Tamarika

Validating My Reality

Writing a blog is becoming a commitment. I am not sure what kind. Is it a commitment to keeping my audience updated with the latest and greatest? Or a need to please my readers by not disappointing them if I don’t write? Or perhaps it is a commitment to myself. A way of promoting my creative spirit and generating writing exercises for becoming a “real” author in the future. What is it?

Actually, I am becoming exceedingly uncomfortable with this commitment. You see, if I give speeches, make presentations or conduct professional consultations, I feel like I have a duty to be prolific and knowledgeable. In those situations I find it easier to wax lyrical. I am able to go on and on.

However, talking on the telephone or expounding theories at dinner parties, I fall silent. More than that, I become uncomfortable if asked to speak. For example, if someone turns to me and says, “How are you?” or “What do you think about thus and such,” I become quite anxious and while I have learned social skills and am able to reply to these questions, I prefer to remain silent and listen and observe.

Over the years I have learned the source of this discomfort and I am becoming more able to negotiate with it thus making it easier in intimate situations like dinner parties or telephone conversations. One day I might share the source with you – but not yet. I need to get to know you, the reader, better.

Blogging brings discomfort right into my face each time I sit down to create a posting for my web page. Unless I have been asked to speak, present or consult, I feel as if I have no right to my opinion. Mostly I feel that everyone else’s opinion is much more valid, even, more important than mine. At times I even feel that other peoples’ opinions are even more factual than mine. In other words, I have difficulty validating my reality.

I wrote a whole book about “Confronting Our Discomfort.” So I probably should be an expert, even comfortable confronting mine – no? Well, no. I believe we write or teach about that which we want to learn or understand. Confronting my discomfort is excruciating for me at times. It even causes physical pain sometimes through head, stomach, backaches and even chest pains. Yes indeed, dear readers, I am prone to anxiety attacks!  

I know that many of my staff, students, colleagues and friends cannot believe this about me. A year ago my friends found me weeping over the sink in our hotel bathroom as I trembled and shook in terror of having to give a presentation that morning. They were amazed and shocked to find that out about me. After all, they thought it was easy for me to stand up and share my knowledge. I mean, people, you should see me! When I present sometimes I make people roar with laughter or weep with sorrow. I probably should have been an actor. That surely would have helped me confront my discomfort more than early childhood education does.

I might not have something really important to say to you every day and even if I do I might not feel I have a right to say it. If I am able to confront my discomfort, I will try to honor this “blog commitment obsession” or I might just quit the whole thing. I’ll let you know!

My Father Sang To Me

My father, Ezekiel Israel, was born January 18, 1894. He died when he was 87. I often think about him. In fact today I woke up thinking about him. It was not even after a recurring dream I sometimes have, when Dad visits me. He sits in a chair in my bedroom and asks me how I am. I tell him that I’m well and when I awake I feel sad and nostalgic. And then I realized that today is his birthday!

Six years after his death I was encouraged by my counselor to write him a letter that he would never see. She suggested that writing a letter would help me express the grief that I seemed to have difficulty allowing myself to experience. I rummaged through my box of memory papers this morning and found the letter I had written in 1987.

Here follows some excerpts from the letter:

“Darling Dad,

This is not going to be an easy letter for me, as I have not written to you in such a long time. So much has happened to me in that time that perhaps you wouldn’t recognize me. On the other hand, you always seemed to recognize me – whatever happened. I get so choked up when I start to think of things to tell you. Dad – I miss your letters every week in the post box. That pale, blue air letter and the colourful Rhodesian stamp in the corner.

Can I tell you how shocked and deeply sad I was to see you that first day in the hospital? I hadn’t seen you for six years. Suddenly I heard that you were really ill and after sorting everything out I came as soon as I could. I traveled with Gilad close to 36 hours – spent a few hours at the Johannesburg airport and then continued onto Zimbabwe. Oh, Dad, so much had changed. The sweet little airport of Bulawayo with only one flight and the place seemed empty, cold – lonely. Was it Mrs. Amato who drove me into town? When Gilad and I arrived at the hospital I simply could not recognize you. I stood at the door –tired, so estranged, with my little boy at my side. You were small and thin, your skin was yellow and wrinkled. I wanted to cry out. I missed you so much at that moment.

The following days seemed surreal: the long, lush lawns and the roses – oh Dad, the roses! The smells of Rhodesia, the wide avenues, my little town! The daily visits to you in the hospital – just sitting by you as you slept, holding your hand, waiting with you to meet Death together. Ever since I was small I remember your hands – large, soft, wrinkled, warm – always warm. Dad, you had such a tender, loving smile at me. Do you remember when we’d walk in the park around by the ducks and the toy train with the beautiful bougainvillea and Jacaranda?

You were always concerned if I was “bored” when you took me out – I suppose you felt old in those days. And if I was a little bored I never told you – never wanted to hurt your feelings. Daddy, I never feared you. You were always gentle and kind with me. Did you know that I always dressed my very best to go out with you? I think you must have known because you always commented on my “prettiness.” I felt very delicate and lovely when I went out with you. There was something terribly gentle and charming about you, Dad. Almost aristocratic. Something very fine. However much I hid my love of you I have you in my heart. Am glad and proud that I shared your Death with you.

Daddy, thank you for all the beauty, softness, sensitivity and vitality of the Sephardic heritage. Thank you for respecting Mommy. Thank you for all your letters to me. I know it’s too late to tell you this – but I loved you – and I love the memory of you.”

Perhaps these memories of my father came to me after reading one of three poems a friend gave me to read recently. He spent all of last semester in Krakow. David’s experience in Poland was recorded partly through three poems that he was moved to write. I was privileged to read them these past two weeks and found them to be passionate, painful and intellectual all at the same time.

I would like to dedicate this poem to the memory of my father today – as a gift for what would have been his 111^th birthday:

My Father Sang to Me by David Gerber

My father sang to me in Yiddish,

but I did not hear him, or failed to listen,

until he had been dead two years.

In Poland,

in the corner of a synagogue,

now a museum dedicated to the memory of the dead Jews,

Polish students sat on folding chairs,

and formed their own Yiddish winkel.

In a language that is not their own,

and is no one’s,

they sang the old songs.

Tanz balalaika! Spiel balalaika!

It was then I remembered: my father sang to me in Yiddish.

Martin Luther King Jr.

MLK

Sleep,

Sleep tonight,

And may your dreams be realized.

And if a thunder cloud passes rain

So let it rain

Rain down on me

So let it be

Sleep,

Sleep tonight

And may your dreams be realized

And if a thunder cloud passes rain

So let it rain

Let it rain down on me

So let it be

Oh, so let it be. (Hewson, Evans, Mullen, Clayton – sung by Joan Baez on “Recently”)             

Memories about Martin Luther King, adapted from Chapter 3 in Confronting Our Discomfort.  America, by Marquis Woolford is from Chapter Two.

Five years after I had arrived in America I attended a national conference in Atlanta. I went to visit the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change Inc. Martin Luther King Jr. is buried at the Center. His tomb lies in a Reflection Pool with the words: “Free At Last, Free at Last, My God Almighty Free At Last,” inscribed on the side. Jackie and Annie, two teachers at our Child Care Center at the time, accompanied me on a field trip to the site of this great man’s final resting place. We were all deeply touched by the experience. On the way back to our hotel we walked through an area that we had been warned was unsafe. What we discovered, in fact, was in that area people were walking with strollers, going into grocery stores or standing on corners and chatting together.

Out of one of the small grocery stores, a young African American man with dread lock curls falling about his face approached us. He asked me where we were headed and who we were. He remarked on the fact that we were carrying bags from the King Center and asked what we had learned there. I enthused to him about the beauty of the place and how much we had learned from visiting the site of such an important person as Dr. King. Then the man smiled and said quietly, “Well if you learned so much, why are you clutching your purse so tightly?” I looked down at my hand and saw that I was holding onto my purse with my knuckles almost white from the strain! I felt so ashamed. I could not imagine why I was behaving in that manner. There was nothing about the young man’s actions that could have caused such a reaction. Personal life experiences had not caused me this kind of fear. After relaxing my grip on the purse, I apologized to the man and asked him his name. He replied, “My name is Umuali and, look, it doesn’t matter. It happens all the time.” Umuali walked off down one of the side streets. Jackie, Annie and I stood still, shocked, silently as we watched him disappear.

Our field trip to the King Center had taught us much more than we imagined. We continued to walk back to the hotel through the unsafe neighborhood, which nestled between luxurious conference hotels on one side, and the Martin Luther King Center on the other. I decided I had a lot of unlearning to do. Since my personal life experiences had not been the cause for such fear, I realized I must have learned about it from the media. After all, every night on the news we watch yet another story about yet another brown skinned man who has murdered, robbed or drug-busted. I am grateful to Umuali for helping me confront my discomfort and identify the source of my fear. As I had learned this bias for only a brief period, I have been able to shed it quickly, by letting down my guard. At the same time I understand that in our culture the fear of African American men runs deep. The earlier in our childhoods we learned this fear, the more difficult it becomes to let down our guard.

Michael Moore writes:

Black men alleged to be killing, raping, mugging, stabbing, gangbanging, looting, rioting, selling drugs, pimping, ho-ing, having too many babies, dropping babies from tenement windows, fatherless, motherless, Godless, penniless … No matter what city I’m in, the news is always the same, the suspect always the same unidentified black male … the suspect is described as a black male … I believe we’ve become so used to this image of the black man as predator that we are forever ruined by this brainwashing.

[Michael Moore (2001). Stupid White Men: And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., page 59].

America by Marquis Woolford

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to us all.

A land for the free?
Why no free for me?
Is my color a crime, what did it do?
Did my soul sin before I was born?
Why does democracy seem likes it's mocking me?
Is it just that "Every man created equally" includes everybody except those of us considered nobody?

Don't look away!
Don't put your head down!
Don't turn away from me!
Look me in the eye and tell me to my face:
Why am I brutalized and utilized?
Do you hold something to gain?
Is it because of the 3/5's of human in me, that I get a fraction of your
freedom?