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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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June 2020

The Magnificent Seven

Seven. The number of completion. Of wonders of the world. Of legendary itches. And the number of times I’ve gotten lucky and right in my life: my second husband, four kids, teaching career, writing life.

This summer we are celebrating all of them — the completions, wonders, itches, and all things right in my life. So much has happened — so much life — in the last seven years.

Seven years ago this month we drove out to Dallas from Augusta with Caitlin, a freshly-minted doctor embarking on her residency. She graduates in one week, after receiving one of the finest and most brutal trainings known to medicine.

She’s flourished here, but that doesn’t mean it’s come easy. Dallas has been a painful growing process — lots of pressure, pruning, heat, storms, and fertilizer (so much colorectal content!). But she’s grown and blossomed into a big, beautiful, bodacious surgeon, ready to excise cancer at its roots.

Seven years ago this month, Mike and I drove her to Dallas while embarking on our own life-altering journey. We were in the process of mapping out an IVF schedule, communicating with our fertility specialist to choreograph not one, but two cycle details and dates: my own and our egg donor’s. Seven years later, we have flourishing six-year-old boys.

But these wonders of ours haven’t come easy. It’s been a painful growing process, being the mother of twins at my age. Lots of pressure, pruning, heat, storms and fertilizer (so many diapers!) But the boys eventually potty-trained (finally, at 3!) and learned to sleep(ish) and have grown into big, beautiful saplings, full of potential and wonder.

And even though Mike and I are about to complete our eighth year of marriage, we lost a year of sleep and sanity when the boys were born, so I’m claiming seven In keeping with this theme… I am more in love with him now than ever. He has pulled my heart into the light and shown it how best to flourish. And honestly, it’s come pretty easy. Sure, we’ve had hiccups and spats, but we’ve had so many more blessings and sparks. And they just keep coming. Together, we’re brighter, better, stronger than we could ever be apart. Gosh, how I love him. And gosh, how I love us.

So no, the seven-year-itch I mentioned has nothing to do with our relationship. No, it has to do with my writing life. I’ve been scratching hard at a novel these last few quarantined months, trying to bring it into the light. It’s been simmering under my skin like chiggers for quite some time, nagging away, just begging me to dig at it. And now I’ve begun, I can’t stop. It’s like the harder I scratch the more it hurts — and the better it feels. It’s a growing process. And I’ve given myself another half a year to complete this tickly, prickly gestation and get it birthed, Good Lord willing.

Yes, it’s been seven years and I’m back in Dallas once again, packing up Caitlin’s apartment and unpacking memories, while she packs in a few more surgeries and a good many hard-won, difficult goodbyes.

These seven years have been a whirlwind of goodness, grace, and growth. I am so full of gratitude for the many blessings received along the way — for the completion of Caitlin’s residency, the wonders of our miracle twins, the blessings of my second-born, Bethany’s wedding and the birth of her own beautiful family, the change of scenery in my teaching career, the writing itches that have unearthed my blogging endeavors and my percolating novel.

All the pressures, pruning, heat, storms, and fertilizer of life surely can bless you a bundle. Can’t wait to see what takes root and grows in these next seven years.

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I am Here to Listen, Learn, Speak Out, and Support

I feel so strongly and ache so deeply for my friends, family, and students of color. I want to help. I want to do more. I can’t imagine the pain and exhaustion. The frustration. The fever.

I can’t imagine being a member of society, upholding a social contract with a society, that refuses to acknowledge my value and worth beyond my ability to fuel a sports franchise or fill a quota.

Can’t imagine being looked at like my skin, hair, eyes, speech, culture don’t measure up.

Can’t imagine driving or jogging or shopping or simply chilling in a country that believes that because my skin has more melanin, my motives are monstrous and mustn’t be trusted.

And now, these last couple days, I can’t imagine seeing and hearing people I thought were friends and allies complaining about the funeral of a murdered black man too closely resembling a “state funeral.”

The death of George Floyd became the catalyst of a much–needed revolution. He did not sign up to be a soldier. He deserved so much more than a brutal death at the hands of a man corrupted and influenced by privilege and power. But now, in death, George Floyd deserves to be celebrated. He’s become a hero in a war that never should have been. And he deserves to rest in peace.

His memory cannot and should not be left to lie uncelebrated. Cannot and should not be left to lies driven by hatred in attempts to villainize his life and corrupt his memory and the cause that has sprung from the ashes and dust of too many black bodies unjustly killed for too many dark generations.

By laying his body to rest, I pray we are laying to rest all the silent complicity of white privilege. I pray we are at the beginnings of an end to the blatant and latent racism that has driven this nation far too long.

I pray we continue to debride the wounds and break up the scar tissue. It’s not comfortable, not for any of us. It stings sometimes. It hurts. But for our friends of color — Oh-God-Have-Mercy — I can’t imagine the bone-weary acres and acres of buried bruises, inherited pain, and fresh wounds. So. Much. Pain. So. Many. Wrongs.

So while I can’t speak for my black friends and family and students… I can speak out for and with them. I can give them my support and my love and my voice. I can proclaim at the top of my lungs that #BlackLivesMatter. That they are important to me. That their equality is important to me. That justice for those unjustly killed is important to me.

I loudly proclaim I AM NOT COLOR BLIND. I see you, hear you, ache with you, and stand with you. I am ready to help, to do whatever I can. You have a friend and an ally in me.

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when men hold bibles as weapons of oppression

Y’all, I’m terrified.

I’ve been on the side of white men in power suits wielding the Bible as a weapon before. I know on an up-close-and-personal level how dangerous a man who has fallen in love with power and believes he’s unstoppable can be. How quickly he finds allies, how quickly he finds weakness, how he uses everything in his arsenal to his advantage and against yours. I’ve lived in tyranny under the guise of Christianity.

When I was seventeen years old, I didn’t have the power to stop it. The only power I had was to run. To run away to another home. A sanctuary. At fifty-four years old I have the power to stop him. I have the power to vote. I have the power to speak out. I have the power to march. I have the power, but I can’t do it alone.

He’s already gotten away with so much more than I would have thought possible.

When he was elected three-and-a-half years ago I cried and cried and cried. It felt like mourning. It felt like death. I was terrified of what he would do. But I was assured the country had checks and balances in place to keep Trump from doing too much damage. That seems not to have been the case.

I’ve watched the POTUS navigate this country completely without moral compass, violating law and constitutional rights and human decency, time and time and time again. And then, this week, when he declared himself president of law and order and decided he would “dominate” the people he was elected to serve… when he marched his smug self and his police force (his long-dreamt of military parade) out of the Rose Garden and onto the property of St. John’s Episcopal Church, a church dedicated to humanitarian missions and serving those in need within its community, to hold up a Bible in blatant mockery of everything Christ stands for — I knew. I knew we have come to a dangerous tipping point.

I’ve seen men hold Bibles up as weapons of oppression and hatred before. I’ve lived it. And I know the havoc it can wreak. A man who holds a Bible like Hitler and seeks domination and absolute law and order squashes every liberty you’ve ever known. Will rob you of every dream you ever had — if you let them. Don’t let them.

If you are of voting age and you see the slippery slope the feverish, power-hungry philistine in office is trying to steer us all toward, you need to exercise your power, use your might: VOTE. Vote and GET HIM OUT OF OFFICE before he does irreparable harm.

Don’t run away like I did at seventeen. Don’t seek sanctuary somewhere else. THIS is a land of promise. A land of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for ALL. Not the few. Not the white. Not the patriarchy. Not the men wielding bibles as weapons.

Stand up. Fight for your freedom. Fight for your dreams. Fight for YOUR country.

VOTE. MARCH. SPEAK OUT. PROTEST.

VOTE.

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If you can breathe, you need to speak

The last few days have been heartbreaking to me in a way I’m having a difficult time processing and expressing. I can’t imagine what my friends of color are feeling. I ache for your grief and your anger.

Seeing the president speak from the rose garden about being a “president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters,” minutes after flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, and tear gas rained down on law-abiding citizens demonstrating across the street — all so he could parade himself over to a church and wave a bible in the air — it sickens me.

Hearing him speak of second amendment rights and military aggression with heavily armed soldiers to squelch the justified movement of a people in pain and desperate for change — it sickens me.

And not hearing what should have been said. The POTUS not addressing the injustice and violence and murders that led to these protests, this unrest. No acknowledgment of pain felt or wrongdoing dealt. What he didn’t say sickens me most of all.

And the same goes for some of my friends who have chosen to leave so much unsaid. The voices that have stayed silent during this pivotal moment in American history, my grief and shame is overwhelming.

I don’t get it. Staying “politically correct” in a time when the politics of status quo are anything but correct — it’s selfish and it’s sad.

The people who belligerently write “All Lives Matter” on posts infuriate me, but at least I know exactly where they stand. And so does the black community.

It’s the ones who say nothing — they’re the ones you wonder about. Are they ally or enemy? Those who say nothing aid the oppressor. So I guess that makes them enemy.

Silence smothers. It covers and conceals and squelches fire.

George Floyd’s “I Can’t Breathe” cry fell on his tormentor’s deaf ear. But it has become a rallying cry for the movement. Don’t smother that cry with silence.

Without oxygen, you die. Without oxygen, you also can’t speak. Be the oxygen this movement needs. Speak up.

Eric Garner and George Floyd’s and myriads of others’ voices were taken from them. Don’t let anyone — including yourself and any fear you feel — take yours. Use your voice. Stand up. Speak out.

If you love this country and all it stands for. If you believe in liberty and justice FOR ALL, rise up and rail against the injustice you see, you read, you hear, you feel.

You: Speak. For justice, for truth, for liberty. For all the battered, bruised, violated, murdered brothers and sisters of color.

Please. Speak.

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