tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80405316915266652202024-03-12T21:41:38.544-05:00The Clarence White BlogI never said most of the things I said.
--Yogi BerraClarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-33177461505704131152012-12-11T21:53:00.000-06:002012-12-11T21:53:19.036-06:00Love as Wind-Tossed Paper<a href="http://www.facebook.com/messages/tish.jones.56" rel=""><span></span></a><br />
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“I love you,” she said.<br />
“You don’t even like me,” I said.<br />
the recipe for the perfect argument<br />
worth its furry<br />
both of us wrong.<br />
<br />
beautiful lovers,<br />
short-lived friends—<br />
no heart to be an enemy<br />
but sometimes i wish<br />
<br />
passing glance<br />
subdued by passion spent<br />
long ago that brought<br />
the blindness of fools<br />
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that cannot hide us<br />
from daylight<br />
the not-quite lies<br />
now illuminated, I can’t bear to see<br />
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we squint, grasping for<br />
the word that makes us win<br />
hollow prizes<br />
with hands coming up empty<br />
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why won’t she listen<br />
why can’t he hear<br />
“If I didn’t love you…” I say.<br />
“If you really loved me…” she says.<br />
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Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com46tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-81146387141335335652012-11-24T18:24:00.000-06:002012-11-24T18:24:12.911-06:00Thanksgiving Tradition<div class="post-header">
We set out, this year for Thanksgiving, just the two of us, Sid
and me. Sid was sad that his cousins would not be joining him this year.
He was glad to hang out with grandma and grandpa, especially in the
kitchen.</div>
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We arrived on the holiday eve. Leaving town amid the last remnants of
the day’s rush hour, mixed with other holiday travelers, leaving the
city for regions closer to Lake Wobegon in geography and spirit.
Watching a steady stream of tail lights I wondered if travelers are
headed home, to a relative’s, and of the stories of the people inside
each vehicle. I cannot keep track. I cannot ponder each set of lights.
It is enough to contemplate the stories that put my son and me in our
seats that late afternoon.<br />
<br />
It’s a matter of perspective. I can look at the faint images of
drivers and passengers in the early dusk as we pass. I cannot tell if
they are headed someplace happy or a place of annual or daily
obligation. I don’t know the nature of the commotion that ensued prior
to them getting into the car, if it was wrapping up details before the
long weekend, organizing small children and the things they would need
to survive four days at a relative’s, fits of loathing that often
accompany times with family that are aggravations of the dysfunction and
ill health that plagued their developmental years, or the greatest of
joys that comes with the prospect of spending time with the most
favorite and precious people in the universe.<br />
<br />
These trips matter and so do the histories that lead up to them. We
all have history that makes the days what they are, the day-to-day
reality that created the relationships we encounter most intensely on a
holiday as well as what those days looked like in years past.<br />
<br />
The story of our preparation was marked by excited anticipation. Sid
asked if we could go up to grandma and grandpa’s a bit earlier than I
suggested.<br />
<br />
This year, Sid spent hours in the kitchen entertaining grandma and
grandpa with long discussions about China, school and the finer points
of learning grammar and the teachers who were as entertaining as the
escapades of pedagogy. I sat in a spare bedroom, listening to quick wits
and luscious stories. Mother, who was always a good speller, the kind
of smarts that helped her graduate from high school at age 16, traded
her knowledge with Sid about the finer points of English–alternating
that with her well-remembered math anxiety that made itself known as she
entered college. Dad, the great story teller, compared his college
French class with Sid’s experience. Even coming from New Orleans and
French heritage, we do not maintaining much French language, but dad
retains the stories, especially of his professors, as a language no one
teaches as well as himself.<br />
<br />
As I sat resting, I could hear each of them laugh from at each
others’ stories and their own. Teachers are the same from generation to
generation and, at the same time, so different today than the days when
high school graduation was little more than behaving well enough to
convince the teacher to give students a C and then to march them capped
and gowned into an arbitrary adulthood. They were full of conversations,
most of which I have had over the past years and recent weeks with each
of them, in smaller bits and pieces. Sid’s monologues were enough to
wrap grandma and grandpa’s attention. He looked forward to this trip as
well for the stories he learns, as well as the grandkid attention.<br />
<br />
I knew there are more stories. I hear them. As many stories that get
shared, there are long, dark afternoons endured with the aid of the
second or third drink. Off in a corner with a concocted fetish of a
tumbler and melted ice. So much easier to peer slightly over the lip of
the glass than directly into the eyes of past shames that the relative
does not want to let you forget, the in-law who still dreams of the
other woman for their son and the failure after failure to conform to
something that is less about virtue or morality than it is a struggle to
keep family members corralled in a cage of a family secret.<br />
<br />
History, however you define or identify it, means something. Some we
carry from our childhood. Some, we carry from generations. Americans
have a short history and even shorter memories. Even the short 400 years
since English separatists arrived and nearly all perished in the new
elements is played out with most of the details mostly forgotten and
lived through a fiction of harmony that masks the genocide that makes
the losses of the initial losses of the first immigrants look like the
loss of one nonagenarian relative whose suffering warranted moving on
into the next world.<br />
<br />
A friend, thankful in her own rights, shared a piece written by
Dennis W. Zotigh in Indian Country Today Media Network, “Do American
Indians Celebrate Thanksgiving?“ The present-day follies that dress
children in garb to play Pilgrim and Indian mark our history better than
we remember it. Was it so necessary to insult Native identity as it is
to insult our children’s intelligence? For some purposes, yes.<br />
<br />
We are making new traditions. Some fitfully. While some school
children’s are led in rituals that still mock native peoples, but more
people are interested in accurate and respectful representations of
history, story and the people who lived and perished in those stories.
New traditions.<br />
<br />
I have often said that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It is
that day, for me, that has been about getting together with people who I
care about. Little obligation other than to enjoy a mean and share it
with great people. Okay, there’s more than that, especially if you are
making a big meal. I’ve shared a few green bean bakes over the years. It
is the day when mom and dad usually invite other company, student
strays and need the card table to fit everyone.<br />
<br />
In years past, we would always have snow for Thanksgiving. There
would be snow on the ground, almost every year. Even if the day before
had none, it was sure to snow before dinner was set on the table. Two
families in St. Cloud, the Statzs and the Opatzs, would hold a touch
football game between the families. It was always held in a field
covered in snow. But in recent years, climate has brought us something
different. I have gotten used to brown Thanksgivings. Things change.<br />
<br />
This year, it was only Sid, me, and mom and dad. Without his cousins,
Sid gets more attention from grandma and grandpa, but he said, “It’s
not the same without Kamarah and Nyah here.” Mom turns from the counter
and says, “What are we missing?”<br />
<br />
My impulse was to say, “Your three other children.” I was silent.<br />
<br />
My siblings and my nieces are having a great Thanksgiving and we are looking forward to Christmas together. Traditions.<br />
<br />
I had mentioned to a friend that I might bring baseball gloves. She
was excited to hear this, surely missing her father with whom she shared
a love of baseball and the misery of the Cubs. I might be able to give
mom and dad’s neighbor Thom Woodward a call: a former baseball coach, he
has expressed a desire to join us, having seen Sid and I and often his
cousins at the park across from his home. The gloves sat idle as the
morning sun became lost behind solid clouds and the wind picked up
enough toward the end of our walk. Later, it would snow. A historically
accurate Thanksgiving.<br />
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<i>[Leave comments at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/thanksgiving-tradition/]</i> Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-43927830915069720952012-11-04T12:27:00.001-06:002012-11-04T12:27:41.249-06:00Obama’s Hand of CooperationIn the week before the election, much of the eastern seaboard was hit
by Hurricane Sandy. Republican New Jersey Chris Christie was faced
with the devastation left by Sandy and millions of people suffering in
pretty harsh conditions. He responded to his constituents’ emergency
swiftly. He also worked with FEMA and President Obama, setting into
motion the pieces of our national infrastructure that was designed to
enhance safety during such disasters and provide a backstop when the
critical means for survival have been wiped out.<br />
<br />
There is a photo that has circulated widely of the President, getting
off a helicopter and being greeted by Gov. Christie. They are shaking
hands as they walk to their task of responding to the disaster. Gov.
Christie is quoted as saying much in praise of the President including,
“The president was great last night. He said he would get it done. At 2
a.m., I got a call from FEMA to answer a couple of final questions and
then he signed the declaration this morning. So I have to give the
president great credit. He’s been on the phone with me three times in
the last 24 hours. He’s been very attentive, and anything that I’ve
asked for, he’s gotten to me. So, I thank the president publicly for
that. He’s done — as far as I’m concerned — a great job for New Jersey.”<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://theclarencewhiteblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/28876_517168258296475_1413846004_n.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-624" height="400" src="http://theclarencewhiteblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/28876_517168258296475_1413846004_n.jpg?w=374&h=300" title="28876_517168258296475_1413846004_n" width="332" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie greeting President Barack Obama to lead the storm response effort in the wake of Sandy.</td></tr>
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<br />
This is not just refreshing because it is an act of bipartisanship
that everyone talks about. At this point, I am not so concerned about
bipartisanship as much as I am impressed with this act of
non-partisanship that President Obama marks the extended hand of
cooperation that Obama has been extending for over four years. Too many
Republican partisans have been terrorized into ignoring it or
vociferously opposing, not Obama’s policies but the mere act of coming
together at a “Team of Rivals,” as Dorise Kearns Goodwin phrased it.<br />
<br />
It took Sandy to get one to honorably accept the invitation to make our county better.<br />
This response to dire need is an example that Obama has tried to
share with Republicans and show to Democrats. It has been especially
disappointing that Democrats at least didn’t pick up on it. It could
have quelled the crass opposition. The message of cooperation over
compromise is a winning one. Still, it is even less rare than the
partisanship of half a generation ago.<br />
<br />
I don’t know anyone else who could have a chance at really has the
vision that gives anyone a chance of pulling this off, besides Barack
Obama. Like Lincoln, his team of rivals is key and goes deeper than his
appointment of Hillary Rodham Clinton (who grew up in a Republican
household) and gaining the confidence of a statesman of the integrity
and character of Colin Powell. When Obama appointed Republican Ray
LaHood to the cabinet, it was one smartest appointments that could carry
this cause. LaHood is a very good guy and well respected. There are
some good men and women in Congress, but there are still too many in DC
for whom it is not a life-altering tragedy if stuff does not get done.
When it’s staring them in the face, they can lend a hand to each other.<br />
<br />
Today, Gov. Christie has the real lives of real people staring them
in the face. I did not like to dwell on the chorus of arm-chair pundits
who’s clamor sang of politicians at the Capitol who are out of touch
with “regular people.” I still believe, basically, that politicians are
not much different from the rest of us and their shortcomings are
triggered by the same things that trigger ours. But there is a
privilege that got most of them there that is accentuated by their
“honored” status. It sometimes makes most of us invisible. And like
any of us, when we act in arenas where others or invisible or the
day-to-day realities of existence for a lot of people.<br />
<br />
This is especially apparent with the current Congress. The
Republican leadership and loyal minions decided early on that they could
sacrifice the lives of a public desperately in need of economic
recovery, community and personal health and acknowledged civil rights
and the political and electoral gain would be justified. They are far
enough to not feel the pain that comes from not blocking Obama’s
policies but the invitation for unprecedented cooperation. Democrats
showed their distance by not even having the words or message to
respond.<br />
<br />
This brings me back to Doris Kearns Goodwin and a story I related a couple of years ago. (See “<a href="http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/celebrity-crush-saturday-november-20-2010/">Celebrity Crush</a>”
from November, 2010.) AT a booksellers convention, I had the honor of
sitting next to her at the convention dinner. She said something that
shocked me. She said, You know who I think should be the next President
of the United States? Paul Wellstone.<br />
<br />
I smiled to myself. Two thoughts crossed my mind. The first was
that she was just saying this because she was in Minnesota amongst a
crowd that almost certainly loved Paul—unconditionally. This may have
been true, but I did not quiz her on this.<br />
<br />
The second thought was, Oh, here we go again. A well-off,
out-of-touch elite who is going to go on about how wonderful and liberal
Paul is and “don’t you just love him?” But what she said surprised
me. It was smarter than a knee jerk and was what I now see as a
distinction that, today, is fading: that distinction between liberal and
progressive.<br />
<br />
She said something like this: You know, Paul and Sheila (Wellstone)
are just about the only people on Capitol Hill and maybe the only ones
in the Senate, who, when they go out, have to pay attention to how much
they spend. She reminded/pointed out that the Senate was a club of the
very wealthy. As such, most of them had little perspective on what it
meant for most Americans to live day to day, make their way through the
mine field of common economic and social realities.<br />
<br />
I think it is why Obama and Bill Clinton make much better presidents
than Republicans Bush, McCain, or Romney or Democrats Kerry or Gore.
Being a fortunate son is not what it takes to understand when to
cooperate, compromise and build consensus. The value the lessons of
having a tough life growing up are showing, and there are many, not just
politicians, who do not get those realities.<br />
<br />
But Gov. Christie cannot ignore the reality of Sandy, nor the fact
that much of the media if focused on neighboring New York and not his
state–his people who where hit much harder. News reports say that when
Christie was asked if Romney would be joining him to tour the storm
damage, he responded, “I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned
or interested.” He added, “I have a job to do. I’ve got 2.4 million
people out of power, I’ve got devastation on the shore, I’ve got floods
in the northern part of my state. If you think right now I give a damn
about Presidential politics then you don’t know me.”<br />
<br />
Well, I think he is concerned about Presidential politics, now. I
am. He was interested enough to consider running for the office, or at
least bathe in the attention amid such speculations–and we were
interested enough to give him that attention. But maybe this is that
place where Christie can swallow Romney’s pride and Obama the Democrats’
and get a chance to show America what real pride is made of. And maybe
the next four years will look more like the shining example streaming
through the storm clouds.Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-15507562465325233532012-10-09T12:21:00.002-05:002012-10-09T12:21:49.311-05:00How to Win a Political Campaign<div class="post-header">
“He actually sounded like a not-so-bad guy,” said a friend after
hearing the concession speech of one of our least favorite politicians,
years ago. There is that moment of “If he would have sounded like that
on the campaign trail” that comes–and goes after the votes have been
counted. But how come most candidates can’t be that person during the
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One of the reasons they can’t is because of us. A lot of people say
they are tired of campaigns and politicians. I am tired of a lot, but
most of all people complaining about politicians. One of the things I
am tired of is the complaining.<br />
<br />
When you get down to it, politicians are pretty much like us, not
always in the “regular guy” sense, but with principles, morals and
integrity much like ours. When we see politicians behaving badly, they
are acting like us, only in public. They are acting like we want them
to, encourage them to and reward them.<br />
<br />
We don’t want humility. We want them just as they are–only better than us, but one of us.<br />
Campaign attack ads bother a lot of us. We ask, why do they do this
if we don’t like it? But I don’t recall seeing many attack ads that are
worse than common barbs and insults that many of us live with on a
daily basis.<br />
<br />
Or maybe someone could take to the campaign trail with that strong,
humble integrity. But that’s not the conventional wisdom. It is not
what we ask for. But for all the pins and needles on which we sit, it
is hard to go an entire campaign season before we get a sincere “Thank
You.” Maybe we need to do a better job of asking for that, a better job
of giving that and a better job being the people we want our
politicians to be.<br />
<br />
Then, maybe, we’ll win.<br />
<br />
[Leave comments at theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com] Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-15169794543715894722012-10-01T15:20:00.000-05:002012-10-01T15:20:20.025-05:00Mom and HildaIn the mid 1970s, near the time I was finishing grade school, Hilda
and Bernie Heinen moved in next door. They had retired from the farm in
rural Stearns County where they and generations of family had lived and
where some still lived: still farmed and some still spoke a form of
German compromised by a couple of generations away from the motherland, a
couple of wars with which they did not want to be associated and a
longing to be able to navigate the logistics required to make it through
a trip into town, the stock yard or the grain elevator. Hilda and
Bernie’s English was good with irregularities common in our town that
often interchanged the words borrow and lend as well as the words teach
and learn and with an accent that hinted at the rural Minnesotan and
German. Lake Wobegon.<br />
<br />
Mom and dad came from New Orleans, a different world where a few
still spoke the last smatterings of Creole, but themselves spoke English
that had no hint of the French that dominated many of the name places
and was cultivated to distinguish them as Xavier University students.<br />
<br />
Hilda and Bernie moved into town partly uninfected by much of the
media bias that tainted most of America’s perception of African
Americans. Mom had learned well from her father and her own experience
to meet people like you were meeting Jesus.<br />
<br />
Hilda and Bernie were good people and good neighbors. Mom and Hilda
became good friends. Better than the neighbors across the street who
were related. Better than most would have expected and better than most
would have dared or bothered.<br />
<br />
And most would not have expected the exchange that happened between
mom and Hilda one afternoon while they stood in one of their front
yards.<br />
<br />
Hilda referred to to a black person using the word nigger. That, in
Stearns County, Minnesota and many other places would not be so
unexpected–maybe for reasons other than why, on this day, the word came
out of Hilda’s mouth. What came next was truly unexpected.<br />
<br />
Of course, my mom what stunned. Surprised and stung in a way that
hearing the word nigger always stings. It is America’s ultimate
unwelcoming–and we as black people know the unwelcome that comes with
this word and a lot of other edifices that loom larger than a passing
insult.<br />
<br />
But mom was not mad. It did not change her relationship with Hilda,
like so many stinging encounters might. Mom was hurt, but took a half
moment to seek the best way to respond, maybe even asking God what to
do. She decided to do something that she might not have been able to do
with many other people, with any other type of relationship and maybe
not in today’s social spaces.<br />
<br />
She told Hilda what that word meant: what it means in common language
and what it felt in her ears and to the ears of someone who is or
believes is the humanity of African Americans and other people who walk
this earth. Mom was kind and gentle–because she sensed that Hilda
really didn’t know.<br />
<br />
And she didn’t. Hilda faced the biggest shame of her friendship with
mom. She really didn’t know and would not have wanted to hurt mother
or anyone with the word if she knew what it meant. Hilda could not have
been sorrier.<br />
<br />
What was so remarkable about this exchange was that this is not how
we handle this issue in America and not many are willing or really have
the honest, safe space to misstep and repair the damage.<br />
<br />
What usually happens is that someone shouts “Nigger” to draw a line
of supremacy. The target of the slur either gets out of the way of the
unhealthy and harmful verbal assault or responds with either the angry
pain of the injury or a rebuttal that falls on the emotionally deaf or
dumb.<br />
<br />
Or maybe the response it an attempt to say how that kind of language
and attitude is hurtful and damaging to common spaces, not much unlike
what mom did with Hilda. Where Hilda showed her exceptional nature was
in her response.<br />
<br />
Most of the time when we explain that this kind of language and other
slights we encounter (and I hate to call them slights because there is
nothing slight about systemic degradation and social, political and
economic disadvantage), we get a response that complains that is
dismissive, that we don’t have any reason to complain, that somehow they
are entitled to speaking to and about us with impunity.<br />
<br />
Instead, the two women chose to understand each other.<br />
<br />
They made a space moved mom to choose Hilda as the person to whom she
sent her two youngest after getting off the school bus for tending and a
snack before her older kids got home. It made a space that moved mom
to be the primary helper for Hilda, more than her family who lived not
far from us, or the once removed cousins who lived across the street
when Bernie was dying of cancer.<br />
<br />
The two women chose to share a space that most of America will not
work to create, for which most of America is reluctant to work and that
many do not want to exist.<br />
<br />
After Bernie died, Hilda let her hair go white. She let mom know how
sad she was without him. Mom worried, wiped tears and let her tell
stories and shared a few of her own. They were busy being Jesus for
each other and entertain the angel they saw in each others’ eyes.Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-89695872113169032122012-09-10T08:02:00.001-05:002012-09-10T08:02:31.961-05:00Fiction Spot: The Last Running Summer<strong>THE LAST RUNNING SUMMER</strong><br />
<br />
Today, he has the memories of his childhood self running. Running
with his two legs. Sometimes, he thinks those memories are dreams,
fantasy images of a very young boy. Sometimes the images are from the
perspective of himself running in his own body. Sometimes he is the
observer, dreams or memories of him running across the field with his
cousins on those long, golden summer and autumn days.<br />
<br />
He remembers the days that seemed to go on forever, the sun-scorched,
coarse grass that was, in the later days of the season, slightly too
long for the games of tag, touch football, kickball or whatever they
chose on any given afternoon. The days grew long, overlapping into dusk
on that summer and fall stage of recollections.<br />
<br />
The most vivid memories were of the games that played on even after
the sun slipped below the horizon, lit by a lone utility light atop a
pole not far from the house. It was the kind of light they tell you
about, warn you about in the middle of many country fields–the ones that
they say not to walk to in an emergency because they look closer than
they are–that one can parish in the distant journey to that beacon
whose welcome is illusion a siren especially in those snow-swept storms
that used to visit the Midwest more than once each winter.<br />
<br />
That summer and fall in 1965, Donny and his cousins benefited from
the illusion that it was not time to come in for the supper the grownups
ate while the playing kids’ plates cooled like the crispness of the
first days of school that came after their fun. Their parents let them
play that summer–play past the small pangs of hunger forgotten amid the
fun–or duty. Past some bed times. Past any concept of “future” that
Donny’s four-year-old self could conjure.<br />
<br />
They decided, between them, the grownups, that they would let the
kids play–instruct the kids to play way beyond the regular boundaries of
time, competition and exhaustion. Some of the older kids knew. The
younger ones would know it time: know why, this summer, they were
allowed to ignore the dinner bell, play past their hearts’ delight–play
with respect for nothing except the rules of whatever game they were
playing and a few bumps and bruises that often visit young bodies that
run faster than the wind and the shouts of their names that sail the
game into the next harbor of semi-organization.<br />
<br />
And with respect for an attempt to let the little kids have as much fun as the bigger ones, especially Donny.<br />
He remembers that summer, not knowing that his one shorter leg made
him different. The other kids saw him as not much different than any
other four-year-old who struggled to keep up with the faster, older
kids, and not so different because everything about him was as normal as
everything else the family and a few friends had always known about
him.<br />
<br />
The older cousins knew, partially from what their parents had shared
with them, but more from overhearing hushed tones that the grownups felt
forbidden to speak but felt the responsibility to share with each
other: because that is the adults’ burden; or because they needed to
talk through their fears; or because Donny’s problems were easier to
talk about than their own problems, relationships, or shortcomings. The
older cousins, taking their first sip of grownup responsibility carried
the burden of knowing why that summer, they played into the night, why
they were told to play as long as Donny wanted to play, long beyond a
four-year-old’s bed time. As they grew older, they too carried memories
of those days.<br />
<br />
Donny remembers the illusion of running fast, an illusion created by
the gentle prairie winds that blew across the golden fields and his
still golden hair. He was not fast. He was four. He had one impossibly
short leg. He was the little cousin that the older kids made giggle
and chased with no more speed than what would keep him in the game.<br />
<br />
He did giggle–a lot. He was happy. It was the last summer when he
had no inclination that there was anything wrong with his body and it
was how the other kids saw him, just as kids see so many other truths
with their naive intuition of integrity.<br />
<br />
Soon, after the others were shuffled off to school, mostly out of
sight and away from the taste of adult responsibility. Almost like a
poorly-kept secret, Donny would be shuffled off to what the doctors
where sure was the right thing to do with The Impossibly Short Leg.
Sure that he would be better off without it. Sure that the prosthesis
which would be refitted many times over the course of his next decades,
one that would fill his other pants leg the same as his longer leg,
would be the best “cure” for Donny’s short leg and clubbed foot.<br />
<br />
That fall, while his cousins and their friends played at recess, gym
class, ran home from school, chased the girls, where chased by the boys
who would otherwise imitate the football game they saw that weekend at
the high school field or on television. Meanwhile, the parents paced
daily as if by doing so, they would come to some peace about the
doctors’ decision or whether they explained what was about to happen to
the little boy or their guilt over having caused Donny’s affliction or
the curse that God had placed on their family: to have such an inflicted
child. Donny was having his shorter leg amputated, well above the
knee.<br />
<br />
Donny does not remember waking up from his surgery, nor the three
others that were required before he could have a properly fitted
prosthesis. The encouragement given him by so many of the grownups
didn’t register, subconsciously shutting down from the trauma, but
giving the impression through his silence to the grownups that he was
happy and taking this all in stride, taking care of grownup feelings.<br />
<br />
He did not dwell on this change. He avoided it as fiercely as he
avoided the changes that came as his body introduced him to adolescence
and avoided again when those changes brought on urges that he would not
entertain because what girl wanted to be with a boy with only one leg?<br />
<br />
When Donny was born, the nuns who served as the nurses in that
Catholic hospital wondered to themselves and out loud, the same way as
the disciples asked Christ of the lame man, was it the sins of his
parents or the original sin of Donny that left him lame. They, nor the
doctors nor the parents waited for Christ to answer and, instead,
wielded the tools God had left in their hands.<br />
<br />
Jesus would have said, Donny’s condition is neither the result of his
parents or his transgressions but exists in order that the glory and
power of God can be demonstrated. Or he would have said something like
that, if our Bibles depict him honestly. Then, he might have laid his
hands on Donny, restoring the leg and showing his glory. Or maybe not.<br />
<br />
The nuns, the doctors and the other well-meaning mortal sages were
left with their own devices. Whether they harbored notions that Donny’s
parents’ sins brought them to this point, they made the best choice
that their limited wisdom could see. It was probably the right choice
but could not have been as glorious as Jesus’.<br />
<br />
The cousins would not see Donny again until Christmas at aunt
Marilyn’s house–and this time, to them, Donny was “different.” This
time, they felt sorry for him. For the first time, they were fixed with
the notion that there were things Donny could not do. He was a new but
familiar stranger and all of them were a little afraid. The cousins
did not know how to play with him. They did not know how to talk with
him.<br />
<br />
The family’s silence was matched by Donny’s who, that Christmas,
spent most of his time in the big chair in the living room, next to the
tree, mostly watching, with two shoes that hung identically beneath the
cuffs of his brand new jeans. Appearing unexceptional in his muted
form, no one would ask of his condition, nor whose transgressions were
to blame, nor whose mortal glory might be stoked.Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-38392662559191391682012-08-26T18:07:00.001-05:002012-08-26T18:07:12.343-05:00Not Quite Ready for Some FootballI spent last Friday night with my dad. We went to see the Minnesota
Vikings American football team play the Buffalo Bills in a preseason
game. These days, unlike in my youth, I am not a big fan of football.
Many of you can count as many reasons to not like the game, but I will
watch football with my dad. Not just watch, but appreciate some of it’s
finer points.<br />
<br />
There are two things that I continue to appreciate about football.
The first is that football is one of the few places in our society where
a Black man can come close to being recognized and paid for his efforts
on par with his White counterparts. There are still hurdles of biases
that most players must overcome, but the results on the field are hard
to argue. Some try to run a subconscious and sometimes conscious
sabotage. The stumbling blocks are not unfamiliar and not unique to
football, but that sabotage often backfires in an atmosphere where any
kind of anger or animosity have a very welcome physical response in kind
that is likely to be rewarded on the field. However all the factors
figure, the field is more even than most aspects of society.<br />
<br />
The other thing I like about football is that it is how dad went to
college. He paid his way into school on an athletic scholarship. (The
photo on the banner of this blog is dad from his college playing days.)<br />
<br />
There was a time as a kid, when my favorite sport was whatever sports
season was in full swing. In the winter, I wanted to grow up to be a
professional basketball player and then, later a professional hockey
player. In the spring, I wanted to become a professional baseball
player. In the fall, it was football. Those fantasies added to any fun
that came with being out with the other boys, to play in the fields and
playgrounds or just play in my imagination. Later I had fun playing on
the team dad coached, a volunteer job he held for 29 years at Holy
Spirit School in St. Cloud, Minnesota.<br />
<br />
Like with so many of the boys who became men on a journey boosted by
their learning from dad, football was not so much fun after 8th grade
when I was too old to play on his team: when football came to mean less
about personal and social life and more about how important football was
to our elders.<br />
<br />
It was not that we did not learn about football. Those who played for
dad carried with them a reputation of skill and how to play well and
safely. We also learned to practice and play with pride, with respect
for teammates and opponents, coaches and officials, and that ideally, we
would carry those ideal back home, to school and on the streets of our
community. And I knew that even as a kid who would not get his growth
spurt for a couple of years, I could still bring down a running back who
outweighed me by 50 pounds.<br />
<br />
But unlike experiencing the game alone or with someone else or the
television commentators, talking about what happens on the field that
honestly critiques the game and not the players, talking about the
players knowing what they had to do to get there and like they are the
physical and emotional beings they are, and hoping that their experience
in the National Football League will help support them and their
families during the rest of their life time.<br />
<br />
Friday, we watched, not “ready for some football,” like Hank
Williams, Jr., or the masses of onlookers that drive the
pseudo-capitalistic machine that paid Williams for that song that sounds
more like the soundtrack to accompany the guy with the beer on the sofa
than the majestic athletes on the field. I am not sure if I have a song
for those athletes, the ones who have been encouraged to weigh 300
pounds but are still quicker and faster than any of us watching, the guy
who will be injured giving his best to please the crowd who will forget
him a minute after he leaves the field, the tears of joy from a mom or
dad who is seeing their son on the NFL’s field for the first time or
that exceptional player who goes home every night to the love of a woman
and maybe a child–whether that week they are in the same city or not.<br />
<br />
After I left for college, my youngest sister Jennifer became dad’s
football partner. Today, she is the biggest fan, still as cognizant of
all the social, political and cultural shortcomings, and still, even as a
resident of Chicago, a Vikings fan. She is the true lover of American
football. It is very charming, the two of them, intelligent discourse on
a brutal game. But this Friday–his time, I got to hang out with dad.
Thanks dad for taking your boy to a game.Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-63308538471834500632012-08-24T16:07:00.000-05:002012-08-24T16:07:13.552-05:00Life at the Speed of a Cup of TeaIt has been a while since I have shared with you via this blog. I am
not sure what to write in this tiny space. There are so many things,
so clear but the maze society places in front of many of these issues
and the complex musings that I have brought to others make it tough to
untangle in one Friday’s post.<br />
<br />
I am not sure if I should write about missing my son Sid while he is
on a wonderful adventure in China, the bad ideas that are being pushed
in the two constitutional amendment ballot questions we will face this
fall, the still racist commentary during the Olympics, a couple of the
great stories of the Olympics, how my foot hurts and I don’t know why
and how it makes it hard to get today’s exercise, the fact that I am not
really feeling that sorry for myself when I know that my friend Anne’s
friend Jim is in the hospital with an illness from which they don’t
think he’ll recover and who may be in his last days.<br />
<br />
I could write about my mom and dad’s wonderful 50th wedding
anniversary and the wonderful friends my mom and dad have cultivated
over that half century. I would, but it is a story that is too long to
tell, with too many people and is one about two people about whom there
is too much to say in this moment.<br />
<br />
I could write about all the work I need to do around my house and how
I am supposed to get a lot of it done while my son is on adventure and
learning in China.<br />
<br />
I am reminded of a phrase that my Sid used to use often. “Too many
conversations.” When he was little, he used to say this whenever I ran
into someone I knew–and it seemed to him that I knew someone wherever we
went. Too many conversations; let’s go. And maybe today, too many of
my thoughts are running into each other. Do I need to make time to talk
with each of them?<br />
<br />
Too many words. Too many ideas. Maybe it is time to just cultivate a moment of simplicity.<br />
A simple moment with a simple cup of tea, something that I have not
enjoyed for a while, but can now with today’s wonderfully cool morning, a
wonderful cup out of which to drink it and the promise of a weekend
that I can fill with something new.<br />
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_581" style="width: 310px;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://theclarencewhiteblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/tea-cup-019.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-581" height="225" src="http://theclarencewhiteblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/tea-cup-019.jpg?w=300&h=225" title="Tea cup 019" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tea cup by Heather Wang. http://www.fireonthegreenway.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="wp-caption-text">
</div>
</div>
Off to something else. I hope your weekend is blessed, and enjoy a cup of something good.Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-89716455556620388392012-07-09T07:50:00.000-05:002012-07-09T07:52:56.666-05:00Midnight Drive from Nowhere<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sitting in the passenger seat of her blue Volvo 240 wagon, the wind animated her hair--hair that had lost all other life from the days of excessive heat and humidity. She was tired, wilted in the swelter. I clutched and shift into fifth gear, turned and see her happy and content.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The tassels of her deep brown locks swirled around her neck and face as disorganized as the rest of the world that had also wilted into a disarray. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">We didn't mind. There comes a time in the heat wave when you just give up, realize that the starch in your shirt means nothing after a couple of minutes outside; that the potato salad might just be better left behind; that as hard as you try to protect yourself between the air conditioning of home and car or between car and work or wherever you are going. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Content with our state of disassemble, we sat wordless, headed to her home—or mine, from somewhere—I cannot remember. The destination was defined more by our momentary glances-- caught in between wafts of breeze and a passing car much more in a hurry than two lovers fine with each others' company.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Later, we would lie limp in bed, too hot to spoon, too hot to sleep, but not to hot to trace the space between us with a finger, a light touch through the heavy air. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">What did we talk about? Religion, politics, the kids. The future. The past. The present. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The next morning, we wandered out the door, aimless, bearings confused by oppressive stew of weather. Maybe a shower before we found our first appointed stop, unable to tell, neither by how we felt or by memory, whether we had taken one the night before. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">In this morning, I could not tell if we are happy, content, thrown back into the real world, unable to put off the facts in this start of the day. Unable to procrastinate those things that are so easy to forget in a cloud of a love. We would find that place of forgetting soon enough in each others' eyes, arms. And maybe a little bit of bravery to talk about those things, and religion, and politics, and love, and the kids, and work, and all those things that make all the questions that surround them so hard to answer. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Happy and content in our mortal, humble ignorance and relative wisdom. Happy to shift into neutral and let the rest of the world be in a hurry to solve the problems that have no answer.</span></div>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-71515423868339510932012-06-18T08:38:00.000-05:002012-06-18T08:38:58.471-05:00A Return to Baseball's CathedralThe rain let up with an hour to spare before last night’s
Twins-Phillies baseball game. In the quiet overcast of the day’s storms,
I remembered in my haste to get out the door that I had forgotten an
umbrella. Moments later, I remembered that I had forgotten our
scorebook. Sid gave a shrug of his shoulders at omission of the
umbrella. The missing scorebook was of more concern.<br />
<br />
The umbrella would be unnecessary. We substituted the scorebook with
an inexpensive scorecard and a pricy pencil from the gift shop.<br />
<br />
Sid and I arrived at Target Field on the light rail train that was
less packed than Sid expected. The girl who would turn four in three
days, wearing her heart-decal-ed Twins t-shirt would not sit down and
exerted the power of “NO” quite often. A cute couple nestled with each
other in their seats, the man totally oblivious to his surroundings and
the woman somewhat distracted by us. Outside, waiting at the platforms
for trains headed the other direction, lonely faces of women and men who
stayed too long at work, nothing, no task and no one who would have
waited for them to step off the 4:30 train.<br />
<a href="http://theclarencewhiteblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/target-field-6-14-2012.jpg"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-568" height="225" src="http://theclarencewhiteblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/target-field-6-14-2012.jpg?w=300&h=225" title="Target Field 6-14-2012" width="300" /></a><br />
Even under the heavy gray sky, the threat of rain had passed. Sid and
I made our way to seats. The air was calm and pleasant and the only
weather menace was the beads of rain that clung the the green seats that
were much better than either of us anticipated.<br />
<br />
Close enough to the field to notice the blades of grass that were
disturbed by the sliding play of Twins second baseman Alexi Casilla,
vivid numbers sewn onto the backs of uniforms, the chance at a souvenir
foul ball. Behind us sat a father and his primary school-aged daughter, a
bright girl of whom her father is proud and may grow up to be as much
of her fathers baseball buddy as Doris Kearns Goodwin.<br />
<br />
We saw Julian Loscalzo, a native Philadelphian and reason d’etre for
Ballpark tours and of “Save the Met” fame, wearing his hometown insignia
sitting down in the seats in front of us. I had enough time to start a
conversation before he realized that his seats were in the next section
over and the people to whom the seats belonged eagerly wanted to sit
down.<br />
<br />
It was an interesting game, satisfying to Sid’s baseball mind. A nice
night and still air that produced three home runs, one by Jim Thome,
now playing for the Phillies, again, launched into the right field
flower boxes and which, even into the next morning, had not been found.<br />
<br />
The Twins lost to a struggling, injury-laden but usually powerful
Philadelphia Phillies ball club. No matter. It was a sweet night, our
first successful trip to the ballpark, where we belong.<br />
<br />
The last month of this summer, Sid will be in China. I do not know if
I will make a trip to the ballpark. It is not the same without him. I
don’t know with whom I would visit the park. It might not matter if I
go—does not matter if the thunder storms saturate the ground and air. It
does not matter if the stillness is disturbed and the air swirls and
the atmosphere is filled with electricity and the smell of ozone. They
will keep me company, even if I forget my umbrella.Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-17777703056759374532012-06-06T08:57:00.000-05:002012-06-06T08:57:09.828-05:00When There Is Crying in Baseball<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There is a difference between crying over spilt milk and grief. Or maybe not. There are some things about which we should cry and others, not so much.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Having baseball tickets stolen might seem like the loss of a material thing or the chance to hang out in the elite company of those spectating the gladiators. It would be sacrilege to say that it is on par with being told that you cannot come into the church for worship. But what unholy transgression was it?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My son Sid and I had planned a trip to see the Minnesota Twins play the Detroit Tigers. It was to be our first outing of the year to the home field. It was a trip to do what fathers do with their sons, some of my mother friends do with their children, a gift that some of these mothers and fathers are passing along to their sons and daughters and a place where so many stories of the love between them have been told, written and lived. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It also was a spot, in that gray-skied Saturday afternoon where many of our friends waited in seats adjacent to the ones we had for the game. They were there for the same loves that get entangled in watching and playing that game and for the love of our friend Mel, who knows all of those loves and people well. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But Sid and I did not make it to the game. In the moments before we boarded the train to the ball park, the tickets went missing. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I reached to my back pocket to feel the void where the envelope holding the tickets should have been. The pocket felt as empty as the gap left by a missing tooth and as crazy as a lost child: the lost slice of childhood that I planed to share with Sid that day. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">At first, I told myself that I must have let them slip from my pocket. We ran from the train platform, tracing our steps back to the car, the Mexican fast food restaurant where we ate—a place much cheaper than the extra meal we might eat from the ball park concession stands. I looked hard, back and forth, in the car, on the ground, in the restaurant, in the eyes of passers by: something that would tell me it was okay, place them in my hand and make everything okay. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As I looked, though, the image of a man on the train platform kept appearing in my mind, a man who lingered too close as we swiped the pay strip on the fare box, the image of the man who, I am quite sure, lifted the tickets from my pocket moments before we would be on our way.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">After those moments of the frantic, Sid and I got home and were quiet in the living room. I tried my best to hide my sadness, but not so much as to fake something happy, fake a substitute that would not have even worked when he was younger. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He did look sad on the sofa. I asked him how he was doing, and he said he was pretty sad. "And this one was for Mel's birthday, too--wasn't it?" I told him yes, the man who took his not-quite-two-year-old self to the second baseball game he could even notice. He cried a little. I tried not to show much of my sadness, tears, frustration or anger; and how do you show grief over something like this?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We are sorry to have missed the chance to share baseball with each other, with you and everyone else who was there for the happiness of baseball. While the money it cost us to participate in that day is significant in these days, but even at the greatest cost, it doesn't describe that what was missed was more than just a fun event, recreation or a chance to get out. I don't know how many people will understand or how to describe the loss--even to a lot of people who know baseball. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I think I can only have other people describe it. They know, somehow, maybe from watching the two of us, seeing the game not through our eyes but through our sharing with each other and with anyone willing to get close enough. Those who love us like seeing us together--seeing us in ways that are accentuated by baseball.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I am not sure which parts of what was defiled and violated are sacred. I know that it is more than a violation of our personal space. More than my friendships. More than spoiling a game. I just know that I feared such a catastrophe as much as I feared missing an important flight to an important event: like I had missed a relative's wedding. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It is not a wedding. It is just a game. Just a birthday. Just a day out. Just another day filled with hazards. But it is that day that remembers the first time I walked into the Bowie Bay Sox stadium with Sid in my arms, then settling in our seats, his eyes fixated on the animated diamond with more attentiveness and fascination that I thought was possible for a pre-toddler and my eyes welling with more tears than are allowed in baseball. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I would not experience the kind of emotion I felt at the ball park until the first day we sat together, the two of us in church. These are things that can define what fathers can do with their sons, friends with their friends, love with love and joy with joy. (See “<a href="http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/crying-at-the-cathedrals-thursday-january-13-2011/">Crying at the Cathedrals</a>.”)</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">For a moment, that is what was taken from us. For a moment. We will recapture it another day.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-100148961405067102012-05-31T08:20:00.000-05:002012-05-31T08:43:54.625-05:00Windows into Grandpa: Part 1<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Age
had left him to shuffle his feet as he walked across the floor in the
duplex he built, the one in which he lived for half of his life. His
words were hard for me to understand. It might have been because I
was used to hearing Midwestern voices, his the New Orleans accent was
too unfamiliar, another language that I strained to hear correctly.
But it was really his advanced years, so many years that I, as a
child, could not comprehend: So many years that even his wife,
official records or any other family member could not be sure how
many years it had been. So many years that I was constantly anxious
to watch each step, each breath, afraid that he might die at any
moment. I was as afraid to lose him as I was afraid that, as a mere
child, I was not yet been equipped with the emotional and social
tools to deal with such an event if it should happen in front of me.
I was afraid of what I would do without him.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Our
Grandpa did not always shuffle. As a younger man, and even into late
middle age, he was a lean, tall, dark-skinned man with distinctive
and strong features in his face and toned muscles that were apparent
even under his well-dressed self. And a walk that needed no
swagger because it was strong, true and belonged to a man whose
beauty struck every set of eyes that were lain upon him. He had the
respect of people to whom he gave love, care, and a benign fear of
God. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I
was afraid of grandpa, not because of what he might do, not afraid of
any anger or wrath. As a young child, such a man was a strange sight
to me. He seemed bigger than life, and the people who knew him,
including my mom and the man who she married, treated him so. But as
I grew older, I did not discover the secret to why this reverence
persisted. I don't quite know how to explain it , except to tell you
a few things that mother would often say about what it was like
growing up with him.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Her
mother, our Grandma, was a yeller and a spanker. She was larger than
life in her own right, big enough to match with Grandpa, maybe his
emotional opposite: a woman to fear because of the whippin' you might
get if you stepped out of line. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Grandpa
never yelled. He never spanked. Mom would say, as many whippins'
and harsh words as she got from her mother, she feared nothing more
than the possibility that she might disappoint her father. The wince
of pain and the lingering fulfilled promise of, “I'll give ya a
whippin' so bad, you won't be able to sit down for a week,” from
her mom was nothing compared to the deep, dark, empty pang in her
heart from letting her father down—a heart to be repaired, soon
enough, by the his love and adoration. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Grandpa
was a man of few words. Except on Sunday morning. Grandpa was a
preacher, pastor of the Second Bright Morning Star Baptist Church in
New Orleans, Louisiana. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It
seemed like the rest of the week, he read his Bible. Wise eyes
peered through large, thick glasses with heavy plastic frames. Quiet
in a sea of darting grandchildren and dueling televisions, he sat
with the leather-bound Bible, turning the white thin pages with his
long, black fingers and thick, ivoried workman's fingernails. I could
not imagine when or how this sagacious discipline was cultivated, nor
how the dry words of his King James, which I knew well from my days
in Baptist Sunday school, could be translated into the rocking sermon
that brought the congregation to its feet, caused women to weep and
played on well into the afternoon, even on the hottest of Louisiana
summer days. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Long,
hot summer Sunday mornings. Sermons too long for a small child who
had, by a strange happening of fate's logistics, grew up in a sedate,
Swedish Baptist church that had services that ended on the hour,
leaving just enough time to linger in the foyer with fellow
congregants and get home to take the roast out of the oven before it
burned. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Grandpa's
sermons: too foreign coming from this creature in whose image I was
made, Grandpa talking words, like music, that I could not believe
were supposed to come out of a human. Sounds so rich and deep, like
the most complicated jazz baritone. Too complicated for that small
child to decipher. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Grandpa
was old, not just in the eyes of a child who could not imagine being
“so old.” The years of hard work at a cement factory made use of
his long, strong arms, but also consumed his joints and left him with
black lung disease. Years of upkeep on the rental properties he
owned, the hauling, pounding, digging and mending did as well. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Rock
and roll is a powerful thing. Most people don't know why.
I am not sure, either, but it has more to do with the black church
than any of us will admit. Grandpa was not a fan of rock and
roll. He was not a fan of dancing. He did not follow
Little Richard, Elvis, Bobby Darin or the Beatles. He did not
want to. He did not have to.<br /><br />The Sunday morning sermon was not
the fare of the 17-year-old "Me Generation" teeny-bopper,
on the first slope of adolescence, first taste of love's desire,
barely off her parents' good-girl leash. My not-so-vague
notions of what whipped girls into a frenzy moments before and after
Ed Sullivan introduced the Beatles "I Wanna Hold Your Hand;"
or the swiveling hips of Elvis that the camera was only allowed to
leave to the imagination of the television audience, pale in
comparison to the rocked emotions of a dozen women wearing white in
the front pews each Sunday whose lives had already lived bigger
sparks of excitement, toil, tears and care than the Sullivan girls
would ever feel, even into their old age. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Sunday
morning was not teeny-bopper tame. Against a backdrop of
furniture dressed in Jesus' royal red velvet, behind the pulpit,
before the choir, with sunlight streaming in the east windows,
Grandpa would rise, dressed in a the sharpest of suits draped over
his lean and angular frame.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The
sermon—the whole spectacle was hell-defying. It had to be. I did
not know at the time, how much even there, in that church, in that
neighborhood where if felt comfortable to be black, and at the same
time, uncomfortable to be not black enough—that the people who
toiled in that sea of humidity, heat and racial strife where
profoundly aware of all of this at every moment. The songs, the
preaching had to be potent enough to at least hint at some well of
salvation and freedom from the present day, heart-hardened Pharaoh. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">If
Grandpa could defy hell and the apartheid under which his reign
dwelt, it would be no problem to move the emotion of more than a few
women, no problem to make them “fall out” in their pew, or save
them, if for no longer than they could sit in their Sunday best for
those few hours each week. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">These
were attentions that Grandpa would mostly ignore, but Grandma—she
would not. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It
is said that jazz is that thing that came to birth when European
instruments got into the hands of the African diaspora. It lead
to the blues. It lead to rock and roll. It lead to a
Godawful fear about what was going to happen to the piano and horn
lessons that were given to the nice children of middle America: a
Godawful fear that this dark music would make their children forget
their fear of God. So it is with the King James Bible.
European instrument of Protestant politics, corrupted in the hands of
the Diaspora, what would it sound like?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br />In
the hands of grandpa, King James did not sound as the King intended.
He sat in quiet, most afternoons, with the Bible on his lab, gently
turning the onion skin pages, thumbing through the Exodus, the
temples, the acceptance of Ruth, prophet after prophet, angle's visit
after angel's visit, a birth, life and death, rise from the dead,
redemption, sweet redemption. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b>[Leave comments here or at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/window-into-grandpa-part-1/]</b></i> </span>
</div>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-72017543497165582092012-05-21T10:14:00.000-05:002012-05-21T10:14:39.932-05:00I Just Know He's My Brother<span style="font-size: small;"><b>even branches, by Julia Klatt Singer</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b> </b> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>They are running tethered together</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>One blind, one sighted</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Stride by stride, two men, moving as one.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Like the way birds fly, wing tip to wing</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>tip, they move as though they share</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>not only the same air, but the same thought.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Flowers bloom–whole fields of them–</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Frogs croak in chorus. Even branches</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Know to sway, in much the same way</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>as the one above or below them.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>What I wouldn’t give tonight to know</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>What wind, what song, what yearning</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>what kind world, what beginning, what</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>abandon I belong to.</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">**********************************</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span id="yui_3_2_0_29_1337363969365412">The scene is the field behind the church. A comfortable Summer evening, church picnic with lots of games, lots of hot dish, cold salads and things off the grill. Little games for the little kids. Big games for the big kids. Impromptu games for those who think they are bigger than that or cannot decide whether they are a big kid or a little kid, or wishing they could be both, even if they are neither.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I get pelted with a water balloon from a precocious Lisa Dahl. I intend to retaliate, as I believe is her intention. I am faster and a better aim and pelt her twice in the middle of the back with balloons that do not burst, much like the utopia of the distraction of a picnic from the fire and brimstone that is easily recalled inside the church walls.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Games. We are obligated to the gunny sack race, the spoon and water relay, lawn darts.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Pastor prays before we eat. Little children, fidgety men, and a couple of the gossipy ladies peak during the invocation. I know what mother brought to the pot luck and promise to try the dishes others shared.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">That year, my brother Michael is 20. I am five years older. We hover moments before the three-legged race, not with much intention, me reluctant to participate, but am vulnerable to the faint persuasions. I am not sure how much Michael wants to play, but I am guessing he wants to more than I do, wants to with more interest than his big brother, but as they begin to make the pairs, soon our legs are lashed together, standing at the start line.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">We are told to take our marks. We are commanded to get set. We are ordered to GO.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Michael and I start out awkwardly. Stumbling. Lost stride. This is not going to work. We are not the same athlete. We are not the same person. We are not going to win. We are last.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">All my siblings: I love them. We are four very distinct people carrying different virtues of our forebears, different personalities, different qualities that people know from knowing our parents. We each look like one of our parents but all have different noses and very different ways of making it through the world.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Neither of my two sisters are there, far enough away to not have to navigate the prospect of a three-legged race we would rather not run. Before the race starts, I have no idea of how Michael and I will navigate, have no idea of where we will be when someone says “GO!” whether I will be in the race or comfortably on the sidelines, glad to let someone else have the fun, glad to be by myself. I don’t understand how Michael and I were roped into the race, roped together, in that space. I did not need to know.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I also don’t understand how or why or see the moment when we suddenly broke into the most synchronized stride–running almost as if we were the same person, not just children of the same womb and sire.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">We pass the other runners, outpace them by enough so that at the finish line, they have full views of our backs.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I can’t explain the feeling, that sudden burst of speed, whether it was his speed or mine, whether we began to hear the same drummer–what stride we fell into. I don’t know what to say; I don’t know why. I just know he’s my brother.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><b>[Leave comments at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/i-just-know-hes-my-brother/]</b></i></span>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-78222850445012141252012-04-16T08:58:00.000-05:002012-04-16T08:58:25.502-05:00Don’t Tell Me Where You’ve Been, Wanderlust Train<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">wanderlust love </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">for the train </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">that will wander with more lust </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">than i will ever be able to keep up with </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">and longer than i can stand to wait </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">for its return </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">from further away than i can imagine.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">but its horn is a siren </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">that will turn my head </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">every time it passes my open window</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">even on the coldest night; </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">my ears will perk </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">in the silent frost and my </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">neck strains to bring them closer </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">to phantom sound.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">and the distant click-clack</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">click-clack, an echo </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">endures from your last visit</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">a long row of memory</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">laden with other people's cargo</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">your burden</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">now mine.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">i tell myself </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">the whistle blares for me </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">and not some other wanderer </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">whose lust could never be as strong </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">as the love that waits on the crystal breeze </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">that circles around my bed posts </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">through my body </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">and fills the empty space </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">that sleeps beside me. </div>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-42964025931297664142012-04-02T19:13:00.000-05:002012-04-02T19:13:16.182-05:00Not a Woman with Hoodie Wandering without ID<div id="yui_3_2_0_17_133312279444548">I received a voice mail the other day that ended with, “Thank you for being a champion for human rights.” I didn’t know that anything had been won. It doesn’t even appear that we are in the first division or even in the playoffs. I don’t see the championship.</div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_133312279444548"><br />
</div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_133312279444548"> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_133312279444548">For a brief half century, we enjoyed a period in our country’s history where, even against a cultural backdrop of resistance, we thought of the constitution as something to affirm, expand and ensure civil rights and liberties. Today, that respect for rights, through constitutional measures, the law, or cultural attitudes seems to show up for corporations more often than for most of us.</div><div id="yui_3_2_0_17_133312279444548"><br />
</div>I am not surprised that there is enough steam to put a statement in our state’s constitution that says we are against men marrying men and women marrying women. The constitution is supposed to be a document that makes statements about who we are as a people and what rights we have as citizens. With all the ungodly things that happen today in the context of legal marriages, we somehow have decided to bring up measures related to legal marriage against the population that has not even had the chance to screw it up like the straight population.<br />
<br />
I am not surprised that, even though our country has a four-and-a-half century history of terror legislators feel the need to enact laws that will protect the “rights” of George Zimmerman and anyone who wants to enforce the lingering and pervasive terror against which we have little other protection: certainly not from police culture.<br />
<br />
I am not surprised that men who do not even have or acknowledge sexual partners and do not have anything to do with a woman’s reproductive health are trying to decide what women should do or have access to with regard to their bodies. I am not surprised that more men, especially conservative men, are not standing up to say that they do not want the government in the private, sexual parts of their wives–places that they believed were to be exclusively known by them as a right of marriage–and not equally uncomfortable with the government doing the same things with their daughters.<br />
<br />
I am also not surprised that there is an effort afoot to prevent hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans from legitimately exercising their basic voting rights, and will quite pointedly hurt voting access to the populations elderly, students, and people who move with greater frequency than other populations (eg. the poor, racial minorities, women fleeing abusers, and anyone else who regularly flees oppression or the difficult situations imposed on them by the social and economic dysfunction protected by current "rights" campaigns), in order to prevent a mostly non-existent fraud that is less effective, more costly and less efficient than most legal, legitimate means to influence elections and get votes for the candidate you want. I guess this right TO vote, a right for which many have died and were tortured and for which many still fight needs to be curbed by the arbitrary possession of a state ID. It seems we don’t need to poll tax or poll “test” or land-ownership requirement to pre-determine the outcome of elections.<br />
<br />
I expect that I will have a valid ID with me this upcoming election, as I expect that I will in several upcoming elections. I did run out the door without my ID one election day, several years ago. That was just once.<br />
I expect that I will not start wearing hoodies. Not my style. No need to mess up my hair even more than the ill-quaffed doo that I have been urged to groom with more attention. It is also a nice spring, so I guess I will not need it.<br />
<br />
I do not expect that I will ever want to marry a man. Even though it might help me get better health coverage, make it easier on my mom if something happens to me and someone has to make decisions about my care, maybe make it easier to inherit something in my later years, and I know that, if we made enough money, we would qualify for one of the Bush tax breaks.<br />
<br />
I do not expect that I will grow a uterus any time soon, nor to I expect to gain the perspective to be given the primary responsibility that gives me the right to make ultimate decisions about one.<br />
<br />
So, why am I writing about these other people? It is obvious: I look enough like them to know that I am them. I know enough about history, mine and those who came before me, to make me afraid of all the things that, as a boy, I thought I would not have to suffer because those things that were so awful were exposed and could not possibly continue–because they were so awful.<br />
<br />
So, I stood in the Marriage Equity subcaucus at my Senate District convention two Sundays ago. I comment on the fate of all our Trayvon Martins. I remember the people who died, mostly in the south, and where tortured just because they wanted to vote. But I don’t feel like a champion standing up for rights. I don’t even feel like I am in the game, hiding from the men with guns who have historically wanted and still today want the excuse to shoot me or take away my “reproductive” capacity. I breath a sigh when I see those men and realize I do have my “documentation” with me. I am no where near a place where I will be married. Just sitting in the stands.<br />
<br />
And in the mean time, I don’t care if the Major League pitcher had an affair with a guy when he was a teenager–much less what anyone did or did not do in high school. It is none of my business what is happening with the insides of a woman I do not love. Whether you look nice in the photo on your ID will not make you a better citizen or vote right, in my opinion. And I still know with that of all the things the Bible says about marriage, none of them are part of the (im)moral right’s assertions of how the institution should be defined.<br />
<br />
But some people have taken it upon themselves to “care.” I don’t feel like a champion because they are winning. One day, maybe it won’t be that way.<br />
<br />
<i>(Please comments at: http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/not-a-woman-with-hoodie-wandering-without-id/)</i>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-70613791955101337742012-03-24T19:50:00.001-05:002012-03-26T15:48:51.387-05:00Your Next Love Letter<span style="font-size: small;">Last Wednesday,<span style="color: black;"> I found a great Smith-Corona portable manual typewriter at Goodwill. I was shopping for something for a trip to a chess tournament being held in St. Louis. (I can’t remember what I originally was looking for. I know I didn’t find it, whatever it was.) It is definitely not the case that I need another item in my house. I have not the room. My son is intrigued but ambivalent, exclaiming, “For a while, there, I was thought we were caught in the world of typewriters and wood-burning guitars,” playing off a James Taylor quote he had rattling around in his very smart head. It is quite cool, a Smith-Corona Classic 12. It’s a portable, manual, vintage. It feels great. It is great.</span></span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://theclarencewhiteblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/smith-corona-classic-12.jpg"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-519" height="225" src="http://theclarencewhiteblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/smith-corona-classic-12.jpg?w=300&h=225" title="Smith-Corona Classic 12" width="300" /></a><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">It was almost not great. I tested it out in the store. Plunk, plunk. So many of these machines do not work, like the IBM Selectric I lucked into not long ago. Beautiful machine, but it’s electrical insides are scrambled and it knows not how to behave. This one felt great. Seemed to function great.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">That is until I got it home and tried to type a word that had a K in it. The K did not work. Not a tragedy. I spent $7 and maybe I would be motivated to find someone who could repair this gem. The better idea was to try and fix it myself—a dangerous proposition, but it would be a true failing if I did not try.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">I took off the metal plate on the bottom and searched the levers and hinges. Aha! The K was disconnected from its series of levers and rods. I figured out the mechanism for the failed connection, and with the help of two screwdrivers, made the reconnection. I could now write words with a K. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">I now have a functioning manual typewriter. The typewriter I learned to type on was also a Smith-Corona, one of those gray, Studebaker-like, upright things that my mom had salvaged from the days when she was a student. I think I was seven or eight when I asked mom to teach me how to type. With three other kids, two of them quite small, and an outside-the-house job, She did not have a lot of time. She did the next best thing—or maybe the better thing. She sat me down at the kitchen table with her old Gregg typing manual and let me teach myself. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">Years later, when I was in graduate school, I found another typewriter just like it at a yard sale. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">I don’t know why I wanted that typewriter. It would be an odd way to reclaim my childhood. Regardless, the purpose it served was much different than was the allure as I passed the sale that early summer evening. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">One purpose it served was saving the many recipients of my many letters from having to read my handwriting, which is still pretty illegible. The other purpose was to pound out the lingering adolescent angst that was the impetus or subject of most of the letters.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">As you might remember from my first blog post “<a href="http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/stop-him-before-he-writes-or-at-least-tries/" target="_blank">Stop Him Before He Writes (or at least tries)</a>,” I wrote about 380 personal letters one year. Many of them to a few women/girls for whom I felt enough affection to write so often, but never with the boldness to admit or hint, beyond the volume of mail they received, such affections. I would not admit because those affections were truly a transgression of what was supposed to be mere friendship or/and often with society’s color line. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">Plunk. Thwap. Slap. It was a wonderful sound and feel to which I worked out so many of my frustrations. Social-political frustrations. Frustrations of internal and external religious and theological dissonance. Frustrations of what felt a lot like love in the midst of a fading adolescence. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">This might be too reveling. Did you get any of those letters from 25 years ago? </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">Maybe you were not in my life 25 years ago. Maybe you are not a woman. Maybe your life was safely secluded from such attentions. Maybe you did get a letter—and maybe it was not one tainted with such emotions. Maybe none of that matters. Today, as then, all of the musings may be little more than the exercise in writing it turned out to be. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">Maybe none of it matters and maybe it IS nothing more than an old writing exercise—or that is all I will admit to. That and one other thing—something that may be of value to you: being so subtle and guarded with displays of affection has made me very good at figuring out if a man is interested in being your friend or if he has a crush on you. I can tell you how deeply he is into your relationship. I can pick it up, in most cases, pretty easily. Sometimes I can tell without ever meeting him. It is how I knew with certainty, even a year before he asked her out, that a classmate from long ago was interested in my friend A. It is how I knew that even though my friend C was so worried that her latest boyfriend might break up with her, that I was sure he would not, certain; I could feel it, that he knew she was the best that he would ever meet (that she was the best that most people ever meet, even if the context of relationship is not a possibility) and he would not pass on who she was. And I had never met either of them. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">I can tell by the smallest kind of attention that a man pays, letters, or anything else, especially something else, because no one writes letters, especially on a typewriter. I only wish that I could be so perceptive in the dynamics of my own life.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">I do not plan to write 380 letters in the next year, but somehow, the acquisition of this machine seems to fit for the day. I have urged my son to pound out a few poems on our new piece of functional furniture. What will I write? And what will you think if a piece of mail comes to your door, written on dear Smith-Corona Classic 12?</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">I beg you not to over-think this one, but in the mean time, I will carry the burden as I worry that no one will ever want a letter from me again.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>** Leave comments at: http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/your-next-love-letter/</i> </span></span>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-91972617764830858252012-03-18T16:52:00.001-05:002012-03-19T23:57:45.967-05:00I Love You: That’s So FunnyPoop, butt and vomit jokes are one of the delights of early childhood. I don’t know how long it takes us to tire of the butt jokes. Maybe as long as it takes to accept those not-so-crude aspects of life: a common daily reality, not so odd, ironic or absurd. I am guessing that doctors Freud, Jung, Erickson and Spock have explanations, something that explains this transition from being comfortable eliminating our waste into our pants to finding the elements of that process the most hilarious idea we can conceive of on the planet.<br />
<br />
I recall a day in grade school when every boy in the middle grades was fascinated with a turd soooo big and long it would not flush. Everyone elbowed their way to the door of the stall in the boys’ bathroom for a chance to see the spectacle as one of our teachers tried to encourage and then order all of us back to our classrooms. Urging us out of the bathroom did not, in the least, halt our exclamatory banter, filled with “Holy cows” and “Did you see that?” and eyes as big as the phenomenon we had, prior to that day, never seen.<br />
<br />
In time, we tired, outgrew, or just forgot to laugh at unless adorned by some cleaver sophistication.<br />
<br />
In a way, we never quite get comfortable with any of that, the body parts and the functions that go with them. There are still ways to make poop, butts and puke funny. It works in some movies for some people on some days: I guess it’s all in the timing—and maybe in not being the ones who have to clean it up: either the physical stuff or the pitiful emotional fallout that accompanies the physical mishap.<br />
<br />
While still children, we graduate to the next order of strange and uncomfortable body parts and functions: it’s about sex. We are kids, with no or very warped contexts of this life reality and, thus, still naïve enough not to confuse this caricature of sex with love. We can conveniently not see that sex and love are things that could go together, even if we know too much about them than is healthy for a child.<br />
<br />
Sex and love: they are funny.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Bobby and Suzie</i><br />
<i>Sittin’ in a tree</i><br />
<i>K-I-S-S-I-N-G…</i><br />
<br />
Or, “Bobby has a girlfriend! Bobby has a girlfriend!” More giggles. More embarrassment. As many denials of “Do not! DO NOT!<br />
<br />
When do we grow out of his stage? Hopefully not too soon, because it really is something children have to grow into, spend time uncomfortable with and out of that discomfort, spend an appropriate amount of time growing, establishing their personal space, identity and sense of self the discomfort helps us grow into. The taunts work for comic relief: Little Bobby with “First comes love/then comes marriage/then comes Bobby with a baby carriage is supposed to be an uncomfortable absurdity.<br />
<br />
Even as adults, though, we sometimes—and for some, every time– do not avoid being as unripe as Bobby. And maybe that is why it is hard to graduate out of that stage of bad humor that it follows us into the spaces and time of life when it can no longer be a silly absurdity: the places in which we live and have to care in those relationships, with those real people.<br />
<br />
Not being that undeveloped person is hard in our “Two and a Half Men” society. Once I got past being offended and realize it is just television, a comedy, it reminded me of some of the Greek classic comedies. So absurd. Silly. Such shallow attitudes on some things that are of ultimate importance: family, sex and love—or the absence of love. Absurd. Silly.<br />
<br />
And maybe it would be funny, if only it lasted the two and a half hours it takes to present one of those Greek comedies. But it goes on and on, week after week, day after day, rerun after rerun. And then I realize that it is not just a fiction. It’s more real than we will admit, even though the implicit admission is as plain as the popularity of the show. It is hard to deny when the show’s star repeatedly shows the real consequences of what happens when the plot of the show comes to real life. It is hard to deny when the trail of ruin left by that star shows up large—and we still want to reward him with our attention, money and an even bigger stature than we provided him before.<br />
<br />
It leaves us, still as adults, afraid to fall in love or to let anyone know, even the target of our affections. Will people laugh at us? Will our love laugh at us? Is love a joke with which those around us are still way too comfortable? Will our love be so uncomfortable with the love that the realm of the comic will be the comfortable refuge?<br />
<br />
If I say, “I love you,” will you say, “Oh, that’s so funny,” and laugh?<br />
<br />
And I can laugh, too, make us both comfortable and say, “Just kidding.” Freud, Jung, Erickson and Spock have theories on this, too. I am not sure I want to know. Instead, we can turn on the television and learn what love is about.<br />
<br />
<i>(Leave comments at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/i-love-you-thats-so-funny/)</i>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-91387325315237037622012-03-11T20:37:00.000-05:002012-03-11T20:37:10.774-05:00“The Time Has Come,” for a few FirstsThis is a true first for me, in many ways. It is my first attempt at video, recording myself, using my outdated camera, posting a self-made video—and this is the first and only take.<br />
I recorded Pentangle’s “Time Has Come,” my favorite Pentangle song. I have to thank Sherry Ladig who, years ago, introduced me to these “folks,” or at least she was encouraged my affinity with her enthusiastic expertise on these great musicians.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/o8FXqawYnwk?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div> <span class="embed-youtube" style="display: block; text-align: center;"></span> <br />
<div class="pad" id="content"><div class="post-501 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-dunquin category-guitars category-love category-pentangle" id="post-501"><div class="entry clear"></div><div class="entry clear"><br />
You can learn more about Sherry and the band Dunquin, made Sherry Ladig (piano), Don Ladig (her swell husband on flute and whistles) and Kathleen Green (fiddle) at <a href="http://www.sherryladig.com/bands/dunquin/">http://www.sherryladig.com/bands/dunquin/</a>.<br />
So, forgive the videography, I’m a newbee. Forgive the missed word or two in the lyrics, and the fumble with the strings. I have few words this week, but this song was sitting, waiting to be played for someone other than the idle books on my book case.<br />
In the mean time, I am working on a couple of pieces, one of which will be showcased in a reading by Givens Foundation Emerging Writer Fellows on<strong> April 24</strong><sup><strong>th</strong></sup><strong> at Intermedia Arts</strong> in Minneapolis, so save the date. Hope to see you there.</div></div></div>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-15108803182897421082012-03-05T07:41:00.000-06:002012-03-05T07:41:15.482-06:00Blog Hop: Is Comparison the Thief of Joy?Be sure to visit this blog post at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/blog-hop-is-comparison-the-thief-of-joy/ and leave a comment there!<br />
<br />
Tell the world what you think. This international discussion that involves 20 bloggers and scores of participants will make you think and fill you with stories.Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-49092798549948763762012-02-25T14:04:00.000-06:002012-02-25T14:04:34.169-06:00love settles at the bottom of the glen2 loves<br />
he comes beside her<br />
a touch on her arm<br />
she turns<br />
guides his center<br />
to the seat next to her<br />
another touch<br />
nudge<br />
sends them rolling quietly<br />
down a hill<br />
<br />
<br />
he sits<br />
rests<br />
turns again<br />
they tumble into a light kiss<br />
settle at the bottom<br />
together<br />
they gather<br />
to watch<br />
the birds fly<br />
against<br />
the setting sun<br />
<br />
<br />
and i wonder<br />
if i will ever<br />
share such a beautiful silhouette<br />
enjoy such a beautifully<br />
seasoned loveClarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-56146127803105285032012-02-18T21:20:00.000-06:002012-02-18T21:20:07.250-06:00She Told Me, “I Can’t”<a href="http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/"><span></span></a> <br />
<div class="pad" id="content"><div class="post-469 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-art category-childhood category-determination category-school" id="post-469"><div class="meta clear"> <div class="author"> </div></div><div class="entry clear"> “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 4<sup>th</sup> grader believe that she could not—could not draw an oval. Who told her that she could not?<br />
<br />
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.”<br />
<br />
I was in Cassie’s class assisting with a jazz and visual arts residency. The 3<sup>rd</sup> and 4<sup>th</sup> 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.<br />
<br />
“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.”<br />
<br />
“I just can’t,” she said. “It’s too much.”<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.”<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
I saw my 4<sup>th</sup> grade self, the 4<sup>th</sup> 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.<br />
<br />
What was Cassie really supposed to do? What was really expected of her? What had she learned about what people expected?<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.”<br />
<br />
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.”<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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…<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.</div></div></div>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-3590921862101769662012-02-12T19:21:00.000-06:002012-02-12T19:21:54.791-06:00miniStories: The Boy Who Did Not Like Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches<em>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 <a href="http://3minuteegg.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/ministories/">HERE</a>.</em><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><strong>miniStories: The Boy Who Did Not Like Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches</strong></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span>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? </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Peanut butter and jelly. It is, of course, the perfect breakfast food. I remember as a child listening to the episode of </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><em>School House Rock</em></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> that suggested: </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><em>Peanut butter and jelly<br />
Any time of day’s a treat.</em></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span>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. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span>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. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span>But other kids are usually better influencers than parents. Kids know what’s important. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span>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. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“<span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">How about it, El?” he turned to my son. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span>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. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span>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.” </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span>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. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span>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. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>[Leave comments at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/ministories-the-boy-who-did-not-like-peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwiches-2/]</i></span> </span></span>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-91605364596249192672012-02-05T17:07:00.001-06:002012-02-06T11:21:48.997-06:00Home, Part 3<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>This is the last of a three part series. See “<a href="http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/home-part-1/" target="_blank" title="Home, Part 1">Home, Part 1</a>” and “<a href="http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/home-part-2/" target="_blank" title="Home, Part 2">Home, Part 2</a>” in the previous two posts. Wishing all of of you, whether I know you or not, a nice home weekend.</i></span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">*******</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">What happens when we lose his or her trust or lose that trust in them? What happens when we fall out of love? </span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">A stack of strawberry soda that my grandmother used to keep in a room just off her kitchen. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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?</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>(Leave comments at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/home-part-3/)</i> </span></div>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-2709003436407692702012-01-29T17:15:00.000-06:002012-01-29T17:15:14.350-06:00Home, Part 2When we were kids, our grandma and grandpa had a television in every room (except the bathroom). They never moved from the side-by-side, shotgun duplex, the last of the properties of several they had owned and grandpa had tended over the years. The background squawk of the TVs was as constant as the simmering pots on the stove. <br />
I don't know what grandma's favorite show was or even if she paid attention. White noise. Colorful noise, maybe blunted by the power and color of her personality. It mostly played in the kitchen, toward the back of the house, much of which had been built by grandpa. At one point in the house's history, the kitchen was the back of the house. Mom told tales of trips to the outhouse, even as inner City of New Orleans dwellers.<br />
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Whatever grandma's favorite show was, grandma knew that all of the people in them had indoor bathrooms, just like her, and likely had more than one color TV—maybe in every room, just like her. Toward the front of the house, the televisions rarely played. Instead, the sound of a bar across the street often filled the air. An ironic coexistence, given that grandpa was a Baptist preacher and did not set foot in the establishment. It was an ironic coexistence with his step son who lived in a tiny living space upstairs with its own entrance who regularly stepped into that establishment.<br />
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Ironic? Uneasy? Maybe neither. All these things belonged. Was it a sense of humor or a load of tolerance—or maybe an exercise of non-judgmental Christian love—a test of the church's Great Commission playing itself out, a world across the street that begged the preacher man to save then; and a man who was more willing to open that door than his wife was eager to accept. <br />
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Or a test provided by grandpa's eldest granddaughter who, on a Sunday morning, dressed finely for the good church people to see, one of four shiny, cared for grandchildren of whom he was much too proud, would peer into that magic TV box at American Bandstand, full of gyrating young people running afoul of the expectations of that sacred day and afoul of young Christian lady conduct in general. <br />
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But she loved to dance. She loved dance, a student of people moving to music, to the beat and of their hearts' desires, still too early in life to have an understanding of what all those desires were, but knowing of them—enough of them to watch, not getting to close and knowing that she could watch because she was her grandfather's granddaughter. <br />
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The TV would be turned off not from disapproval, even as my mother and I lived moments of uneasiness, appropriately worried about hurting grandpa's sensitivities, feelings or the equilibrium of moral order. The TV was turned off because it was time to go to a church service at which grandpa would preach, that would last hours and would be capped off with a score of fawning middle-aged women who had to meet grandma and grandpa's beautiful grandchildren. <br />
Those three-week summer visits were punctuated on the front end by grandma's vigilant wait on the front stoop for a weary carload of Minnesota kids to show up at the house on Roman Street. We would arrive as new-again strangers who would ease into the growing familiarity that, at some point, devolved into mostly-hollow threats from grandma saying that if we did not behave, we'd get a whipping so bad we would not be able to sit down for a week. <br />
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<em>Next week, the final installment (I think) of “Home.” Be sure to check out the first installment at: http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/home-part-1/. In the mean time, tell the rest of us what home means to you.</em>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040531691526665220.post-23415239787533928552012-01-21T09:29:00.001-06:002012-01-21T09:30:34.158-06:00Home, Part 1<i>This is the first installment of a three-part series. It began as an assignment given to me and my colleagues as Givens Foundation Emerging Writer Fellows. There are many facets to this theme, and I will get the chance to explore them with my fellow writers as we workshop each others’ works, but I hope that some of you will leave thoughts, now or at the end of the series. </i><br />
<i>Thanks for reading and thanks for passing this on to friends.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Clarence</i><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">John and I made our way up the walkway to Mary’s house. It was a sunny, spring afternoon. We had just come from our local political convention: 1994, a year in which we failed, again, to win the Governor’s election, a year in which I would be on one of many versions of the staff that could not get our guy into the mansion on Summit Avenue. That day, Mary had invited several people over. I don’t know who we endorsed that day, for what offices or what issues we decided. I’ve been to more than my share—and a good share of other people’s conventions—a constant blur and while I can remember the details in the moment—but don’t ask me today about any moment of years of beautiful spring days spent inside school auditoriums when more sane people would be outside playing in the newly arrived Minnesota warmth.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I don’t remember, either, what John and I spoke of on the car ride to Mary’s. I don’t remember who drove, although I think it was me. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">John was a not-yet-old but past grownup California blond who was way too serious to waste his toe-headed noggin on surfers’ waves. My much younger nappy head was willing to listen and the two of us spent the trek from convention to Mary’s in tandem—until we stepped onto Mary’s walkway. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I walked a step ahead of John. We came to the front door and I reached up to open it and began walking in. John was a bit startled and shot me a what-the-hell-are-you-doing glare and said, “Do you live here?” </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I did not live there. Not really. But John did not know the substance of my over-familiarity. He did not know that over-familiarity was more than a function of how many times I had been there. He did not see the implied welcome invitation of the woman who rarely locked the door to her house. He mostly did not see my relationship with Mary, one that was more than familiar, but one that made it a place to lay my weary head as much as my dusty satchel. </span><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Months before, Mary’s dog Beau’s made his first visit to my house. We walked in the door and Beau shot in and made his way down the hallway. We did not notice at first, but a minute after we arrived our noses told us that he had left something in the hallway. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">We both laughed. “It means that he knows this is a place where I belong,” she said. He had done the same thing when he walked into her house for the first time. A pet-savvy friend told her that pets will do this: leave droppings in places that they know are the places of their people. I don’t know how Beau knew this. He saw no tooth brush in the bathroom. He saw no clothes in the closet or a favorite mug in the cupboards. Maybe there is a smell. Maybe it was the way that she walked to the door, a step ahead, that told him that this was a place she belonged. At that point, I was not sure if Beau belonged. We laughed some more. I let Mary, her body still heaving with laughter, pick up the mess while I opened a window. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Dogs are like people. Or maybe people are like dogs. Or maybe this is just a false, crude and convenient anthropomorphism. There is something about the places where we will leave our mark and our precious possessions; drop our weapons, our hair and other things that we hold tightly inside when we are somewhere we belong or somewhere that is our own. There are places where, when we show up at the door, they have to let us in, places where we get to decide who comes in and places where we get to poop—just once—and the other creatures living there will still want us. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">These are places where we will tolerate our mess for a period of time and the messes of someone else for a much shorter period of time. They are places where, even in that mess, we are content to fall asleep in the middle of it, whether that mess is one of physical things from our closets, kitchens, toy bins for kids or toy bins for adults; or the emotional messes even if they stir our dreams and make sleep restless. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">And sometimes those messes are so bad, they can’t be ignored, even when the eyes in our head and the mind’s eye are closed and we try to settle a heart that won’t be quieted.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I listen to the dreams of friends and, just as often, the nightmares that have left them restless. I listen because the friends will tell me, want to tell me, seek out my ear. I listen because it is much easier than sitting on my own couch and having mine analyzed with a scrutiny that makes them hard to put to bed. And just as often as I hear the dreams that led my friends, way too young and anxious to fly out of their parents’ nests, I hear the nightmares that chase them away with a ferocity that makes me cover my ears, not wanting to believe that their child-selves had to sleepwalk through such caustic purgatories. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">A friend talks about the “distant murmur and hum of traffic” that perforated the darkness in which she slept as a child. First in a two-story blue house set on a busy, small town highway in southeastern Wisconsin. Later, after her parents split up, it was the front bedroom of her father’s place during the weekend visits. Today, she still needs the white-noise drone for slumber, a necessary accessory in that place where she lays her head. It is the lullaby that lets her body and psyche know she has arrived at the place she is supposed to be. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Where we are supposed to be changes, nests change and so do the people who occupy them. But these are places with familiar sounds, familiar smells, familiar walls, familiar faces and familiar pillows. It is said that the smells are the most powerful, wresting memories from our subconscious. Still, I think the faces are most important—or more so what is behind those faces. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">My parents lived in the house, in which my siblings and I did most of our growing up, well into my 40s. They were there long enough for it to be grandma and grandpa’s place. Long enough to be the oldest people on the block. But it was always the place where I could lay my head, my satchel and almost every version of my stuff, my material possessions—even the messes that were created by my string-saver mentality. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">There are places where, when I show up, they have to let me in. There is a place where I can sit without worrying if it is my chair. I can go to the refrigerator and take what I want—or maybe ask, not if I can have what I want but, rather, if anyone else had plans for it already. Someone will either offer to do my laundry or ask if I can help with the laundry that is there. I will be fed or expect to feed someone including myself. All of this is a step of intimacy beyond that which makes us merely welcome.</span></div>Clarencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07037845100222922152noreply@blogger.com0