Mamablogging

A brief note on an ongoing struggle regarding race and ethnicity

March 27, 2013 By Leslie M-B

One of the anxieties I had about moving to Idaho was raising a white boy in such a white state. I’ve written before about how, perhaps because I was raised in one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse places on the planet, I feel my whiteness most acutely when I’m in a crowd of white people. My worry was, and continues to be, that if Lucas grows up in a very white state, whiteness will become invisible to him, the norm.

Three anecdotes:

Last spring break, we visited Disneyland for the first time. As we drove into the parking structure, Lucas asked, “Can anyone come to Disneyland?” (Anyone who can afford it, my mother replied.) “Even black kids?” he asked.
Recently, Lucas pointed out he had “a black kid” in his class. I’m guessing she’s of Asian or Pacific Islander descent.
Today, Lucas saw some black and Latino men setting up the fencing for the upcoming Long Beach Grand Prix, and he asked why some people decided to “become workers.” Well, I explained, there are all kinds of workers in the world, and some people are skilled at building, while others prefer to work outside. “But if they work outside for a long time,” Lucas said, “they become black.”

That sound you hear is me beating my forehead with the copy of Colonize This sitting on my desk. (Mercifully, it’s a paperback.)

At home, we watch documentaries on human evolution and civil rights. We talk all the time about race, ethnicity, and culture. We read multicultural literature. We listen to all kinds of music. I even have written—and, soon, I hope, will return to writing—plenty of blog posts on multicultural books and toys. I think about this stuff a lot. Short of hauling my seven-year-old back to California, I’m not sure what to do, as I’m loathe to intrude on the few safe spaces people of color do have in Idaho (e.g. churches). Nor do I want introduce Lucas primarily to people of color who are refugees (perhaps Boise’s most visible people of color), as I don’t want him thinking that all people of color have come to rely on the generosity of white communities for their livelihoods.

What to do? What to do? (Gentle) advice welcome.

Image by PavanGpd, and used under a Creative Commons license.

Filed Under: Grist for the cultural studies mill, Mamablogging, Tall tales and true, Whining Exhortation and Angst

And things just keep getting better

January 3, 2013 By Leslie M-B

As if antibiotic-resistant pneumonia for me and a nasty chest cold for Fang weren’t enough, the household gods decided to toss in another challenge. Here’s Lucas’s op-ed from New Year’s Day:

Filed Under: Mamablogging, Whining Exhortation and Angst

An appreciation

January 2, 2013 By Leslie M-B

I have to admit, when Fang said we should sign the boy up for Taekwondo, I was a skeptic. My pacifism runs deep, and I was worried Taekwondo involved a lot of fighting. We had already talked at length about how Lucas was going to be a big kid, and if he happened to inherit Fang’s occasionally short temper, he needed to know how to control himself; was teaching him to fight really going to encourage reflection and nonviolence?

Today, in Taekwondo Lucas has reached the level (and you can imagine how I feel about this belt color) of “Camouflage – decided,” meaning next time he tests he’s eligible to earn his green belt. When he began Taekwondo more than a year ago, he was physically awkward and timid; in fact, just a couple months ago we gave up gymnastics lessons after about a year because he wasn’t progressing at all. He couldn’t hop on one foot without falling over. He couldn’t even jump and land simultaneously on both feet.

Worse, in school and on playdates, he was being bullied—by much smaller kids–and had no idea how to deal with it. In both kindergarten and as recently as this fall in first grade, his annual character goal was learning how to tell people how he feels when they treat him poorly.

We’re fairly laid back as parents go, but those details raised some red flags for us, so when the owner of the martial arts school invited Lucas to join the leadership club, where kids get practice interacting with and teaching other kids, we jumped at the opportunity, even though the cost is a bit of a financial stretch for us. (Ditto for a run of weekly 30-minute private lessons with an instructor who really seems to “get” Lucas, but the ROI on those has been great, too.) The leadership club membership means Lucas can attend as many classes each week for which he’s qualified, and he has embraced the classes wholeheartedly, typically attending three classes a week.

I haven’t written much here about Lucas, as he’s really becoming his own person, and, as many a blogging parent has noted, after about age four or five, it doesn’t seem as appropriate to blog all the milestones. But the change we’ve seen in him as a result of a combination of parenting, his very special school, and especially Taekwondo has been tremendous.

As I mentioned, within the past six months or so, we were still working with Lucas on landing on two feet after jumping, and he wasn’t getting much air. Here he is at tonight’s Taekwondo class. (Apologies for the blurry photos–I got tired of lugging around the SLR, and I’m still learning to use this point-and-shoot camera.)

He’s showing confidence, strength, and even a bit of agility. We have conversations about the character themes of each 9- or 10-week session—the most recent was perseverance—and you better believe we’re milking the school’s question “Is that a black-belt attitude?” at home for all it’s worth.

A lot of the boys and girls enrolled in the classes appear to be mainstream, rough-and-tumble, tough little kids, and clearly they’re benefitting from the instruction. But I just want to highlight how much the classes, and the whole atmosphere of the school, have helped our sensitive and awkward boy develop into a much more confident seven-year-old boy. If you find yourself in a similar situation with your child, I recommend you find a good Taekwondo school (this is the second one we tried, and it really clicked, while the first one did not) and give it a chance.

We owe a big, and ever-growing, debt of gratitude to Heather Grout Neitzell, who teaches courses and owns the studio with her husband, as well as to the various instructors and junior instructors, but most notably Lucas’s regular instructors and assistant instructors, Ms. Strader, Mr. Garrard, Mr. Putzier, and Mr. Fenello. Big thanks to all of them for helping our boy make up some lost ground in confidence and athleticism. We still have a long way to go, but because we’re seeing such great results, we’re committed to continuing with Taekwondo for as long as Lucas wants to participate.

Filed Under: Mamablogging, Tall tales and true

Gratitude

December 31, 2012 By Leslie M-B

I am so thankful for my little family this week. Lucas has been a great gofer and has (mostly) kept himself entertained. (He has been making Valentine’s Day cards for the extended family and sewing little felt pouches adorned with hearts as gifts.) And Fang has gone above and beyond the requirements of those in-sickness-and-in-health vows he took a decade ago.

Image source*

He has taken me to urgent care twice, fetched escalating prescriptions of antibiotics, fixed meals for the boy, kept Lucas entertained with reading and guitar lessons and movies, and more–all while meeting the multiple deadlines of a newspaperman (his preferred title). I am so very fortunate to have such a caring, thoughtful, capable spouse–especially since I suspect he knew the job wouldn’t be easy when he signed up for it.

Thanks so much, Sweetie. Here’s to a healthier new year!

* “Milk Truckers” is one of my fave WPA posters of all time. Glad I finally found an excuse to use it.

Filed Under: Mamablogging, Tall tales and true

An interesting way to introduce yourself to your first-grade teacher

September 6, 2012 By Leslie M-B

Submitted without comment–but you should feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Filed Under: Grist for the cultural studies mill, Mamablogging, Tall tales and true

Playground slides? Scary.

July 16, 2012 By Leslie M-B

A precipice on a windy day? No sweat.

(at the Oregon Trail Reserve, just outside Boise)

Filed Under: Mamablogging, Tall tales and true

On Father’s Day

June 16, 2012 By Leslie M-B

When Fang and I decided to become parents, I remember being excited and enthusiastic about the whole affair. At the same time, I must admit I was apprehensive on two Fang-related fronts:

Dude needed a lot of alone time for creative projects and to maintain general mental wellness. As he was working from home most days, for the previous few years I had been spending a lot of time on campus, going to class, teaching, and doing research. Although we didn’t really know much about baby-rearing, I knew that the baby would complicate this arrangement.
The genetic lottery. Fang is adopted and has never met a blood relative, so in our informal research into the Bastardson gene pool, n=1. (One of my homework assignments in 10th grade required me to survey about 30 of my parents’ and grandparents’ traits, and I had apparently inherited the recessive alleles for 29 of these, so I figured my genes might not play a huge role in the child’s genetic makeup. Then again, one of my cousins has described our shared genetic heritage as “the ‘no diving’ end of the gene pool,” so I suppose that’s for the best.)

Lucas was born healthy and thankfully remains so. Sure, there may be some ticking genetic time bombs further down the line—hello, thyroid disease and orthodontia of the damned!—but for the most part I’m satisfied with our winnings in the biological lottery. As I suspected would be the case, Lucas is in many ways much more like Fang than I am, and I’m happy with that outcome.

I was much more worried about the ways baby Lucas would impinge on Fang’s need for dedicated creative time, and the coping mechanisms Fang might or might not have developed for that contingency. How much of the parental responsibilities would I have to bear? (I was pregnant and ABD. Would I ever finish my dissertation?) How much would a baby complicate our relationship with one another?

Those worries? Totally unfounded.

Even though I bear a good deal of affection and love for my own father, I must award Fang the honor of wearing the “World’s Greatest Dad” t-shirt this Father’s Day. With Lucas, he strikes the most amazing balance of love, logic, empathy, guidance, encouragement, and critique. In contrast to my prenatal worry that I would be bearing the most parental responsibilities, I now feel guilty that I haven’t contributed as much to Lucas’s recent major developmental milestones as Fang has.

Fang has been involved in Lucas’s school activities, volunteering in the classroom and getting to know which kids would be good candidates for playdates.

Fang was the one who finally pushed Lucas over the last hurdle from foiled-by-phonics to reading and writing words and sentences.

Fang has coached the boy to new physical prowess and enthusiasm for athleticism through Taekwondo, taking him to lessons two or three times each week.

Fang is chiefly responsible for the boy’s confidence in swimming.

Fang has allowed the boy to use his office as a gymnasium, which has dramatically increased Lucas’s confidence and bravery.

Fang has been the chief documentarian of the boy’s activities.

He is also responsible for the boy’s ~~impeccable table manners~~ sense of physical humor.

Fang has encouraged the boy’s creativity, providing him with the inspiration, tools, and–yes–a predisposition for weird experimentation.

Through all of this, Fang hasn’t let his success go to his head; he has remained self-deprecating. His caption for the following portrait taken by Lucas? “Eminem isn’t aging well.”

I’m so very grateful to have Fang in my life and, more importantly, in Lucas’s.

Thanks so much for everything you do, Sweetie. Happy Father’s Day. Rock on!

Filed Under: Mamablogging

Submitted without (much) comment

June 6, 2012 By Leslie M-B

I’m under way too many deadlines this week, so all I have for the blog is a few camera-phone snapshots from my day with the boy:

First, he was a total rockstar at the dentist.

The dentist took x-rays. See those giant incisors (at left) trying to push out the baby teeth? Yeah, he gets those from me. “There may be some crowding,” the dentist said. (May be? I wore braces for eight years and I had a quarter of my adult teeth removed. The boy is in for an orthodontic roller coaster ride of epic proportions.)

The boy has become enamored of late with a pedestrian overpass at the edge of our neighborhood. We’ve taken the dog over it before, but on those excursions we used the ramp on both ends. This time we thought we’d try the stairs.

Ends up the dog doesn’t do stairs. We often talk about how dumb and uncoordinated he is, and this was a classic Jake moment:

He muddled his way up to the landing, but there was no way in hell he was going to lift his hind feet onto the second set of stairs. Did I mention he weighs 100 pounds? So yeah, we coaxed and coached him back down the half-flight of stairs and walked around to the ramp. He’s a sweet dog, but he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Filed Under: Mamablogging

Because we don’t already have enough to do or worry about

January 9, 2012 By Leslie M-B

The boy has become an even bigger target for bullies, and it has moved into physical altercation territory. Fang explains.

Feel free to return here to The Clutter Museum to offer suggestions based on your own experiences as a child or parent. Your stories and solutions are appreciated!

Image by Barnaby Wasson, and used under a Creative Commons license

Filed Under: Grist for the cultural studies mill, Mamablogging, Whining Exhortation and Angst

Silent retreating

December 31, 2011 By Leslie M-B

With all my references to Havi Brooks’s practices, sometimes I worry about coming across as a Fluent Self cultist, but the second half of 2011 has been challenging for me in a number of ways, and I find myself reaching deep into Havi’s wide-ranging toolkit of emergency calming techniques, reflective writing prompts, and sovereignty-preservation exercises. I’ve been doing more reflecting and journaling, taking a quasi Havi-style silent retreat from certain topics on the blog. I can credit a pretty crazy fall semester, the illness and death of my grandmother in late summer, and a tough year in just about every way for Fang.

I ended the year on a sad note, as I learned that my grandmother’s house is in escrow, so I paid my last visit to it during my annual holiday trip to Long Beach. The house has been in the family since 1920, so it’s a pretty special place to me. I took some snapshots of the house from the angles I most want to remember it. It has a different energy now since it had been staged for viewing by potential buyers, but the house is so thick with memories that I couldn’t help but have a good cry in every room.

Here, then, without comment are a few of the photos from that visit.