Dangermond.org

The notion of who I am and what I want in life has surfaced more times than I can count in the last weeks and even to the point where when I went to speak on It’s New Orleans about my work on race and parenting, questions of my identity came up – since I’ve already determined all the identities I use that are fraudulent – let me add this: I’m a fraud LGBTQ as well.

And honestly instead of that F-word – fraud – let me use this F-word – FLUID. I’m fluid and really squirm with a label affixed to me.

Recently, I spent one very long day and afternoon discussing relationships and what I am looking for in a partner – I had four attentive ears asking me who’s next – a man or a woman? – and another later that same day recounting her tales of woe in partnerships. I have already staked out what I seek in a partner – a person who will bring their truth to me without fear and handle my truth without fear.

That statement took me 54 years and countless relationships to articulate – call me a slow learner.

And the truth is now that I know what I want – #whatamIgonnado?

I have a strong feeling my partner is already making their way to me because I cleared out a ton of mental baggage I’ve been carrying for years and my heart is open and fierce.

Does it matter – absolutely not. I am a happy person, with friends, a beautiful son, an aspiring second life career, and I don’t have to have a partner in life -which oddly enough drives most men crazy yet turns most women on.

Go figure.

So I read Kathleen Gerson’s post about the declining demand for husbands with profound interest. Gerson says:

What are implications for future of marriage? The decline in marriage rates is both practically and symbolically important, but it does not signal a wholesale rejection of marriage. We need look no further than the fight for same-sex marriage to find evidence of its enduring importance. There may be a declining demand for husbands — at least the traditional kind — but there is a rising demand for a life partner to share the joys and woes of earning a living and caring for others in an intimate setting. [emphasis added]

Yet having the option to marry is not the same as actually getting and staying married. New generations of women are more likely to exercise that choice if and when they are able create and sustain relationships that are more equal and flexible than the gender-divided structure of traditional marriage. In this sense, young women are not simply lowering the demand for husbands; they are also raising the demand for work-family policies that would make it possible for men as well as women to integrate committed work with caretaking. If we do not rearrange our work and parenting institutions to help support these aspirations, then more women will resist traditional marriage and more men won’t be able to support it.

I have a vision for a life’s partner – one who wants to walk beside me – not follow, not lead – who would be an equal life partner and share my joys and sorrows. But like many women, particularly post 50, I would be fine without one as long as my spirit is alive, my child is healthy, and my friends are near.

Yes, we are now firmly in the 21st century where men are discounted for being the stereotype of a man – and it’s up to all of us to parent children differently – our sons and daughters – so they will be ready for this new world and their future partners – it’s time for all of us to evolve.

Birth is violent, whether it be the birth of a child or the birth of an idea. Beginning stages are rough. The most giant tree begins as a tiny green sprout, but that sprout pushes dirt out of its way as it forces itself up through the earth to the sunlight.

Marianne Williamson

Yesterday was one of those nonstop days where everything just keeps getting pushed further out till day and night run together into one long dreamy sequence.

I spent the day moving this bad daddy of cupboards into the house:

This was one of those purchases I did not want to pass up – I needed a cupboard and cabinet space and this one screamed to me from the get go. It’s all cypress and was taken out of a house uptown and it fit perfectly into the kitchen and I get to pay it off in installments until August next year. Plus I got it for half the price because I boldly asked for it.

I then segued into a hastily prepared lunch of fatoush salad, penne with lemon and shaved parmesano reggiano, asparagus with brown butter. Wala – lunch is served. And Tin got his playdate that has been a long time in the making:

Tin’s playmate is eight years old and though half his age, Tin followed his friend, doing cannon balls in the pool and swimming across the pool underwater like a fish. This morning, Tin rode his bike like he had been doing it forever. I realized as I watched Tin doing what had been a huge feat just two days ago that the reason he has been high and low and psycho lately is he has had growing pains.

I remember growing pains as a pre-teen; I would lay in bed with achey muscles and joints, but now as an adult my growth hurts me more in the soul, and in my head and my heart. Perhaps these same areas hurt when I was young, but I was not given context or vocabulary to identify them as such instead I just felt the pain deep in my bones.

I watched Tin up close and from a far the past week. He had three little girls in tears in the spate of 24 hours – his friend Violeta, the mover’s daughter Kelley, and his playdate’s sister, Amaris. I told him his record was not looking too good. Meanwhile, he was over emoting to his playdate who he was meeting for the first time, wanting to hug him up till the young boy was starting to stand back.

Scaring girls and identifying with boys.

It must be what I’d now call unidentifiable soul growth.

We went to visit with friends yesterday evening, and Tin devolved into a tangled web of angst – throwing himself on the floor, crying for no reason, having an urgent need to look just like Tin Tin the cartoon character by having his pants rolled up just so, and generally wanting to be in my lap between Katy-bar-the-door tantrums.

My friends just watched in horror.

While the adults grooved to one after another of Anthony Hamilton’s crooning soulful songs, Tin found new places to meltdown and I listened to a woman telling me she had “just been through something” and that every time she thought she was clear, “the tide would rise back up” and she’d get “smacked down, again and again,” she said as she beat her fist into her hand, “by competing forces coming from all directions” – she took a deep breath, and opened her chest wide, then exhaled and said, “I’m finally coming out of it” and I nodded knowingly as I mirrored her posture and took a deep breath before saying with a smile, “I too, had a similar bout, and one thing I learned was to quit dragging that poor pitiful narrative around” – she shook her head; she said her pitiful story was running on fumes … almost done.

And it was high time for it to die.

The good thing about being a kid and having growing pains is you are sort of oblivious – you can’t articulate what it is that is happening to you, so it becomes this bad mood that passes in a day, a week, or weeks, but once gone, it gives up its ghost to wisdom and wonder.

If only adults had the same mechanism for processing what we can articulate but all too often wear as the too-tight clothes of yesterday’s pain, letting our cedar trunks overflow with sad mementos of regret, unable to let loose the clutch that rises up to stop us every time we try to open our chest and shout ENOUGH!

The woman thanked me as I was leaving and said, “I appreciate your listening” but I told her, as I would tell any of you, “oh no, thank you; you and I, we’re soldiers on this journey, we’ve walked through a battlefield together, we’ve grown, and now we’re on the other side.”

As my friend was telling me earlier in the day – about a man she was dating who didn’t want her to ever speak about her past – but she said “I have one” and I laughed out loud and said, “Indeed, I am a woman with a past.” We all have a story to tell, and the beauty of life is our story gets to be edited, modified, rewritten, enhanced, embellished, and revisited many many times, till we get it right.

So where did I leave off? Was it somewhere where I was tip toeing through the tulips and espousing grandiose feelings of joie de vivre? Perhaps, or if not, let’s start there. I’ve come to realize that life is what you make of it and your body and your mind can be transformed by your will. Seriously.

Does it happen often? Not often enough. I’d have to say that four days into Tin loving on me like there’s no tomorrow has made me feel claustrophobic – not just for me, but for him. I feel like telling him, honey you need to get out more because his clinginess has become unnatural to his normal independent self but I understand where he’s coming from so I’m indulging but only to a point. I’m loving on him like crazy but my son is the constant negotiator and so I’m also aware of how he is playing me when he’s still just a little kid.

So today I insisted that he go out to the boat parade with me and go swimming with his friend. He kicked and screamed, but he did it. And I got to sit on Rodney’s porch and have an ice cold Amstel Light brought to me as I chatted with friends/neighbors going to and fro. Across the bayou, almost as an after thought, was the LaLa, still and quiet, no one on the porch.

From Rodney’s porch, Tin was still in command – he wouldn’t enter the house and wouldn’t indulge anyone in conversation except a little chihuahua name Pip he took a liking to.

I conversed with Rodney’s neighbor – a young man about to have his fourth child – you heard right. He just got home from working on Bourbon Street and he was spent. It’s Essence, he reminded me. It’s hard to believe Essence is going on right now – today was chock a block full of talks I really wanted to go hear but I was trapped like rodentia so I had to do other things. As the boat parade got underway and friends of mine in crazy costumes cruised by in canoes and pirogues, I instead, left the comfort of the porch and went into the backyard to take Tin swimming with his friend.

And swim he did – like a fish. He chased me in the pool and he was faster than me (ahem, I was going backwards, but still). And so I realized that here we are, he and I, and everyone else, in life, in it, doing it, and again, I was asked if I was his grandmother, and I said, no, I just became a mom at 50 so I’m his mother – and yes, whatever this looks like from the outside it is very great on the inside.

I left the bayou, my old home and drove to my new home where yes, another dog had left a gift for me to pick up and yes, there is no glorious bayou outside my window, but inside is home, and it feels like it, and all of the things that await us in our precious life have already taken root, and outside there are fireworks overhead and I felt the need to say that today, it has been a good day, and tomorrow will be another.

This photograph I took – it’s artistic inclination purely happenstance – a product of some glitch that created art – as if this photograph were a mirror revealing the constant reframing my life has demanded of me and the constant beauty that erupts spontaneously:

Tin woke this morning with fever again and he clung to my body and would not stop saying, “I love you.” How is it that you want these moments and when they come you’re worried more than overjoyed? His fever has subsided but then again so has the thermometer – which broke the last time we took it – (97°) – and so deep breath and here we go, day three of the Summer Cold.

I’m trying to think how to get through this day when I have work piling on top of piles. I forged a deal that goes like this – an hour of free play and then he can watch a video. This is not my best parenting, but then again, this is where we’ve come to. Yesterday, I broke and he watched a 30-minute video at almost 5PM, the day before he watched two videos – one in the morning and one in the afternoon to give me time to set up calls that I cannot now do.

My days have gone like this – a client says he can’t pay – a top source connects me with the head of an agency saying, “Rachel’s the best, you should speak to her” – always in life there is the agony and the ecstasy and always at the same time.

Yesterday, I stopped into Ricca’s, which forever was a mecca of everything worth salvaging from the architecture of New Orleans. Only, after the 2005 Federal Flood a lot of what we have salvaged was destroyed, so only now are there pieces showing up here and there. I went to find out about shutters as I have none on my twelve large windows and we are in the midst of hurricane season. If I had to evacuate, I would have to board up the windows. Then there it was – waaaa waaaa waaaa – calling to me – The cypress cupboard that fits perfectly in my kitchen, which was removed from a kitchen uptown on Robert and St. Charles because the family was upgrading – another woman’s trash, my treasure:

My clarity goes like this – I want that cupboard – then this morning with reality descending on me by being woken up by a four year old who said, “I caca’d – get out of bed and change me!” – I woke to another day with my son sick and needy, another day I don’t have help, and another day I have to try to work as best as possible in adverse circumstances – focus on the positive and do what you can. No judgment.

Clarity – it’s what’s for breakfast.

Yesterday, I was doing the phones – boom boom boom – and then ran out to do a podcast about Transracial Parenting and segued to the American Sector for a drink with a friend, and then Ogden Museum to hear Andrew Duhon, a singer/songwriter who not just because of the fact that he called me radiant, is now on my playlist.

And I came home and got in bed and my head was reeling and here was my list:

1) I’m writing a book for white parents of white children – The Elephant in the Playground – and I wanted a publisher and a friend emailed that she has closed her graphic design business and become a book publisher.

2) I have had all the money I need and wanted more of it and an ex colleague called and said she has work for me.

3) I wanted to start workshops to reach out to social workers and prospective adoptive parents of children of color and was referred to a woman who wants to help me do just that.

4) I was asked by a person I met in California if I could write a children’s book and just came across a link for a contest by a publisher for children’s books seeking books about kids of color.

I woke this morning and had a new friend call me from Richmond, California and tell me about her colorful family and the best way to put your intentions out into the world – stay away from no, not and don’t. Even in your gratitude – saying “I don’t have money” is best offered as a positive question, “Why do I have all the money I need?”

Intention is a powerful tool. Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.

My mother told me she didn’t know where I got my confident attitude from – she said she would see me walking out of school when she came to pick me up and my confidence made me stand out from the rest.

So maybe it’s no coincidence that a long time ago I mastered the ability to FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT, which stayed with me for most of my adult life – up until I went sideways for a while and then got back on track.

A friend posted a TED talk today and you have to watch it till the end where she personalizes the experience, which is when I say HURRAH!!! Learning how to be self-actualized and then using that skill to help someone else become so is the greatest gift in the world.

This week was to be my busy week, my finally out of the weeds in every other thing week, so that I can focus week, on work that pays the bills week, and so it began with Tatjana leaving for Spain and Tin getting sick. Two days into this week, where work has gone awry and a four year old under my wing could have made me go bonkers, but instead, I flourished.

I gave up on what was on my list and focused on what was presented to me. A little boy with a high fever who had one parent leave for a month – and he was CLINGY – and he kept telling me he loved me like he meant it and so I sat with him in the rocker, I sat by him on the sofa, I laid near him in his bed, I sat across from him on the floor, I sat and rocked him, hugged him up, and loved on him.

When we had sick day redux this morning (his fever had broken), I decided to get some things done that have been on my alternate to do list – my homestead exemption, my eyeglasses that were tweaked from Tin stepping on them and my new sunglasses that needed prescription lenses, the paint I needed for an art project, the moisturizer I hadn’t had time to pick up – I got it all done with Tin in tow and managed to get some lunch in him at the same time.

One thing that I’ve been working on in my life is to roll with it – whatever it is – and to not worry about what gets pushed aside for what shows up. Yesterday and today, I put my motto into practice – fake it till you make it – I will be someone who doesn’t have an anxiety attack about missing work, I’ll be someone who doesn’t worry – and today, I faked it till I became it.

I actually enjoyed myself the last two days and I think so has Tin – amazing what you can do with yourself when you put your mind and body to it:

I just handed over the keys to Tatjana’s apartment for the month of July. A local musician and yoga friend posted on Facebook that she needed a place for July and boom there it was. She said to me as I gave her the keys, “I can’t thank you both enough — it’s funny how the universe provides.”

Today, I woke to Tatjana out of the country, Evan out of the country, and all four babysitters I use out of town, and Tin sick. That’s right, no camp today, Tin’s sick and clingy because he doesn’t feel well and to top it all off his other parent just left for a long month away. So today, the day that was me hitting the ground running so I could work on this project deadline that is looming – I had to say – meh.

I’m manifesting energy, I’m manifesting love, I’m manifesting health and in the meantime, I’m dealing with the what comes up – the gifts as my new friend calls life’s challenges. And joy comes from those gifts – my sick boy wanted to nestle against me all morning (something I usually beg for and today it was given to me with abandon). Gifts = L.O.V.E.

Today I got to wake up in my house that I’m totally digging – our Spirit House – home of good energy.

And we have a visitor – Heidi has come to stay with us while Tatjana is gone – so we have a nice German Shedder who can protect better than any beast.

We have a school going up next door (piles being driven, house a shakin’, as I type).

We have food in the refrigerator, clothes on our backs, and a/c to keep us comfortable.

We’ve got it all right here in our corner of the world. Heaven on earth.