Prejudice

In my youth I was a card carrying member of the SDS, NOW, and any other left wing radical organization devoted to eliminating sexism, racism, and Richard Nixon from office, not to mention ending the war in VietNam. I prided myself on my advanced views, my advocacy for the rights of the downtrodden, my vehement protest of unjust war and unfair advantage.

I prided myself on my feminist viewpoint and was very vocal in my defense of women's rights and the elimination of male supremacy in the world. I was eager for women's freedom to choose not only reproductively but in every other aspect of life. I was convinced that most problems in the world were the product of twisted male thinking. I supported revolution, believed that the world could be righted by the politics of dissent.

The civil rights movement, with it's emphasis on non violent confrontation and the use of the legal system to advance the rights of blacks, was a model of how progress could be made towards equality for all people. Martin Luther King was a hero to me. I grew up in a city suburb that was virtually lily white. I did not know any black people in my childhood, I'm not even sure I knew there were people of other races. So by the time I went to college and established my bon fides as a radical intellectual I was convinced that I had escaped the taint of racism, did not believe that there was a racist bone in my body. I was to find out differently before too long.

Towards the end of my sophomore year of college, 1971, I attended a showing of art in the gallery at our school that was done by black artists. There was a reception going on in the gallery and many black people were in attendance. This was notable since the city I went to college in was 80% Catholic and 98% White. We didn't often go places in that town where we were outnumbered by people of color or Protestants. I was standing with a friend smoking a cigarette as I looked over the crowd that was milling around. This was when it was more politically correct to smoke than not to, or at least considered chic by most of my peers. My friend asked me for a drag off my cigarette, a common request since we were always broke and cigarettes were a luxury we couldn't always afford. Many times we had shared cigarettes. As I handed it to her I said in a rather loud voice, "fine, take a drag, but don't nigger lip it." As the words fell out of my mouth a sudden hush came over the room, I learned what it means to be so quiet you can hear a pin drop. My mortification was absolute. I had committed a sin that in my own mind was so huge that I fell from grace instantly. I literally ran from the building in tears. I have not ever known such shame, before or since.

What I learned that day is that oftentimes the enemy lies within us. The sins of the father are indeed passed on. My own misguided sense of pride and ego trumped my desire for goodnesss. I deserved the shame I felt that day. It snapped me back from my self righteousness. To this day I feel the shame of that sin on my soul. If I had been more courageous I would have stood up and apologized for my own ignorance. I don't think I deserved forgiveness but I did need to acknowledge my egregious breach. I am an optimist in my belief that we all share in goodness, that day I learned that we also all share in sin. We are all part of the same body, each of us dependent on the rest, we all bleed when one of us is cut - whether in the Sudan, Afghanistan, or the ghetto of any urban city here in the U.S. we all are part of the problem and must be part of the solution. You don't get a pass on being in the world.

Bread

I take a large bowl out of the cupboard, a bag of flour off the shelf, some salt, a little sugar, some oil, yeast. I turn the tap to it's warmest setting and let the water flow until it is hot to the touch. I begin to mix. Some yeast, the water, a little sugar. I wait and watch as the yeast begins to move and mix and grow. Into the flour and oil and salt it goes, making a thick, soupy mass of goop. I add more flour and then more still until the goop becomes a glistening ball of dough, slightly elastic to the touch, warm and smelling yeasty. Into another bowl it goes, slick with oil top and bottom, to sit and grow undisturbed, covered by a clean towel to keep the drafts away and the warmth in. When I look again it has grown anew, the top blistered with bubbles of yeast, it begs to be punched down and divided into loaves. I knead it and shape it and form it into loaves the size of the bread pans. I lay each loaf in it's own pan, making sure that the ends are supported by the ends of the pan, I cover it and wait again. In a while, I turn on the oven and the kitchen grows warm with the heat. When the oven is warm enough, the loaves raised enough, the time long enough, I place the pans on the oven rack and close the oven door. Soon, the smell of fresh bread makes it's way through the house. When it is time I open the oven door and remove the lovely bread. It is hollow to my tap, the crust brown and ready for a brush of butter across it's expanse. It falls effortlessly from the pan when I turn it over and I place the loaves on a rack to cool. Before they are ready to be wrapped someone takes a knife from the drawer and cuts off one end, butters the slice, a little jelly, and before I know it one loaf is half gone as my family comes in and samples the fresh bread. Before the week is over the bread will be toasted for breakfast, sliced and grilled with cheese, a sandwich for roast beef and lettuce with cheese, a bedtime snack. It will barely last long enough for Sunday dinner when some will be broiled with tomato and mozzarella cheese, fresh herbs and olive oil drizzled over it, and served with the pasta.

When I was young we would often visit my father's aunts. He had seven of them, all sisters of his mother, who had died when he was 2. So the Aunts were his surrogate mom's, a veritable army of love and solicitous adoration. My Aunt Fanny would cut paper dolls from newspaper in long strings that always amazed us. How did they stay together? My Aunt Vicki would always be ready to make you a hamburger, no matter the time of day or the day of the week. Her house always smelled like hamburgers and big fat french fries, cut fresh and piping hot from the oil. My Aunt Adele was the bread baker. My grandfather and his sisters had come here from Lebanon where they lived in a tiny mountain town. In the United States they migrated west and ended up in the mountains of Colorado. Eventually, Adele moved south to New Mexico, where she could still see the mountains surrounding Albuquerque. We would visit there often for she was a favorite aunt. Each Saturday at my Aunt Adele's was baking day. She would awaken early and the ritual began, a large bowl, some yeast, a huge bag of flour, oil, salt and sugar. But this bread was different than my high loaves. She would prepare the dough, let it rise, and then break it into eight or ten small pieces. Each piece would become a round, flat loaf. When it had rested she would take the small piece of dough and begin to pull it and stretch it, as it grew bigger she would toss it across one forearm and then the other until it was a big, flat disc. She would lay it on the hot rack of the oven and in only a couple minutes the bread would be done on one side and turned. She would work at this all morning, piling the loaves on a clean towel on the floor until eventually the stack would be above the counter. Of course if you were lucky enough to be there you could grab a loaf and run off with it, pulling it apart and gulping it down, as you ran. If you were more patient Aunt Adele would take a piece still warm and drench it with butter that would drip off the edges of the bread and down your arms as you ate it. When she had finished her bread making, usually about 100 loaves in a morning, she would package the bread for her three sons and their families and we would deliver it to them. And the ritual was the same.

This ritual, repeated every week or two, month in and month out, for years marks the rhythms of our family as it grows and changes. And yet the ritual of the bread baking remains the same, a little flour, a bowl, some yeast, oil, sugar, salt and hot water. Sometimes some cinnamon, or milk instead of water, but basically no change. The yeast grows, the bread rises, the heat bakes it. There is no culture that does not have a bread recipe handed down from one mother to her daughter, or father to son. In the simple ritual of bread making I reach back in time to other people, and other cultures. All of us continuing the ritual.

Magic

I often wonder if there is magic left in the universe. Is the black, cold, emptiness of it so overwhelming that even the starlight is dimmed by comparison? Each little star a twinkling inferno that eventually blinks out and yet the black, cold emptiness remains. Some would argue that there has never been magic, that the creation of the universe is the result of some great big bang that happened by the coming together of random events which resulted in an explosion of elements and here we are. No mystery, no magic, nothing more than a series of accidental happenings resulting in us.

When I was younger I would wonder what it would be like to find the "man of my dreams" and I would ponder the mystery of this. Would he be tall, dark, and handsome - a brooding presence like the universe, or a cheap romance novel hero. Or would he be brilliant, shy, and bespectacled - like the tiny star peeking out at me from behind the clouds on a dark night, or the Harry Potter type hero. Would we fall magically in love and live happily ever after?

For if you think about love, what is it that causes us to be as helplessly attracted to one another as those atoms hurtling together in that smashing explosion of creation? We fling ourselves towards each other in the certainty that we are each other's destiny perhaps later to discover that the big bang has led to creation but not to wonder. Is it too cynical to think that our desire is less the working of magic than the chemical explosion of our desire to live on? The universe is vast, our dreams and hopes a tiny counterpoint to it's majesty. We awaken, we work, we live, we sleep. "To sleep perchance to dream?"

I Lost You in Lowes OR The Big Box Mystery

I wander the aisles of Lowes looking for an appropriate border for the church bathroom, something with a little spiritual enhancement to it's edges. I am supposed to meet you somewhere after you return from the bathroom but I can't remember if it's tools or lawn and garden, which are separated by at least an acre of concrete so I am reluctant to go to far either way. Instead I stand aimlessly in the middle wondering if I am lost or if you are lost or if I will ever find the border to end all borders in the stock wallpaper section. My dilemmas are plentiful, my answers few. In the big box store the box is divided into about ten zillion sections each about a mile long so it might more appropriately be named "Labyrinth" than "Lowes". That name would most probably be lost on the many shoppers who come through the doors so at least from the Madison Avenue perspective "Lowe's" works.

I begin to edge towards the garden center thinking that surely that is where you would most likely wander to, being that you are feeling the urgency of spring planting, grass seeding, fertilizing, and mowing. But alas, I do not see you. I am dreading the walk back to tools, a section of the big box defined by narrow, long aisles with no cut throughs. Tools is not my favorite part of this place. I am more interested in lighting and paint, and love to look at hardware and faucets, and then there's all those great cabinets in mini kitchens that make you dream of what they would like in your kitchen eliminating the greasy, out of date ones you currently have. There's also the flooring section where you can imagine your bare feet on plush carpet, hard, cold tile or smooth, polished wood.

My reverie is interrupted by a noise. I look up to see one of those big fork lifts backing up towards me with a honking noise. The operator seems annoyed that I have not scurried away from his menacing presence. I am annoyed that he is in the way of my path to tools. I detour and he smugly backs up over my tracks and down the aisle. In tools I am held up by too many men ogling the saws and drills and blocking the very narrow aisle I want to get down. It is frustrating that I cannot see over the merchandise to the next aisle and must walk all the way to the end and around only to find that you are not there. Now I am really irked. What started out as an outing for 3 rolls of border and a couple plants has turned into a walking marathon. If I really wanted to walk it sure wouldn't be inside here. I could be outside walking in the sunshine, looking at the blooming trees of spring and smelling the new grass. Instead I am plodding through aisle after aisle of stuff. And this is stuff that you buy so you can go home and work on projects that you would never have thought of if this stuff wasn't all sitting here crying for you to take it home and hang it up, nail it down, plane it, saw it, paint it, and on and on until you fall into bed groaning. Stuff that overwhelms your desire by the sheer magnitude of it all.

Those old hardware stores, the ones with rickety wooden floors and bad lighting, and shelves bent with merchandise didn't have the seductive call of this big box. You could run in, buy a screw or two, and head out without much thought. You went for what you needed and if you hung around it was to talk to the old guy at the cash register about squirrel proof bird feeders not about how to lay your own hardware floors in a day. I asked one of them one day if those "squirrel proof" bird feeders are guaranteed. He replied, "young lady (aside - I loved that considering that I was only young by comparison, although my best friend says men are always looking for a woman 20 years younger - another story) all those squirrels have to do all day long is sit there and figure out ways to get into those feeders. So you gotta figure that sooner or later they will succeed." Moral: Don't kid yourself, there is no such thing as a squirrel proof bird feeder regardless of the 'money back guarantee' enticement. There aren't many old guys to talk to in the big box, at least not for any length of time because there are too few of them for the square footage of the place. Just the opposite of the old hardware store that usually had about 2 old guys for every customer in the place. I think it's where they all retired to from their jobs at the factories and on the farms. Those guys know a lot about a lot of stuff but they aren't useful in the big box because they, too, are overwhelmed by the size of their surroundings.

I head back to wallpaper, figuring that if you are gone forever I will at least have found the border appropriate for peeing in a church. Turns out they have one that's suitable, bird houses that say peace, love, joy and little candles twined with ivy. Works for me. I feel satisfied that I have accomplished at least one task in this place, even if it has taken 45 minutes of wandering around looking for you and dodging fork lifts. I am ready to check out. My hope now is that you will come to the car when you are done and find me sitting there or that you are there waiting. I get in line behind one of those guys with a long flat bed cart, stacked high with lumber and bags of cement. I comment on the fact that it looks like he will be working hard today. "Jeez", he says, "ever since they opened this place I spend my weekends on projects that take all day and I can't get out of here quickly because my wife wanders off and I spend a half hour looking for her." I nod in sympathy, there is nothing more to say. Walking towards the car I see you waving at me from the parking place. "Where the heck have you been," you say, "I was done 30 minutes ago." I want to scream, I want to cry, I want to go home. Instead I turn to you and say, "don't you think 'I Lost You in Lowes', would make a fine country song."

Writing in Circles

I went to a writer's roundtable last night that is a continuing ed. class at the local college. There were 10 middle aged women there - surprise. Several of them have published and they were all quite interesting. I felt like the plain jane of the group. We took turns introducing each other and the instructor talked about the course. We are using a great book, "The Right To Write," the author's name escapes me right now but she has also written a book, "The Artist's Way," which is quite wonderful so I know I will like this one. Before the night was over we did a free writing exercise, there were 10 words on the board and you could pick one or 10 to write about. I tried "love" but that was awful so I settled on "chocolate" a subject all women can write about with ease.

The instructor then asked us to share what we had written or we could pass. I passed. I don't have writer's block, I have reader's block. I could not read what I had written. It was embarassing but fortunately one other person passed so I didn't feel quite so odd. I am freaked out about sharing my writing with anyone else, at least out loud. Everyone's words sounded so good, and eloquent, and wonderful. I was worried about being criticized but the truth is I was my own worst critic. Paralysis!

I don't know what to do about this exactly. I feel very emotional about it and I think that's odd because I'm not sure why. Right now I think it would be easier to bungee jump and I hate heights. I have never been a wall flower, no friend would describe me as shy or unassuming. I have spoken in public without reservation. So what is this about?

I am looking forward to the class because the women in it are interesting and I think I will learn a lot. The instructor is quite nice and talented too. I just feel like I'm out of my league. Perhaps it is better to continue blogging to my own little circle of friends and acquaintances and not step off this diving board yet. It's certainly safer. I think it might be easier to take my clothes off in public than to expose myself to public scrutiny in this arena - how odd is that. It is interesting to me that my anxiety is so high about this considering that I am a woman who claims never to feel great anxiety about much of anything. I pride myself on being able to negotiate most situations with relative ease. And boom - I feel like a little kid afraid to go to sleep because the witch might be waiting for me. If I were Harry Potter this would be a good time to summon a patronus to ward off the dementors.

Lacking a patronus and not really facing any dementors except of my own making I am left to try and figure out a way to go back to class on Monday and be able to read. We have already been told we will be doing so (you can pass of course) and I'm not sure I can pass again without feeling totally stupider than I already feel. I think I understand now what it must be like for an actor to take to the stage, or an artist to have a show, or a musician to sit on the stage as the lights come up on a recital. You hear actors talk about their own stage fright - now I understand. I am afraid.