Hard to Believe

Hard to believe the surprise baby who brightened all out lives and left early would have turned 50 this December 10th. A few nights ago I was out walking after dark, something I love and still do every chance. I was remembering Joey at six or so at the trailer in Austerlitz, a few of us around the fire, lawn chairs scaritching as they do. Looking out at that tremendous meadow -- forty acres, fifty? -- we saw many fire flies. Near us and dotted the tall grass far out, like stars over a calm, placid sea. "What's that one?" Joey asked. A firefly had landed on the tip of a wheat stalk. "A tired firefly,' I answered. Our mother was there. Maybe she chuckled. Anyway remembering this the other night as walked a dark street along a park, a long dark stretch behind the renovated but still dark and hulking mill, an abundance of fireflies appeared in the woods rising up a slope to the houses along a high curve. Houses where in summer daytime groundhogs (aka woodchucks) could be seen sprinting away, though a quarter mile off, at the sound of passersby. These fireflies on my walk home were so many. More than one sees in these troubles times. But there they were. And so I decided: make this blog for him. Invite others to share stories and memories so that later ones arising from our generations ad the generations after may know him. A little. Not the whole forest but maybe the little lights. I invite you. Send your words and/or pictures and I'll post. Peace out, ekg, Kathryn Gordon the 2nd, elizag, Kathy, K, Elizabeth, elizak. I think that'll all the names I used. Oh, and Lady Astor -- my mom's name me for me sometimes.

Update, with truck

Ahmad has been living in Albany near me for about two years now. I'd been saving and shopping for a used Prius when the market went crazy. I came upon this used Ford F150 and remembered he said he'd always wanted one. Well now he has one! Wish us luck. It expands the jobs he can do and seems to have added two inches to his spine. Pray he doesn't become prey at some trumped up traffic stop. Believe me I'll be ON him to keep the truck 100% legal.

The Triplets visit

Ahmad, Jamarr and Amear.

This week I had the pleasure of a visit from all three of the triplets. Jamarr drove up from Texas, where he's been working as a mason, and picked up Amear in Philly, then they both came the rest of the way to see Ahmad in Albany. A reunion!

And here they are at Cohoes Falls. I was so taken by them I neglected to get the waterfall much in the picture. Oops. But they saw and admired it, and we had a wonderful couple of days.

Today is their 22nd birthday -- Feb 19th. They've come so far and have so far to go. Blessings on the journey.

1/3 of the trips moved in

Ahmad performing at Poetic Vibe, a weekly open mic in Troy

Ahmad, the middle triplet, has been living with me in Cohoes, NY for about 3 months now. He's studying to be a fitness trainer and working at Troy's Boys and Girls Club as a youth counselor. They love him. My apartment is small and zoned for only one. Don't you know my nearest neighbor on one side called a guy he knows in zoning soon after Ahmad moved in? And this was after a huge snowstorm when Ahmad had shoveled for his wife (the neighbor has a bad back). Anyway, we're still here. My landlords have an old feud with the guy...so they're on our side, surprisingly.

In more catch up news, Tahija has moved out of Philly after years of wanting to. She was able to sell the house and buy one for a little less in a medium sized Ohio city. Ohio has the bargain houses! We U-hauled most of her stuff out there in January. I say most because it didn't all fit on the truck, but it was plenty. Booshie the cat came too and was very well behaved. She's doing well. A bit lonely she says but enjoying the peace. She's on a cul de sac street with only 2 neighbors close. It's a solid little house with a tea room on the 2nd floor -- sink and all. We couldn't fit the washer and dryer in though, which is a loss.

Thanks for stopping buy. The book is available on Amazon. Still waiting for Ellen or Oprah or both to find it and make a movie. If you know them let them know. Peace.

Sad to report...

I'm sorry and sad to report that the father of the triplets, named Lamarr in the book, has died. It was a car accident. He was thirty-four. The boys were seventeen when it happened a few months back and have just turned eighteen. There was insurance. Tahija always carried life insurance on him but the insurance company is fighting the settlement. I don't know all the details. I know she's a vulnerable person who seems to attract exploitation, the way a fish attracts water. I mean she and her family live in a sea of it. But she's a fighter too and has found a pro-bono lawyer. But fighters get worn out. Send prayers and Light. Good news is her mom stepped up big time and is a steady presence now. She loved Lamarr very much, knew him from way back when he was 13 or so.

He never thought he'd make it to 18, and he did, and beyond. Not as far beyond as we might have hoped, as his sons needed, but still they had him the whole time they were growing up. They're tough. They don't take crap. Tough and smart. And still soft too, caring and questioning. Please world stop being so hard on the Black men because they'll be Black men soon. Please Lamar reach back, reach down, reach out and continue any way you can as best you can to guide and father and love. Inshallah.

give this map to the children

So a family with five kids aged 4 or so to 12 moved in on the corner. I was walking by last week and called "Hey neighbors" and one of the little ones, a black-white pair, maybe 4 maybe 5, called out "We're not neighbors we're children."

They were worried about the dogs of Cohoes. Apparently one loud one lives in the apartment beneath them. I told the oldest child, a girl of I'd guess 12, Cohoes didn't have many dogs and the ones I'd seen anyway were behind good strong fences. We have a lotta of cats though I said. Were they afraid of cats.

Little boy one said a grey cat jumped right into his arms.

"Maybe cats will always like you," I said back. I don't know why. Something in me says of a family group like this give give give. Of your best.

Then tonight,why I came here, is I met another Lucille, a different Lucile, down the other end of the block, on the steep downhill toward the falls.

I've seen her before and said Hello. This night we had our longest talk. She's had 2 heart attacks though she's not very old. She hates Cohoes, grew up here. She knows my Lucille, my closer neighbor who inspired The Clotheslines of Cohoes, but she's not Arcadian French she's "Italian and Indian" mixed. Father-mother.

I asked her her complaints and was sorry I had. Long story ends with "I don't like white and black mixing and I don't care who knows."

Hmm. Just now I thought Does she know who I am? Does everyone know and are the watching?

But before that, why I sat to write is, I thought, I need to make a map of Cohoes showing known racists. Might as well get sex offenders in there too. And give this map to the children.

Still walking

After a recent visit to the family, little stories bubbled up. I realized, remembered, this blog. Maybe its the surface where the bubbles pop. So I resume. And I allow myself all topics loosely related to race, racial healing, and all the taking ourselves so seriously stuff.  I allow myself 2) to take myself less seriously.

Ok here's a little story I just told Kaki, Damear told me when I went down there to watch Dawn of the Planet etc.

Damear's in the Howard Street neighborhood, has a friend who lives near the house Kaki still owns and which the three lived their first year. So Amear walks by and sees one day the front door's open. He knows the folks who've rented  there now a decade or more--former housemates of Kaki, all in advanced recovery and loosely linked to the renegade nun's recovery community where Kaki used to lead AVP workshops. Anyway, Mear's been to the house, knows the folks inside. He calls but no one answers. He goes in halfway into the livingroom calls again no answer. Sounds like they're home but whatever busy.

So he goes into the kitchen--Kaki loves this part--and get some juice out of the fridge and pours a glass. And drinks it I suppose and goes back out.

Damear has a medium?serious girlfriend. Gabby.

The split picture

At a few readings from the book I told this story. We were all going to the New Jersey Seaquarium, meeting on the Philly side and taking the ferry across the Delaware.  The boys were only about 8. As they walked toward me, Lamarr ahead of his brothers and parents, I noticed a little dip in his walk. Looked like one of his uncles. I felt an aversion stirring in me, and a little fear. Was he going to start having some attitude, talking the white man this and the white man that.  He looked older, scarier. My joy at seeing them and my unconditional love were sullied.

When he reached me, he said "Do you know how to skip? Watch, I'll teach you."  And he skipped along the walkway, so cute, young really for 8.

one of Lamarr's facebook photos

Recently he changed his facebook photo (they're 15 now) to a camcorder shot of him close to the computer screen looking up, the small bedroom behind him, a bit rough, the light poor, his gaze serious.  And the same thing happened to me. A sliver of me recoiled. With adolescence his nose has taken on a little character, widening and flaring, and his strong wide jaw can make him look much older and bigger than he is.

In my mind's eye the screen was split. One side held 15 year old Lamarr, the baby whose diapers I'd changed many times; who earned the nickname Wah because he cried so much; who sucked his thumb; who didn't like to fight though his dad taught them all to fight and his mom punished any one who left the other two in a fight; who liked to teach random grown-ups how to skip; who was of the three always the most helpful to and interested in adults; who I loved with all my heart.

The other side held a scary young black man who was mad at the world and meant to get even. In that dim light and odd angle he could pass for 20. In fact, he looked older, scarier and darker than Trayvon. Indeed, he is darker, they all are; few of their great grandmother's Cherokee features have been passed on to them.
Little matter, any black is very black in some places, many places; and very black = bad and scary, violent, assumed guilty.

Is Lamarr violent? More so than the average white 15 year old who grew up in urban America? He may be. He lives with a sense of being under attack, because he has been under attack. And this sense was passed to him from his parents and theirs, who were all under attack. His mom's mom has told me about "kill a nigger day" at her high school, in the late 70's. But the attack didn't always come directly from white people. There was just much more violence when and where the triplets' parents grew up, with little or no help from any of the authorities that intervene in white neighborhoods when children are in danger. Big Lamarr had to fight to and from school as a matter of course. He saw several deaths close hand by the age of ten (I re-tell one in the book).  He felt he had to raise his boys to be tough.

He started early. For a punishment he had them punch a punching bag for long stretches of time. Hard. They'd punch away as the tears streamed down. This at 3 or 4 years old.  He spoke roughly to them, teasing and taunting, insulting, toughening them up, he said, against the insults and humiliation that would come.  How could I say he should not?

I don't know if Trayvon was raised to be that tough, that ready to defend himself. I know when anyone is cornered they may feel they need a burst of aggression to quickly disarm their attacker. I believe Trayvon feared for his life. People say he contributed to his death. Perhaps he should have run. Probably he could have outrun George. But could he have outrun a bullet? We might wish he had tried first to talk, explain. But he knew he'd already been profiled and that his words would likely be taken as lies. A different young man might have been able to "shuck and jive" and humble his way out of it. Yes sir, no sir. We might wish he had done that. Maybe his parents wish it. I feel certain that Lamarr, the most ingratiating but also the most hot-tempered of the triplets, would not have deigned to talk his way out of the fact that he was walking home to his father's house from the convenience store.  He would have been confrontational. Damear might have run; he's very fast.  Mahad might have gotten the larger man into a headlock; he's an excellent wrestler.

Or they could as easily have died there on that sidewalk where Trayvon died. A victim of racial profiling, the stand your ground law, and a picture split down the middle: 17 year old innocent young man, a citizen with rights, on one side; 20-something thug who deserve what he gets on the other.

Looking at Lamarr's Facebook picture, I see first and mainly the Lamarr I love, but I do glimpse the stereotype too.  I was after all raised a white American in a racist time and place, and no amount of reading, thinking, praying and changing diapers completely erases that. It's a daily struggle to see clearly and the work of my life to live in a love that can counteract or even erase the racism.

Which side of the picture did the jury see? Were they able to see clearly, when I who cared for those boys when they all three of them weighed less than four pounds cannot consistently see clearly? I think they saw Trayvon through George's eyes, but could not see George through Trayvon's eyes.  If they had, George would be in prison now, and millions of African-American boys and those who love them would perhaps start to feel that maybe America is becoming a place where Black boys don't have to be raised to daily defend themselves from attack.

Jobs in Triplicate

I guess the other two like the idea of cash in their pocket and being able to help mom with school uniform costs and fees. Because Damear and Mahad have jobs now too. Lamarr called me last night on his very first phone, bought with his hard-earned dollars. Amazing.

I AM old

Jammar just got his first job. Little Jamarr, aka Jamarr junior, aka THE BABY. It's helping out at a store on The Avenue. He's very excited. Me too, I think. Anyway I'll be down there on the 15th for the 8th grade graduation party. It's an all day affair; the block will be closed; the DJ will be loud. The boys will be on their way to high school, and other jobs, other milestones. Just wow.

To the next level

Ahmad and Jamarr (Mahad and Lamarr in the book) are in the state wrestling championship today. The whole family left at 5 AM for weigh in in Pottstown PA. Getting farther from the city. I hope they feel safe there and can concentrate on their matches. I know Jamarr senior did not let getting up that early. He's definitely not a morning guy.  I wasn't able to go thanks to the flu or some croupiness hanging on here and the hours and hours of grading awaiting me, but Tahayyah is keeping me posting by text. I'm excited they have something their passionate about and have good coaches. They'll stay at the same school for high school and so can really settle in, learn and grow. Amear likes the social aspect of the matches and of course roots for them. He says he'll play basketball or football once he's out of demerit trouble enough to be let to. The school is strict about that. One benefit of Mahddy and 'Marr being sports stars could be that the school will be more likely to keep Amear, who's likely to get more rebellious before he gets less.

The High School team (trips still in 8th)

The school by the way is Mariana Bracetti Academy Charter School, founded in 1999 and housed in a Save-A-Lot where tahayyah and I used to shop when she lived with us.  That makes it sound industrial and small. it's not. The grounds also cover a row of shops and the school looks quite nice. They're moving next year though to an old Catholic School much closer to Frankford, where the family lives now. Coincidentally, this school, North Catholic, had one of the top wrestling programs in the city.