whether or not Beloved is really present is unimportant; in Sethe’s mind, Beloved is present, loved, lost, wanted, missed, and grieved.  Beloved can also wound Sethe, and she does when she becomes pregnant with Paul D.   Like betrayal, the loss of a child hurts acutely and forever. 

Sethe’s suffering is raw, violent, and close to the surface.  Her pain wracks her body with weakness and her soul with despair.  She can barely live, and has no need for freedom after she has lost so much of herself.

At the end of the story, Sethe tells Paul D., “She was my best thing.”  This means that when Beloved died, Sethe died with her.  She lost her willingness to live, he ability to think without guilt or sorrow, and even her capacity to love her other children completely so that they could enjoy their free lives. 

Female slaves lost not only physical dignity, but also their emotional and psychological self-possession. 

Paul D. corrects her gently: “You your best thing Sethe.”  What he is asserting is that she can overcome her deep grief and loss and find a way to recapture who she is.  She can wash up her battered body and mind and live the present.  Put the past in the past.  It does not have to define her. 

As an American female, I am the African American’s sister; I, too, have lived with the loss of dignity.  Even though my damage does not equal the forfeiture of slavery, I have been slashed by violations, a lack of voice, and scars of discrimination. 

I stretch out my femaleness, my soft center, my vulnerable heart to my African American sister so we can raise each other up, celebrate our communal bond, and feel unified.    Our past does not determine our future.  We have changes to make in this America. 

Clearly Bothered

I felt like a target, sitting in a dark theater with a hundred college students and only one other professor.

Movie Theater
I felt like a target, sitting in a dark theater with a hundred college students and only one other professor . . .

One night after I teaching my courses at Diablo Valley College, I attended the showing of a movie—Sorry to Bother You—written and directed by Boots Riley, who will be coming to campus in March as part of Black History Events. 

The movie is an artistic commentary about the negative characteristics of capitalism.  The main character Cassius Green, who is Black, gets a job as a telemarketer and finds out that he is successful only when he uses his “white voice,” a nasally, high-pitched tenor with overtones of lassitude and a lack of interest. 

Just as the poorly-paid telemarketers unify to demand a union and better pay, Green is promoted to the “Power Telemarketer” floor where he enjoys the luxury of a modern office and sells labor for a company named Worry-Free.

While Green is enjoying the parties, alcohol, and access to the CEO of Worry-Free, he learns that the company transforms humans into horse-like creatures who can work harder and stronger than the average human, creating even more profits for capitalistic, greedy companies.  Green’s girlfriend informs him that all labor is slave labor when capitalism controls the corporate culture.  The employees work at the mercy of those in power, thus having no rights or voices. 

Finally, in the end, Green quits his job, gets back his pure-of-heart girlfriend, and retains his morality. 

I walked into the theater right at 4 p.m., thinking the movie would be starting on time.  The room: a theater with about three hundred seats that stepped down to a big screen, where a podium stood to the side with a laptop set up to show the movie.  An IT woman, that occasionally comes to my classroom to fix technical problems, stood behind the podium. 

I looked around before choosing a seat.  Feeling a little overwhelmed, I sat in a seat on the right aisle about six rows from the door. 

Scattered in the rest of the seats were students who did not reflect the diverse nature of the college.  About half were Black, sitting in twos and threes, sprinkled throughout the room.  Several Asian students, sitting by themselves, also filled the seats.  Three white students sat together.  Where were the Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Indians, and Native Americans?  I saw no professors—the people in the room were all in their teens and twenties. 

Waiting for my English colleague who was bringing her class to the showing, I changed my seat to an aisle seat in the middle section of the room.  Definitely felt like I needed some physical support in this room that did not reflect either my age group or my status.  Finally, I’ll call her Carol, Carol walked in with her class—an assortment that more reflected our college’s diversity, and I adjusted more comfortably into my seat. 

At about 4:15 p.m. a Black man strode down to the podium and turned to face the audience.  He wore his hair in a wide, black afro and dressed in casual clothes, not helping me decide whether he was a fellow student or professor.  In any case, when he started talking, his sophisticated vocabulary and well-practiced speaking voice let me know that he was used to speaking in front of groups about issues that he supported.  He introduced himself.  Let’s call him Brian Miller.

Miller explained the focus of the movie.  He discussed how students have to use their “white voice” when they speak with their professors. 

At this, I squirmed in my seat.  I spend lots of time in my English classroom teaching students how to speak and write in Standard English.  I explain that they will have to use formal language in the workplace, and that they will be more successful when they attain a command of it.  I preach that the acquirement of this language is empowerment. 

I also inform them that, once they learn the mechanics of formal English, they will be able to purposefully adapt the language to suit different writing and speaking purposes.  While speaking, they can employ a short sentence to give listeners time to think.  When writing fiction, they can utilize fragments to create emotions or visual impressions.

But here, this person was inferring that the formal language I teach is not only “white,” but also oppressive.  That what I teach in my classroom is a form of domination that subjugates people to conform to those in power, and those in power are the “whites.”  I wasn’t sure I belonged in this room, being an English professor and white, but I wasn’t willing to miss learning about how an African American film director was going to portray the white culture.  I wanted to know and try to understand, so  I stayed deep in my chair.

One scene in the movie showed the CEO of Worry-Free Company surrounded by scantily clad women who fawned all over him.  Another scene showed naked women having sex with naked men at a company party.  I was certainly offended at the misogyny of the scenes, and commented about it to Carol.  My first thought is that people are more concerned about equality amongst the races than they are amongst the genders.  Troublesome.  A uniquely American issue that continues to plague our whole society. 

At the end of the film, Miller asked the audience to rate the film from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best.  Most people rated it as a 3 or 4 as Carol did.  I didn’t even raise my hand.  The film was such an in-my-face opinion about the culture that I represented that I couldn’t even decide what to think. 

What could I learn from this Avant Garde criticism of America set in Oakland, California?  As I drove home from campus, dodging the headlights of dozens of cars whirling around me, my heart fluttered like a moth burned by the heat of a lightbulb. 

Why would this director claim that capitalism was “white” culture?  Because the white Europeans colonized the Africans in order to rob them of their land’s natural resources such as rubber and diamonds.  Because the English aristocrats, who profited from the Caribbean plantations, left the sin of slavery behind when they went back to England to live in their mansions and estates.   Because American plantation owners treated the slaves like they were savages and erased their African roots by converting them into Christians and partial human beings.  Because African Americans have never felt like the benefactors of the capitalist system.  They have slaved before and after the Emancipation without profit and, for hundreds of years now, have been robbed of their human dignity. 

When I got home, two new volumes of African American literature were waiting for me on my doorstep.  I recently had ordered them from Norton.  As I sat at the kitchen table in the hallowed light of the room, I read the Table of Contents of each volume. 

The first volume starts with the words of spirituals—religious songs sung by African Americans since the earliest days of slavery.  As I followed the long list of songs, I recognized the name Brer Fox, but most of the words were not familiar.  In the latter lists, I spotted Phillis Wheatley, a slave who was taught to read and write by her mistress, and W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Harlem Rennaissance poet Langston Hughes.  Volume 11 covers literature up to the 2000 years, and I knew of Melvin Tolson, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King, Jr. 

But the lists of people I had never read was longer.  The editors of the volumes are two African American professors from elite Eastern universities.  Obviously, they have used their long literary careers studying the works of African American authors of all forms and styles.  I never even heard of many like Bob Kaufman who wrote Jail Poems or Adrienne Kennedy who is still living and wrote Funnyhouse of a Negro.

I’m not surprised I don’t fully understand the perspective of Boots Riley and other African American writers like him; I have two disadvantages.  For one, even though I have experienced discrimination and prejudice for being a woman, I have never worn the dress of an African American.   Second, I have much, much more reading to do and more empathy to cultivate until I understand why Blacks distance themselves from me, from someone who wants to be their fellow citizen, but, first, who needs to qualify.

My Search for Cultural Humility

Maya Angelou wrote, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”  This is the quote that will guide me through my search for cultural humility. 

I was born white.  Nobody asked me what color I wanted to be.  I was just born this way: pale skin, toe-head blonde, pink fingers and toes.  I was also born female.  No one asked me what gender I preferred.  Then, about a month after I was born, my parents even chose my religion; they had me baptized as a Catholic.   These three conditions created my destiny, my opportunities, my struggles, my pains, and, for a long time, my opinions about people who were different than me. 

I was raised in a white community: white neighbors, white church members, white school, white grocery stores.  Both of my parents were white.  All my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were white.  As far as I knew, everyone in the whole world had bleached skin. 

When I was nine years old, my father—an Air Force sergeant—was transferred to England to serve there for four years.  So, in the middle of my third grade, my large family of nine white children flew to England to live for four years.  While there, we lived off-base in the English countryside and attended English Catholic schools.  I can only remember white classmates, kids who looked even paler than I did. 

In California, state history is taught in fourth grade, so I missed learning about the California missions, the Spanish colonialists, and the Gold Rush.  I didn’t study about how the Franciscan priests converted the native Indians to Catholicism, made them work in the missions making wine and bread, watched them contract the white man’s diseases, and buried them in the mission cemeteries. 

In seventh grade, California students study United States history, so I missed that too.  While kids back home were studying about the Colonial times, I was learning about Anglos and Saxons settling the British Isles, William the Conqueror’s successful takeover of England in 1066, and the tumultuous and factious rule of several royal families like the Houses of Lancaster, Tudors, and Stuarts.  I became fascinated with Elizabeth I, whose reign produced William Shakespeare.  To me, she was a powerful, ingenious woman who used savvy strategies to maintain her hold on power and her queenship in a male-dominated world. 

If my old friends in the U.S. studied anything about slavery, I didn’t at all. I leaned that the men from aristocratic families often sailed out of England due to business, but nobody ever talked about where they went, what decisions they made, what they saw, what they were responsible for, or how their wealth was produced. 

My family lived in England from early 1966 to late 1969—important years in America: civil rights.  I missed hearing about all of Martin Luther King Jr.’s marches, his speeches, what he was speaking for.  On the day that Robert Kennedy was killed, Sister Genevieve asked me to stand up in front on the class and tell everyone else how I felt about his assassination. I didn’t know. 

I never even heard about Martin Luther King’s assassination, and no one asked for my opinion when he died.  An ignorant mind doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about right and wrong or concepts of equality and freedom. 

I knew little about Black people except what I learned from the mouths of my parents.  My father thought they were lazy.  He told stories about the Black men in his unit who were supposed to work on the plane engines.  He described how they sat around smoking cigarettes while the white men brought in the parts, organized the work spaces, and fixed the broken planes.  The Black men smiled as they smoked, knowing they could get away with doing nothing. 

My mother used the “N” word.  Whenever she talked about Black people, she called them “N****s.”  I knew that it was a derogatory term by the sneer that formed on her face when she said it.  The tone of her voice emphasized the first syllable in a low guttural sound, and then let up on the second syllable like the backlash of a whip.  One side of her lip curled up like she had just found a cockroach in the garbage can.   

While we lived in base housing—a pastoral oasis with grazing cows and forested valleys—a Black family moved in next door to us.  My parents reacted with quiet, stunned faces.  One day when I was outside in the front yard, one of the boys from this family walked out onto their patch of front lawn.  His skin was black, as dark of my father’s shoe polish.  We looked at each other silently for several long minutes. 

After noting his skin, I searched for his eyes—not black.  In the English sun, they shone like deep, brown pearls floating in seas of white cream, friendly, wistful, inviting, tender.  I softened in response, like a morning glory opening in the early light, and a wad of shame built up in the center of my chest for all of my preconceived notions. 

Yet, this was only a first impression and short-lived.  Soon, our family was on our way back to the United States and away from our next-door Black neighbors.    

And so, I came back, enthralled with a love of English aristocracy and royal lineage and the literature that upheld their good and righteous glory.  I believed in the goodness of Henry V as he protected the English throne on the edge of France.  I believed in the moral purity of Elizabeth and Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.  

I never studied American history until I got to college.  In high school, I studied World History in freshman year.  No Black peoples or slavery interrupted my understanding of Egypt, Rome, Constantinople, or Napoleon. As a senior, I studied Civics, never learning about the constitutional amendments that finally allowed women and Blacks the right to vote freely, without literacy or taxation barriers. 

In college, finally, I took American History from Colonial Days to 1877.  1877 was the end of the Reconstruction Period in the South.  Did I understand the significance of ending Reconstruction?  Absolutely not.  Looking back, I wonder why the academic planners chose to end my history class right before Jim Crow took over the South. 

So, I entered the world of adults, ready to work, vote, contribute, change, and mold my society with an incomplete understanding of the history and make-up of my country or the world.  Little did I know that I would learn what discrimination meant, but from a female point of view. But, even with good intentions, I was ignorant of who my fellow Black brothers and sisters were and how they felt about themselves and me.  My perspective was too white, too female, and too Catholic.  My journey toward cultural humility was going to be a long one. 

Dark Confession

Audrey’s second grade class had been practicing their confession ritual for three months, and, finally, the day came for their first confession.  Audrey smoothed the pleats of her green and white plaid, wool skirt over her knees.  The fabric scratched her bare thighs.

Sister Magdalene was listening to Tommy.

“I don’t know,” Tommy said.

“You must know.  How many sins do you have to confess?  You’ll be going to confession today and you have to be ready.”

“I can’t think of any,” Tommy whined, cupping his already large hands at the sides of his dipped head. 

Sister Magdalene picked up the math book from her desk, raised it like a whip over a slave’s back, and banged it down on Tommy’s crew cut.

Tommy cowered over his desk, protecting his head with his hands laced over his skull and his elbows tucked in across his face.  A moan escaped from the cave of his elbows, a sound like a deer shot in the forest, trapped in the eye piece of a hunter’s gun.  Audrey winced when the book hit Tommy’s interlaced fingers again.

“You’re lazy, Tommy!  Tell that to the priest when you go to confession.”

Tommy’s desk was the first in Audrey’s row.  He had to sit in front because Sister Magdalene wanted to watch him.  He got hit over the head with lots of books: math, history, hardbacks, large paperbacks with big words on their covers, but he never got hit with the little paperback books from the top shelf behind Sister Magdalene’s desk.  Never.  And Audrey was glad that she sat close to the back row.

Jane’s turn.  “I hit my sister yesterday.”

Darlene tells Sister Magdalene that she stole two marshmallows from the cupboard when her mother wasn’t looking.  Colleen used Darlene’s bicycle without asking her.

Soon would be Audrey’s turn.  What was she going to say?  When mommy asked her to set the table, she did it.  When she told Audrey to fold the clothes, she folded them.  She didn’t talk back.  She knew better than to say no.  Instead, she knew that if she folded the clothes, she’d be alone in the laundry room where it was quiet.  The dryer warmed the room, and its tumbling sounded like distant drumming.

Sometimes, Audrey sang songs, pretending that the dryer was background music.  When the washer was on, she sang livelier songs.  She sang, yes, but she didn’t sin while she was folding the clothes.  The laundry room wasn’t a place for sinning; it was a place for peace.

What was she going to do?  If she didn’t come up with a sin, Sister Magdalene would hit her over the head with one of those books.  Colleen was only two seats ahead of her.

As Sister Magdalene asked each student, she stepped down the row, closer and closer to Audrey, like a huge bat in her black gown.  A white band on her forehead held in place a black veil that flowed down her back.  Her folded arms were pleated bat wings.  Closer and closer she inched until her shadow crossed over Audrey’s desk and engulfed her in gloom.  Audrey couldn’t see the sunlight shining through the windows anymore.

“Tell me your sins.”

Audrey squeezed her hands tightly in the crotch of her skirt.  She could feel her heart beating up a batter of a lie that was thick and sticky.  Maybe Sister would sense the lie. Then, Sister would hold a book over her head, and when it clunked down on Audrey’s headband, she would groan like Tommy.  Die like a beetle under a shoe.

“I lied, Sister.”

“Good.  You’re ready then.”  Sister Magdalene took a step behind Audrey and the sunlight from the window splashed over her face and shoulders like warm bathwater, the heat from toast, the breath from the dryer in the laundry room.  She was safe.  She had survived the inquisition and had something to tell the priest in confession.

After lunch, the class marched in two lines from the classroom to the church on the hill.  Audrey held hands with Maureen, who sat right behind her.  Sister Magdalene held Tommy’s hand, pulling him behind her like a walking doll whose battery was running down; his legs dragged on the sidewalk and he tripped on the stairs.

Inside the church, the class filed in twos down the center aisle and filled the two front pews, girls to the left, boys to the right. 

“Hands in your laps!”  Sister Magdalene whispered harshly with disdain and disapproval.  Audrey tucked her chin into her blouse and looked at Sister through furtive eyes, folding her hands over her plaid skirt and stretching her toes to reach the floor.  The tips of her shoes could barely reach the linoleum. 

One by one, her classmates disappeared into dark hallways on either side of the altar.  She waited on her square of the pew, tapping at the floor, trying to remember the words to the Act of Contrition prayer that she was supposed to say in the confessional: “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I . . . “  What’s next?  Her head was filled with white, fluffy nothing, like those cotton balls mommy had in her bathroom.  No words to the prayer came to mind, only filling that blackened and furled into fear.  What will the priest say if I can’t remember?  Will he tell Sister Magdalene?  Audrey thought of the math book lying on the corner of Sister’s desk with its big, black letters.

Her turn.

She walked from the pew with her arms at her sides, and hastily clasped her hands together as she reached the dark hallway.  She couldn’t see the confessional.  The hall was so black and deep, she couldn’t see even the walls of the tunnel stretched before her.  Only a hollow shaft of light illuminated the floor for several feet ahead of her.

Beyond the shaft was blackness.  A black as deep as the space above her bed at night.  Dense, complete darkness.  Somewhere in that cave of blindness was the confessional, controlled by a priest in black clothes with a cross around his neck.  A priest who would judge her for her sins, even if they were fabricated at the last minute to avoid corporal punishment.

She stepped gingerly into the obscurity, holding her breath so tightly that pins jabbed at the cells in her chest like tiny swords.  Walking on her tiptoes, her arms lagging at her sides.  She clenched her jaw, ready to defend herself against the demons of the dimness, but not sure where or what they were.

Step by step, the walls appeared like the slabs of a tomb as her eyes adjusted.  The lines of the linoleum transported her gaze down the chamber to a kneeler set under a dark window.  Beside the window was a notice, stuck to the wood with a silver tack, pierced like the heart of Jesus.

She couldn’t read it.  Maybe it was a notice that the confessional was out of order.  For a flicker of a second, she breathed easier, absolved of the responsibility to implicate herself in a sacrificial crime.  Liberated from the punishment of a priest’s sentencing, free of the humiliation of having to lie to follow the rules.

No.  It wasn’t that.  She heard a shuffling behind the dark window.  Saw a silhouette wobbling behind the screen—the shadow of a fat head on the pedestal of rounded shoulders.  The priest was there, waiting for her, grinning at her guilt, anticipating the litany of her sins, prescribing her sentence.

Audrey knelt on the wool cushion, one knee and then the other.  Her knees itched.  She pressed her hands to each other, fingers pointing to the dark ceiling, and one thumb crossed over the other. 

In this cavity of shame, she read the words on the sign—The Act of Contrition.  Sucked the dank air into her lungs like filling a vacuum, and its clamminess wallowed around the tight walls of her organs like the squall of a storm.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned.  This is my first confession . . . I lied, Father.”

Baptism at Bridge River

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

A teeny church stood on a patch of earth next to the shore of the American River in Sacramento where the iron gables of the Fair Oaks Bridge arched its back from the north shore across to the south sandy bluff. One room with a polished, wooden floor and six stained glass windows; three high windows lined each side wall, inviting the glory of the sunrise in the morning and the grandeur of the sunset at night.  In the sun’s ascent and descent, the stained glass filtered a rainbow of light into the single tall room, creating the impression that heaven hovered right outside.

Father McAlister, fresh out of a seminary in Ireland and already balding, said mass every weekday morning at 8 a.m. to a cluster of parishioners. McAlister named his parish St. Mel’s, after the nephew of Ireland’s patron, Saint Patrick. He told his parishioners that St. Mel came to Ireland in the fifth century with his uncle to convert pagans to Catholicism. Mel was the patron saint of the dioceses of Ardagh and Clonmacnois in Ireland, McAlister’s birthplace. As he preached, Father McAlister’s emotions drew deep, angry lines into his forehead, but when he clasped the hands of his parishioners, he smiled warmly, shook firmly.

In August, 1956, McAlister’s little church was only half-full on Sundays. But, by May, 1957, the seats were filled—fathers in suits, mothers in maternity dresses and lace veils, babies that squalled, and toddles that escaped from their parent’s clutches and teetered down the short center aisle.  Little boys wore blue trousers and tiny buttoned shirts.  Little girls twirled in skirts that gathered from their waists and bounced above their knees.

On summer Friday nights, parishioners gathered for potlucks on the nearby sandy shore of the steely blue river. Fathers carted their barbeques to the beach, on which they grilled steaks for the parents and hotdogs for the kids. Bowls of potato salad and coleslaw crowded the tops of folding tables along with steaming pots of baked beans, plastic bags of hot dog buns, and jars of yellow mustard. Parents set their woven folding chairs in circles to build fences around the toddlers that were attracted to the rolling current of the river.

Later, after the sun had inched its way down through the iron spokes of Fair Oaks Bridge and settled splendidly on the tips of the trees across the river, fathers took the older kids down to the water’s edge to teach them how to find flat stones on the bank and skitter them across the smoother parts of the water. The kids took off their shoes and waded in the shallow puddles of the shore. They fell and smeared their shorts with gritty mud that would eventually end up on the seats of the family cars. When the sun set and it was well past bedtime, reluctant parents packed their picnic supplies into the backs of their trucks and station wagons and took their broods home.

This church, this beach, this community was the perfect setting for a happy childhood.

Back at home, a girl child swam in the dark, warm ocean of her mother’s womb.  She listened to the soft voice of her mother who used short sentences. Single words. Gentle instructions. Submissive answers. The girl child was excited to be in her womb and anxious to see her mother’s face. She swam and swam around the dark ocean for a long time, writing big dreams on the pages of her heart. She dreamed of dancing for hours in the sunlight and catching as many golden rays as she could carry in the crooks of her arms.  She would speak and draw and teach and learn and listen to as many people as she could meet.  Her dreams were long and  joyous, endless, full of laughter, unlimited in imagination.  In early May, after a thousand stories had filled this sweet heart about the future of her life, this baby girl was born and her parent named her Audrey.

By the end of Audrey’s third month, her parents stood in front of the altar at church with her and her two sisters. Her father held her. Her mother, her left arm in a sling, alternately patted the blonde heads of her sisters with her right hand.

Usually parishioners baptized their babies the Sunday after the mother and baby left the hospital. But, after Audrey’s mother had delivered, Audrey came home from the hospital while her mother stayed for another two weeks, healing from bursitis.  Her father couldn’t take time off work to care for a new baby and two little toddlers so he asked the neighbors, Ed and Crème Hardy to take care of the new baby girl. Yvonne and Owen O’Neil, parishioners from church, took Audrey’s sisters.

Crème swaddled Audrey in blankets and placed her in a drawer in the living room so she could see her while she worked. She fed Audrey fresh goat’s milk from the ninny in her back yard. In between finishing the laundry, sweeping the floor, and baking bread, Crème rubbed Audrey’s belly and pulled her toes. She sang lullabies to her with a voice that chimed like a church bell.

When Audrey fell asleep in the mornings, Crème snuck out to the farm yard to feed the chickens and collect eggs. During the baby’s afternoon naps, she ironed her husband’s button down shirts and worked on a quilt for her own soon-to-be-born baby. But, after she cleaned up the dinner dishes, she took Audry into her arms and rocked her by the fire in an oak rocking chair, softened with deep red cushions. Audrey looked into Crème’s jade-green eyes and saw smiles. She cooed and gurgled while Crème told her stories about a beautiful, young girl who was admired for her intelligence and grace.

At the end of two weeks, when her father arrived to take her home, he roughly scooped Audrey out of Crème’s arms with his big, pancake hands. Audrey couldn’t breathe. All she could see were the walls whirling, the rocking chair getting smaller, the fire shivering like a frightened animal, her father’s face spinning around and around, making her dizzy, confused, and scared. He took her far away from Crème.

“I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” Father McAlister chanted as he poured the glass picture of holy water over Audrey’s head as her father held her over the baptismal font. The water was cold. It splashed on the little head and drizzled down the front of the baby girl’s face, over her eyes, down the sides of her nose. She squeezed her bluish-green eyes shut and pursed her mouth into crescent dimples.  The baby girl didn’t cry, whimper, just held in her little puffs of breath until it was over.

Broken Bloom

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Every baby girl born will have far to go.  She doesn’t know this, of course, as she lies in her cradle and makes her first speech with sweet coos and babbles.  And she will start at her beginning, like all baby girls.  She will make mistakes as she tries to find her own direction, which will pull at her throughout her whole life until she discovers what her course is and then takes charge of it. 

Because she is a girl, her potential will get crushed early on.  Someone will tell her that she doesn’t have the right or authority to reach the same potential as a boy.  And she will come to believe this so deeply and thoroughly that this limitation will become part of her personality. This belief will be the ink stain on her white blouse, the deep crease in a linen dress, and so woven into the fabric of her being that she’ll likely never distinguish between the nuances of her unlimited character and the poison that tells her that she is a lesser human being.

This is why it takes women decades to figure out what has held them back for the majority of their lives. They feel ashamed of being subordinated for so long, and so deeply shackled.

Based on this belief in her lack of power, she will make decisions.  For example, she may decide that when she can’t find love, she is unlovable.  When she feels unlovable, she will lose her self esteem in running the rest of her life since love, after all, determines self-worth.  She will shake when she meets a new person at a party, or she will decide not to go to the party at all.  No one would want to meet her anyway.  At her job, she will perform like someone who is not important because how could she be important if she is not worthy of love?  Accordingly, she will not be promoted and will be overlooked for more challenging positions.

When she graduates from high school, she may think that she has to choose either motherhood or college, not both.  If she already has a child and she is not married to the father, she’ll struggle to support this child without a higher education, guaranteeing her a life of struggle and poverty.  The fact that she had a child so early will make her feel like victim or a loser, some one who has no control over her life.  So, she won’t ever have control over herself.

The woman who chooses motherhood, but is unlucky enough to be infertile, will break into a thousand pieces of sorrow and unresolved anguish. Not only is she not powerful enough to get a higher education, provide the income for a family, or lead a corporation, she also lacks the one power that a woman has traditionally called her own–the power to grow a child inside her, a potential so profound that inequality, discrimination, or misogyny have all failed to steal this role away from women. When a woman doesn’t even have this ability, she will feel as if she has nothing at all.

When a man treats her as only a sex object or demeans her sexually in any way, she will believe that she essentially plays the role of a prostitute, and that this is her major role in society.  Even without labeling herself, unconsciously, she will treat herself as a trollop anyway.  This belief will determine how she dresses, styles her hair, wears make up, and walks down the street.  She will use her sexuality more than her intelligence to attract a man. 

She will come to understand that she does not deserve to be paid as high as a man because she will agree that hiring her is risky since she may take time off to have a baby, showing her lack of commitment to her job.  If she is a soccer player on the national professional soccer team, she will settle for lower prize money since women’s sports don’t bring in as much advertisement as men’s sports.  After all, prize money must be determined by profits. Right?

And when she is spending all her time being the limited person that she has been told she is, she won’t get any closer to the woman that she can really become.  She won’t figure out that she is a naturally gifted teacher who can transform or even save the lives of her students. She won’t dare to invent a drug that cures leukemia or challenge the male-dominated glass ceiling of corporations.  She won’t recognize that she is a gifted artist who can paint philosophical lessons into her images to help her community heal from prejudice or other sins of society. 

She’ll miss opportunities for better jobs, healthy relationships, and fulfilling activities.  She’ll be blind to her full potential, and, if she never finds her power, she will live like a subordinated human being her whole life–never truly finding happiness, a joy that she could achieve by living her glorious, powerful, fully-blooming life.