My sister calls these surprise lilies. It's an apt name, because I never remember they are coming, and then one day in August I stepped onto my deck and there they were: "Pop!"
In Barb's life: sick last Friday thru this Tuesday. Not Covid (tested negative) but likely a different virus. My cousin mentioned that norovirus was going around her workplace. I have zero contact with said cousin, but the symptoms seem to match: headache, low-grade fever, nausea, and lots and lots of nasal/phlegm discharge. Yuck. Not to gross y'all out or anything.
Feeling more like a human being Tuesday, and even more so Wednesday. Back on limited food Tuesday, regular (but tracked) eating starting Wednesday. Disturbingly, while I canceled the Tuesday workout, the trainer canceled the Thursday one, with queasy stomach... so, maybe something really is going around town.
Sensitive subject alert...
I had not mentioned it here, but I've taken on reading "White Fragility: Why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism" by Robin Diangelo. It was copyright 2018, so relatively recent, but not freshly published. Since I do find it hard to talk about racism, and it had been recommended as a book for self-education, I figured it would be good for me.
Keep in mind, when people go about trying to ban books, it makes me want to read them more, so knowing that this one was on some people's lists of that nature certainly fed in to my decision to purchase it. It's a "pause and think" read for me. It's also a "I am not sure I want to admit to my white friends that I'm reading this because I don't want them climbing down my throat" (due to the banned book thing). I will admit it and share it with my sisters, and we'll discuss, but how comfortable will those who read my blog be with it? I sometimes hide the book when service people come to my home!
Still, I am making my way through it. I'm over halfway through it, even with think time between chapters (and sometimes paragraphs).
What am I seeing? A lot of things I had gradually become aware of over the decades... those are easy. Some explanations of reactions from others to words or actions, which were eye-opening. I'm an almost 70 year old white woman. I think the first black person I met was a little girl close to my age in a Sunday school visit, and I was fascinated and curious. It never occurred to me that her life experience would be different from mine. I mean, we wore similar clothes, and read from the same religious texts!
I grew up during the civil rights movement. As a four year old, the neighborhood teenagers dressed me up as a (stereotypical, I might add) colored child to ride on a wagon in the kids day parade. It won first prize, with its civil rights message. Later on I felt proud of my small part. After all, it proved that my people were "on the right side" of the issue, didn't it? I couldn't be a bad person. My mother put the photo in my "baby book". Of course at the time I had no clue (that segregation was an issue... I didn't even know what that was). I knew full well why I couldn't go to school... I wasn't old enough in our town.
My high school boasted a single black family, I think. We voted one of their sons class president (he was a State Champion wrestler). Over the years I discovered not everyone had the same experience with people as I did. I acquired mixed race niece and nephew by marriage. They were innocent children when I first met them, and I got to see how different their life experience was. Even so, it was a long time before I understood their mother's reaction to some statements my husband made. I was also puzzled by my mother in law's actions toward her daughter, who conceived and bore these children.
Moving back to the book, I got to chapters that asked me to examine how being white has impacted my life. I had to slow down and think. There is a lot of meat to examine.
How is this impacting my on-line life? Let me hark back to my "summer obsession" which is in reality a social experiment: The Big Brother house. This year the house was filled with a diverse cast, and I watched what I was reading about in action on the live feeds. Some very difficult conversations have been held, many of which I have difficulty holding with people I know in real life, of any race, including my own.
I've always used the show / feeds this way. In season one I was fascinated just to listen to the life stories of people I might never meet in real life. In season two, I enjoyed the strategy and the growing relationships. Year by year, as the game evolved, so did the slices from my real life experience that I folded in.
Some seasons have been hard to watch. The tendency of people to align with people they can identify with is natural. Some years I found myself actively "rooting" for people that others considered the bad guy. Other years I found myself seeing myself reflected in behavior that other fans found abhorrent. I hope that over time I have learned and adapted my own behavior. Such things are good IF they teach us and we grow into better people because of it.
Since the cast is almost always people in their 20's and 30's, it is a window into how social values are changing. Because there is a financial gain to be had, it highlights the tension between wanting to win and wanting to hold to one's moral standards, as well as showing how those standards may be generationally changing.
No one can do our growing and learning for us. It is an internal process. But if we never converse about such issues, if we run away and hide from them, we will never get to a place of peace. So, I'm opening the door, a crack. I'm fessing up to where I am in this journey. I'm hesitant... will my friends who read this blog be comfortable with that? Do we want to talk about such things? Or will we retreat back to our corners and talk only about flowers and weather and recipes, because that's all we are comfortable sharing?
The thing I most hope for is maintaining the respect we show for one another, wherever we happen to sit on the spectrum of attitudes, of learning and of personal growth. I've seen so much of that erode in the political realm, and especially on social media.
Pep talk takeaway:
The important thing as Spark refugee folks is to remember that dealing with difficult subjects is stressful, and it's important to take care of ourselves as we do... the old pep talks to hydrate, be active, get our balanced nutrition and rest apply especially to stressful periods in our life, whether because of lived experience or exposure through the TV or through books!
Life is good. Spark on!
