Wednesday, March 14, 2012

A Tale From San Francisco

The boys and I decided to take the city bus to the Exploratorium. We boarded the transit four blocks from my sisters home in the Dogpatch and slowly rolled across the city.

I hoped that my children would taste the more complex flavors of city life by viewing San Francisco from the vinyl seats of public transportation. I hoped they would begin to get a sense of what "multicultural" means. (In Eugene, people of color are so rare that their appearance sometimes scares the dog.)

In our first ten minutes, a large black woman boarded the bus with her iphone blaring. I marveled at the sound she coaxed from that little machine. My iphone has never projected so well. I sat for several minutes bearing witness to her rap concert while other thoughts leapt from every available window in my head. Soon, it became clear that I could hold no interior conversation, harbor no dream or plan of my own in the presence of music at that volume.

I considered my options. Would I ask her to turn it down? I imagined that the request would not be warmly received. I expected that I would likely be seen as another white person demanding that my needs be considered first.

I understood and had compassion for such a response. How many generations had black people passed down the suffering of white domination in this country? I trusted that my family had certainly taken part in this grief-making, though the record of it was lost to me. I accepted responsibility for this, even as black people today shoulder the burden of pain passed down by nature and nurture and live their lives beneath the implicit weight of it.

I felt terribly sad thinking of the ways that cruelty has shaped black culture and opportunity across generations so that people of different colors who have never met could be perceived as enemies without even meeting. I mourned the pain that countless people of color have endured, the native cultures lost, and the struggle that many experience now to get their basic needs met in the fallout of a history of explicit and implicit discrimination.

I sat with that and made my peace silently. Several minutes rolled by. My children stared out the window. The bus filled. A few white people cast disgusted looks in the direction of the iphone which continued to erupt with expletives that I doubted that my children fully grokked.

A new thought emerged. What if I asked her to turn it down just so I could have the opportunity to connect? The request risked discomfort on both of our parts, but what if I was successful and a bridge was built? That bridge could be crossed by more than just she and I -- it might extend with good will on the next bus ride and the next. My children might see the model and brave the opportunity to connect with someone else who seemed similarly separate. The effects could be statistically significant. And best of all, I liked the challenge and the opportunity to see the heart of someone else apparently marooned in the seat across from me.

"Excuse me," I said. "I'm having trouble thinking with your iphone at that volume. Would you be willing to turn it down just a little?"

"No way, lady! Listen, I play my music at the volume I want to play it at and nobody's goin' to tell me what to do with it. This here's a public place, and I can listen to whatever I like!"

"Amen, sister," said a large black man slumping in the seat behind her.

"I want you to listen to whatever you like," I said. "I just wondered if you would be willing to turn it down to support me thinking my own thoughts, too. I see you aren't willing, and I'm okay with that."

"There ain't no foul language in this music. I know, because I have a kid of my own. The only people I'm willing to turn it down for are kids." At this point, she leaned forward and extended her hand toward my boys.

"You alright, babies?" she asked. They nodded quickly and emphatically.

"Y'see? They fine," she said, sitting back. "Now, I've had a really tough day, and I will listen to what I damn well please to listen to."

"Sure," I said. "I'm sorry you've had a tough day. Music helps, huh?"

"Yeah, I'll turn it down in a minute," she said and within a couple of seconds she began to press at the volume control with her thumb.

"No, don't do it!" called the black man behind her. "It's your god damned music!"

"Oh, thank you, brother, thank you," she said warmly. "This lady, she asked me so nicely. I'm happy to do it. Thank you, though."

"How old's your son?" I asked.

"Oh, he's fifteen now. And I always listened to all kinds of music around him. I played Mozart when I was pregnant. You never know what kids will like and maybe even want to play -- you might have the next Eminem over there," she said nodding to my towheaded children.

"Never know," I agreed.

"This my stop, honey, so I'll see you later," she said, scooping up her things and pulling the cord. The bus jounced to a halt and the woman's body pressed hard into the bar she held from above.

"'Scuse me!" she said with a smile to the man beside her, and she stepped down from the bus.

As we sped northward, a heavily pierced white woman two rows ahead of me said to her partner, "Well, at least someone is happy."

Now, that's my kind of ending.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Becky Thatcher

It happened on our first evening here in Key West. The sun dipped low into balmy skies as we walked, en famille, through our new neighborhood toward the Atlantic.

A block and a half away from home, I heard a sharp clapping sound, and I turned to see a girl of about twelve years old standing in the middle of the sidewalk staring back in my direction. Her eyes did not focus on mine, though her gaze was intent and her smile broad. I turned to follow it.

She was looking at Trinidad, now eleven and a half. Trin's flaxen hair rumpled gold in the evening light, and he guided a soccer ball casually back and forth before him as he walked.

"Trin," I said. "Someone's trying to get your attention."

Three more claps sounded as he turned to look. The girls smile widened more still, and her white teeth shone beneath dark, almond-shaped eyes. Black hair fell smooth and shiny to her shoulders, and her long legs hung gracefully straight under narrow hips. She sprang behind a telephone pole, and all we could see then were feet, elbows, and black hair wisps over bare, caramel-colored shoulders.

Trin looked to me questioningly. Two more claps issued from behind the telephone pole. Trinidad shrugged, one eyebrow raised, a half-smile on his lips. I grinned back.

"Remember this morning in the airport when we were reading Tom Sawyer?" I asked. "We read the chapter about Tom meeting Becky Thatcher, and how he was 'showing off' with all sorts of absurd gymnastics to get her attention?"

He nodded. "Well," I said. "That's the sort of show that's going on for you now."

Trinidad's eyes widened a bit, then he looked down, blushed, and smiled. Trin shrugged again and glanced back her way, shyly. The girl now stood in the middle of the sidewalk, feet planted wide, hands on her hips, smiling at him. Trinidad dropped his gaze, turned, and shuffled off with his ball.

I had the sense that I had just witnessed my sons first awkward steps on land all over again, this time in initiation to the threshold of romantic awakening.

A prayer of thanks went up that I got to see it happen ~ sunrise, sunset.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Key West, On The Dark Side

Cayo Hueso, the bone Key. You are full of bones, Key West. Dry coral does not give beneath bare feet. Broken bottles lie like smashed skeletons on asphalt -- the death of a civilization prone to excess.

The wind here is a siren song. It calls warmly to passing ships of air and sea: come hither! The people arrive, brightly clad, with bags of many colors.

Oh, what we will carry! Maps we bring -- human roads printed on paper in the hand as deer leave their paths in dirt and in their blood as memories to kin. We drive our sacred paths on motor scooters or in lacquered cars, petrol fogging the clean sea air. Liquified bones we pour into sky: This is an offering we burn without thanks.

My apologies to the gods. Our vision is obstructed. These sunglasses allow in a comfortable amount of light, and our bodies have forgotten how to tighten a retina, pull an eyelid taut. The human experience is honed by that which does not belong to it. We are not quite ourselves anymore.

Cayo Hueso, land of bones. This is not the whole story. The land here teems with life, but bones emerge at an ever alarming rate. Decades of life in a coral reef knocked apart with the touch of a well-meaning hand or the accidental strike of a jet-ski propellor. Sea life, more abundant than most, appears to thrive, but how abundant is it compared with that of a century past? The colorful underwater carnival is eclipsed only by its rate of decline, bones collecting in estuaries behind the Winn-Dixie where we watch horseshoe crabs mate.

Like the Spanish, I ask myself: Who does this tropical graveyard belong to?