2020.09.27 My "Racism"—Brief Anecdotal HIstory. Part Eleven. A Silent Divide

Chapter XXIX. God’s Rights?

I never thought of God as having any rights, only duties to help us make sure we knew how to exercise our right, principally to freedoms. It wasn’t my right to go to Smith College, but my privilege. It wasn’t my right to visit Spain. It was my privilege, my class, my caste. It wasn’t even my right to get married or have children. It was my hope, my love, my choice, and, yes my privilege—until the murmurs and shouts of feminism, housewifery, wifeyness, and at-home mothering became my duty.

I began to think beyond the particulars of my duties and understand that my whole duty was to live my one precious privileged life to its full in compassionate consideration of myself, God, my family, and my neighbors near and far. I had left myself out of all these duties, and I was wilting.

As much as I’d loved Mr. DeNood I had to get off the teeter-totter of the rights/duties paradigm, because I was losing my balance, and I had to get on with that life and DO something. So I got pregnant—again. I also wanted to get out of Alabama, especially since the misogynist old gynecologist had fitted me for a dysfunctional diaphragm. My father was recently retired and he proposed to Bill that they start a cable television business together, with Bill on the electronics and sales and my dad offering business advice and financing. Our ticket out of Alabama! On the road again in our Chevy station wagon named Roosevelt Franklin, we headed “home.” I was nursing a huge belly and our fourth child-to-be—nearly born en route but holding on till we arrived at my parents’ home in North Canton, Connecticut. We lived with them until the house across the street was ready for us to purchase and move into with our family of six. It was 1970, November.

Chapter XXX.  Ether

I was surprised to see that Ether was now living with my parents. She had lived in Stamford and had moved upstate with them. Her boyfriend, Willie James, was in prison. I didn’t know why. As nearly as I can reconstruct it, Ether and my mother, who wanted a laundress (imagine!), cooked up a live-in arrangement that suited both of them perfectly. I don’t know what my father thought, but Ether became a member of our family. She was a large woman, strong, affectionate, and popular with the children. She accomplished a task I thought could not be done soon after we arrived at my parents’ home.

It was dark. My sleep was fitful but oddly sound. I was engaged in a dream in which I was drowning and struggling to save myself. As I emerged from the dream state, I realized I was drowning—in a pool of blood. I’d managed to contract an obstetrician in Hartford. Bill and I woke my parents, being very careful not to startle my father who, after reading Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood, had purchased a shotgun which he kept at his bedside. (Our family would not be murdered by intruders, but Dad might murder one of us by accident.) We took towels for my blood and hopped in Roosevelt Franklin to head for Hartford Hospital, the exact location of which we didn’t know. Why we did not call an ambulance I have no idea. We made it. The doctor showed up, gave me Pitocin to “induce her labor” he said. My first thought: “More labor?” My second thoughts: “Oh dear God, let this baby be born safely and don’t let me die! You could also make this labor short. Please and thanks.”

John Thomas Brakeman was born about 5:30 a.m. within a couple of hours (not bad, God). John weighed almost seven pounds, and I stayed alive even though this was another placenta praevia birth. This doctor had given my Scopolamine, a drug that gave me powerfully terrifying hallucinations of wild beasts—huge tigers and much more—racing all over the ceiling.  When I asked the doctor about this drug he did not tell me it came from a poisonous plant that sedates and has hypnotic properties, but he did reference my “old and tired uterus.” Lots of drugs that addicts adore come from plants. However, this son was fine and gorgeous I thought, and I was alive. Thank you, dear God. I also thanked myself and Bill, my father for not shooting us, and this baby—but not this doctor.

I would also soon thank Ether who took on the task of cleaning up my mess— not only all the sheets and blankets but the entire blood-soaked mattress. I do not know how she did it, but I was in awe—at her physical strength and ingenuity but also at the way she plunged into this task with utter commitment, you could say devotion.

Ether was a blessing in many ways, mostly I think for my mother who had moved from a city to a busy suburb, and now to this practically rural area. My parents had moved there because an attorney had advised them that labor for their new business would be cheaper in this area. Mom was lonely at first and felt out of place. Ether, though still a maid, became also a friend in whom Mom confided from time to time.  I know this because a few years later after my sister and her family moved into the house next door—a commune no less!—Ether commented that my mother had one good daughter and one bad one. I was the bad one. Laurie my sister was the good one. I resented Ether so did not get to know her very well. Her perception, however, was accurate, because I was feeling overwhelmed, alone in a marriage that wasn’t working well, drinking too much, and inwardly planning my breakaway from my mother’s lovingly intended control. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if my mother was living her own life or mine. I was inwardly preparing to consider a little job all my own. It was the 70s!

Chapter XXXI.  The Silent Divide

In time Willie James got out of prison, and Ether rejoined him back in Stamford. My children had loved Ether, and I trusted her completely with their care. I felt not so much love but admiring affection for this black woman who was so so much more than a maid. She did not do the cooking, but boy, could she iron—not a wrinkle unnoticed. Willie James, for his part, made a tea cart with wheels for my parents as a gift of gratitude for their taking care of Ether. Sometimes, it is hard to tell just who is taking care of whom. 

I noticed, however, that Ether never ate meals with my parents or the family whenever we all had dinner together. She had her own room and bath and must have eaten her meals there. That did seem strange. She was part of the family, and not.

Looking back, I do think that this separate eating was race-based. This made no sense at all given other interactions, and yet I was embedded in a family and class system that held dear the so-called “maid” phenomenon. It was clearly racist although it had little to do with mutual affection. Oddly, it had to do only with eating together, chiefly dinner. Was this racism by social distancing? Was it manifested with unique rigidity at the dining room table? Why didn’t Ether eat with us? Would I now invite my friend, Carol Lee, whom I'd first betrayed to my dining table? The irony of this strange tacitly-agreed-upon silent divide happening at a dining room table did not escape me. I had years earlier first met God under another dining room table.  

I took little time, however, to reflect much on this divide. I was too busy questioning the status of women and my own in particular—beyond motherhood and my own “maid-ism.”

2020.09.20 Breathe!

I often suggest to people that they breathe, that is, stop a moment, take a deep breath, and give your racing mind and body a rest. This is great spiritual wisdom. I should try it myself sometime.

It is 2020. Our whole world right now is being forced—by an ugly and lethal traveling virus, political mayhem, and racial pain—to breathe, even if it is behind a mask.

I already have a respiratory illness and need medication to help me breathe. I also need yoga, exercise, and writing—nice and sedentary yet full of spiritual electricity. I believe this: there is nowhere God is not, no one in whom divine grace is absent, even if interrupted by death itself.  

Therefore, to give myself and my readers a break and a breath, I resurrect my 2005 rewrite of a dear old hymn: “Breathe On Me Breath of God”.

Breathe In Me Breath of God

Breathe in me, breath of God,
Healing my lungs’ disease
So that I may in purest love
Breathe in and breathe out with thee.  

Breathe in me breath of God,
For when my life is done
And my sweet lungs lose all their pow’r
My last breath and yours are one

I now sing it daily as a prayer. Sing with  me.


The composer of the hymn text on which I riffed, was Edwin Hatch (1835-1889), an Anglican theologian, student of languages, and Bishop of Manchester, noted for his independence and extreme study habits. He does look a bit harried.

Hatch, a graduate of Oxford, and his wife Evelyn, had one son and four daughters.  His hymn was published privately in 1878, not too long before he died at 54.  It reveals his deep faith and his spirituality of hope, and was published publicly in 1886. The hymn tune #508 in The Hymnal 1982 is Nova Vita, by Lister Peace who died in 1969. The first stanza gives us a clue to Hatch’s state of mind: “Breathe on me, breathe of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love and do what thou wouldst do.” He sought peace of mind, reassurance, and unity with the Divine.  He was running out of breath.  Some days it feels so, eh?

Breathe.

2020.09.13 My "Racism"—Anecdotal History. Part Ten. In The Dark.

 

Chapter XXV. Alabama 

 

Our two daughters Bev and Jill were four and three when their brother, Robert William Brakeman, III, affectionately known as R.B. or Rob, was born. It felt very odd to be praised for having a boy child when I had nothing to do with it—except to endure a terrifyingly hasty but late placenta praevia birth. The placenta (supposed to be the afterbirth) emerged ahead of the infant. Blood spurted and flowed, and somewhere in all that bloody mess was a tiny baby boy, healthy at 7 pounds and some ounces. The pediatrician was summoned. She informed us with steady tactlessness that we wouldn’t know for six months whether this oxygen-deprived baby would be retarded or not. I found another pediatrician and knew pretty quickly myself that this child was not retarded in any way— unless you can count near-professional thumb-sucking.

Rob was a toddler in diapers when we moved to Anniston, Alabama for Bill’s new job as electronic engineer with a start-up cable television company. In Alabama we would meet black people for sure I thought. No such thing. The only black person I met and got to know well was a delightful woman I’ll call Elvira, the neighbor’s childcare person—and “maid”.  She became a good friend and gave me lots of advice about how to clean our black-and-white tiled entryway floor. I’d purchased a huge floor waxer. I followed the directions with care. Those tiles just wouldn’t stay clean—black tiles ran and heaved black specks onto the lily white tiles. There was no vice versa. This was a poignant metaphor, which I missed, yet lovely Elvira addressed my frustration with affection: “Too much cleaning, honey. Leave ‘em be.”

Alabama, of course, was comfortably segregated in the late1960s. The house we’d bought was—of course again— in an all-white neighborhood. The uptown Episcopal church was advertised (seriously, with a sign!) as segregated, and the downtown church was more Baptist liturgically than Episcopal. I felt deprived and angry, but I passed off the obvious racism as being Southern. It was the South’s fault. Not mine.

Chapter XXVI.  Jonah

Sometimes one is in the dark for obvious or willful reasons, and sometimes one is in the dark because, well, it just happens almost inevitably by circumstance. Amazing things grow in the dark. Take Jonah.  

As was the imaginative wont of my mind, I suddenly conjured the putative biblical Jonah. The poor guy couldn’t win. He wasn’t even an official prophet of Yahweh, yet he got tagged by the voice of God to hightail it to Ninevah to reprimand the people for exceedingly bad behavior—sleeping around and more. Jonah turned down the divine offer, knowing its danger would be tantamount to one more tour in “Afghanistan”. He fled across the sea. A storm kicked up. The sailors all prayed to several variations of divinity, but the storm didn’t abate. Jonah slept through the storm. (Does this behavior sound familiar?) Horrified, they threw him overboard as he himself suggested they do to appease God and the storm. It worked for the storm but not so well for their consciences. Then, alas, God sent a “large fish” to swallow him. At this point Jonah’s prayers get serious, reciting all his pious deeds and finally confessing his powerlessness. Only God delivers! True that, because God caused the whale to throw up, and splat! Jonah flew out, landed on terra firma and headed for Ninevah. There his errand of rebuke failed to change evil hearts, and he ended up bitterly humiliated and furious at God who did not repent. And there you have it. Beware of your pious expectations of God. Jonah was left in the dark. You could be too.

The tale of Jonah is a fable, yet in every tale there is deeper meaning if you wake up and suss it out. Let yourself identify with whatever the plight of the main character might be. I have always wondered what Jonah thought about while he was in the dark.

 Chapter XXVII.   Leviathan

The great vision given to the miserable in-the-dark Job was a visual tour of all Creation, including the great Leviathan. Job was wowed enough to feel humbled but not humiliated. The mere sight of Leviathan in breach could knock the wind out of anyone’s sails. Have you ever been on a whale watch when the whale, all 100-foot/170 tons of flesh, came close alongside the boat, puffed out its foul breath from its blowhole, then reeled, plunged deep beneath the boat, emerged on the other side, dove again, flashing its mammoth tale at the shrieking fans, then leapt straight up, exposing its front side to the now-cheering crowd. All of this is just the foreplay understand. Who wouldn’t be awestruck? I was. Job was. Jonah not so much—yet.

In fairness to Jonah, his view was from inside the beast’s belly. He remembered God and prayed wildly that his indigestible presence alone would cause this beast to retch him out. Would Jonah then be humbled enough to face Ninevah, a city for which God cared deeply, just as much as God cared for little Jonah apparently? What happened to Jonah in the dark?

Chapter XXVIII.  Breaching

As I write this brief anecdotal history of my racism, it is 2020, and the world, although still in the dark about the depths of racial injustice, is on the brink of a new breaching similar to the one I would personally embark on back in the 1970s.  

Therefore, in the name of HOPE, FAITH, and LOVE, I breach the rigors of my chronological structure to include below a 2020 poem by Canadian poet and spiritual director Antoinette Voûte Roeder. Her three collections include The Many Singings, Poems for Meditation, and The Space Between, all available with Amazon. This poem perfectly reflects what might happen in the dark—to Jonah, to me, and to this twenty-first century world as yet riven with ignorance, conflict, fear, and death—all racially bound together.

Jonah’s Whale: Not the Whole Story

Perhaps he liked it down there
in the dark cave of its belly

Delivered at last
from God’s demands
and the press of people
to a sanctuary quite unlikely
to be shared with others .

Now he had time to reflect on the past.

When at last he found
the cave inside
himself and knew it to
be sacred, out he vaulted
with great bravura
to claim his mantle
in the world.

The motto of this tale? Don’t mess with Leviathan unless you’re prepared to spend some time in the dark and emerge changed.  Also, do not assume or presume anything about God whose will empowers human agency—in other words, you and God make things good and right together and this pandemic is not the whole story.

2020.09.06 My "Racism"—Brief Anecdotal History. Part Nine. Independence?

Chapter XXIII. Marriage and Family

My first love, Bill Brakeman, and I married in June of 1962 after I returned from Spain and taught classroom Spanish at Smith College for a year. Bill was in college at Rensselaer Polytechnic. He pursued his natural gift for electronics and I pursued mine for languages—words strung together for communication and beauty.  

I hated the traditional way languages were taught, but I wasn’t trained enough to change it. While teaching Spanish boringly at Smith I also took intensive French with Mme. Cattanés. From her I learned how one teaches a language: you speak it. Students learn just the way children do—by imitation and pointing and asking. I also took a year of Russian with Mr. Kolosoff. That was more difficult because the alphabet was—foreign-er than Greek. He too spoke Russian to us, but we also had to memorize a lot of words and phrases. He was a humorous man who wore a boot-shoe for a club foot. We could hear him coming a mile away.  

I also pursued my Spanish under the supervision of Smith Professor Whitmore. She pushed me hard, assigning me a thesis in Spanish on any topic I wanted. I chose to write about the role of the priest in the 19th century Spanish novel. How telling my choice was I had no idea at the time, but I had noticed what a dominant role the priest, (Roman Catholic of course) played in fiction. He was dominant, authoritative about morality and everything else, inserting himself into the family scene—not always graciously. It made me laugh and shiver. I felt attracted and resistant all at once.

It struck me that immersing oneself in a new language was like marriage—a commitment which does not thrive on love and attraction alone. I remember the thrill that rushed through my whole body when I suddenly realized I was reading in Spanish without the middle step of translating words into English. I’d loved the language and now I was committed to it, married to it—in love, not just feeling love.

An integrative process like this is difficult between humans. It requires attentiveness to self and other. But I thought I wanted independence. Could I have my freedom and still be married at once—share vulnerability, desire, inside of plain mystery? It occurred to me that each partner devotes the same kind of commitment and intimacy you’d devote to learning a new language—making it your own. Bill and I had children whom we adored, yet we could not rely on them to complete our wholeness. We pursued our own goals and visions. We did not talk and listen with enough honest mutual attention. Instead we talked over wine, and our love lost its roots. Neither of us was independent, because we both feared dependency. For me it felt stifling. Both of us I suspect were too independent to know how to be healthfully dependent.

I was learning that the kind of deep personal engagement required for marriage or foreign language mastery could also heal racism. It was a deliciously enticing idea—this  inherently far-fetched interlocking of love and commitment. It was fleeting, unattainable, and something I knew I wanted and needed.  I’d relished tantalizing glimpses of its near-mystical potency, yes, even as a child with Carol Lee. When would I meet a Carol Lee? It would be years. Glimpses kept coming.

Chapter XXIV.  Ether

"What’s that?" my small and curious oldest daughter, Bev, asked, pointing her finger at the black woman who answered the door at a neighbor’s house. I knew we were in trouble. I could explain who this was to my four-year-old, but it never occurred to me that her innocent amazement might be racist. How to explain blackness without stereotyping it as being the “maid”?  

At about that time my parents who lived one street away from us hired a woman to clean their house. She was black. Her name was Ethel, but the way she said her name made it sound like “Etha”. She came to be called Ether. I thought I could introduce Bev to her, but how awkward would that be—taking Bev over to introduce her on whatever day Ether came to clean, as if she were a specimen or a phenomenon? And Bev, being Bev, would have a million embarrassing questions such as: How come your skin is so black?  Strategic avoidance was my strategy, although I couldn’t avoid the “maid” issue. Bev was too young for much more anyway. Was my choice racist?  I had no idea, although the question tugged at my worrying heart.

I did not know this then, but our young family would soon be moving to Alabama. Surely there I would meet black people on their own terms, wouldn’t I?