It is interesting to contemplate; this relationship between sons and their mothers.

Especially when the mother in question is parenting on her own.

I have talked extensively in this space about my darling daughter: her wit, her intelligence, her perseverance in the face of circumstances that might hobble another child.
​
But I don't say nearly as much about my son.

​Possibly because, in my own mind, I'm not really sure how to talk about him.

There is a certain group of mothers whose sons can do no wrong.  No matter what is going on in their lives, their sons are heroes.  Everything they touch turns to gold, or will, eventually.  In all honesty, they have every right to be proud of the accomplishments their sons have made.  They have made every correct turn, always taken the right path, and have remained steadily on course for eventual success.

​On the other end of the spectrum are the mothers whose sons made terrible choices, and are either incarcerated, dead, or well on their way to either fate.  Some of these mother tried everything they could to make sure that their sons had decent lives, but in the end, none of that mattered.  This is NOT the way their sons were raised, and the man they see is not the boy they saw growing up.  This is the group most vilified in popular media.  Especially if there was no father in the home.  The reason for the absence of the male parent doesn't matter; there was no male role model, so any and all parenting was pre-determined to end in failure.

And then there are those sons that fall into neither group.  Neither reaching the lofty heights of perceived success, nor the terrifying lows of a life gone tragically off course.  They are flailing somewhere in the middle, quite literally neither here, nor there.  Sometimes they are continuing their education post high school; sometimes they are working; most times they have no idea what they really want to do.  They are not bad people, often telling those that inquire about their latest change in direction because in all honesty they've changed their mind so many times even they can't remember what they originally wanted to do.

It is in this wispy gray area that my son exists.  Funny, talented, and utterly frustrated by his own shortcomings as he embarks on his latest run at getting his life to the point where the world determines it should be: a 23 year old should have a job, a car, and his own apartment, excuses be damned.  It is a different relationship, this one between a parent, and an adult child with an issue or two that may be hindering his ability to move as fast as his peers or get the same results.  Me, the parent, trying to be both understanding, as I have been through a great deal of this already, (with a child to take care of to boot), and nurturing but firm, without being pushy or nagging; and Him, the son, wanting badly to be the independent young man, running to make up for past missteps, and trying to deal with the issues that are preventing the move forward.  All while dealing with a certain level of snarky condescension from adults who are supposed to be in a position to help, advise, or at least encourage him get to the next steps in his journey, but are far too jaded to be of any real assistance.

As I watch him crawl, walk, run, stumble and fall, then start the process all over again in an effort to reach this or that goal, I marvel at  his willingness to keep trying until he find out what fits him in a world that expects all young people to identify a goal as soon as possible, then stick with it until the end.  There was no promotion ceremony from Elementary school or Middle school for this son. And after going far too long without any help for a learning difference, and it's related co-morbities, no high school graduation either, as he dropped out.  I observed during a frustrated conversation with him one night that I have spent most of his life waiting for him to FINISH something.  As I study his hurt, defeated and angry eyes, I realize that I just want to be able to brag about my son the way I hear my friends bragging about theirs, which is completely unfair to him.  We have come up through some strange and trying times, this young man and I, and as hard as it is for me to realize that it is even harder for him, this teetering between where he is and where he wants to be.  The burden of managing other people's expectations, as ridiculous as they sometimes are, is now on his shoulders, and he is finding that the yoke of adulthood can strangle just as fast, if not faster, than the one he wore as a child.

Occasionally, I look back over the times and struggles we've had over these last going on 24 years now, and wonder how he made it through, even when I admittedly was still learning how to be an adequate parent. I love my son, obviously, and was always determined to do right by him, even at enormous personal cost to myself, if that's what it took.  I look at him now, and see traces of both his father, and myself: His father's temperament, mellowed by my sense of the absurd; his father's hair and chin, with my eyes and nose; His father's nonchalance about most politics, mixed with my passion about issues that affect me directly. In the midst of this, he still manages to be uniquely himself, which is all he should ever be required to be.

Really, this is the story of patience for a late bloomer, in a world that expects early and continual success.  But the rose that blooms latest smells just as sweet as the rose that bloomed first.  We just have to continue to nourish, water, prune, and WAIT, until the rose is ready.  Like all things in nature, it will happen when the time is right, not when we want it to.

​As it should be.

This was the last photo taken in the apartment my daughter and I vacated over the last couple of days.

The same apartment we felt so blessed to get into in a hurry right after Thanksgiving last year that, while not a complete nightmare, was definitely a HUGE disappointment.  Or whatever you want to call mice, ants, mysterious water leaks that we never did discover the source of, and in the final couple of days, an industrial sized cockroach that opted to menace us, first from the hallway, then from inside the apartment.

When it finally occurred to me that I didn't know when the Sheriff was coming to lock us out, my daughter and I went into a flurry of getting as much of our stuff could fit into my car into storage, then refilling the car with the stuff we were going to need day to day.  My rules for my daughter were simple, "Grab anything that actually means something to you, and pack it in the box you have.  In the bucket, only pack things you can actually fit, and wear on a regular basis."  Of course some things got left behind, including the vast majority of our large furniture and appliances.  I grabbed some pots and pans that it would be very difficult to replace, as well as my Tupperware (You will pry my Tupperware, especially my few nice pieces, from my cold, dead hands), and tossed those in storage yesterday.  But for a couple of chairs that my daughter and I fit into the hatch of my car, and our electronic items, whenever we get another place, my daughter and I will be completely starting over.  As I stated to my daughter over and over again while this was going on: "It's only stuff."

One of the Bible stories that kept occurring to me over and over again during this particular go round with my housing situation was the story of Job.  For some reason, I was taken with the idea of studying the story of Job in depth during Lent a couple of years ago.  The short version of the story is that Job was actually a good guy, and Satan suggested to God that Job was only praising him and faithful because he was successful and didn't want or need anything, and his kids were healthy and happy.  So Satan bet God that if Job lost everything, he wouldn't still be happy and faithful and praising Him.  God basically told Satan to do what he wanted, so long as you don't kill him.  Satan took God up on it, and made sure Job lost everything: money, livelihood, family, house, eventually, even his health.  Job's friends came around to tell him what a loser he was, and how everything that was happening was probably his fault in some way shape or form, and how he should just leave all this God business alone, and just die already.  Job wasn't having any of it, which he told his friends to their faces, although privately he whined to God, "What did I do?  Are you mad at me, or something?"  After a couple of rounds of God telling Job not to tell Him His job (a summary of a much longer conversation), God eventually restored everything that was lost and destroyed back to Job, and the narration of the Bible resumes.

I again contemplated the story of Job as I prepared to possibly spend Sunday night in my car with my daughter as I didn't get paid until Wednesday, and I had spent the remainder of the money I had left getting what of our stuff we could into storage.  I burst into frustrated tears as the one thing that terrified me, my biggest fear that I had been doing everything possible to avoid, visited me for the second time inside of one year.  Watching my daughter watch me, I realized that I had a decision to make.

Was this going to bend me, or break me?

After a series of texts and phone calls, I secured a few days at my sister's place until I could get a motel room for us, some phone numbers that I called today (every homeless service in my area is taped out beyond belief: http://www.dailybreeze.com/social-affairs/20150512/homelessness-jumps-39-percent-in-south-bay-12-percent-in-la-county-in-past-two-years ), and in general started making plans to live in motels until I find a way to put it all back together again.  Again.

Like Job, I finally understand a few things about this life.  Although old Job was blameless, I made a few mistakes along the way, and I earnestly tried to fix them.  It didn't necessarily work, obviously.  But like Job, I know that losing my Faith just because things appear to be at a dead end, would be the worst thing that I could do.  Especially right now.  I am already putting in the hard work to improve my situation and repair my credit.  Everything I was raised to believe as a Christian tells me that so long as I continue doing the right things to put my life back together, God will meet me more than halfway.  The Spiritualist/Humanist version of this says that What you put out into the Universe is what the Universe gives back to you, and often more so.  So we all agree that hard work and blessings often go hand in hand.  Which is the face I want to show my daughter while all  of this is going on.

The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. Job 42:12

I hope so.  I sincerely hope so.
​
​

I certainly didn't think I'd find myself back in this same place after so many years.  Then again, my luck hasn't always been great, and making desperate decisions based on which was the lesser of two evils doesn't exactly make for the best of circumstances either.  I know, based on the most recent financial news, that I am not the only person going through these issues.  There are two entire generations that are struggling financially, and can no longer make ends meet where they used to be able to.  More are joining our ranks everyday, and the cries for relief are getting louder.

But I am getting ahead of myself.  Should I start from the beginning?

With the exception of some short stints of living with others (I'll get to those later), I have been living on my own since my early 20's.  I readily admit that I was ill-equipped to handle this responsibility, as the jobs I was qualified for back then never actually paid enough money to afford rent in Los Angeles, but I have also never really had a choice in the matter, as my family is not the type that lends itself to long term co-habitation.  Those situations were sticky at best, and explosive at worst.  So I did what I could to make the best possible go at living on my own, then with my son, now with my son and daughter.

Back then, I worked as a temporary employee.  Before I learned to be registered with multiple agencies, I generally only worked for one at a time, staying with one agency until they stopped calling, then moving on to another agency.  When there is rent, childcare and bills to pay, temp work doesn't always cover everything, so I was always on the lookout for that elusive permanent job. In the meantime, I learned to dread dry spells, those seasons when the temp jobs dried up for a couple of months due to the comings and goings of college students that are often used as unpaid interns for the companies that usually employed me.  It was during these dry spells that I became very familiar with evictions.

The pattern would go something like this:  While I was working, everything would be okay, but just barely.  I had no car or bank account, so I would pickup my check at the temp agency, cash it either at the bank the check was drawn on (before that option was taken away by the banks) or the check cashing place, then on Saturdays, hop on the bus with my son to go pay bills.  It was always a careful dance on the edge, quite literally living paycheck to weekly paycheck, while trying to move forward.  Whenever an assignment would end, two things would invariably happen:  There would be just enough of a wait before the next assignment to put me behind on bills and rent; and I would also have to repair or replace an (always purchased used) appliance.  It never failed.  It would be a tragic comedy if it had not gotten so predictable that I could pinpoint, almost to a day, when something would go horribly wrong.  Shortly afer putting out that fire, the 3-day notice would appear in such a way that there was no way to answer it in a timely fashion, followed by the Unlawful Detainer, followed by a tear filled court appearance (which usually cost me a day of work from the assignment that I had usually JUST STARTED, which I was not going to get paid for and usually made a poor impression which hastened the end of that assignment as well) that generally ended with me getting a crappy note in my credit record, and a extremely small amount of time for me to convince someone to rent to a single parent that worked low-paying temp jobs.

If this sounds familiar, it is because this has been the subject of quite a few recent documentaries, most notably HBO's Paycheck to Paycheck: http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/paycheck-to-paycheck-the-life-and-times-of-katrina-gilbert#/ , and more recently, Spent: Looking For Change:  http://www.spentmovie.com/.  Both films detail the lives of those who, 20 years ago, might have been squarely middle class, but due to inflation, accidents, illness and other unexpected circumstances, have found themselves in deep financial holes, struggling to meet basic daily needs for themselves and their families.  In these scenarios, even two parent families aren't spared, especially when the other parent (or partner) either can't work, or is unable to find stable employment.  Spent specifically focuses on the the financial lives of those who for various reasons are unable to participate in the mainstream financial systems in the United States.  These are people unable to have bank accounts, or get needed small business or personal loans, or have faced some crisis that started a painful downward financial spiral. Those without the ability to participate in a regular banking relationship, are all too often at the mercy of all manner of high interest, theoretically short-term loans, utilization of check cashing services, and associated bill paying services which charge additional fees of their own, which all adds up quickly, and can be devastating to low-income, and middle to low income families.



Setbacks only too easily become the last step before complete financial collapse for families already on the edge.  The car that either broke down or got repossessed that was the only link between the only employed person in the house and the well paying job that required it.  The emergency room visit that empties a checking account, or worse, has to be billed as it comes up at an extremely inopportune moment.  Having to make a heartbreaking choice when you realize that you can either eat or pay a bill, especially when there are children involved.  Wanting to be strong for everyone else, and be the stable provider that you feel like you should be, but being denied the resources needed to remain on your feet through a storm, so that you have to rely on less than palatable sources that become the anchor that finally sinks your situation.


For me, it was the discovery of payday loans.  Let me start by saying that of all of the Seven Deadly Sins, I have the largest issue with Pride.  I refused to let anyone know that I was having money issues, lest they think me incapable of "handling my business".  Being unable to handle one's business is a cardinal sin among minorities, and will get you singled out for derision and long term condescension very quickly.  Having been bullied relentlessly as a child, teen and young adult, I was willing to do just about anything to avoid being perceived as a failure for not being able to adequately care for my children and myself.  With a payday loan, I could discreetly handle any shortages that came up, and there were many since, as I stated earlier, I wasn't making enough money to cover everything, and soon between the loans to cover the bills due to the loans, and my bank's love of re-ordering the transactions to create as many overdraft fees as possible, 13 years ago, I found myself in an impossible situation.  I had been laid off from a long term assignment right in the middle of a dry season, I was having a hard time finding another assignment, so I decided to go to trade school to help me change careers, 9/11 happened, and before I could find another job, I got evicted.  My credit was destroyed, I couldn't get another bank account for a long time, and for the next five years, my son and I alternated between living with my older sister, living with my soon to be daughter's father, a brief stint in a 3rd floor walk -up apartment that ended when the above scenario repeated itself, and, when my daughter was a little over a year old, a year spent living in a residential motel.  Somewhere in the middle of all this, I finally acquired a driver's license and a car, hoping to expand my options in terms of both where I would be able to live and work.  Although I had sworn off payday lending, auto repair emergencies on an overpriced car would conspire to bring me back into the very expensive fold, especially considering that I lived somewhere not readily accessible by frequent, convenient public transit.


I've talked extensively earlier about making do as a single parent: http://www.houseofperpetualdistraction.com/thoughts-feelings-impressions-blog/song-of-the-single-mother , and trying mightily to create a life for my children where, at the very least, their needs are met, and they may even get a couple of wants, here and there.  What I didn't mention was the fact that I never wanted them to know when things got really bad, although they knew that we were barely making it, and could not afford things.  Like most of the parents you see in the documentaries, all we want is to take care of our children to the best of our ability.  We love them, we want the very best for them, and despite less than optimal circumstances, we don't want them to suffer from our mistakes and missteps.  It's crazy making that even when you work a job making a decent wage, no matter how hard you try to live within your means, even allowing for a little extra, there is always something that comes up to create a wrinkle in even the best of plans.  Since moving into this apartment seven years ago, I've endured two separate judgments, where substantial money was removed from my paychecks, two rounds of furloughs, a change in apartment ownership, bank shenanigans with transaction order and overdraft fees, several cars with huge mechanical issues, a voluntary car repossession for the aforementioned car that ALWAYS had something wrong with it, a car accident that I am still paying for as it was not covered by insurance, and due to trying to keep everything paid in the meantime, more payday loans.  Believe it or not, for a few months a couple of years ago, with the assistance of Lexington Law Firm, my credit score had actually gone from Poor to Fair.  Then I traded in a car that had a low payment, but a transmission that was on it's last legs, for a new car with a huge payment and insurance cost, but lower maintenance costs, which was crashed 9 months later.  Which killed my credit, and started the payday loan cycle all over again.  Like so many others, all over this country, I made a decision out of the desperation that arises when someone is trying to hold it all together for those they love, and is reduced to choosing between the lesser of two evils.  It wasn't really that much lesser, however.


I opened my front door this morning to find a 3-day notice taped to my screen door, ironically dated October 1st, which means I got it one day later than the time I was supposed to be given to respond to it.  


The cycle begins again...

We are almost 10 days into the Siege at Ferguson.  Not a military action, thousands of miles away, but an overzealous law enforcement response to protests waged in the wake of an unjustified police shooting in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. While watching the coverage, and reading many of the articles and blog posts that have been written in the wake of this latest tragedy, numerous people have mentioned the continued efforts to dehumanize the victim of the shooting, while demonizing the protesters.  The media tactic has been around as long as newspapers have been in print, if not longer, and all those who have called the news media out on this shameful habit were obviously correct in doing so.  They are missing one crucial fact, however.

In order to be dehumanized, we have to be seen as human.

Like so many things in America, the routine dehumanization of Blacks can be traced to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The entire southern economy was built on and depended on the free labor of those captured or sold into slavery in Africa , then transported to these shores for sale.  In order to justify the highly profitable, but morally reprehensible, practice of chattel slavery, as practiced in the U.S., the argument had to be made and emphasized that these were not people, but things.  No more than animals to be worked until they died, then you could either by more, or worse, breed them.  Even in the Census, slaves were only counted as 3/5 of a person.  That this point of view existed for at least 200 years prior to the end of slavery, is very telling about how attitudes towards all minorities, not just Blacks, developed over time as the nation grew.

After the slaves were freed, when most Blacks were just trying to live peacefully and support their families, the Ku Klux Klan formed.  Although, if you look carefully enough, their services weren't really needed.  After 200 years of being conditioned to believe that an entire race of people were all mostly lazy, ignorant, or animalistic, those in positions of power: the bankers, landowners and politicians, had no interest in creating a fair and just society were all men could propel themselves up the socioeconomic ladder by their own hard work.  There is no profit in that, for them anyway, so we have the invention of the system of sharecropping, a system meant to keep Blacks as close to a condition of slavery as possible, while also managing to sweep in the rural poor as well. It was during this era that we also saw the beginnings of the "Us vs Them" style of politics, which used the by now widely believed stereotypes of Blacks to scare poor Whites into believing that the Blacks were out to take away their livelihoods (rather than just trying to live independently), and/or commit some heinous crime against them.  American has always had a need for a "villain" (in order for someone to be declared a "hero"), and due to the fact that Blacks are highly visible, all that is needed to keep the population in fear of a certain group is to find someone who fits the definition of what they are afraid of, and parade that person out front, as often and as loudly as possible, drowning out the fact that the vast majority of the population is not only nothing like this person, but probably has more in common with the person being fed fear then they realize.  The purpose of the KKK was two-fold: to keep Blacks "in their place", which meant not doing well enough for themselves that they saw themselves as equal to the whites of the time (the phrase "Uppity Nigger" was coined during this time); and to control the remainder of the population through feeding into their fear of the "Other", thus allowing those in power to stay in power.

Just underneath the surface, although slavery ended 149 years ago, the lingering notion that Blacks (and other minorities) aren't really human, hangs heavy in the air over any media coverage of events surrounding largely minority communities.  Therein lies the rush to portray them in as negative a light as possible, especially when their death at the hands of an authority figure is in question.  Which leaves the parents, relatives and friends to tell the story of a complex life, rather than the caricature the law enforcement community needs you to believe in order to justify their actions.  They have to feed the fear.  Do not think there is not an economic component to this in these days, just as there was back then.  Now, those that benefit from media reinforced fear of the "Other", are not just the bankers, landowners and politicians (who sell fear as a means of staying in office), but the Military, Law Enforcement agencies (it is called the Prison Industrial Complex for a reason), home security companies and gun manufacturers all receive massive budgets, and huge profits, from selling seeming safety from the mysterious "Other".  The "Other" who in reality is more like them than they realize, if they would only see beyond what they are told to believe.

All races of people have people within that race that are criminals, fools and ne'er do wells.  The multi-award winning TV show Breaking Bad, and the much discussed show Sons of Anarchy, show that the drug trade and gang violence are not limited to urban minorities, concentrated in inner cities.  Rural America has it's fair share of issues, but those that live there are largely given the benefit of the doubt (or they used to be) in interaction with law enforcement and subsequent treatment by the media.  For Blacks and other minorities, the lowest common denominator is the default by which they are measured. Always. Minorities often have to go far above and beyond in order for the world to know that our loved ones and friends were not the "Thugs" (code word for all minorities) that they are being portrayed as.  The ultimate scenario of Guilty Until Proven Innocent, is what they have all come to expect.  Which, 149 years after the end of slavery, is a shame.

When William Shakespeare gave that speech to Shylock during the court trial in The Merchant of Venice, he was making a comment about the view of Jews in Elizabethan society during the late 1500's.  What does it say about us as a technologically advanced, presumably First-World country when we still have to ask those same questions in 2014 in a mid-western suburb?  If all you know about an entire group of people is what you've been fed in the media, and maybe had one or two interactions with a few representatives, how much do you really know, especially if you are going to continue spreading the lies, fear and hate?

My son is 21.  He is already a veteran of being stopped for no other reason than "because", and was taught early on to be polite and respectful to law enforcement, no matter how they may be treating him.  He is funny and charming, but he can also be temperamental and easily upset if he feels that he is being treated unfairly.  He is by no means a perfect person, but neither is he some sort of always to be feared "Other", and like most parents of imperfect Black males, this is what I worry about most.  Having to defend my son should one day, propelled by fear, paranoia, and 350 years of being repeatedly told that my son is not a real person, some law enforcement officer will misread a harmless word or gesture, then completely overreact, thereby turning my son into another heartbreaking statistic.  Which they would then try to justify by bringing up the fact that he wasn't a great student, and whatever else they can think of, dig up or make up.  Which would leave those of us that loved him in the position of trying to remind the world that this wasn't some animal; this was a son, brother, nephew and friend, that was wonderfully human, flaws and all.

We all are.  Now if we could only realize that and treat each other accordingly.

Addendum on 12/1/14: I am re-posting this today, instead of another post I was writing, because this subject seems even more important today, in the wake of the Grand Jury verdict, than it did when I first posted it 3 1/2 months ago.  I truly believe that our historical inability to be perceived as human beings is slowly beginning to tear away at something deep in the fabric of American society, and if we don't stop this dehumanizing of the minority population, we are setting ourselves for a societal failure that we will not be able to handle or contain.

There were ten of us in the room that warm Thursday evening.

All mothers, of various ages and races, from every corner of Los Angeles County: From the middle class suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, to the hip, laid back Westside, to two of us from the working class South Bay.  

Although we were all drawn there by the promise of a few dollars for a couple of hours of our time, answering a few questions for market research, once we introduced ourselves and began to tell our stories, a feeling washed over the room that women like us rarely feel.

We realized that we were surrounded by people that we didn't have to explain ourselves or our children to.  When you have multiple children with ADHD, isolation is the norm, and you get used to it.  With each answer to each prompt, every time another one of us told a story of dealing with multiple doctors and their varying opinions, of school teachers and administrators only too ready and willing to write a child off, of struggling with the unknown, then the search for answers once you found out what you may be dealing with, you could feel the breeze from all of the other heads nodding in agreement.  We all knew all too well what each other was going through.  We had all been there at one time or another.

We had all felt the sense of panic of knowing there was something not quite normal about our children  I would watch my son exhaust himself, and everyone else, racing from one activity to another, never staying with anything for long.  Or if there was nothing else to do, he would just crawl around in endless circles on the floor, completely freaking me out.  I had heard of ADHD, but hadn't really done much research on it when I took him with me to a research study appointment at UCLA.  The research assistant quietly observed him for the length of the appointment, then gently suggested that I bring him to be screened for another study they were doing on a medication for children with ADHD.  I spent the next month or so reading everything I could get my hands on about ADHD, and the writing on the wall could not have been any clearer.  I was prepared to put in work, because this was not going to be easy.

We talked of diagnoses, and the medication merry-go-round.  All of us had gone through a minimum of two medications and multiple doses before hitting on that perfect combination that worked.  Then realizing, for those of us with more than one child with ADHD, that the same magic combo that worked for Child One was highly unlikely to work for Child Two.  There is the ultimate juggling act of keeping up with Doctors, appointments, meds, school-related issues (and believe me, there are many), and the sneaking health issues that come up on the side.  Two of us have children that are perpetually underweight, (inviting scrutiny from the pediatricians) both because they are naturally small people, and because the prescribed medication kills their appetite.

We knew each others stories, and when the facilitator stepped out of the room, the relieved laughter started.  We were finally with other women that weren't judging us because our kids weren't hitting all of the same milestones at the same time as other kids.  And that was okay. We could admit that while we loved our children, we were glad to be away for a little while.  These kids require exhaustive micromanagement, and although this is entirely doable, none of us kid ourselves.  These children are WORK, with a capital W, and it gets tiring. Not that we don't love our children, obviously we do.  We were just realistic about the demands on our lives.

As we were leaving, a few of us talked on the way to the elevator.  It was nice escaping for an hour or so, and making a little extra cash to cover the endless extra expenses associated with child-rearing.  It was also nice to decompress from always having your guard up when talking about your children.  No Judgy McJudgerson mothers here, ready to alternately snark or condescend  at the mere mention of difficulty, or the slightest indication of any small triumph. The mother next to me was happy not to have to say "No" for an hour, and planned to extend her time away to the actual time she said she was going to be home by making a solo trip to the mall.  Not to buy anything, mind you.  Just for the quiet time alone.  We all understood perfectly.

This is the way of the parent of the child that needs a little more parenting than average.  There is always one more: one more teacher to talk to, one more form to fill out, one more evaluation to complete, one more medication to convince them to try.  It is a train in constant forward motion, often speeding, that just might change directions on a dime, frequently.  And as a parent, it's all you can do to try to keep the train on a set of tracks, any tracks, long enough to complete a trip.  All the while keeping your own train on track, just barely.

My son, my daughter and I all have some level of ADHD.  My daughter is the only person on any type of medication for it, as my son refuses to even consider it anymore, and I figured out how to deal with the worse parts of it before I knew what it was.  Not to say that any of us deals with it all particularly well, but we deal.  I finally admitted to myself once my daughter started elementary school that anything not written down was lost, and Google Calendar was a Godsend for a person who consistently forgot about appointments.  A friend taught me years ago how to create simple budgets that tracked where my money was going, and once combined with budget tools provided by my bank, I finally got control of my finances.  I am still broke all the time, but at least now I know where it all went.

My son has good intentions, but is struggling.  Even if he remembers daily tasks (going to class), details (assignments and due dates) escape him, and he refuses to write anything down. I understand that he wants to live without what he sees are crutches, but my role in this is to make sure that he realizes that real men DO get help when they need it, and there is no harm in admitting that you can't do everything by yourself.   He is also dealing with an LD related co-morbidity called Auditory Processing Disorder.  Meaning that what people say, and what he hears are often two entirely different things.  Oh the misunderstandings that arise from not hearing EXACTLY what was said!  Just learning to double-check verbal instructions and directions, and just follow normal conversations, has been a hurdle that took years to overcome.

My daughter is an extremely intelligent ball of energy, and having learned my lesson with my son, I make an effort to stay on top of everything going on at school.  Academically, there are no issues, but her occasional emotional outbursts, and out of left field health issues, keep me glued to my phone during the day, as I never know when THAT phone call will come, and she will need to be picked up immediately.  I find that teaching her to manage sudden change (and her emotions regarding those changes) is almost a full-time job.  Anyone that has ever worked with a highly strung child will agree that having to be on your toes at all times gives you the balance of a ballerina after several years of managing these children's fragile emotions.

But we manage.  All of us.  The women in that room, and parents around the world that have children that for some reason or another, require just a bit more work that the usual amount.  Especially when we ourselves take additional self management just to get through the day. We appreciate the little accomplishments because of the almost herculean effort it took to get to that point.  We finally get a little something we can celebrate.

And for a brief hour in a conference room in West Los Angeles, we got a moment to let go of all of the work, all of the hassle, and all of the judgement, and just breathe.

To say that Mother's Day means different things to different people is likely the understatement of the century.

For a lot of women, Mother's Day is the day when their successes and value as a Mother is applauded by all far and near.  If they have adult children, they call home or come visit for some combination of food, flowers, conversation, and possibly a walk or a movie.  Those with younger children may be treated to all manner of homemade gift by teachers that love any excuse to break out the arts and crafts.  This is all wonderful, obviously, but there is another group of mothers who we don't readily acknowledge for whom Mother's Day looms as a painful reminder of exactly how much they don't fit the norm.

This post is for them.

For the mothers whose children yell at inappropriate times, garnering them hard side-eye and loud whispers from everyone around them;

For the mothers who have children with behavior issues are that aren't as easily handled as the people giving you condescending, contradictory advice that you have already heard 50 times, tried, and already know that it either won't work, or will only work for a few minutes;

For the mothers who did everything they knew how to do: made sure their children went to school, took them to church, loved them, disciplined them, asked them about their day, and REALLY listened when they answered, and the child still made one or more truly bad decisions and is now incarcerated or dead;

For all of the mothers whose inner demons drove them to unspeakable pain, pain that translated into absent, neglectful or abusive parenting, and now their children are no longer with them;

For the mothers whose children have given up on life, despite their best efforts to encourage them;

For the mothers who children exist in that grey area where they doing neither poorly nor well: in reality, they aren't doing much of anything;

For the mothers who were imperfect, whose children are struggling, who now face down stares, whispers and judgment from family and friends;

For mothers for whom Mother's Day is a reminder of their frayed relationships with their own mothers:

I am one of you.  I understand, and I salute you.  I know the road you walk is not an easy one because I am currently on that path.  We are those who will never really know what kind of parent we were because are children are not on the same path other children are.  We get the occasional pat on the head or hand as assurance that we have not totally screwed up, but internally we can't help but look around us, wondering what our lives would be like if we were "normal" mothers.

We will do all of the right things on Sunday.  Some of will go to church, smile with everyone else, and accept the greetings of the day.  Someday, we hope, everything will be alright, or normal at least.  Until then, at least on the inside, Mother's Day is just another day.

Society taught me from an early age that I was ugly.

Even from my birth in 1971, I did not fit the popular standard of what was considered "beautiful", so I adapted to life as the type of person that I was perceived to be.  Second best.    When hanging out with any group of people, I was generally the one no one really spoke to anymore than they absolutely had to, which forced me to learn how to be funny as quickly as possible so that whatever brief conversation I got to have with someone would at least be a memorable one.  Being considered unattractive and being an introvert (I sometimes wonder if the former fed the latter), I became the fly on the wall of every social situation, my lack of interaction with others enabling me to become a seasoned observer of human behavior.

I used to be mystified by certain people's reaction to me.  Saying hello to people, and having them look around to make sure no one is watching before they return the greeting is a very instructive lesson in how human nature works.  No one wants to be seen acknowledging someone thought to be ugly.   Unless of course they are reminding you of this fact, loudly and with a great deal of derision.

I wish I could say that my experiences were unique.  Perusing the website Jezebel last week, I came across a posting from a young woman who was ruthlessly catcalled by men for no other reason than they did NOT find her attractive: 
http://groupthink.jezebel.com/ugly-c-nt-my-experience-of-street-harassment-1561588177/all    We've reached a point in society where polite behavior is a rare commodity.  Especially as it pertains to the old saying that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything.  This rule seemingly does not pertain to anyone society sees as unacceptable in any way.  Especially women.  Women are then subject from to anything from being ignored during routine social interactions to the loud, brutal assessments hurled at the author of the piece above.

But where does all of this come from?

My friend Susan sums it all up nicely: "We're conditioned to accept the societal definitions of beauty, which seem to grow narrower every year. Women are conditioned from the cradle. It keeps us in line and pits us against one another. If we weren't so busy worrying about what we looked like, imagine what we'd accomplish."

As it stands, the societal definition of beauty runs to the Scandinavian look: tall and slim, with pale skin, hair and eyes, is thought to be the absolute ideal.  The further you move away from that definition of beauty, the less worthy you are of consideration.  The less worthy you are of consideration, the more certain people feel that they are quite justified in being critical about any and every aspect of your personal appearance, or barring that, simply being dismissive of you altogether.  And while this is true across the board, women get the brunt of the harshest forms of this scrutiny.

The messages I have received from the media over the last couple of decades (or since I have been conscious enough to realize that there are subtle messages underlying a great deal of what we see), is that the main purpose of a woman's life is for men between the ages of 18-49 to find her attractive enough to have sex with.  In order to meet this goal, you must be as close as possible to the description outlined above, and if you are not, it is strongly encouraged that you spend as much time, money and effort as humanly possible in dogged pursuit of the ideal.  To be unable to spend your life chasing what for most amounts to an almost impossible ideal, due to disability, might garner you a pass from men who see the ideal as their due in life, if not their own goal to attain.  If you are unwilling to devote your life to becoming pleasing to the eye of random passerby on the street due to disinterest, or the fact that less than 5% of the population possess the ideal appearance naturally, and to spend too much time wishing to be something you are not is inherently mentally unhealthy, be prepared to be shown no mercy.

You will be assailed from all sides by well meaning, if misguided, attempts to steer you back on to the correct path of low-grade self hatred. It is the economic engine on which the beauty industry thrives.  Some will try cajoling, others will insult and demean you, but the larger goal is to let you know, by all means necessary that as you are, you are not acceptable to the male gaze. And if you dare to carry yourself with any kind of confidence (Those of us who have decided to be happy with our selves whether people find us attractive or not), despite being considered unattractive, many of the supremely insecure, who rely on others for validation, will make it their mission in life to remind you that, by popular estimation, you are not enough.  How dare you be happy with yourself, as is!  Don't you know that you are supposed to be striving to conform to what random strangers feel you should be so said random strangers won't have to tell you that you are still not acceptable to them?

If you are still unattractive, unwilling to attempt conformity, and perhaps content with yourself, you will be ignored, with an extra helping of contempt and scorn.  The comments section of the Jezebel piece will bear this out.  There are too many women who have been overlooked or ignored out right for no other reason than they were thought to be ugly.  To be thought of as ugly, but not sufficiently humble, will earn you large doses of what I like to call aggressive ignoring.  This is when someone attempts to interact in a normal way, and realizing that a horrified reaction is an overreaction, the person they attempted to interact with openly ignores them.  I can't tell you how many times, I've tried to participate in a normal discussion (after weighing my words carefully to make sure that my contribution was on topic and appropriate), only to be roundly ignored as if I weren't part of the group.  As I look around me, I see other women subject to this same treatment, and I shudder to think what internal processes they must go through just to get through the day.  For some, it must feel like the treatment they received in childhood never ended.

My friend Lisa put it this way: "When you're bullied as a child, you know who's bullying you and why. You learn how the system works because you have to in order to survive. I think it's the same for any children who are victimized by anyone for any reason, their brains develop a very sophisticated level of insight into the situation and they become very wise about it at an early age. Part of the damage that causes is that you never truly break out of that schema for the rest of your life, even though the bullying has stopped and everyone has grown up, you still read the people around you as though they're getting ready to bully you for the same childish reasons. And you don't even know you're doing that most of the time."

It's a strange road we walk, those thought of as ugly and/or unattractive.  It's a road made stranger by the fact that we live in a world where singling us out for random verbal and/or psychological abuse is thought of as perfectly acceptable as we are not considered real people, if we are in fact considered at all.  Pretty people will tell you that theirs is no easy walk through life either, what with the constant belief by those in the middle of the spectrum (neither conforming to the ideal nor considered ugly),that they are coasting through life on their looks, and are unlikely to have either any real talent or intelligence.  Women feel like they can't win no matter where they are on the spectrum.  This subject was covered in depth, and quite well in 1990 by Naomi Wolf in her book "The Beauty Myth".  The sad thing  about this is that, 24 years after the publication of Wolf's book, not only has very little changed, the treatment of women, based solely on their perceived attractiveness to a specific demographic of men, has actually gotten worse.  To paraphrase Wolf's opening, as women make larger social and political strides, the definition of the ideal woman becomes narrower, and those who do not conform are now met with open hostility by those who feel threatened by changes in the world, and feel the need to maintain the status quo the only way they know how.  Crush anybody you feel is beneath you by any means necessary.  These people don't realize that not everybody is entitled to their opinion, the person you are trying to embarrass has been hearing some version of the same thing all their life, and it costs you absolutely nothing to be polite to someone that is being polite to you.

I am an idealist.  In an ideal world, what is on the inside really would count, and people would treat you accordingly.  If only.....

When I write the names of my children and myself, I write three different last names.

Maybe you've heard of me.

I am the never married, inner city single parent.  The image that is painted of me  by the world at large is one of wanton sexual promiscuity, complete irresponsibility and damaged children.  Statistically speaking, we live in an impoverished area, we live at or near the poverty level because I don't have enough of an education to have a job making much more than minimum wage, and since mine is the only income, it is woefully inadequate.  My children will suffer from not having both parents in the home, all the studies say, and I am to blame for it all.

That's what conservative media sells their constituency, anyway.  For some people that's very true.  For SOME people.  For most of the rest of us, the truth is far more complicated and nuanced.  If you are willing to listen, there is a story there, just not the one you think it is.

Mine is a story of an insecure girl who sought to soothe her insecurity in the worst possible way, relationships with men thought to be the objects of other women's attentions.  If you were to ask me what I was thinking, I would probably tell you that I thought that I could be the one to make the relationships "work" where other women had failed previously.  The fact that I believed this not once, but twice, tells you that I was either a hopeless romantic, an incurable optimist, incredibly foolish or a rotating combination of all three.  All I can say is that between romance novels and romantic comedies, there was a long stretch in my life where I had particularly unrealistic notions about relationships, and people's willingness and ability to "change" given the right circumstances.  Mercifully, I figured it out at the two child mark, but some women take far longer, and unfortunately, are the ones who turn bitter after the reality that you can't change people sets in.

But as much as I admit to making two extremely poor choices (based on looks alone) in relationships, eleven years apart, I do not regret having my children.  That's not to say that this has been an easy road.  I realized on the day of my son's birth that the majority of the responsibility for child raising was going to be on me, and I made a promise to God and myself that I was going to step up to the best of my ability.  I was one month shy of my 21st birthday with only a high school education, but I had a pleasant enough personality, a good professional demeanor, gave great "phone", and had a history of front of house type jobs (Which I didn't realize at the time meant I had kind of a pretty face. I've always thought I was funny looking.   Live and learn.), which I was able to translate into a series of receptionist jobs.  I say series because initially the only work I could get was through temp agencies, which was far from steady work (I can't begin to tell you the number of times we were evicted because I was out of work just long enough to get behind in the rent.), but it kept us afloat for 10 years.  During that time I worked my way up from Receptionist to Executive Secretary by learning on the job any skill I didn't already have.  The upshot to that, however, was that my son had a lot of issues both at school, and with his daycare, and when you are a contract employee, if you don't go to work, you don't get paid.  Which is why I missed my son's learning disabilities by so far a margin that by the time anyone was halfway willing to do anything about it, he had already given up on school.

By the time my daughter came along, I was in both a better, and a worse, spot.  I had completed trade school to learn how to repair computers, thereby turning a longtime hobby into a profession.  But my relationship with her father was already mostly over, and by the time she was six months old, we were living on my sister's living room floor.  It was a long slow crawl to the lower middle class for us.  The first step was an entry level civil service job for me at the ripe old age of 32.  The next step was a small 2 bedroom apartment in a working class suburb of the South Bay.  What was supposed to happen was for us to build from there.  But...

Our little family fits the description while blowing it out of the water.  Yes, we live paycheck to paycheck.  I wanted to live in a safe-ish neighborhood, especially because of my son, and I wanted to be somewhere I could let my daughter play outside, without fear or worry.  Mercifully, where I live is about average for the region, price-wise.  I drive an eight year old used car, but there is still a car note, and insurance.  I tried mightily to live without a car on several occasions, and so long as I had no life outside work or church, living without a car was doable.  The minute I wanted to do anything at night, or in any of the outlying suburbs at odd hours, there was an issue. My son did drop out of high school, and is struggling because of it, but so are many other young men and women with untreated ADHD and other learning disabilities.  The ADHD, by the way, is hereditary.  I have it, as does my daughter.  If you can tell from the title of this blog, there are three people in this house that have fairly serious social, emotional, concentration and organization issues.

Nobody knows how or why, but somehow, we make it work.  Despite what you may have heard about young Black males without a high school education, my son has not only NOT become a criminal, he has never been in any major trouble.  My daughter is an academic superstar, with the social behaviors exhibited by natural introverts, preferring to be alone with electronics or with a good book as often as with other people.  Whatever they end up believing later on in life, I gave them a Christian foundation so that they would both have some spiritual grounding, as well as an extended church family.  I have always encouraged communication between the fathers and the children.  Note:  I said between the FATHERS and the CHILDREN.  I have also made it very clear that the state of these relationships are the responsibility of the father, as I would neither force these relationships, nor discourage them.  I would only intervene if there were absolutely no other way to resolve an issue.  My son has chosen to have limited contact with his father; my daughter's relationship with her father is, much like the Facebook status,  "complicated" (see earlier statement about only intervening if I had to).

You won't hear about my little family on the news of course.  We are the OK square pegs that simply do not fit in the dysfunctional round holes that society would have you believe we should be in.  We are far from perfect, obviously.  I get frustrated with all the new parenting methods and I yell.  My restless, impatient son is drifting between goals, and trying to figure out what to do with himself.  My daughter is in the throws of an ADHD enhanced pre-teen life, and it's attached emotionalism.  Quite normal, actually.

No one is suffering from a lack of anything.  Sometimes we run out of things, or have to wait until payday.  We are three people getting through life, day by day.  Nothing remarkable or extraordinary.  Which doesn't sell newspapers or political agendas.

Which is why you've never heard of me.  Or any of the rest of us.  And you never will.

It happened in the middle of a very long day, a little over 20 years ago.

I was 19, all ideals and bluster and lofty opinion.  She was also 19, with an infant son, living at home, attending school and looking for work.  We had spent the better part of the day on the job search, and had observed some other girls with their children while we were out applying for jobs at a nearby mall.  They were hard not to notice, as they weren't wearing much, their children seemed oddly overdressed, and their conversations could be heard from 20 feet away.  We said little at the time, just observed them quickly and looked away, so as not to be noticed, noticing them.  Back at her house later that afternoon, the discussion turned to the girls at the mall, and others like them.

I remember launching into a tirade about how I wouldn't have allowed myself to be caught having a child with a man who wasn't going to be around, and how I would never stoop to being on welfare, and how I would conduct myself in public if my child were acting out, and all of the kinds of things you say when you are 19, have no children and in all honesty, really do think you know everything.

I remember her sitting quietly through my ranting, then fixing me with a steady look.  


"Well that's good for you, but everybody ain't you."

I stopped talking (rare for me), and had to think about that.  What made me think that I knew so much that what was good for me had to be good for everybody?  Did I really have all the answers, or was I trying to separate myself from a situation I could have easily been in?  Or was there something deeper at play?

I am now 23 years and two children removed from that warm Fall day.  Over the years, I have had to remind myself of that statement from time to time, as I found myself getting all judgy about some person or situation.  I was reminded of this most recently when a controversy erupted over a Facebook photo posted by a mother of three who is also a fitness trainer.  It is a photo of the woman with her three children, all one year apart, in a revealing workout outfit, with a caption above her hear which reads "What's your excuse?"   According to the woman in the photo, it was meant to be motivational.  The picture didn't bother me, but the caption stood out, as it was obviously meant to.  At the time, I couldn't figure out what bothered me so much about the statement.  A week or so later, it finally occurred to me.

"Everybody ain't you."

There is nothing positive or motivational about suggesting that someone is making excuses.  It is an accusatory phrase that we use with children when chores or homework isn't done, or they have gotten into trouble they can't possibly explain.  We probably shouldn't even use it then.  But looking at the comments section of many news stories about the post, some people see it as motivating people either to prove her wrong, or to do whatever they need to do to look like her.  Then again, the comments section of newspaper articles can be a sycophantic minefield of their own, especially when issues specific to women and body image are covered, but I digress...

As a society, we have developed a deep need to seek fault in others.  If we can find a reason to look down on someone else, then maybe our faults aren't so bad.  I mean you might be a pathological liar, cheater, terrible with money, etc, but at least you are not "______". (fill in the blank) Then, if we can hide our snarky criticism underneath a cloud of "concern" for the other person, we can even manage to make ourselves feel slightly better about the fact that we have just passed unfair judgement on someone.  Telling someone something "for their own good", usually never is, and is only stated to make the teller feel better about themselves for having said it.  And thanks to the anonymity of the internet, being nasty and judgmental is easier, and more readily spread across a wider spectrum of forums.

What would our world be like if we shifted our focus from ourselves to others?  If instead of holding ourselves up as examples of what others should aspire to, we actually bothered to speak with (and actually LISTEN to!)  them to understand and address their challenges.  If rather than expecting people to get to where we are, and quickly, we would meet them where they are, then bring them up to where they would like to be, at THEIR pace, not ours.  If we could move, as Robert Fulghum once stated from "Look at ME" to "I am seeing YOU".


What if instead of judging people using ourselves as a yardstick, we actually bothered to give them the benefit of the doubt that there might be more to their story than we know?  What if we actually thought of people as people, not examples of what could possibly be wrong about ourselves?  What if we saw people as individuals, rather than manifestations of our own insecurities?  Would we be less judgmental then?

What if.....

What if.....