The Trouble with My and Mine - Part 2

My man, My woman, My husband, My wife. Proclamations of ownership are scary because people are not possessions even though we often times think in those terms. My and Mine - two small words that cause BIG drama.

We mistakenly believe that when get intimately involved with people and/or marry them, that they come with a bill of sales stamped paid in full. We think we own them. But the truth is we do not. We cannot claim ownership over another human being; we can only acknowledge the relationship that we share. And we have to be true to ourselves in that acknowledgment. People have been hurt and killed because of their desire to own the actions of another because we think He or She is Mine.
The tragic story of Rhoni Reuter, the girlfriend of former Bears Shaun Gayle who was pregnant with his child and was killed by Marni Yang,a woman who thought that Sayers was Hers and she didn't want to share. So, she eliminated her coompetition.

When we're invloved with someone, and we find that they're spreading themselves around, there are only two things we can do: accept it or not accept it. We can't act like dogs and start pissing around the hydrant to mark our territory. I can't count how many times I've watched this drama unfold with ugly consequences and it never stops the partner from stepping out.

People are who they are. Dating or marrying them doesn't change that. If the person wasn't monogamus when you were dating, he or she is not going to miracously change during marriage. The question you have to ask is Am I going to stay or move on? People do not belong to us. We cannot control their actions, only our response to it.

I want to date and be in a relationship, but I don't want to be claimed like a possession: the man who says I'm His woman; the man who says that he can't live without me, or the man who thinks if he can't have me no one else can. I've always said don't love me to death; love me to life.

Every relationship has its challenges, but if we need to shift our personal pronoun paradigm so we can make our relationships work.

The Trouble with My and Mine

The tragedy of Lashanda Armstrong clings to me like rain-drenched clothes on a blistery day; no matter what I do I can't shake the chill that it gives me when I think about it. Lasahanda along with three of children 5,2 and 11 months of age drowned. The 10-year old managed to roll down the window and escape. We shake our heads and wonder how could a mother drive her minivan carrying her four children into an icy body of water?

It seems like an unspeakable horror to intentionally harm children, but I'm beginning to wonder how many of us have a little of Lashanda in us because for far too many of us, people are possessions--things we think we own like our homes, our cars etc. We're quick to claim my and mine reminding me of the self-indulgent immature nature of a child who becomes obsessed with something she thinks is hers.

Back in the day, we chuckled at the absurdity of our parents words: "I brought you into this world and I'll take you out," because we never thought that our parents would actually kill us. And maybe back then our parents spoke out of frustration and/or fear, but today with our country's economic instability and people's stress levels at all-time highs, there are far too many parents that take these words to heart.

The Lashanda Armstrong case is not an isolated news story. There seems to be a disturbing trend of parents killing children before killing themselves,and in the case of married couples killing their spouses as well. Lashanda had been arguing with the three younger children's father on that fated day. Why didn't she leave the children with Their father?

Even in death the problems of My and Mine continued when the children's father, Jean Pierre decided against Lashanda's family wishes to bury His children with Their mother. Tension was thick as the relatives of Lashanda felt that were not welcome at the children's funeral.

So, often in custody battles that I've witnessed I often hear parents argue about MY children who belong to ME because they are MINE. There's no longer a thought of what WE should do in the best interest of OUR children. Even when they're not fighting, parents are possessive, and it's not healthy.

The words of Khalil Gibran captures the essence of parenthood.And if parents take these words to heart, there will be no room for My and Mine.


Children

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, 'Speak to us of Children.'

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

The Hierarchy of Love

The movie, I Will Follow is as much a meditation on loving as it is on grieving. We follow Maye as she packs up her recently deceased aunt’s house and prepares to leave and return her own life. A cast of characters pass through and help her to reconcile her aunt’s death and begin life anew.

The aunt, Amanda, an eccentric character and professional drum player who dreamed of playing in a rock band, succumbed to breast cancer. The two had a close, loving relationship that demonstrates the complexity of how we love. As a naïve little girl, I thought love was love, but I grew up to learn that even in loving there is a hierarchy. The greatest love is reserved for mothers, then fathers as evidenced by how much more attention we give to Mother’s Day than we do to Father’s Day. After all, it is mothers who bring us into the world and we should love them the most, right?

After parents then it’s siblings and after that we have to figure out who’s next on the tier for our affection. In the extended family there are grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces nephews and in-laws. Figuring out where everyone fits is tricky. The hierarchy changes when we marry and have children and so we shift and shuffle the ways in which we love and oftentimes things get complicated like they did for Maye when we break rank.

We meet Fran, Amanda’s daughter and the tension between the cousins is immediate. Aunt and niece had the kind of relationship that should have belonged to the mother and daughter, but didn't. Amanda and Maye's relationship went against the hierarchy and Fran resented Maye for that. At one point, Fran asks Maye if she has ever thought that the very qualities that she loved about Amanda didn’t make her the best mother. Fran also demands that Maye give her all of Amanda’s things because they belong to Fran and her children because she’s the daughter. The movie never reveals what happened between mother and daughter nor does it ever tell us anything about Maye’s mother.

Love isn’t the same for everyone; it can complicate, create confusion or cause pain when someone loves out of order. So,I wonder about our capacity to love. Is it limitless and boundless, or are there known but unspoken restrictions? How do we love? Do we do it differently depending on the family pecking order? What happens when relationships change? Or order isn’t followed?

Mae is single with no children. Fran is married with three children. So, did Fran’s sense of obligation to her immediate family prevent her from being there for her mother? Mae loved her aunt so much that she left her boyfriend and moved to another state to be with her aunt. During a phone conversation, Maye asks him why wasn’t he there for her and he said that he couldn’t just pack up his life and move away like she did.

Like Maye, I am also single and childless and I wonder what this means for me on the hierarchy of love. What do I do if my hierachy is missing a tier or two?

A Dangerous Place

“The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.” Really? The billboard stirred up so much controversy when it was put up in New York that it was taken down. I look at this ad in jaw-dropping amazement at the audacity of Life Always, the pro-life organization behind this mastermind. This is not simply an issue of women having abortions; it’s so much deeper than that.

The intent was to draw attention to the alarming number of African-American women undergoing abortions, but it missed the mark. This is a child. A little girl. Not a fetus in utero. This billboard implicates all African-American women—child bearing or not—in an act of incompetency. We’re damned if we abort and damned if we carry to term depending on which statistics you want to give credence to.

Is it our perceived hyper-sexuality and irresponsibility that makes Big Brother feel the need to watch our wombs telling us what to do and when? History shows that our fertility has never been ours to own. So, I wonder if and when we’ll be thought of as capable of making our own decisions regarding our bodies?

Just recently I was speaking with a friend of mine about her co-worker who had suffered a miscarriage. A struggling single mother of two, neither of thinks she should have another baby until she can better provide for them. Who are we to tell a woman what she needs to do when we don’t stand in her shoes?

“The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.” Wow! I don't know if I should bless or curse my existence.

Carol Mosley-Braun and the Crackhead Comment

When mayoral hopeful Carol Mosley Braun called her opponent Patricia Watkins-Van Pelt a crack head not only did Mosley Braun paint herself as an insensitive elitist, she also perpetuated the stereotype of so-called crack heads as degenerates. Crack head has become a catch-all phrase to describe the undesirables roaming our streets.

But those of us sharing living space with them in blighted urban communities know that they are no more the Frankenstein monsters the media smear campaign has made them out to be than celebrities who have a revolving door in and out of drug rehab. Not all of them smoked the mutha@#$%@#$ TV like Gator from Jungle Fever, but are more like Dicky from the Fighter who do more harm to himself than others. Rich people and/or celebrities have substance abuse problems; poor people are crack heads no matter their drug of choice is.

What Mosley Braun doesn’t know is that Crack heads are assets as well as nuisances to the community. We have a love-hate relationship with them; we don’t like what they do, but we don’t mind their help when we’re in a pinch. For a few dollars, these substance abusers will do any outside work you might need done. Take the recent blizzard for example. Some of us would still be digging out if it were not for the locals with their handy shovels looking to make a few dollars.

Contrary to popular belief, they are not all lazy, shiftless folk looking for a handout. They work year around trying to earn a little cash. In the winter they shovel, in the spring they cut grass and wash cars, and in the fall they rake leaves—a handyman for all seasons. I know there are those sitting on high pointing an accusing finger that those who give them money are supporting their habit, and that might be so, but the way I see it, many of us have an addiction of some sort—food, sex, alcohol, drugs, gambling, shopping, social networking etc.—and we feed it. So, who am I to pass judgment on someone who offers to shovel my snow for a few bucks?

2011 Blizzard Musings

Whereas Mother Nature might be the great equalizer, the clean-up after reminds of the inequities we still face in our society. Forecasts for a blizzard to hit Chicago were projected far in advance thanks to the wonders of modern technology, so people were able to prepare as much as humanly possible for a date with Mother Nature, and a date it was—strong winds, knee deep snow and dropping temperatures.
The morning after the storm I stepped out on my porch to visually drink the raw beauty of nature. The houses, treetops, bushes cars and sidewalks were all gently blanketed by the purity of whiteness. Then later as the sun yawned and stretched across the noon sky, life emerged from the stillness people started coming out--to shovel, dig out, talk and laugh—all while marveling at the mass accumulation of snow.

I live in Roseland, a neighborhood best known in the last decade or so for murder and mayhem. Who can forget the beating death of Darion Albert when it was caught on tape and went viral for the world to see? But on Wednesday morning, we were a group of neighbors, many of whom have known each other for years outside clearing away the residual of the storm that engulfed our city and I wondered where the news crews were on a day like to today when something good was happening in the ‘hood.
After two days of peace and quiet, lazing around and catching up, it was it was back to work on Friday. People had shoveled out and left piles of snow in the street, and there were no signs of city trucks coming our way. So, I had to get my Honda Accord SE that sits low to the ground over a mountain of snow. It was not working, but my neighbors came out and assisted. As I drove to work I saw that the inequities that we face daily had returned as Mother Nature retreated.

On the Southside of Chicago, streets are not shoveled and snow is not as readily picked up as it is on the north side and in the suburbs. Even in areas where people do shovel their walkways, our blocks our plagued by so many abandoned buildings that for every house that has a clean sidewalk, there is a house or two buried in snow.
Mother Nature may not discriminate, but city services do.

OMG! A Lesson Learned from Steve Harvey

I am not a Steve Harvey fan. I didn't watch The Steve Harvey television show when it was on, I didn't listen to him when he was on the radio the first time around, and I turn my radio station away from The Steve Harvey Morning Show. When I saw the Kings of Comedy, I chuckled a time or two, but the gut busting laughter came from Bernie Mac's comedy routine. He just doesn't do it for me, and truth be told, he sometimes irritates me which is why I tune him out.

I know people that love his show and swear by his advice; I am not one of them. Somebody sent me a copy of his book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man via email and I perused it not because I thought I needed dating advice, but because everyone else was talking about it and I wanted to know what was the big deal?

What I know is that celebrities have become brands, and they can put their name on almost anything and it will sell. People love Steve Harvey, but his books don't say anything that hasn't already been said, but people will accept it better coming from him. And I am not hating on a brother for striking while the fire is hot. His first book did so well that he has now written a sequel, Straight No Chaser. He's been on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Ellen and Good Morning America--not bad for a man who's been married three times.

So, after I finished rolling my eyes and sucking my teeth about the phenomenon that is Steve Harvey, I sat back and thought that there is something for me to learn. In the world of celebrities at 53 his star is on the rise when others are fading. That's an amazing feat for someone in the public eye. We mostly like those that we think are young and fresh. We are also fickled because we can love someone in one moment and hate them in the next watching many shining stars crash and burn.

So, while I may not be a Steve Harvey fan, I have respect and admiration for a man that can push himself to achieve his wildest dreams and beyond. Havey has two books under his belt, both written in his 50s. He's the host of Family Feud and he's gives monthly relationship advice in Essence magazine.

I have always wanted to write a book, but I let other things get in my way, and sometimes I feel like my 40s is too old to be trying to write a book. But I look at Steve Harvey and think, I can write book, too.

So,I have to admit that lessons can come from the unlikeliest sources, and when I've learned what I need to learn I should be grateful. So, thank you Mr. Harvey.