This Could Be Us But You Keep . . .

How Chloe Almost Got Hurt Over a Pair of One Hundred Dollar Sneakers . . .

Jackie and I are two very different women.  My idea of a nice day is putting on a pair of heels and going out to lunch, while she would prefer to put on a pair of hiking boots and go on an outdoor adventure. Our friendship works because it is reciprocal.  We indulge each other; she comes to Buddakan with me and I go hiking with her. 

Jackie wearing a fur trimmed cape to the farm! Yesssss! Fashion!

This weekend she decided that we should take our kids to Harvest Moon Farm and Orchard so that Chloe could participate in an Easter Egg Hunt.  The 50 minute ride to rural NY was scenic and I noticed myself beginning to breathe more deeply the farther we got outside of the city. Chloe delighted in having a fresh eager ear for her stories, while Noah read a book on his phone up front.  It's almost as if the personalities of our children are reversed:  Chloe is active and gregarious like Jackie, and Noah is quiet and observant like me.

When we arrived at the farm there was snow on the ground, and not a bud on a tree.  Nevertheless the sun was shining, the wind was still,  and I immediately perked up when I saw this:

#farmlife

Chloe, Jackie, and I went inside to buy apple cider donuts. The donuts alone were worth the hour ride: light, fluffy, straight out of the deep-fryer, and warm.

Yum!!

While we were in the store, Chloe spent about a minute looking at baby chickens in an incubator and decided that she would rather be outside. That bold seven year old of mine ran off and ended up talking someone into letting her into the bouncy house without a ticket!  Sometimes, I look at her in wonder.  When I was her age, I would have been clinging to my mother's side in fear of the other people.  She has no fear of the world or her place in it.

Afterwards Chloe found more than her fair share of eggs in the Easter Egg Hunt, rode a horse,  had lunch, and played on a makeshift slide and swing set.

When it was time to get into the car to leave, we looked down and Chloe was covered in mud looking like Pigpen from Peanuts.  Her jeans were splattered with a particularly foul smelling dirt and her boots were completely covered in it.  She only had the boots since December (they were a Christmas gift from Grandma), but they were now unwearable and Jackie wasn't trying to have those nasty things in her car.

aka Chlo-Chlo

We decided to leave the boots in the parking lot and head to the mall to get her some new shoes. At that point I was mildly irritated, but as we walked into Nordstrom I looked at Chloe strutting around in her mix-matched dirty pink and purple socks and got heated.  She was prancing around, flipping her braids like being shoeless in public was a perfectly acceptable wardrobe option.  It took everything in my power not to snatch her up and tell her that she should be embarrassed (she's lucky that Grandma wasn't there).

To make things worse, when we went to the third floor to look at children's shoes, Chloe immediately ran toward the most expensive ones.  When I picked out a pair of functional navy blue Converse she had the AUDACITY to pout and pretend that she couldn't get them on her feet.  Then she began making this strange mewing noise- like the very act of trying them on was hurting her.  I honestly felt like knocking her upside her head, but I figured that would not be a good look for Nordstrom.

Did this child realize that she should be grateful that she had a mother with the time and inclination to take her to a farm and spend $8.00 so she could sit her behind on a horse for two minutes?
Did she understand that she should be thankful for getting a new pair of shoes on a day that we were NOT celebrating the day of her birth?  Did she not get that it made no sense for me to spend one hundred dollars on a pair of shoes when she did not have the sense to take care of the ones that she had?

Of course not, because despite the fact that her personality is nothing like mine, she is my daughter and she expects the best.  And even though she walked out of Nordstrom with a pair of navy blue Converse, rather than the sparkly pink Sketchers that she wanted-she made them WORK!


   

Sick of Spring Break

Ugh.  I spent the last week of Spring Break sick in bed.  Chloe scarcely recognized her poor mother picking her up from school without her face and hair done.  It was a sweatpants, Uggs, and messy (ok. ratchet) ponytail kind of week.

Anyway, I got this really sweet note from a former student that cheered me up and made me look forward to the week ahead back at school.
  
Hi Ms. Cardwell! 
I hope you're doing well. I'm back at Mount Holyoke and in one of my classes we're reading The Bluest Eye. I told my professor that I'd read it before in middle school and he actually didn't believe me at first. This isn't the first time a teacher has been surprised at the books you assigned us; in high school I had to read Invisible Man for a class and the teacher was surprised that I had read it at The Storefront. Just so you know, I'm actually really glad you made us read those books. Even though I didn't appreciate it very much at the time, it is easier reading these books the second time around because the discussions we had at The Storefront start to come back to me.

-H.

Invisible Man by Elizabeth Catlett Riverside Park @ 150th.

Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic @ The Brooklyn Museum

Painting is about the world we live in.  Black people live in the world.  My choice is to include them. This is my way of saying yes to us. - Kehinde Wiley

Go see Kehinde Wiley's work at The Brooklyn Museum before May 24th.

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

One of my new favorite television shows is American Crime on ABC.  In one extremely powerful scene, a daughter tells her father, “you hate yourself and you hate us for looking like you.”  This line resonated with me because of two crazy conversations that I had with men this week.

Crazy Conversation Number One:

The other night I was on the phone with an old friend from school.  He was telling me about how his daughter was dating a young man that he didn’t approve of.  His daughter is Dominican and the man in question is African-American.  As he was complaining about the ways in which the man didn’t measure up to the expectations that he had for his child, he added, “he’s like the stereotypical black person.” When I reminded him that I am black (I’m having to do that a lot lately) he reassured me that he wasn’t racist, just stressed out about his daughter.  Then he told me that all of his black friends preferred Latina women because they knew how to “take care of their men.”  

Current Mood: Pissed off (but still fashionable)

Huh?  How did we go from an apology for an inappropriate comment to an indictment of black women?  Who are these black men who would tell a Dominican man that they prefer his women to their own?  Do Asian men have conversations with white men about how much they prefer white women over Asian? Do Latino men write books and give lectures about what Latina women need to change about themselves in order to "get a man." Or do men of other races just choose who makes them happy and keep it moving without feeling the need to advertise and justify their choice?

Crazy Conversation Number Two:

A few days ago I was talking to a man who mentioned that he wanted to see me.  When I asked him where we were going to go on our first date he lectured me about being “old-fashioned.”  He said that if I wanted to go out with him I should ask him on a date (and pay for it).  When I told him that that wasn’t going to happen, he said that I could cook him a plate and we could go for a walk as he ate it. 

When I laughed at that idea he said “Don’t get offended or defensive about what I’m about to say . . . but black women don’t know how to build up their men.  Black women are the only women who still believe in fairy tale relationships.”  Then he really went to for the jugular and said, “you are going to keep doing what you’re doing and then wonder why you’re going through menopause and still single.” 

Did this man really just call me old and black like who I am is something that I should be ashamed of when he is just as old and black as I am? Did he just insult me because I expect that going out on actual dates (as opposed to euphemistically "hanging out") is part of the process of getting to know someone?  Does he realize that creating and manipulating feelings of race based insecurity is one of the tools of white racism used against him in order to maintain control and  prevent him from questioning the status quo-just as he was trying to do to me?

Probably not.  And what's worse is that this fool was probably hollering about Eric Garner a few months ago.  Well, guess what?