Son Shining

On June 3, 2018 I was all smiles as he walked across the stage but the next day I woke up back in my feelings about my sonflower graduating from high school and heading to college. We moved to our community 6 years ago and he began his time here as the middle child entering the 7th grade, the middle of middle school. He was a free spirit back then—mohawk and skate boarder. Marching to the beat of his own drum. He signed up for club soccer and realized quickly that our laid back nature about team sports and life was not valued in the culture of our new over structured and intensified suburban reality. He dropped skate boarding and double downed on soccer. He cut his mohawk he had worn for 7 years. He navigated the sea of other middle schoolers and the ocean of high schoolers over the past 6 years. He also has maintained an honor roll GPA despite the constant life stress and family transitions. In his senior year, he decided that he did not want to play club soccer any more. It was like he woke up and remembered he was enough and he had had enough of the team sports hamster wheel. He decided to play soccer and live life for the joy.      

He began spending time playing basketball, working out and hanging out with friends whom we never met. At times, I did not know how to parent him. He was fiercely independent and private and I, a social worker and self professed super mama, just wanted him to "share his feelings". He chose not to go to homecoming or the prom. I learned new notions of a "normal" high school experience. He applied to college without my help. He was accepted in 7 of the 8 colleges he applied to but only 2 of the 8 accepted him into the Civil Engineering & Architecture programs that he applied to. I stewed as I thought about the structural ways Higher Ed pushes black and brown folks out of STEM, knowing he was a strong student. He decided that he would major in communications not Civil Engineering or Architecture, though as a Lego kid he had spent his childhood building and drawing new worlds. I wanted to advocate and fight the systems that stood in his way but to be honest, I felt powerless. I held my tongue and my heart.

 I also didn’t quite get his sharp pivot since he had already taken 3 courses in Engineering but I was learning that supporting and loving him meant following his lead not understanding him. Still I was haunted by all that I imagined he was navigating. He reminded me often to stop constructing his journey as a victim narrative and to trust him when he said that he was good. He soon announced that he and his 2 best friends, whom I met on graduation day, had decided to go college together and would be room mates. And days after dropping him off at college he announces that he is joining a fraternity that is not one I am familiar with from the black experience. Initially I felt like I had failed to help him appreciate our family’s traditions and valuation of black organizations and institutions. But I forgot that what I also value is bodily autonomy and freedom of expression. I forgot that I raised my child to blaze his own trail and to live beyond the boundaries of what the world, including our family’s world, defined for him. I raised him to chart his own course--and so he is. 

I have loved him deeply as I had hoped to be loved by my parents. Which at times, I admit, may have even been smothering. Parenting is hard. Parenting as a black mother of a black son is harder. Parenting as a survivor of emotional, physical and sexual abuse further complicates it all. I generally parent out of worry, fear, anxiety and then somewhere down the line, I remember to just breathe and let them blossom. It does not come naturally to me. Letting go, loosening my grip, is healing. Tightening it risks producing intergenerational harm. I am learning and he is teaching. 

I dropped my son off at college 9 days ago. I have felt every emotion I own since I dropped him off but the 3 most prominent are love, awe, and pride. He is a beautiful and brilliant human and I am so grateful the world gets to experience him. Keep shining brightly, sonshine!

                                                                     Love, Mom!

    

About Last Night

I am hard on myself. I work really hard but sometimes when I am trying to articulate myself while speaking I stumble through my words. I then become anxious worrying that my audience will think I sound incompetent and I begin rushing to finish, which makes me stumble more. This most often happens in academic settings and even after being a professor for most of my adult life, I still find myself almost in tears after I speak in front of academics. This is a carry over from being socialized in a culture that has made me feel like I don't belong despite me working so hard trying to be their kind of smart. 

Recently I have been resisting and in fact rebelling against trying to "sound" smart. I recognize it as Western middle class cultural imperialism and have begun saying fuck you--i may not speak your language but I have shit to say. And right when I think I have recovered from feeling like an imposter and begin feeling myself for the bad ass I am, I stumble in the middle of a speech and I am spiraling downward again. My heart races, I feel small, I speed up, I skip over sections of my paper to get to the end faster. It's like all the self work disappears. Sometimes i catch myself and remember to breathe, sometimes I lie in bed playing it over and over in my head, tossing and turning wondering why I still suck at this thing. But what I will say is this--fuck academia and the damage it does to us (women, first gen, POC, queer, immigrant, people with disabilities, etc) and the way it violently dulls our shine. I'm working to embrace my stumbles and will keep saying what the fuck needs to be said. My people will hear me and those who focus on my articulation and enunciation are not the people I am speaking to in the first place.

 I also must remember that my harsh evaluations of myself are often unfounded. Last night, when all I wanted to do was crawl under a rock after I spoke, an audience member walked up to me and thanked me for including my sexual abuse survival in my remarks. She said she was especially grateful that I named it in an academic setting because said she had been sexually assaulted at Northwestern and had not told anyone yet. She said maybe one day we could write about it together. She re-centered me and I affirmed her. I am not here to sound eloquent. I am here to tell the truth. and so are you.