What it Means to Matter

The complicated, fragmented bones of summer so far, including BLM, garden news, and my perennial shout-out to sea glass.

We packed up and headed north on a whim. After months of caution and lots of “air-quotes-familial-togetherness,” we decided to spring for an Airbnb near Lake Michigan with Cory’s brother and his family – a worthwhile calculated risk if ever there was one.

Silas was still racing up and down flights of hardwood stairs, trying to call dibs on every bedroom, suspended in disbelief over the luck that landed him there for the next four days. And then his cousins showed up.

Within an hour of arriving, we were all making our way to the pool tucked into the nest of pristine, Magnolia-perfect vacation homes. After all the chaos of making a road-trip happen, (laundry, packing, grocery shopping, behavior expectation summits, and emergency jam-making, because strawberries ripen when they please) I was ready to exhale.

Our crew of five kids, all ages, all shades of Black and Brown, ran ahead of us, giddy. That fleeting sense of relief caught in my throat like a chicken bone. Would the regulars be kind to us? Welcoming? And even if they would, what about five years from now? Would they act differently because all of us parents are white? Would they smile as benignly if we had invited Robert along, as I’d wished we could have?

{Here is where you realize I’m writing about this. Again. Here is where I tell you how hard I tried not to, how for days I racked my brain for something different – something lighter. But it is July 2020. The air is stifling and the news is bleak. On the whole, we’d like a refund. But cut into small enough slivers, it’s languid and juicy. So, that’s what I keep doing. I carve it down, past the muscle. I find what’s flowering in the thicket.}

Those four days were pure delight. Sea glass and bike rides. Long adult conversations on the back porch while the kids belly-laughed.  We splashed and we ate and we stayed up too late. Once my son said, “We are the only people in this town who aren’t white.” Another time a different son said, “Wait, there are two more!”

As far as I can tell, coming home always throws some sparks. There’s the comfort, the familiar, the bed that dips in just the right place, the mugs waiting for their tea, the train whistle lullaby. But there’s also the rebound effect of vacation. Dirty laundry wadded up in a backpack and left for dead. The over-sugared and tired-out. The regret that cousins don’t live closer.

That’s where you’ll find us now, right here in the mess and the wanting. The sunburn has faded, mostly. We are tired again, like clockwork.

Calvin pushes the mower across the street and tends to Mike’s lawn as I warm the heating pad for Ruby and tuck her into the crook of the couch with a slice of cinnamon toast and a library book. Silas sulks and jokes, molds a batch of soap, melts it back down.

We fill steel bottles with ice and water, meet friends at the park and stand with six feet between us. We walk back to the van with aching backs, our eyes electric with hope that maybe we aren’t as alone as we feared.

We rummage through the fridge, wishing for curry but settling for a salad, thrilled that the goat cheese hasn’t turned, grateful we had blanched the beans before it was too late. We putter away the boredom, listen to music, beg for screen time. We water our garden.

Through every bit of it, I watch my kids, my nephews, my neighbors like a hawk. I’m overly sensitive on their behalf, and I know it. I won’t apologize. I have seen what I’ve seen. I know what I know. I believe what I’ve been told.

My gut knows Robert would have made the cul-de-sac uncomfortable with his sagging jeans, his 2XL laugh, his cigarettes and bass. But I have to wonder, how many of them have typed “#blacklivesmatter” on a tiny keyboard over the last few weeks? Or even put a sign in their yard? Do all black lives matter all the time? Or only from a distance? Do they matter enough that you would count yourself lucky to have my son as your neighbor? Enough that you would reach out and wrap your feathers around him when necessary?

~

I was sitting in a waiting room two days ago, passing idle time with a novel as Christian music streamed through a tiny speaker screwed into the wall. A man walked in and said hello to the woman standing nearby, the one with a plaque on her wall that said, “My hero wears a badge.” I had already classified her as warm, engaging, kind. I wished it was 2019 and I could ask her to meet me for tea. I wanted to listen. I desperately wanted to be proven wrong. But their conversation turned from church camp for their kids (Still a go! COVID-waivers signed!) to something entirely different. “Thugs... Dangerous... Have some respect... Black-on-black crime... Where’s the frickin’ outrage for that?”

All the while, the music played,

May His favor be upon you
And a thousand generations
And your family and your children
And their children, and their children

They thought they were safe. They read the room and it told them they were free to say it out loud, in a public space. My children? And their children? I thought. You only think you know my children.  

My face was hot when I climbed into my van, not because they were hateful people but precisely because they weren’t. They aren’t monsters. They don’t see themselves as racists. They’re respected in their communities, probably pleasant to their neighbors. They are people whose life experiences planted them in the simple narrative, as my friend Becca Stanley says. This is why the world is on fire. This is why some of us are burning.

This week I talked with women on the other side of the globe and blinked back tears when they prayed, “God, channel her fury into hope.”

This week the neighbor boy asked me through the screen door if I would warm up the bun for his chicken sandwich. (I laughed and told him no. Just being honest.)

This week I went swimming with a family of five who wore bike shorts, basketball shorts, tank tops, and sports bras. I watched them dip beneath the surface on a sweltering Sunday and emerge wide-eyed and glistening. “Don’t drink the water!” we told the smallest ones, laughing.

This week, my lavender bloomed.

The moment where we look around in horror and decide to care? It hasn’t passed. It’s ongoing. An open loop. But I see the limits of solidarity warp and bend. I know what it’s like when the record keeps skipping, I know, I know, I know.

I also know that this is all I’ve got right now, and if all of it doesn’t matter, none of it does. This is the garden I’ve been given, equal parts devastation and sun-shot skies.

It’s a massive bowl of watermelon waiting on the deck, picked through by sticky fingers, juice dripping down our chins.

It’s watching a young dad stand in the shallow end, “Jump to me! I got you! I won’t let you fall!”

It’s letting those words sink into the crags of our present reality, a salve where the skin has split, a buoy of truth.

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