When We Hold Children

After a 6 month break, the Hoosier Contrarian is back at it. 


Chatting with a friend recently about child rearing, she mentioned the Harlow monkey studies from the 1960s. Baby monkeys were isolated from their mothers at birth and placed with two fake surrogate mothers, one made of wire that dispensed milk, and another snuggly doll made of soft cloth that gave no milk. Most monkeys spent their time with the soft mother, preferring comfort to food.

Snuggling is powerful, and where children are concerned, I think it's a 2-way street.

When we hold children we tell ourselves that we do it for them, but sometimes, and maybe more than we ever realize, we do it for ourselves. The nurturing comforts the parent, too.

My first child was colicky on a Biblical scale, going hours each evening for weeks wailing as if in agony. Often when he’d screamed himself to sleep, I held him with a desperation that is hard to describe - part exhaustion, part relief, but also comfort. Comfort from the fear that I wasn’t cut out to parent to a child with such unknowable needs, comfort in knowing we’d survived another day, and yes, nurturing comfort simply in having that sleeping baby laid across my chest.

Sometimes for the sake of mental health I needed to put that sleeping baby down, make myself a stiff drink, and just sit in darkened silence. But more often then not I held him close for a while as he slept. Not just for him, but for me, too.

There’s something primal about the feeling of that little heart beating against yours. Maybe it’s as simple as feeling, “I’ve been given this sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying job to do as a parent and at least in this moment everything is okay.”

But of course it’s not just that. It’s something more.

In the same conversation, my friend told me about a survey of single moms that showed they tend to sleep in the same bed with their children at a far, far higher rate than parents in families with both a mother and father. And not just small children, but those aged 5-10 years old. That simple fact raises fascinating questions. I think it’s a complicated subject, but it's fair to say that to some degree these moms are doing it for themselves. They’re lonely and doing a difficult job that can be overwhelming even with help from a spouse. With so much on your shoulders alone, with no one else having your back, knowing your little charge is close at hand brings peace of mind. But I think it's also about the adult's need for nurturing human contact. To be loved in return.

We all need affection and comfort, no matter what our age, and when it comes from a child it comes with innocent simplicity and no ulterior motives.

When my youngest, Sally was a tot I worked a grueling schedule that often consumed my patience and cluttered my headspace. Sometimes when I came home from work I gathered her up in my arms, put music on the stereo and danced in the living room with that little girl's arm wrapped around my neck. I suspect I got way more from it than she did.

And because of that hectic schedule, I wasn’t always as patient as I might have been. I raised three children and cannot count the times a child ran to be in my arms because they were stung by a bee, or fell off their bike, or was mistreated by a friend. They came to me for comfort, but sometimes I dispensed hugs like mundane doses of aspirin, “Yeah, yeah, I know you’re hurt and I’m sorry, now give me a hug and go play, I’ve got work to do.”

So yeah, it’s not all comfort and joy. I’ve been reminded of all of this as new children have appeared in my life.

I went camping with my friend Myra and her 4-year-old son, Paul this past summer. On the first night in a tent in the North Carolina mountains I fell asleep with Paul’s raspy breath humming between his mother and me. I awoke in the middle of the night to find him sleeping sideways, his head resting on Myra’s rear like a pillow and his feet rested on my backside like he was kicked back in a Lazy Boy.

I sat up to consider this sorry arrangement and his eyes suddenly opened. I said, “Dude, this ain’t gonna work,” gripped him under one arm, and gently straightened him out against his sleeping mom. He quickly drifted off to that mysterious sleep of childhood, the drug-like sleep most adults can only recapture with drugs.

The next day we biked around Asheville on a perfect sunny Saturday and pretty much wore ourselves out exploring the city and hauling Paul behind us in a 2-wheeled carrier. On a late afternoon tour of the city in an open-air trolley, Paul fell asleep on Myra’s lap. Coming down a hill near the entrance to the Biltmore she rested her head on the wooden windowsill, her hand cradling her sleeping son’s head. I sensed in that moment it wasn’t just him recharging his batteries, she too was finding a sliver of peace at the end of a stressful day spent tending a busy child in an unfamiliar city. The 4-year-old dervish was at rest and his mother was absorbing peace and comfort from it happening against her chest as the sites of the mountain town flew by.

Often now when I visit their house for dinner, I bring a pile of children’s books to read to Paul. In truth I brought the books to help his mother, so I could distract Paul when she’s stressed and cooking, but eventually found he and I enjoy the time spent snuggled together on the couch reading. Again, I’m not sure who gets more out of it, him or me.

On a Saturday a couple weeks before Christmas I kept Paul and his 6-year-old cousin Luella while Myra and her sister worked. I set up a little workshop in the garage and we built 2 birdhouses as Christmas gifts for them to give their moms. My oldest, Cal, that former colicky baby, now 24, helped out.

Later, I settled them in front of the movie Ponyo and I tried to nap on the couch. As I started to fade, Luella appeared beside me and asked, “Is it okay if I lay down on top of you?” “Sure,” I lied. She climbed up and stretched out, lounging on me like I was a couch cushion, and went on watching the movie. I tried, pointlessly to drift back to sleep with a squirmy child lying on top of me. Eventually Luella poked my ribs with a finger. “Hey,” she said, “you’re really snuggly.”

“I get that a lot.” I grumbled back.

My own girl, Sally had just turned 18. Been a long time since that little girl and I held each other, dancing. It was a good reminder to open my eyes, stay awake and enjoy the movie with Luella and Paul. When a child wants to hold you close, you really ought to have a pretty damn good reason not to go along.

True, when we hold children, we’re sometimes not doing it for them, but for ourselves. And that’s perfectly normal, and perfectly right.

Stop Climbing Everest

Two months ago, four climbers died attempting to reach the summit of Mount Everest. They were caught in a sort-of traffic jam of 150 climbers. Each had spent approximately $25,000 on the trek.

Several years ago I read John Krakauer’s book, Into Thin Air, which chronicled the real-life, tragic journey the author made in 1996 to the top of Mount Everest. It was riveting and masterfully written, but also a journey through the selfish obsessions of well-healed, yet bored westerners who’ve lived lives of such detached comfort they’re desperate for an experience that will prove they’re still alive. Problem is, eight of them weren’t alive when Krakauer’s trip was over.

        

I finished the book puzzling over why anyone would want to risk death climbing Everest. Is it the same urge that makes a sheltered girl want to date the dangerous boy – the same giddy hunger that makes seemingly normal people bungee jump? Maybe. Truth is, there are lots of intoxicating, heart pounding thrills short of climbing Everest. But death defying roller coasters are for weekend warriors, Fight Club was just a movie, running with the bulls in Pamplona is an easy-in, easy-out tourist jaunt and parachuting is so routine now it’s safer than crossing Conner Street on foot during rush hour.

Climbing Everest is the ultimate high-risk experience. It requires weeks acclimating yourself to the altitude. There’s cool stuff like backpacks, mountain climbing gear and oxygen canisters. Add in life threatening weather, chances of a quarter mile vertical fall to your death and air so thin it acts on the brain much the same as a bottle of scotch and a handful of quaaludes, and you’ve got the makings of a real laugh-in-the-face-of-death experience.

For all the adventure, the people who die on Everest these days are still husbands, wives, fathers, sons and daughters. They risk their lives for the ultimate adventure. But leaving your child fatherless for the sake of a thrill baffles me. I understand completely why pioneers traveled into the western wilderness. Their survivors can proudly say, “They died looking for a better life.” I understand why astronauts go into space. The survivors of those who don’t make it home can proudly say, “They died trying to broaden man’s understanding of the universe.” But what do the survivors of those who died on Everest say about their deceased loved one who went searching to fill the unnamed void in their lives? “My Daddy died climbing Everest because he had an itch he couldn’t scratch?”

What’s the motivation? They’re not the first to climb the mountain. It won’t save mankind or Nepal from misery. If the cure for cancer were in a bottle at the summit, I’d understand. If the solution to world hunger were written on a piece of paper and trapped beneath a boulder at the mountain’s peak, I’d offer to go along, or at least help pay for the oxygen tanks. But those answers are not there, just as the explanations don’t exist for the widows and widowers whose spouses needed to climb Everest to prove themselves – test their metal. “Because it’s there,” doesn’t cut it for me.

If these folks feel the need to escape their mundane lives and accomplish a daunting task (an urge I understand completely) there are problems that desperately need the kind of time, money and energy that gets wasted on Everest every year. There are villages without clean water, drug-infested neighborhoods without hope, homeless people who need houses and children who can’t read. Imagine the difference that could be made in a community if the people who climbed Everest with John Krakauer focused all that time, money and energy on those types of problems. It would be an event worthy of planting a flag, raising a fist in the air, and triumphantly posing for a picture.

The fool-hardy adventure seeking doesn’t end on Everest. Every time millionaire Steve Fossett tried to fly his balloon around the world I wondered not only why he’s doing it, but also why the media paid any attention. I understand the value of Lindberg crossing the Atlantic – it helped push the boundaries of a revolutionary technology. But flying a balloon around the world in this new century will prove what? Why not circle the globe on a pogo stick? Would that be any less difficult or dangerous?

To Krakauer’s credit he routinely questioned the wisdom of dragging tourists, like himself, up Everest, and in fact actually regretted the journey. Still, he admits to having entertained the desire to climb the peak for years. Personally, I was left thinking that no matter where you live, there are far more rational mountains to climb, mountains that do not risk death, but are more likely to enrich life.

Teacher Bashing for Idiots

It’s been ten years since I drove to the school where I taught and handed in my resignation letter. I spent sixteen and a half years in the classroom of a school system forty miles and two counties away. It was an indescribable joy not to return that last fall, only the fourth autumn since 1965 when I hadn’t started a new school year as either a student or teacher.

For the first several months I had recurring dreams that I showed up for school weeks late. Students had been coming to my room and waiting all that time. The principal was mad. I would wake up to the relief that, no, I didn’t have to do that anymore.

Funny that in those dreams, somebody was always mad at me or I was behind schedule with something.

Why did I leave teaching? Aside from personally feeling that I didn’t fit the profession, I was tired of the top-down way schools are often managed. In my school system, big changes were ushered in from above, changes that would dictate what happened in the classroom. While you’d think that the farmers, insurance agents, and lawyers on the school board would ask the teachers, “How might this work in your classroom?” we got edicts instead: “Make this work in your classroom.” I gather from others in the profession that it’s much that way in other school systems.

I’d like to think it’s different in Noblesville schools. From a parent’s perspective I’ve been very happy with the schools my children have attended here. But the angry tone of the state-wide and national debates on education suggests that many are dissatisfied. And teachers are easy targets.

I friend of mine who teaches in Noblesville Schools has a reputation among students, parents, and fellow teachers as the best of the best. He comes in early, leaves late, and inspires kids during the hours inbetween. He confided over coffee one morning recently that when he goes for breakfast with his father’s retired cronies, they criticize and attack teachers as lazy, union troublemakers. To know how good he is, how hard he works – and that he takes that kind of abuse from men who haven’t been in a classroom since the Kennedy administration – well, it hurts your heart how stupid and opinionated some people can be, both at once.

We Americans have a contradictory relationship with teachers and education that is best expressed by the advice I got from my father. 1) Education is of the utmost importance, and 2) Don’t become a teacher – there’s no respect and little pay.

Though at very important times I didn’t take either piece of that advice, I know now both are true. And what a shame that is. We pay a terrible price in this country for giving lip service to the first part of that advice and perpetuating the second. Our apathy sometimes makes the first part a joke and the second part a reality.

How can this nation expect to have good schools if we refuse to give teachers the pay and respect they deserve? Why we gladly pay our home run hitters and field goal kickers millions while bickering over every tenth of a percent raise we give teachers is a mystery almost too embarrassing to contemplate. It’s not a compliment to our culture, but in its own tiny way, says something revealing about what we really value.

One of the problems for teachers is that nearly every adult has spent more than a decade in the classroom as a student. We think we know what teaching is all about because we each watched it for so long. But what we all know deep inside, but don’t always give teachers credit for, is that watching and doing are two very different things. Being a bad teacher is easy – and we all knew a few. But being a good teacher is very, very hard – and most teachers I’ve known were good. And those good ones usually changed our lives in some way. Withholding appropriate pay and respect from a large number of good teachers because of a small number of bad ones is a near-criminal mistake.

And a look at what opportunistic political forces have done to teachers in this country in the aftermath of the economic collapse triggered on Wall Street truly terrifies me for the soul of our country. Rich, overpaid, well-placed bankers drove our economy to the brink. We bailed them out with billions in taxpayer dollars. You’d think we’d be focused on Wall Street reform, reregulation, and criminal charges, but no. In the years since, conservative forces have obstructed regulation of Wall Street, while instead launching a nation-wide, state-by-state campaign attacking the pay and benefits of teachers (not to mention firefighters and policemen). How underpaid and unappreciated teachers got to be the focus of political attack at a time like this is bemusing. Reminds me a little of a magician waving his hand with a broad flourish in front of your face to distract you from what he’s doing with the other hand behind his back.

It’s odd that I ever become a teacher, considering I hated school as a little kid. To this day the theme song to the Lassie TV series puts a knot in my stomach. Lassie ran on Sunday nights, and Sunday night was right before Monday morning – and school. The sadness of that melody perfectly matched how I felt about school as a kid. But though I was a slow learner, hard working teachers helped me learn to love education.

There’s a feeling of guilt about having left the teaching profession, as if I’m a cowardly soldier who fled the front lines, leaving my comrades to face battle alone. There are so many great teachers in the school system I left. Maybe another twinge of regret comes from feeling I didn’t have what it takes to stick it out in that sometimes beleaguered, yet admirable profession.

But at the very least I can stand up for them when I hear the foolish and uneducated use them as scapegoats for state budget overruns, lazy parenting, and those who say they value education but somehow think they’ll get there by blindly bashing those who provide it.

Stuck In Indiana

In the past few years I’ve encountered a number of people in their 20s or 30s who feel stuck in Indiana.

They’ve lived in California or New York or a place that spoke to a personal interest – maybe a live-music Mecca like Austin or Nashville, or a culinary hot spot like New Orleans or San Francisco. They may work in a high tech industry and now feel isolated from Silicon Valley, or their hobbies revolve around water or hiking, but now they live far from the mountains or the beach.

Most of these folks came home to Indiana at a moment of life transition to be near family or to start a family. They took a job here, maybe got married or had a child - got dug in, and now they lament that Indiana isn’t really a hotbed of anything. The exciting environment they once enjoyed elsewhere feels out of reach.

I’ll admit to getting a little defensive when these folks go on about how fabulous life is somewhere else. Because it’s never just an appreciation of somewhere else, but also a criticism of here – my home.

Maybe I’m defensive because I too came home to Indiana from far away in my 20s and found my home state wanting. I felt stuck. But I got married, had children, and built a life for myself. When someone in the same situation finds it unbearable, maybe deep down inside it feels like an indictment of the choice I made.

But at the same time, I’m sympathetic with their frustration.

Last month I spent a few days in Asheville, North Carolina. It’s a beautiful place in the mountains (which we don’t have here), named by the New York Times as one of the 10 best American cities for quality restaurants (Indianapolis didn’t make the list), has more micro-breweries per capita than any other city in the U.S. (my town has just one), and is a lefty-liberal town filled with beautiful architecture (while we’ve got some nice architecture, it’s pretty red around here). Since returning home I’ve told about a dozen people that I could quite happily move to Asheville.

But I have to remind myself what I say to those 20 & 30-somethings: “If everybody who wants a more diverse and dynamic community moves somewhere else, this place – your hometown, is guaranteed to be less diverse and dynamic. We’ll never have mountains or the ocean a half hour drive away, but it’s at least conceivable we could have everything else.

But how much of your life are you willing to spend waiting for it, nurturing it, promoting it, when you could just move to one of those inspiring places and have it on day one?

And I don’t mean to make this a political thing, but it’s a glaring reality that most of the artistically & socially dynamic city’s around the country are “lefty-liberal” places (my term) – places where the artsy and left-of-center folks have clustered to share their interest with like-minded people, often nurtured by a nearby university.

Think Bloomington.

So if you’re feeling stuck among too many people who don’t share your world-view, you’re not alone. The residents of most compelling places are frustrated with what they’re surrounded by. A liberal friend considered moving to Athens, Georgia because it was such a cool place, never mind it’s smack dab in the heart of a very conservative state with a less than stellar civil rights history. Everyone raves about Austin, but it’s in the gun-toting/death-penalty capital of America – Texas. And Wisconsin’s former governor referred to the popular college town of Madison as, “30 square miles surrounded by reality.” Even in Asheville last month, they were lamenting their state’s recent passage of an anti-gay marriage referendum. Store fronts, sidewalk graffiti, and telephone pole placards wept with outrage.

Most dynamic communities in America amount to acreage surrounded by “reality.” In other words, they’re places that the residents make compelling by doing and supporting what others find unreasonable or unnecessary. They have the best farmers markets, the best restaurants, the best festivals, the best live music and art venues, the most livable, pedestrian-friendly communities. Yet, for some reason, creating it and supporting it at home doesn’t occur to lots of Hoosiers.

It’s here though, in bits and pieces. But if you don’t support it, what good is it? And if you don’t support it, how can it flourish?

I have a variety of friends who I seek to spend my time with because they seek out the compelling. A week ago I went to see Joseph Arthur – a nationally successful alternative rock musician, at Radio Radio in Fountain Square. That group of people go off to see great small shows like this all the time, shows that often don’t sell out because most Hoosiers don’t see going out to live music as a regular part of their lives (most instead attend big arena shows on rare occasions when their favorite band from high school or college comes through town). I went with the same group to the mid-west Brew Fest in February where we tasted beers from microbreweries from around the state.

Another group of friends are foodies who seek out independent restaurants and food producers doing interesting things. And they find it here in central Indiana. You may have to do a little driving, but it’s here.

Another friend started an outdoor climbing, hiking, and canoeing outfitters store to nurture like-minded folks. And yet another friend has established a growing group of women who see childrearing, healthcare, and female empowerment a little differently than the norm. With self-deprecating humor they insist they are not, “dirty hippies.”

All of these folks are creating their own unique world, expending energy, following their passion, drawing the world they want closer to them.

Sure, it’s a very American thing to just pull up roots and go replant yourself somewhere else. But I think there’s also something to be said for embracing where you are, blowing on the embers of what you like about it, and trying to make it grow.

So you 20 & 30-somethings who are feeling stuck in Indiana, I understand, and I don’t really blame you if you leave, but think long and hard before you start packing. It’s possible that the assumption that what you want isn’t here is the main reason you can’t find it.

Two Parents & Two Children

The second trip to the neurologist was at the end of a journey that started with anguished visits to our family doctor, trips to a psychologist, John Rosemond parenting lectures, and reading just about every book about parenting on the shelves in Noblesville’s library. Why, after years of persistent discipline, why couldn’t we control our son’s impulsive behavior? And why did he bite his lip nervously for days until it bled? When we trained that away, why did he begin twirling his hair between a finger and thumb until there was a bald spot? When we trained that away, why did the next odd thing begin?

When the neurologist told us our son had Tourette Syndrome, I was stunned.

Driving home with that sullen boy in the back seat, tears ran down my cheeks as I thought of the times I’d angrily disciplined a child who often, apparently couldn’t control his behavior. The diagnosis explained a lot – like why punishment worked with our other two kids, but too often not with this one.

When we asked what the future held, the doctor casually said, “Well, sometimes it just disappears when they’re teenagers.” That sounded like the cheapest consolation lie I’d ever heard.

That was more than a dozen years ago. Last Monday I drove to a Japanese grocery/restaurant in Castleton with that boy. He is 23 how, just graduated from college with a degree in Japanese. Cal is six foot-two, handsome, well-spoken, well-read, and has a freakishly broad taste in music. That day he was seeking the ingredients to make authentic ramen noodles as good as those he came to love while studying in Japan last year.

In that oddball grocery, a place filled with shrimp-flavored chips, fish sausage, quail eggs and frozen squid, I got a text from a friend, Alison, asking if I was coming to the cookout she and her husband were having that evening. She hoped I’d bring my son by to meet her son.

I first met Alison and her husband Christian in a bar last winter. After a long talk about hybrid ethnic music acts like Balkan Beat Box, we talked about our kids and realized we both had a child with Tourette’s; theirs - 10 years old, and mine - all grown up. Alison asked if I'd bring my son over sometime. Perhaps present a roll model? Proof of what was possible?

As Cal and I sat down to eel sushi and noodles in a little diner corner of the grocery, I asked if he’d like to stop by Alison and Christian’s house later. He offered a quick, “Sure.” On the ride home we talked about Cal’s sometimes difficult childhood and tried to imagine what Alison’s son was experiencing. I recalled that most of Cal’s elementary teachers probably hated him by the end of the school year. He remembered the stuttering, the nervous ticks, and the impulsive behavior that so often got him into trouble.

A few hours later we grab a large bottle of Belgian Ale from the fridge and go to Alison’s house. We find her in the kitchen making humus, preparing for her cookout. Her little boy, Seth appears and listens quietly to our chitchat as I open the beer and pour three glasses. He has a bright and eager face, like he knows something he needs desperately to share. Cal towers over us all with a tanned face and his happy, confident manner. His hands are in his pockets and a small backpack is slung over his shoulder.

The neurologist had been right. During his teens the Tourette’s simply evaporated.

Seth reaches out to Cal holding a small Star Wars figure and asks with an urgent, almost breathless challenge, “Do you know who this is?” Cal smiles and quickly answers, “Mace Windu.” He takes the light saber-wielding figure and examines it. In moments they disappear to Seth’s room to see his other toys.

Though an adult now, Cal will know the name of every toy and can sit cross-legged on the floor and play with them quite happily. It is his way. And in this century-old house in Old Town he is at home. He grew up in places like this. He understands Seth’s life more than a little.

Alison loads the food processor with garbanzo beans and roasted red peppers and we begin to unload about our boys. I am reminiscing about desperate, worrisome matters from the past, but this woman in her early 30s is right in the thick of it. She runs her fingers back through her dark hair and speaks with the firm resolve of a mother who’s cried her tears, done her homework, and intends to find the best path. She reminds me of Cal’s mother, and me a little, all those years ago. I lean back against the stove, sip my beer and respond with the names of drugs he took, the side affects, discipline techniques, positive vs. negative reinforcement – and details of life with a child who, try as he may, just wasn’t entirely like other children.

In the living room, Cal and Seth have set up an old-school video gaming system and are killing bad guys. A 10 year old and a 23 year old, having a brief play date.

Alison and I are dipping pita bread and carrots into the fresh humus, sharing stories of the nurturing successes with our children and struggles with those who don’t or won’t understand. I recall a middle school counselor who said that Cal’s mother and I needed to, “stop coddling our child and teach him the meaning of consequences.” Good thing for him it isn’t socially unacceptable to choke a school administrator.

An elegant, vine-like tattoo winds down Alison’s right shoulder and a swan is tattooed on the other. She is a “hand-talker,” gesturing broadly as she speaks, as if drawing a map in the air of the emotional and tactical places she and Christian and Seth have been on their journey. It is clear how much she loves her son.

I suppose raising any child requires the drawing of a one-of-a-kind map – a sometimes make-it-up-as-you-go map. Plotting the route for a child with Tourette’s is harder, fraught with special heartaches and frustrations. There is the fear of drawing a failed map, regrets over the wrong roads taken to dead-ends or dark places, and a desperate hope of eventually getting to an acceptable destination.

I tell Alison, “As a child Cal got so used to disappointing and irritating people, but it always amazed me that he didn’t withdraw. Instead he kept coming back and trying to connect.”

Alison smiles broadly and nods, “Seth is the exact same way.”

The visit was too short. Alison had a cookout to host and Cal and I had a family dinner to get to. I really have no idea if Cal or Seth got a thing out of it, but I know I did.

When you work so hard to understand and provide what your child needs, it breaks your heart when the world you send them into is thoughtless or impatient and needlessly hurtful. And when you’re a struggling parent there is a feeling that no one understands, that your child’s problems reflect a failing in you, a weakness in your parenting.

Those worries are in the past for me. It all turned out just fine. Still, there’s something healing in being reminded of that, and knowing that you have something to share with a parent and a child who have much of the journey still ahead of them.

Measuring The Distance From Home

Back in the mid-‘90s my mother asked me to go to an auction. It was at a house in Warren, Indiana where she lived as a girl. “When we cleaned the place out back in the ‘60s, the only thing the family didn’t take was a big oak wardrobe,” she said over the phone. “It’s in the sale. Thought you might like to have it.”

I don’t turn down free stuff. I went.

We arrived to find the cabinet in the back yard crowded with other furniture. There was a tent set up in the yard filled with tables of what auctioneers call “items too numerous to mention.” While the auctioneer started on linens, we went through the house.

        

Scattered memories flooded my mind. The house was Italianate, a style popular in the Midwest in the 1870’s & ‘80s. My great-great grandfather built it. I remember running my hands along the curved hallway wall when I was a child and a Christmas visit when I tormented my great aunt’s cat and it turned on me, leaving me bleeding and crying.

        

My mother stopped and stared at the ceiling. “When I was a girl, the ceiling collapsed,” she said, looking up. “Bees got in under the clapboards and built a hive between the floor joists. The honey got so heavy and the plaster so gooey . . . bees and honey everywhere.”

        

We bought hot dogs at the Kiwanis booth and sat on the front porch steps. The auctioneer started on glassware.

“My father - your grandfather, lived here when he was a boy,” she said wistfully. “He told me once about the first car they got,” she smiled, looking at the gingerbread woodwork overhead. “His father told them he was going to buy a car before he came home that night, so they waited here on this porch before dinner. Finally they heard the Model-T come ‘round the corner, and there was my father’s father behind the wheel.

“My father, only about 8 years old, ran out to the street, but his dad didn’t stop, he went on around the block. A moment later he came ‘round the corner once more and again, didn’t stop. On the third go ‘round, he yelled, ‘I can’t stop this thing!’

“On the fourth go ‘round my father ran alongside the car and jumped in, worked the peddles for his dad and got it stopped. My grandfather never drove that Model-T again. My dad used it though. He was just a kid, but he got a job delivering pies for a bakery. He’d sit on his mother’s lap in the front seat. She’d work the peddles and he steered and they delivered pies.”

The auctioneer was working his way toward the backyard. My mother stood and stepped back to look at the house. “I remember coming home from a party when I was a girl and sitting on this porch and telling my mother about all the fun I’d had. She just shook her head and said, ‘You kids don’t know how to have fun.’”

        

“Your mother was born in 1907 and she said you didn’t know how to have fun?” I asked, incredulous. “When was this?”

        

“Oh, I don’t know . . . 1940s.”

        

We went back to bid on the cabinet and paid more than it was worth in dollars. A young couple was bidding against us. Made me feel bad. There was no way they were going to get it.

The cabinet broke down into 4 pieces. Three sections made up the big clothes-hanging body on top. This sat on a low base cabinet with 2 drawers. When I dismantled it and loaded it in my truck, I found a wooden ruler in the bottom drawer – the kind with imprinted black numerals and a metal spine. I studied it for a moment. In a child’s handwriting, the name “Jack” had been scrawled across it. I handed it to my mother. Her mouth dropped open.

        

“My brother Jack kept his things in that drawer when we were kids, during the depression,” she said.

        

While I finished moving the cabinet, my mother walked about the crowded yard, clutching the ruler in her hand.

        

At home, in my house, there was a new baby named Jack. Since my uncle Jack had recently died, it seemed right somehow.

        

We pulled away from the house and drove down the streets my mother had known so well in her youth, past the theater where she once worked, making her a trivia expert on movies and actors from the 1940s. She brought me here often when I was small. I remember the hat shop and the drug store soda fountain.

        

“I remember you cleaning out the house after your aunt and uncle were killed in that car accident,” I told my mother as we crossed over the bridge at the edge of town and drove past the grain silos. “You yelled at me for sliding down the banister. Remember?”

        

“No, I don’t remember. I was in a daze,” she said. “Trying to accept that my aunt and uncle were gone . . . and I wanted the piano, but your father didn’t want to move it.”        

“Thanks for the cabinet, Mom,” I said, patting her hand. She smiled, then looked back out the window, clutching the ruler in her hand.

Segregation On The Beach

PANAMA CITY BEACH, FL

Making my way across the soft sand, headed for the water’s edge for a few mile walk, I’m immediately greeted by the sun-drenched spring-breakers between the age of 16 and 22. They are everywhere, lounging, tanning, drinking, and gathered in massive clusters of 50-100 shouting and singing and screaming to one another.

As I walk between the waves and the high rises, I also notice that most of the black folks are in their groups and most of the whites are in theirs. Not a lot of mixed groups.

Next door to our unit I’ve seen a group of black college boys taking out their trash and icing down their beer. A couple doors further on there’s a room filled with white college boys doing the same. I assume what I see here is a reflection of their circle of friends and family at home. The segregation started way before we all got to the beach.

With the Trayvon Martin case so much in the news it’s hard not to ponder this segregation; the where and the why of it, and what it does to our perceptions of one another.

Reading the New York Times yesterday, clicking through CNN, FOX, MSNBC once I got here, and listening to NPR thru headphones on the drive down from Indiana, the punditry is in full bloom, like this early spring, the opinions are as predictable as the progress of foliage on the roadside. FOX News of course defends the shooter, George Zimmerman. MSNBC of course defends Trayvon. And everybody else does what the news media generally does – brings both side together for a “debate” made up of angry accusations. As usual, NPR is the most balanced and thoughtful.

Like the segregation on the beach, we bring our biases with us wherever we go.

Around me, I note the sides people take in this debate are generally informed by what they believed long before Zimmerman shot Trayvon on that dark and confusing night in Sanford, Florida. On Facebook, a loose-cannon former student of mine whose status updates mostly offer irrational hatred for the president, suggested last week that Jesse Jackson and Alan Sharpton should be shot for inciting racial hatred. Endless others assume that Zimmerman and the Sanford police are racists.

On an NPR call-in show, a listener says, “I can pretty clearly imagine what happened.” The man, whose name and accent tags him as white, explains a scenario in which Zimmerman felt threatened, unfortunately panicked, and shot Trayvon. The host asks if the man has inside information about the event. “No,” he says, “I can just imagine how it happened.”

No doubt black folks can imagine something quite different.

A week before heading to the beach I showed a house to the owner of a Noblesville pizza restaurant. During the showing a young black employee called to say he would be late to work. Heading to work after classes at Ivy Tech he’d been pulled over by Carmel police. They made him step out and then searched his car, dug under the seats, ransacked the trunk, scoured the glove box. They found his insurance had lapsed and impounded his car.

Within the Indianapolis African American community, Carmel police a reputation for pulling blacks over for DWB: Driving While Black.

Standing in the kitchen of the house, the pizza shop owner (who is white and young) anxiously questioned his employee, “Did you ask them why they pulled you over in the first place? And they didn’t answer? That’s bullshit! You’re down there, right? You walk right downtown to the police station and insist that they tell you why they pulled you over in the first place. Do you have somebody that can pick you up and bring you to work?”

He hangs up his cell phone, purses his lips, and shakes his head at me. “I’m sick and tired of my black drivers being pulled over in Hamilton County,” he says. “The cops always find a reason after the fact, but never have a reason in the first place. Doesn’t happen to my white drivers. Explain that.”

Frustrated, he turns back to the issues at hand – the house, and we silently move on to examine a first floor bedroom. No sooner have we passed the threshold he turns to me and asks rhetorically, “Why, why, why? I just don’t understand why it has to be this way.” He’s not talking about the house. He’s talking about what his black delivery drivers face everyday.

Yes, blacks experience a different world than we white folk do. And it’s usually subtle and gentle and easy to deny.

A fellow Realtor shared an unsettling story about a client of his – a black doctor who bought a $700,000+ home in an upscale area around Geist Reservoir. The agent called his client a month after closing to ask how his family was enjoying the new house. “Love the house,” the doctor said, “but not the commute.”

“The commute’s not so far,” the agent replied.

The doctor, who drives a new Jaguar said, “I’m pulled over by the police at least once a week as I enter the area of gated and exclusive communities near my home. The cops never seem to have a real reason. They look at my driver’s license, my registration, proof of insurance, say something about driving too fast or sliding threw a stop sign. But considering I’m pulled over once a week, I don’t speed and don’t slide threw stop signs. And they never write me a ticket.”

Whites who don’t participate in this kind of behavior have nothing to feel guilty about or apologize for. But we sure as hell ought to sympathize rather than dismiss what African Americans face in our communities.

What do I believe about the Trayvon story? I’m waiting for the full story to come out. I neither automatically accept what Zimmerman says nor what Trayvon’s family says. If I was either of them, with the international media spotlight crammed in my face and so many angry people taking sides without all the facts, I’d be saying what they’re saying. I’d be playing defense.

As I walk the beach headed back to the condo I notice a scrum of perhaps 75 kids along the water in the blazing sunshine and heat. In the crowd I see a couple Noblesville kids – been seeing them everywhere. I scan the crowd for my daughter and her friends. This group is mixed. About 75% white – 25% black. That’s encouraging. And I consider our progress. There is no beach with a sign that says, Whites Only. And as I’ve already said, the hotel is a colorful mix of people. That’s way different than the world I was born into back in 1960.

And I try to imagine myself on that sidewalk in that gated community in this southern state. If I was walking at night and someone parked a car near me and began following me, I would be afraid and would prepare to defend myself – no matter their color. And if I saw a suspicious person walking in my neighborhood – as I often do at home, I would not grab a gun and start following them. In fact I don’t know anyone who would do that. That amounts to begging for trouble. This wasn’t a war zone for Gods sake, it was a gated community! And if hoodies make kids look suspicious, then every single kid in Noblesville High School and in every high school in America is suspicious . . . and a hellova lot of adults, too. The only thing that’s certain: some tragic decisions were made that night, perhaps by both Zimmerman and Martin.

We all bring our pre-disposed biases to this issue. And to the beach.

I leave the water’s edge and trudge the soft white powder toward the scrub-grass and the condo high-rise complex beyond. Approaching the wooden ramp I see a white woman, perhaps 70 years old, sitting with a book in her lap and a sun visor pulled over her gray hair. She could be any woman in my mostly white community back in Indiana, at a Tri-Kappa meeting, or in the church fellowship hall after church, or at a coffee shop book club group. Nearby, a black man about the same age with salt and pepper receding hair has taken off his flower print shirt and shakes the sand from it. As I approach he puts his shirt back on, walks toward the women and sits in the empty beach chair beside her. Without taking her eyes from the book she reaches out and takes his hand gently, lovingly.

They are a couple, perhaps married, enjoying the beach.

Being the kind of man who constantly looks for common threads and connected meaning, and having thought hard and felt sad about all these things during my walk on the beach, I pass them with a smile and take the ramp to the foot wash with a tingle running up the back of my neck. It’s a wash of emotion not just in recognition of the distance we push between ourselves and other human beings who are different from us, but also for those who reach out to bridge that distance. As I rinse my feet I think of the Tracy Chapman song, Across The Lines:

“Across the lines,

Who would dare to go?

Under the bridge,

Over the tracks,

That separates whites from blacks”