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?