I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but at some point I transitioned from being a new teacher to an experienced teacher. Maybe it was when I passed the infamous 5 year mark and proved to myself that I was, indeed, cut out for this. Or maybe it was when I worked with my first student teacher and realized that I was good enough to be supporting the next generation of educators. Whenever it was, I feel confident in saying that I have never needed a winter break quite like I do at this moment.
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Whenever J and I talk about our son's romantic future, we say things like "When you bring someone home, I hope he or she treats you well," or "You'd better grow out of that before you find a boyfriend or girlfriend!" We make a conscious effort to make sure that our child is growing up with fewer barriers to his own gender and sexual identity than either of his cis, heterosexual parents ever had to contend with. Excuse me while I go pat myself on the back for being so woke. It's a good start, to be sure, but the month of June isn't only about celebrating LGBTQIA+ pride. Today is also Juneteenth, the day that honors when the last slaves in Texas finally learned about their freedom two and a half years after Emancipation. Juneteenth is simultaneously a celebration of freedom for Black Americans and a stark reminder of how much work our country yet has to do to honor the freedom they were granted 155 years ago. So here I am in my cozy little duplex in my cute little suburb touching the edge of the most segregated city in America, cradling my blond haired, blue eyed baby and wondering: how do I make sure he is not just kind and open-minded, but a passionate defender of social equity? How do I raise an anti-racist? I want to be clear about what this post is and what it isn't. This is a look into the thoughts of a new mom who herself was raised in a white* family in an almost-exclusively white town. This is a reflection on where I am in my own learning, how I got here, and how much further I have yet to go. This is not a declaration of how to be, and certainly not an essay on how to raise a child. This is not proof to my black friends that I "get it" or to my white friends that I have attained some semblance of ally self-actualization. This is yet the beginning of a long journey and I wouldn't dare hold myself to the level of people who have been living and doing this work longer than I've even known it's existed. *A quick note on my whiteness: There is a debate about whether or not Jews, especially those of Eastern European (Ashkenazi) decent, are indeed white. For me personally, I consider myself white because I have benefited from all the privileges of whiteness my entire life. I have never been treated differently because of the color of my skin and I believe it would be an affront to all BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) if I were to deny that white privilege. For some reason, I did not know Juneteenth existed until my second year in New York when I saw the roadblocks for the Juneteenth parade in my neighborhood. I didn't know about it the first year because my apartment was at the intersection of an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, Chinatown, and a large Hispanic area. Much like in my small town in Wisconsin, Juneteenth didn't seem to exist in that corner of Brooklyn. But in the largely Black neighborhood filled with Caribbean restaurants where we spent the last five years of J's residency, Juneteenth was one of the biggest celebrations of the year. Even then, I only knew about it because the road was blocked and I had to find another way to drive to the grocery store. It took me even longer after learning that Juneteenth existed to find out what it was about, and still I didn't quite grasp the magnitude of the day. After all, I never learned about it in school, never noticed it among the holidays on my wall calendar, never witnessed it being celebrated. I figured it was someone else's holiday, like Cinco de Mayo or Mardi Gras. That's some serious white privilege right there. Meanwhile, the entire time I sat comfortably in my white, Jewish, liberal, upper-middle-class bubble, black people were being murdered before our eyes. Trayvon Martin. Slowly, slowly, the pieces started coming together to form a shaky mental image of this thing called systemic racism and its sibling, white privilege. For a while I watched the news but didn't see, I heard the reports but didn't listen. I thought it was enough to be a good person with good intentions, treat everybody with respect and call it a day. Other people were racist, not me. After all, I'm a Good Person™.
It took moving to a big city, living in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, going to graduate school, listening to more voices of BIPOC, and witnessing the election of a viciously racist, bigoted president for me to even begin to understand systemic racism and the very real toll it has been having on millions of people in this country for hundreds of years. It's shameful that it took so much to get me where I currently am but I am extremely thankful that I got as far as I did before my child was born. Had he been born five years ago I probably would not have asked the question that every white parent should be asking themselves today: "How can I make sure my child isn't just not racist, but anti-racist?" Here is what I think I know: 1. I need to make sure he sees the faces and hears the voices of BIPOC in our home through books, movies, music, and other media. 2. I need to actively seek spaces where he can play and learn with and from BIPOC children. 3. I need to recognize when the "classic" stories, songs, and movies I grew up with reinforce negative stereotypes, then either throw them out entirely or, if they truly are valuable for other reasons, help him think critically about what he sees. 4. I need to model anti-racism though how I speak, listen, act, and give of myself. There is a lot I think I know and plenty more that I have yet to learn, but the one thing I am certain of is this: I will get things wrong, but I can not stop striving to learn and grow. My child's life, and the lives of so many black children, depend on it. You came to us on a Saturday morning, Daddy and Savta* on either side of me throughout it all. When I wasn't pushing all 9 pounds, 2 ounces, and 21 inches of you through my body (a bigger boy than any of us had expected), they passed tissues to one another over my head to dab at their teary eyes. The nurse who guided us all on that morning told us the love she witnessed between me, Daddy, and Savta was one of the most beautiful she'd seen. She was grateful to have helped deliver you into a world of love. But beyond the walls of our home was also a world of chaos with a danger brewing. When you weren't yet two months old our lives started shifting. Daddy came home with news of the hospital's extreme plans should the danger arrive in full force. I wondered if I should return to school like I'd planned. We stopped going to Saba and Savta's. And then Daddy called one day from work and said his coworker was sick, so we made an impossibly hard decision together: I packed us up to stay with your Auntie, Uncle, and two cousins. It has now been over a month since Daddy has held you. Your smiles have gotten bigger, your voice stronger, your eyes brighter, your nighttime sleep longer. You have learned how to calm yourself with your hand. You no longer need a swaddle to sleep. You giggle. Oh, how you giggle! Your cousins show you their love every day. They pat your tummy and sing to you when you cry, they are eager to help with bottles and bath time and dirty diapers. They read you books and watch TV with you and kiss you good night each evening. Your Auntie and Uncle love you and are keeping us safe. They hold you and feed you and talk to you, scooping you up when my arms get tired. More importantly, though, in a world with such an insidious foe they have brought us into their home to keep the bad out. And Daddy - the absolute best thing in your world - is like the knight on guard beyond the castle walls, sacrificing so much to keep us both from harm. When I first held you in my arms three months and one week ago, the strongest feeling in my heart was not love but dedication. For months I had been dedicating myself to you and maintaining a vow to protect you. It took a few weeks after your birth for the infatuation to develop, but I have been utterly devoted to you for a year now. I always knew this devotion would mean sleeping less and doing laundry more, but I never would have imagined it would mean leaving Daddy and our home because of an invisible enemy marching through our world. I wish I knew when Daddy will be able to hold you again, to kiss your round, rosy cheeks and feel your hand grasp his finger. I yearn for that day like I yearned for your birth, for on that day our family will be whole again. *Savta - Hebrew for "Grandmother" and my mother's moniker with her grandchildren.
My belly ripples with the life brewing beneath it, the life that is rolling and squirming and itching to get out. I'm 36 weeks and 4 days along in this journey and although my pregnancy app says I have 3 weeks and 4 days to go (and says that today baby's big toe is the size of an M&M), my OB is fairly well convinced that The Gremlin will want to make its debut before then. Thankfully I haven't yet reached the point where I am utterly done with being pregnant, but I can't deny my eagerness to meet this bundle of cells turned bundle of joy, even if the ultrasound photo makes us wonder if we're actually going to have a baby or a Lizard Potato Man. At least it's a cute Lizard Potato Man! (And let's be honest...don't all newborns kind of look like Lizard Potato Men?) Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year is a time for many things: reflection, apologies, personal accountability, renewal, celebration of the sweetest things life has to offer. For me, it's also about lots of time spent in the synagogue, variously praying and daydreaming. It's about dinners and lunches with family and friends over two days (well, three), with round challah and pomegranate seeds and apples and honey and, if you're lucky to have a mom like mine, at least one brisket. It's about hearing the blasts of the shofar, that ancient instrument with the power to shake both the stained glass windows of the shul and the forgotten and neglected strands of your soul. It is that annua alarm clock urging us to wake up, take stock, and present the best version of ourselves to the highest court for judgement. Or maybe just to the people alongside you in the pew. Whatever makes it meaningful for you. This weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to return to for a grand 39 hours to celebrate a momentous Bat Mitzvah and spend a beautiful Shabbat with friends. Despite Brooklyn's penchant for rapid change, it seemed just as I had left it two months ago, although with a new tenant in our old apartment (I can't believe they didn't renovate the unit) and a new cafe around the corner. But the garbage on the streets, the sirens, and New Yorkers' astonishing ability to love the place anyway were the same as always. It's hard to believe I called it home for six years.
"Why does it feel like it's taking us so long to get settled?" J asked on Saturday. "We moved in here three weeks ago!"
I looked around the disheveled apartment and at the boxes strewn in haphazard groups across the living and dining rooms - office stuff, photos and artwork, empty boxes for recycling, the miscellaneous stuff that never has a place to go. Even with the major pieces of furniture in place and so much already unpacked it still didn't seem anywhere near settled. But I realized that while we had technically moved in on July 1st, the moving company didn't deliver our things until July 16th. So even though it had been three weeks since the move, what we were looking at was a mere five days of unpacking. All things considered, we had made plenty of progress. The next night J put together his brand new charcoal grill while I sorted through the remaining mess in the main rooms and put up a few pictures. Bit by bit, the knick-knacks and binder clips and books found their new homes in drawers and baskets and shelves; the hallway came alive with pictures of our family; and Clara continued in her search to find the best places to curl up. By the time we climbed into our new bed with the new sheets and the new-to-us furniture we found used online, we finally, finally, felt at home. Can you put a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order on a blog? When is it time to pull the plug?
(And as I write this, J is looking over my shoulder and whining a plaintive "Nooooo...but I love your blog!" My biggest cheerleader, as ever.) I'm not sure any of my arguments for not writing would hold up under even the most mild scrutiny - I've been busy, we moved, I've been tired. Yes, they're all true, but I've written under similar circumstances in the past. Honestly? I think the biggest reason I haven't written is that in the months leading up to our move from New York to Wisconsin, I felt like writing would solidify the melancholy I tried hard to keep under wraps. For as ecstatic as I was in anticipation of our move back home, the reality of saying goodbye to our friends, my students, my colleagues, our communities was a little too much to write about. Writing it, publishing it, would have made it all too real. And so I simply avoided it. And then, over the last few weeks in particular, all the bloggable events rushed together in quick succession: the last day of school, watching our apartment swiftly emptied by three extremely industrious movers, our final goodbyes over a thoroughly Brooklyn Shabbat, our 888-mile drive with a very unhappy cat in tow, my week spent at an invigorating string teacher's professional development workshop. And of course, our pregnancy announcement! My husband is a hero. There's no doubt about it. I mean, how else do you describe someone who not only doesn't get furious at you when you manage to drop your e-reader in the tub AND lose a credit card in the same weekend, but actually gives you the last piece of his favorite candy just because he loves you?
Yeah, I'm married to a saint. The fact that he's a surgeon (he'll debate me and say he's still just a "surgical resident," but I don't care, he's a surgeon) just adds to his sainthood. You know, that whole saving lives thing. What he does every single day, whether he's actively saving lives or simply caring for ill patients, is no small feat. But that's not actually what I'd like to talk about here. Yes, he does amazing work and he's an unbelievably patient and loving husband, but he is also showing me that there is hope for a brighter future in the often dismal world of surgical education. I went through the regular weekday morning motions: leaving my apartment a few minutes later than planned, moving my Wisconsin feet at a New York pace, trying to catch the walk light at the big intersection, descending into my subway stop through a grimy staircase where the faint scent of urine lingers permanently.
I swipe my card and move through the turnstile in a single, fluid motion, practiced daily these past six years. I head toward my preferred seat on one of the few wooden benches along the platform, the seat that lies at the perfect spot so that when the train arrives I can walk straight forward without moving so much as an inch to either side and stand directly to the left of the train's open door. From this spot, I can enter the train right away and, hopefully, get a seat for my commute. Today, though, my seat is taken by a man whose fetor announced his presence many yards away. He lies sleeping across the bench, curled up into as little space as a tall man could possibly occupy. His tattered clothing as well as his hair hangs from him in a disheveled mess; he seems a man thick with dirt but thin with wear. Like the rest of the commuters on the platform, I do my best to ignore him, as if by not bringing attention to him I am giving him some modicum of privacy. It's gracious, really. I stand nearby, waiting for my train, and others walk by with eyes downcast or straight ahead in measured stride. Unaffected. But one little girl stops. |
AuthorNashira is a music teacher and proud Small-Town Jew who, after surthriving six years in Brooklyn for her husband's surgical residency, is finally back in Wisconsin where she belongs! At least until the end of the two-year surgical fellowship, that is. It's a wild ride, and she's ready to tell you all about it! Archives
September 2019
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