I Miss My White Supremacist Mom, Part One

 

I know this is off-topic for the Kitten Calendar and I’m in the middle of some much cuter threads, but I need a place to process this without any family readers and without asking any activist friends to any extra emotional labor. So if you’re reading, thanks! I owe you some fun later on?

 

What do I do with a mother-daughter relationship after mom has informed me that “Reparations would be horrifying” because reports about slavery were exaggerated? Fully, teeth-grindingly estranged, is where. I don’t know what my family life will look like past the protective barriers of Zoom, guess I’d better figure it out. Let’s try to see how we got here.

 

There was a day I’ve already written about some, a day last June when I lost all of my plucky good citizenship and determination. Even my badass block-a-cop-car protester courage was eluding me. The city was under police and military siege, there was still a curfew/quarantine combo making me jump out of my skin, and on top of that a big rainstorm knocked the power out in a way that seemed (but wasn’t, of course) permanent.

 

I went to Sweetie’s to use her Wi-fi for work and ended up breaking down crying because she had neither ground beans nor a scoop to make coffee. I was out of everything that kept me a decent, functioning human, like my own power was out. It was a time I could have used a mom who checks in to see if I’m okay. Sweetie has those kind of parents! Though they are conservative Texans, they do tend to ask after her safety whenever the National Guard is in town (So often it seems like!) and never discourage her from protesting or assume she is a fire-setting looter. They just, you know, parent! Even though she is fifty and really tough!

 

I’m 46 and really tough, and my mom spent all of her energy writing facebook comments about how she “thought I believed in peace” and defending white people in general and her own white-supremacist-leaning (Well, I THOUGHT they were just leaning but it seems they are marching with the Proud Boys tomorrow…) sisters. So many comments until I blocked her, having tried every strategy for years to bring her around. Sometimes I just want to say, fuck off, SURJ, I fucking TRIED.

 

I should have fully blocked her (not just facebook blocked her) back in March 2020 when she started circulating anti-mask disinfo! Or maybe way back in 2016 when she told me I was manifesting rape culture by thinking about it too much. Possibly, I should never have tried to be friends or “friends” with my mom at all, but I kept trying. I still kind of want to try, it’s so hard to stop myself. Psychologists tell that story about the mother who set her son on fire, how he still asked for her.

 

After I ruined Thanksgiving 2016, (which, sorry niece and nephews, NEEDED to be ruined) I eventually responded to mom’s efforts to stay close. (That Christmas, though, I must’ve really given the UPS man a sense of futility when I took mom’s yearly wreath right down to the curb.) Mom’s love language for me is jewelry. If a bracelet broke, I sent her the beads for her jewelry supplies. She repaired all my necklaces for me over the last four years, both ones she designed and ones she hadn’t. I did a very good job of extending and reciprocating love. I’m proud of us both.

 

But my (our) deep wish to be connected was no match for the powerful pull of the Trump/Russia internet (I can just hear her huffing in disbelief, Ugh, Russia, like I made up the Mueller Report) and my conservative aunts, especially as the four of them were still mourning the loss of my Grandmom from summer 2019.

 

This is the story of how helpless I felt, how there was absolutely nothing more I could do, as my mom was swept away. Or maybe she was always that far away to begin with.

Lady Work Crush, 2010: A Story of Cultural (In)competence (Part Three)

            I took a few days off and lay in bed with a cat sitting on me, deciding what to do. I went into the afterschool classroom in the in the middle of the day when no one was there, gathered up my stuff and left a note. I ran into one of the kids on the way in and the guilt just killed me. I felt like I was abandoning the children I’d been there to serve, because I was. Despite LWC’s perception that I was mean, the kids really did love me a lot, they always do, and I loved them so much too.

            I’d already written to the C.E.O. and other higher-ups during one of the witch-hunty meetings over the summer, and I wrote to them again at the end. This is one of those shitty experiences you hope has a good effect in the long run.

            A nice friend who worked at another school made me a card and had everyone sign it at the all-site meeting. It was sad but I hoped that future LGBTQ AmeriCorps members would be treated more hospitably.

            When I look back on the whole situation, I feel pretty humbled and mortified. Though homophobia was certainly a thread that ran through the whole experience, unwanted workplace advances DO need to be taken seriously, and she certainly deserved to be free of them. But at the same time, I never deserved to be treated with that much suspicion, that much distrust. Though the distrust was understandable in some ways, and I should have been much more willing to take time earning people’s trust, it still hurt, it still did damage, as did kind of having a car aimed at me.

            As I went deeper into the education field, the distrust factor got deeper and drownier. I found it very hard to stay in touch with my best qualities when people kept assuming the worst, and by the end, I was a threat to kids, I was part of a racist system and solidly part of the problem. I have to take responsibility for that and keep trying to bridge the gaps that separate me from African American people, from men, from straight people. The things that separate us hurt so much, and I know I can only do little things to fix the broken connections.

            If I were to run into LWC now, I would apologize for sending her the poem, for making her uncomfortable, for letting my frustration and loneliness impact her job. She probably wouldn’t apologize for aiming a car at me. Straight privilege seems insurmountable sometimes, and I am really, really sick of it.

            All of this informed my not-quite-love story with Mr. Makeout Music—the fear of meetings, the self-consciousness, the worrying about coercion, the general feeling like I might be the bad guy. But I’m gratified to say, this is a wholly different workplace (Well, it’s also a hetero attraction, but still.) Everyone on his team has been cordial and sweet and my own department head has been a patient, encouraging listener. Yesterday as the kids and I made a kindness chain for Christmastime, I felt things shift back into their normal, loving work ways.

I’m sorry it took me this long to realize I’m not back in the scary LWC situation. For all of my getting upset about Mr. Makeout Music greeting me with fear, I brought my own mess to the table too—fear of meetings, fear of oppressing him, fear of being too much and too many. As I revel in the space we’re giving each other and the freedom to grieve the lost connection, I feel aglow in the kind and accepting workplace I helped create.