Autumn in the Air

Fall is coming.

Can you smell it? Not in the middle of the balmy day, no...but in the morning before the sun comes up. There's just something that changes in September. The rain is becoming refreshing-- not just an excuse for the asphalt to steam and the humidity to reach 100% without actual rain in the forecast.

Everything outside my window is wet and lush and dripping. You can hear the plants and trees heave a huge sigh of relief. Even the birds pick up the pace, having finished raising the babies. They can now become introspective once more.

I feel autumn under my skin like an impending excitement. I always have. Summer beats down on me, Spring drives me out of my peaceful frame of mind, and winter-- which is a close second to autumn-- can get drepressing. But the oncoming autumnal season makes me want to cavort out in the swaying grass, and run like a horse with the coursing thunderstorms.



Mushrooms in the yard? Delightful fairy rings! Being able to play outside without sweating to death? Invigorating! Purchasing Halloween signs and stuffed crows to adorn the foyer? PRICELESS!



Cheers to you all with the onset of Fall!

How do the seasons effect you? Just curious...

Childhood Blues

I've had the 'first-week-of-school' blues these past couple of weeks. No, I'm not the one going to school, though you wouldn't know it by hearing me go on and on about the subject to anyone who happens to make the mistake in asking.

For the past three years or so, whenever my son has been getting ready to start a new year of school, I get VERY nostalgic. Just achy from the past, and for the past, for him when he was a baby and school wasn't even on the agenda, for myself having a hard childhood and looking so forward to school as a break from the tension of home.

The summer between my seventh and eighth year of life was one of the most difficult ones I've ever had to face. My mother fled from eight years of emotional and physical abuse during that summer, stealing my brother and I away in the night like a thief, with my father close on her heels, trying to run our car off the road (though his two children were in the back seat). I was asked to make a decision at that age-- the question arising whether I would like to live with mom or dad, my four-year-old brother crying a river in the seat next to me...

I look at my son and I can't even imagine how painful that would be for him. So traumatic. He hates it enough now when my husband and I have heated arguments. If the crap hit the fan around here like it used to when I was a kid, he'd have a breakdown.

And then I think to myself...did I have a breakdown? And if I did, would I recall it? Or just block it out? Or had all the years of tension leading up to that moment served as some sort of morbid practice?

As I think back on it, I probably wasn't given the opportunity to have a breakdown. I had to keep my wits about me, had to make sure that my brother and I were going to make it from day to day. Mom was broke when she fled, and she had also fled with men who didn't always have our best interests in mind.

I'm so thankful that I'm able to give D a better life than that. I'm grateful to my mother for sticking it out and taking us with her and risking her neck to bring us along and keep us as safe as she could. But I'm also thankful that I've chosen a better man, and that time has found it to be a sound choice.

I can't wait to see how far this difference in my son's life will take him in his life as an adult.

He's so completely wonderful to be around, and more importantly, seems so very happy.

(I tried to tell you, serious blues here.)

I was going to write something witty and charming this morning, but alas...that bone seems to be broken.

I am officially PMSing as of yesterday. I almost cried twice at work for reasons that are normally NOT A BIG DEAL. And then I went on to be rather chipper for the rest of the day. This morning, I have the inadvertent death-ray-beams shooting out of my eyes. Hopefully I won't bring the building down around my ears as I casually glance around me, cutting the steel and concrete girders neatly in two. I should probably bring fresh fruit in to work too, to just go ahead and get that apology out in the open, up front. You know, the apology for becoming a vehement neck-snapping harpie because there was no sugar for coffee and the drink machine is spouting out warm sodas.

Etcetera. I hope everyone has a wonderful Friday, far far away from me. Safely away...

Caution: Racial Observations Ahead

I found myself in a unique situation yesterday. Apparently—and unbeknownst to myself—the mall closest to us is a venue visited predominantly by black people. (Insert ‘African American’ if that is your preference, but most of the black people I know currently dislike this phrase, so I’ve reverted to my personal standby, having heard a close friend use it extensively—and she’s black.)

Now I was going shopping with Kate, to a store she and I both adore, so that I could find a nice shirt to wear when we go to the Fox Theatre this Wednesday night to see a play called ‘Bombay Nights’. (Side note: my husband is from India in origin, and Kate is black. Aren’t I the culturally rounded one?)

There we were, making our way through the mall during ‘Tax Free’ weekend, so that it was heaving at gills with people—not my most favorite time to go to a mall. In fact, I usually dislike going to malls in general, unless it is with a friend. Anyway, there we were, walking along, when Kate said quietly in my ear, “This is why Ashton doesn’t want to come here…right now, you’re the only white person I see.”

I have to admit, I was a little surprised at this observation, having not yet made it myself. There have been a few times that I have looked around and suddenly noticed that I was the only white person in an area, i.e. a party at a black friend’s house, a club that was suggested by a black friend, an Indian dinner party where my pale face stuck out among so many darker ones.

It’s not that I was unpleasantly surprised, mind you. I just find it…I don’t know. Intriguing. It didn’t really register, nor would it have, had she not mentioned it. Now in the aforementioned club, I felt awkward when I walked in the door and everyone was looking at me as though an air horn had sounded, heralding my presence. I was with very good friends, though, and soon the shock to the people around us wore off and I was treated with normal disinterest.

Of course, at the mall, no one really cared. It was Tax Free weekend! Whoo-HOO! We had already heard several mothers cursing out their children on our looooong walk in from across the Sears acreage, but that just made for comic relief. I secretly admire how many black mothers are not afraid to absolutely speak their minds to their children. It’s refreshing at times, albeit a bit frightening from the children’s perspective.

But by golly, you KNOW their kids sit quietly in church on Sundays. Hell yes they do.

It was at this time, though, that I thought to delve deeper into a mystery. You see, Kate and I are bookkeepers at our workplace, and so there are often hours on end where she and I get to talk while we work. We knew that we had many things in common before I joined her in the back room, and so we have yet to threaten to kill each other after long days together.

To summarize, we get along rather well. So I did not shirk my next question to her in the mall, as it seemed pertinent to the current line of interest.

“Why won’t Ashton come here?” (Side note number deux: Ashton is a self-proclaimed skinny white boy, very sweet and intelligent, and a good friend to us both.)

Kate shrugged and laughed a little bit. “I don’t know…”

“Does he think everyone would gang up on him and kick him out or something?”

She just shook her head, clearly not wanting to throw out any answers, so I let it go. I’ll ask Ashton today to find out. Perhaps I would have felt similarly unsettled, had Kate not been there with me. I honestly couldn't tell you.

We went into another store, called ‘Ashley Stewart’, which is totally funked out and full of black women’s 70’s fashion. I bought a skirt there, which is really freakin’ beautiful—long, full, dusky peach, heavy lace panels sewn in, and On Sale. But they also had the shirts held together with interlocking gold rings and leopard print this, that and the other. In this store, I got a glance from the other patrons here and there, but nothing that denoted distaste at my being in there and being non-black. (Side note numero tres: I am a white girl, of German, Irish and English stock, blond hair and blue eyed. An unmistakable cracker.)

I can be naïve at times; I’ll be the first to admit it. But I’m starting to feel like many of the barriers between the races are breaking down. Perhaps not on a global front, perhaps not according to the news…but slowly, in the world around me at any rate, it is growing acceptable for a black man and a white woman to strike up a conversation in line at a Dunkin’ Donuts and just chit-chat about the day they had yesterday and the day that has begun way too early for both of them.

Let me know if you have had any similar experiences lately, to map out the easing of racial tensions closer to home—or perhaps the heightening of it, whatever. I just feel like the world I live in is different from the world on the news. And this gives me hope for the world my son is growing up in.

This is a Self Image?

Here it is, a weekend again. I don’t have to be in to work at the absolute CRACK of DAWN. I can lollygag for at least an extra twenty minutes or so. Oh, the luxuriousness of it all.

Something I said struck me as odd earlier, while my husband and I were talking about the day’s plans.

Now as a side note: I’m not fishing for compliments here. I’m aware that people who are fishing for compliments often SAY this very thing just before they bait the hook and throw in the line. THIS is not the case. Just an internal observation. (You can send boxes of chocolates and roses at an address I will disclose to you at a later date.)

Ahem.
So we’re standing there, discussing the reason why I’m going to have to go in later than I had first anticipated, (so the extra twenty minutes becomes forty. Pinch me quick.) so that he can reprimand a worker of his who just might become hostile. You see, he was taking our son in with him, but decided just this morning that perhaps ‘D’ wouldn’t want to be in the middle of a bunch of throw-down redneck ruckus. I agreed, and so will wait for the signal of ‘All Clear’ (which may sound something like ‘The Bitch is Gone’) before bringing him in to help clean up the debris. (Only kidding, he plays his Nintendo DS and reads the whole time.)

I informed my husband that, while I agreed with this arrangement, I might catch a little flack for it as I’ve been positioned at the front end of our store in order to make us appear to have enough people to cover the early morning shifts, even though we, in fact, do not.

My husband said, “So you’re the cover-up girl.” And then I said, “Yeah, like the Cover Girl…only not pretty,” at which time he wrapped me up in his arms and told me how wrong I was, etc. But in my head, I’m thinking, ‘Do I really think that about myself?’

I was looking over old pictures of myself the other day, when I was a teenager and just did NOT like much about my appearance. From a thirty-something’s perspective, I look at those photos and despise the circumstances in my life that made me feel that way about myself. (It was more than just the usual teenager angst over a pimple here and there…)

Because, quite frankly, I was beautiful back then. Long, blonde hair; large, almond shaped eyes; good nose, decent skin, lumps in all the right places, strong as an ox… I could be biased now, I don’t know. Do you begin to look at your younger self like one of your children when you get a bit older?

Anyway, as you can clearly see where this is going—I’ve gained some weight over the years. I’ve been battling it off and on recently, and most recently more off than on, simply because my physical appearance gets lost in the shuffle of day to day living.

I get the clothes on that cover the inappropriate bulges, and with makeup and freshly washed hair, I’m definitely acceptable. But somehow it has begun to sink into my own mind that I am no longer ‘pretty’.

At first I denied that I meant it seriously. I mean let’s face it, it was a decent joke at 6:30am. But after I thought long and hard about how I feel about my body at the present time, I realized…no, I meant it. In all its nastiness. And I know it’s unhealthy to feel this way about one’s body, but I dislike shirking the truth. And I am my own worst critic.

So this weekend I will be making it a point to visit our company’s gym and sign up for the $4 per month to use all their awesome equipment and I will be ON A RAMPAGE to change this self-image. I don’t want to keep heading down the path to self-loathing. I’m way too pretty for that.

Thanks for listening. I feel better having gotten it off my chest. Have a fabulous weekend!