Saturday, February 25, 2012

love settles at the bottom of the glen

2 loves
he comes beside her
a touch on her arm
she turns
guides his center
to the seat next to her
another touch
nudge
sends them rolling quietly
down a hill


he sits
rests
turns again
they tumble into a light kiss
settle at the bottom
together
they gather
to watch
the birds fly
against
the setting sun


and i wonder
if i will ever
share such a beautiful silhouette
enjoy such a beautifully
seasoned love

Saturday, February 18, 2012

She Told Me, “I Can’t”


“I can’t do it,” she said. It was a statement that needed a bit of deciphering. I did not quite know what it meant; I did not know what made this 4th grader believe that she could not—could not draw an oval. Who told her that she could not?

Cassie picked up her pencil, held it to the paper, like a knife to something she threatened to cut, then placed it down on her desk, and said, again, “I can’t.”

I was in Cassie’s class assisting with a jazz and visual arts residency. The 3rd and 4th graders worked with visual artist Teresa Cox to spend a few days becoming their own versions of Pablo Picasso and Romare Bearden. For some, the transformation was easy. For others, not so much.

“I know you can,” I said, hoping to get a sense of her frustration. What did her words mean? “I know you can. Getting yourself to school every day was a lot more work than anything you are going to do for this project, especially draw the oval. Tell me what you mean.”

“I just can’t,” she said. “It’s too much.”

Was she overwhelmed by the larger project of creating a collaged self portrait? Was she shy or unsatisfied with her artistic ability? Had she really been trained by her environment to believe that she was not capable? I told her that I knew that she was a sufficiently intelligent girl and that I was pretty sure that most of the stuff that any of us was going to ask of her in the classroom was something she was up to.

I did not say this as an encouragement, like some hero that was going to make her to believe in herself. She was wise, intelligent and hip enough so that the Marlo Thomas bit wasn’t going to work on her. Still, I was uncomfortable with the “I can’t” language and how infectious it could be to so many other things that she was going to have to do in that classroom; I was not willing for those things, much less the project she was working on, to get derailed with the most powerful words of defeat.

Would I have to interpret her “I can’t” in a way we sometimes we have to interpret “I’m bored” when kids utter the phrase? Sometimes, “I’m bored” can mean a kid wants you to find something for her to do, besides make her lunch. Sometimes it means, “I’m depressed.”

I know that our childhoods are not always happy, that they are not days to which a lot of us grown-ups want to return. Not salad days. During the past weeks spent in a half dozen classrooms, I saw more than one kid living through a day to which they do not want to return. Still, I know that they have and will return in spite of my wishes to the contrary, just as those days did in my youth. And these hard days usually do more than just feel bad: they make just about everything, including school, dysfunctional and not easy.

It was frustrating that some kids could not seem, at first (and second), to pull themselves together to complete their project with an ease that matched the task. What was more frustrating and what was the most difficult to watch was how familiar I was with what those kids experienced.

I saw my 4th grade self, the 4th grade self that, somehow, could not fit himself—force his way into the context of so many things, places, projects and knowledge that should have been simple and easy. Instead, the reality against which I fought, many of the kids I see fight, was one that portrayed the simplest tasks with unease, unsureness and few expectations.

What was Cassie really supposed to do? What was really expected of her? What had she learned about what people expected?

I am not sure what she had to fight through that afternoon, what so many other kids in the many classrooms in which I worked over the past few weeks had to fight through—whether it was something as simple as not knowing or being unfamiliar with the use of scissors and glue or if it was more of a emotional weight against which they had to fight to get themselves to school each morning.

But Cassie was not fighting anything like an ignorance of what an oval was or how to use a pencil to create one. I heard her say the dastardly magic words again: “I can’t do this.” But what followed gave me a hint to what she was fighting. “You don’t understand. I got a lot going on right now,” she said. Heavy words coming from a ten-year-old.

I did not know what I could say in the small, not private space and in the short period of time we had. The words I was able to find could not be guaranteed to be translated into something helpful for Cassie. I do not even know if there were enough words or enough common, familiar language to have anything I said make sense—be impactful in the small context in which we worked.

I looked around the room, at the kids and at myself—at what was familiar in their faces and the feelings that emitted from their fits of frustration. I said, “Yeah, I know. A lot of us have stuff going on. We have stuff that seems impossible, like nothing’s going to work. But not everything has to not work.”

I told her, urged her not to do what is so easy for us, to let that art project, that easy thing, get washed down the same drain of stuff “going on.”

I do not know the details of her life. It is not my place to ask and I did not get the time—and about those things “going on,” she was right: I did not know them. At least not as clearly as she needed someone to know, understand and listen.

What I do understand is that some days, it is too hard to leave the comfort and safety of home and face a boat load of Impossibles, to step out the door, to pick up a scissors or put pencil to paper. But we get up and leave, not so much out of bravery or resolve but because staying is not an option.

And for some, and maybe for Cassie, it was what was happening at home that was her Impossible, an impossible that was heavy enough create a “can’t” that creeps into too much of her days. I do not know.

What do I know? That this opportunity to create was not a “can’t” and did not have to be another failure in days of difficulty. What I did know is that Cassie’s mood and attitude not only risked not getting her project done, but had bigger ramifications, not just for the day, not just for the school year. I thought of my own experience. I wanted to tell her in the most urgent voice something from my own experience: that she needed to do something about it or they would put her in the “dumb kid” class, which is where I found myself in too much of my school career. You might think that they don’t have dumb kid classes anymore. I am not so sure that we do not live in a social climate where we are not just segregating kids into the dumb kid classes: we are making whole schools, full of uncreative can’ts: this kid can’t… our systems just can’t… we just can’t pay for…

I did not have the magic words, and thought maybe her teacher, Ms. Dixon did. Maybe. I am not sure which conversations helped. I told Ms. Dixon what was going on. I know she knew Cassie much better than I. Cassie was a day behind on her project, but she, like many other kids who were having a difficult time, pushed through and created something wonderful.

Today, there are many wonderful works hanging I the halls of the three schools. Scores of works from as many kids. It seems like a major achievement, and given the work that Teresa Cox, teachers and students did, it is a major achievement. I am not sure how to measure this achievement against the the greater complexities of “stuff going on.” I am just glad that Cassie did not let this achievement slip away. I am glad that my worries of “I can’t” could be held off long enough for the wills that made a success.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

miniStories: The Boy Who Did Not Like Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

This piece first appeared at at mnartists.org as a part of their flash fiction competition, miniStories.  As they wrote with it’s publication, “This winning story written by Clarence White (selected by Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl) offers an understated but affecting little tale about the love between fathers and sons and the power of peanut butter and jelly.”  Thanks to mnartists.org and to 3-Minute Egg for recording the event publicizing the competition and publication series, attracting established, emerging and aspiring writers to create works no longer than 500 words. 3-Minute Egg captured some of the voices from the winners’ circle, reading their pieces in the lobby of the Ritz Theater.  See a video of the event HERE.

miniStories: The Boy Who Did Not Like Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

Who ever heard of a little boy who did not like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? Or puppet shows, pepperoni pizza, the sandbox or the caramel part of a candied apple? 

Peanut butter and jelly. It is, of course, the perfect breakfast food. I remember as a child listening to the episode of School House Rock that suggested:
Peanut butter and jelly
Any time of day’s a treat.


It urged kids to eat a good breakfast, and I felt proud that my mother had already discovered the virtues of PB&J. Three decades later, as a parent, I realized how great it was—the discovery that this sandwich was a lot easier than making a lot of other breakfasts, and it dirtied few dishes, which is important when housekeeping is a personal challenge. It helps to know that it’s enough protein for a child and not too many calories for someone who spend most of his day running after nothing at all—that nothing which is everything for a child, that something which is as real as an invisible friend that somehow gets lost between the sofa cushions just before adulthood. 

But Elliot would not eat peanut butter and jelly. A profound disappointment, not just for the nutritional and housekeeping ramifications: it also meant my son was missing out on one of life’s basic comforts, one that would help him cope with a series of life’s rainouts, missed birthday parties and bad afternoons at the principal’s office. 

But other kids are usually better influencers than parents. Kids know what’s important. 

It was Elliot’s friend Brandon who created the breakthrough one morning of a sleepover. “Can I have HONEY on my peanut butter and jelly?” he asked. 

How about it, El?” he turned to my son. 

It was a disproportionate joy that accompanied the sandwich making. I made two sandwiches, the middle topped off with a drizzle of honey. I was a little bit too proud of my five-year-old son and myself. “Hey, this is pretty good,” Elliot said. Of course, the crust was left on both boys’ finished sandwiches, which didn’t spoil the triumph. 

Nothing could spoil the triumph. Not even the day months later when I forgot the honey—and was absent-minded enough to blurt out the fact as we were driving to mommy’s house. His quivering voice threatened to summon a crisis that could easily last through the rest of our week’s final moments together. “Try it Elliot.” I hoped, “It’s okay.” 

I could hear the first bite into the soft sandwich as sure as I could feel the lump in his throat that would make the peanut butter part hard to swallow. I was quiet, hoping for the best and concealing my own voice’s quiver. 

The sandwich was fine—and not just because PB&J tastes the same without honey. It was fine because five-year-olds know how to keep their daddies from crying. “It’s pretty good, even without the honey,” he said. I cried later. On the drive home. With a smiling crust in the passenger seat. 

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Sunday, February 5, 2012

Home, Part 3

This is the last of a three part series.  See “Home, Part 1” and “Home, Part 2” in the previous two posts.  Wishing all of of you, whether I know you or not, a nice home weekend.

*******


What does it mean when our lover puts a toothbrush in the bathroom for us? What does it mean when we give them a key, and how is that key different from the key we leave with our neighbor for safe keeping? I remember a friend’s exclamation when her boyfriend gave her a drawer for her clothes at his house. Welcome. Trust. Love. Knowing we belong.


What happens when seeing that toothbrush in the morning is no longer a welcome site, or anything else that goes with that love, spouse? Years ago, a friend said, “I just need to get alone.” At first, we thought she was telling she needed a loan. “No,” she said, “I need to be alone.” She needed to move out of the apartment she shared (secretly without her parents knowing) with her boyfriend. 


What happens when we lose his or her trust or lose that trust in them? What happens when we fall out of love?

Maybe nothing. How many toothbrushes are sitting in the house, memories too precious to throw away and not willing to institute the insult of using them to scrub nooks and crannies? A found key: I know whose P.O. box it belongs to. No use giving it back; of no use in any way. A key. A toothbrush. A found sock.


A stack of strawberry soda that my grandmother used to keep in a room just off her kitchen. 


It was a mountain that never seemed to dwindle. The endless supply was meant not so much to lure her grandchildren as it was a message to her daughter that those grandchildren should spend more time with their grandmother. Even though we spent three weeks most summers of our childhood in New Orleans, grandma wanted mother to send us for longer, extended stays, long enough to make a dent in her proud pile of red “cold drink.” It was more than a hint. It was “proof,” of course, that we, her grandchildren BELONGED there, with her, the right of her grandmotherhood. 


That visit would never happen. Grandchildren grew into young adult grandchildren and then into adults. They became too busy to take a near month-long chunk out of their summer and then too old to really care about red cold drink. I don’t know if she, little by little, gave the soda away to the neighbor children, if they were slowly pilfered by the one son she had who never really got his life together or if a large pile of soda was her only company when she was stricken by the stroke that would, in little time take her life. 


In the quarter century since her passing, I have wondered who else would sit all day on the front stoop waiting for me come arrive in a place that was especially for me. I wonder for whom I will sit on that stoop. Is the extra toothbrush in the linen closet just another pile of strawberry soda sitting in the back room?


Like grandma, we sit and imagine the object of our love. We wait with toothbrush, special tea, special cereal, whatever white or colorful noise helps them sleep. We want to create a space that will prompt someone to ask as that love ventures without knocking to cross our threshold, “Do you live here?” We look to have such a place of our own; we long to find other places were those we love make us belong.


On that late spring afternoon, I walked into Mary’s house, as I had so many other days, like I lived there. On that or any other day, another friend might have walked through the unlocked door and waited for Mary, sitting on the day bed on which that they would not have guessed—or bothered to think that she and I had made love. 


Others would walk into the kitchen and wait for her and wait for one of the many important discussions we had there that could change the world, if only it would listen. That John walked in with me and that a dozen others would soon follow, I confined the two of us to the living room, bathroom and kitchen. We waited. Other days, I waited: waited on that day bed; waited in the kitchen; waited with open cupboards as the contents of those cupboards waited for me; waited in the quiet white walls and no noise in the bed of the farthest back bedroom, free, welcome and wanted. I was free to fall asleep, lie awake, make myself at home.

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