Papoe

Hair-tastic, take two

Jocelyn and Aja’s daycare has designated today as "Crazy Hair Day." In honor of this special day, I had to share a post that I wrote in March of last year. Since that time I have learned a thing or two, but we continue to struggle (the hair and I).

I am a white mother. This is an obvious fact seeing that I am white and I am a mother. But my husband is black. What this really means is that my daughter Jocelyn has a lot of hair—a LOT of hair. And it is not like mine. It is curly. Beyond curly. With twists, knots, u-turns, and dreaded dreadlocks. I knew when she was born with a full head of hair that it would not stay straight. It began to curl when she was two months old and it never stopped. Don’t get me wrong; I love it. She got the hair I always wanted. When I was twelve, I begged my mom to let me get a perm. Specifically, a spiral perm. Because that was the only kind of perm that any self-respecting girl wanted in 1987. My mom told me no, and then proceeded to bring me to a hair salon so that the stylist could tell me all the reasons why my mother was right. I don’t remember how exactly I responded, but I know that my 12-year-old self would have seethed with anger and frustration. My hair was thin and straight. It was dull and lacked the ability to hold a curl. I was doomed. But Jocelyn’s hair is four shades of special. As it has grown and shaped itself into a min-afro, Khary has mentioned again and again my need to learn how to plait hair. I complained that if I could just get her to sit long enough I could possibly do something with it, but it is just so curly. How do I comb through it? His response: “you better get some grease and a comb!” That is not helpful. But, I did find a magical leave-in conditioner (Mixed Chicks rocks!), which keeps her curls curly. It doesn’t, however, help me to keep her still enough to put her hair back up in little puffs. Last night I tried to bribe her with Sesame Street and my brush (she finds it fascinating) so that I could comb out the dreadlocks that have formed above each ear. I got one straightened out to a silky frizz before she arched her back and began to flop. Then she cried. Surprisingly she did not wake her sister up. Fifteen minutes of our back and forth and the only thing that woke Aja up was the sound and vibration of her own farts. I gave up on the styling session and retreated to the couch.

 Crazy Hair Day = Mommy's Day Off

Most mornings Aja wakes up looking like Diana Ross. The one morning I want to let her sing her greatest hits, and her hair fell a little flat. Jocelyn, a.k.a Chaka Khan, is feeling the moment.

 

If we didn’t have YOU we would have moved on up to that penthouse in the sky

Six years ago when Khary and I were hunting out new digs, we looked at a one-bedroom penthouse overlooking the city. It had hardwood floors and a spacious kitchen. It might have had a fireplace. What I remember most was the deck. It was equal in size to the apartment itself—one that screamed: When does the party start? The penthouse was beautiful and unreasonable and unique and personally created for someone that didn’t believe in sexual reproduction. We laughed at the grandiose nature of having wall-to-wall windows that no one can see in, and the space to entertain a party of twenty-five plus on a rooftop.

Three years later we had the ability to rent the party palace but there was a baby in the belly and we needed practicality.

It may not be a penthouse—it may not even be clean—but we’ve got ourselves a little apartment under the clouds. They have yet to reach preschool but tomorrow (it seems) the girls will be heading off to college. I have imagined having a Claire Huxtable moment, were one of them to say that she wants to change her mind and drop out of school. “Change it back! After all that money we spent sending you to Princeton? Sondra, you owe US seventy-nine thousand six hundred and forty-eight dollars and twenty-two cents! And I want my money NOW!”

There are days when I want the view from my imaginary penthouse back. As if I ever had it in the first place.

But then there are the Mother’s Days. I just celebrated my third and I was reminded (again) how much I love my girls. I can always count on cuddles from Jocelyn, but it was the most precious and beautiful gift from Aja that stood out: she sat completely still while I combed her hair out after a bath. This may not seem like a lot but her usual response is to run away and, if caught, bend over backwards and screech as though I were trying to pluck out her eyeballs with the tip of the comb. And this is the child with the more-manageable hair. Khary thinks it was the Yo Gabba Gabba that was playing that calmed her, but I believe that she knew it was what I wanted. She certainly didn’t cooperate on my birthday—going to daycare without even a half-assed top pony (no half-assed pony equals mixed baby afro).

I try to appreciate the small moments so that the bigger ones (the ones that involve lots of tantrums and No’s and time-outs), however temporary, don’t shape the meaning of the day. Last night, after returning from a day in Santa Cruz, the girls were hyped up on chocolate and Nana-time. A half-hour after putting them to bed there was still a medley of conversation/screams echoing from the girls’ room. I paid little attention until I realized what Jocelyn was saying.

“Okay Aja? One, two, three, four…lay down Aja. Lay down! Okay? One, two, three, four…lay down Aja! You need to lay down.”

Aja just laughed. Were she able, she would sleep standing up.

Virgins and Valentines

It's Valentine's Day. What better time to talk about virgins. Afterall, I am a virgin. Now, I have obviously had sex enough times to birth two children, so I'm not talking about the time I spend in between the sheets. I'm talking about harvesting. Gardening. Getting your hoe down.

Recently we realized that our girls have finally grown enough to hang out on our small patio. No one will fall over, and only one of them will eat dirt. So we thought that it was about time to take another look at our empty pots and make something happen.

Enter, the Virgin Harvest, a lovely little get together (of sorts), organized by dig this chick, one of my new favorite blogs/bloggers. My gardening prowess would probably have stayed hidden, but this organized chaos has helped to bring it all to the surface (or at least to the blog).

Okay, so I didn't actually do any of the planting. I was just the photographer. But this is a family journey, and we are going to try our damndest to keep these flowers and arugula alive.

In other virgin news, I cut Jocelyn's hair for the first time. A mullet had managed to find it's way on the back of her head, and I had to do my motherly duty and get rid of it. I've been wanting to have her wear her hair down for the first time in I don't know how long. Let's just say that this white mama has come a long way from the early days.

Before

After

Happy Valentine's Day!

The speech was more than a dream

Having a dream is only part of what we need to do today.

Good Morning America ran a piece this morning about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. In it, civil rights advocate Andrew Young made an important point: we forgot what the speech was about and focused on the dream.

Excerpt from the "I Have a Dream" speech:

“One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

It cannot be denied that there are still shameful conditions throughout this country, and Americans of every color are fighting to get off the lonely island of poverty. It is up to us to take notice and realize that we are surrounded by these islands—possibly across the street, a few miles away, or in the next town over.

We don’t have to agree on how to change things. What we must agree on is that there is a problem, and make a promise to do something. Today, tomorrow, or next week. Only then can we get past the problem and get closer to the dream. Because I have a lot of dreams for my girls, and for my family, but I don't think it's fair that I may be able to pursue happiness while my next door neighbor may be forced to pursue something less.

Whether you serve your community or you relax on the couch or you work from sunup to sundown, it is important to remember. Remember Dr. King's whole speech and there’s a chance that tomorrow can be better than today.

The white and black of parenting

Mommys are white and Daddys are black. This is how Jocelyn views the world. She has expressed this in various ways in her short two plus years—first by mistaking every black man for her Daddy when she was eight months old, and just recently she pointed to the father in a story that we were reading—a white man—and said, “Mommy?” I explained to her that he was the Daddy. She pointed to the baby boy, who was getting his belly kissed, and she said, “baby and the belly?” I said yes, and then she again pointed to the father. “Mommy kiss belly?”

There will be many conversations like this as she and her sister grow older, each one more in depth than the other. I assume there will be questions that I can’t answer, and I won’t be able to simply correct her. I know that she knows not ALL Daddys are black. She understands that her friends have fathers with different color skin. But I think that she relates on a more personal level to the stories in books. Which I think is what I’m going to take away from this. I can’t explain race or identity to her in a way that she’ll understand right now. But she understands love and family and books. She’s creating her own story, and I’m just the crazy character she calls Mommy. Or Bechelle (her pronunciation of my name). But I prefer Mommy.