Set Back On My Heels

From a quieter protest in Minneapolis earlier this year, by Avi Nahum.

A friend asked the other day why she hadn’t read anything new in this blog lately. And I realized I was still wrapped around an axle over the emotions I was struggling to name following the events in Baltimore late last month.

I realize that the time span involved in saying “late last month” is ancient history in this micro news cycle era driving our ever-diminishing attention spans. But something about those events set me back on my heels.

It was the images from Baltimore that did it. Frustrated young men hurling objects and shouting out their anger at all of those forces that have led them to the lives they’re now living – being born into poverty or neglect, inadequate community support structures, and a series of choices that are one bad over another. 

Yes, we’ve seen those images in other places in the last year and continue to see them, but Baltimore is different than other places. I have spent time in Baltimore. I have friends in Baltimore. With Baltimore, it became personal.

And the images of Toya Graham pulling her son from a group of masked teenagers really brought it home.

If you missed that moment, go find it on Google. Just type in “the mom who pulled her son from Baltimore riots” and the stories pop up. Every now and again, television cameras focus on images that go beyond the story they think they’re telling. This was one of those times.

When Toya Graham recognizes her son among a group that is shouting and throwing rocks – despite his hooded sweatshirt and mask – she runs to him, grabbing his arm and walloping him across his head.

I don’t use the word wallop very often, but there really is no other way to describe the action of that moment.

The maternally protective fierceness of those images is what set me back on my heels. There is something primal and visceral about Toya Graham’s desire to pull her son back from the edge of that crowd of anger. She knows, in a way I can only imagine, that her son’s actions put him in grave danger, and she runs into the middle of angry frustration to pull him away and keep him safe.

It didn’t take long in our instantly connected world of images to identify the mother and son in the video, and their moments of media attention began.  Her son, Michael, is an articulate young man who may have needed that wallop to realize at that moment that he had a mother who would fight for him.

In Toya’s words, “That’s my only son and at the end of the day, I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray. But to stand up there and vandalize police officers, that’s not justice. I’m a single mom and I have six children and I just choose not to live like that no more, and I don’t want that for him.”

That’s the expression of a universal maternal instinct that reaches across geography and race. I believe we all want our children to understand the principles of justice and to live in a society that is just. What is so striking to me is that Toya Graham expresses that as I would, despite the fact she’s raising her child in a society that has a different form of justice for her son than I see for mine.

It’s hard for me to even imagine my son being in danger from over-reacting police officers. He’s generally respectful and has learned that the police are there to be helpful overall.

But I’m not raising a black son. That’s what has me wrestling over this issue. I can’t get my arms around the deep anxiety of that role. How can the maternal instincts of motherhood be both so universally understandable and yet so diametrically different in American society of 2015?

I simply don’t worry about my son or my daughter and their interactions with police officers. In the middle-America of their childhood on the North Coast of this country, our experiences with officers were fair and just.

Yet I also know that today, a black mother in America is giving birth to a son that she knows in her heart is in grave danger of not surviving to adulthood based on the very same interactions. I just don’t know what I can do to change that – thoughts, friends?

Words Matter

Yesterday, in case you missed it, Robert Downey Jr. walked out of a TV interview that was supposed to be about the new Avengers movie and instead, took an awkward political turn.

You would only know about it if you visited the rabbit hole of social media during the part of the day when it was trending – regardless, it was RDJ’s response to a bizarre question leading up to The Walk Out that I found so intriguing.

The entertainment reporter asked if Robert Downey Jr. considered himself to be a liberal, or more liberal now that he was five years ago, and RDJ responded by saying, “I’m not even sure I know what that word means.”

He’s right, you know. I’m not sure words like liberal and conservative and progressive and traditional are anything more than epithets or maligned labels at this point in our political history.

It’s too bad because my experience with the 3000 or so real people in my life leads me to believe that most are some combination of liberal conservatives, or conservative liberals.

Most believe in ensuring individual liberties – a core value of our country – and that makes them liberals.

And most believe in the traditional American values we were brought up with, like the importance of working hard, taking care of family and community, and demonstrating self-discipline – making them conservatives as well.

Most people I know are open to new ideas, believing in progress brought about by science and discovery. We’re grateful to live in an era when we’ve figured out indoor plumbing for our cities, power grids that supply heat and light, and surgical and pharmaceutical treatments and cures for conditions that killed our ancestors. That makes them progressives as well.

So we’re a complex mix of liberal progressive conservatism at a time when our media is seeking simple. We have entertainment reporters seeking a scoop of sorts by trying to affix a simplistic sound bite political label to a celebrity who is now using his fame to give back in wonderful ways – did you see that video of RDJ as IronMan with the child who received a 3D printed IronMan arm? Precious.

The point is that we’re entering the two-year presidential election cycle with reporters intent on using words as labels to divide us into artificial segments.

We’re more complicated than that. The issues – the problems we face as a nation and a globe are complex and nuanced and require solutions that are not black and white. For example, I just don’t believe there is only one right way to ensure young Somali men living in Minneapolis see a future of meaning, and thereby reject the grainy video images of an ISIS imam promising a greater purpose for their lives by joining jihad. 

That means we Americans who care about the future need to reject simplistic labels and start defining ourselves by finding the true meaning behind words that have become trite epithets. As a progressively conservative liberal, I intend to stand up for the right to be complicated in my political views and I support Robert Downey Jr.’s decision to walk out on trite.

Goodbye Esther

Esther left before I had a chance to say goodbye and that made me cry this week. Such a loss before I even knew she was going.

Life can be like that. People we hold dear get older while we’re off doing other things, and suddenly they’re gone too soon.

One of the reasons we were pulled back to our home called Minneapolis is the community at our synagogue. And one of the corner stones of that shul was Esther Burke. Within our first few years in Minneapolis, when we’d finished trying on synagogue communities and selected the one that fit us just right, we met Esther and Jack. We knew them as Ellen Sue’s parents because we met her first.

And they were so much more.

When Esther found out that Jacques grew up in Tangier, she immediately invited us to dinner.

“I had Moroccan friends when we lived near the air base in North Dakota, and I learned to make b’stilla,” she said, talking about the Moroccan phyllo pie filled with gorgeous chicken, herbs, and almonds.  “I want you to see if it tastes like what you remember.”

An invitation with such enthusiasm was impossible to decline, thank heavens.

We were given so many gifts by knowing the Burkes. We learned that Ellen Sue was one of five children – each one interesting, engaged in the world, and intent on creating families of their own that were knit together under the Burke banner.

From Jack, I was introduced to the deeper joys of Sukkot. He glowed when he spoke of sleeping overnight in his sukkah with his children, and then his grandchildren to truly experience the holiday.

“But it’s Minnesota. Isn’t it too cold?” I said.

“Ahh – that’s what makes it so special,” he responded with those eye twinkles of joy.

It was a Burke Sukkah that we built every year when our children were growing up – a smart structure of plumbing pipe, blue tarp walls, and wooden lattice on top.

Then there was Esther. Oh, how she loved to cook as an excuse to gather family and their friends around her table. She took such joy in presenting multiple courses to adoring consumers of her love in the form of food.

She was predictably in her seat for Shabbat services each Saturday morning, reaching out to touch offered hands and kisses over the years. And she never commented on the hour of our arrival, which was significantly after she had taken her place in Beth El. She just showed us that she was glad to see us once more.

Then during the morning Kiddush after services she would seek us out to ask how we were doing, what was going on, and how were the kids. She was part of the extended family we created in Minnesota, and a reminder that Abraham’s open tent philosophy of gathering and welcoming strangers was alive and well in the northern tundra.

And now, before I could squeeze that hand one more time and give a kiss to that dear cheek, she is gone. Thank you Esther, and Jack, for the many gifts you gave our family – the example of a life lived with an open heart, of the heart warmth that comes from family gatherings, and of course, demonstrating how love and joy can be baked into a b’stilla. 

Esther Burke

Coming Home

Fireplaces really do matter in Minneapolis! 

I started writing this after the first good night’s sleep back in our house in Minneapolis while the cross-country drive was fresh on our minds and the familiarity of home felt like a warm embrace.

It was warm that week – the kind of warm that made one believe true spring had actually arrived early this year. With the first gasp of weather in the 60s and even 70s, Minnesotans were out in force and in shorts running around the lakes and biking the trails.

Life has intervened in the past month – boxes have intervened – and since then I’ve experienced the ups and downs of spring in the land of the north coast. Blustery winds that chatter teeth then produce overcast skies – day after day – and actually lead to rain. 

And so the initial glow of return has become more like life itself. A lot of hard work resulting in satisfying outcomes mixed with intermittent flashes of joy at reunions with old friends and family

Ah yes – we are home.

When I was a kid, home was the house where my mother and father lived and the town where I grew up.  It was Mansfield, Ohio.

That sense of “home” continued through college in North Carolina and persisted through life in four cities, three states, marriage, and children.

When we went home, it meant going to my childhood home in Mansfield.

But the magnetic pull of “home” that brought us back from a happy adventure in California was not the pull of Ohio. It was from the city where we have built the bulk of our adult relationships. Home is where we raised our children within a supportive and expansive village of help and care.  Home for us is no longer defined by the location of our extended family, as our relatives are spread across the country and around the globe – some in places we will never again return to visit.

Home for us is now Minneapolis. It took that move to Southern California, the land of perpetual sunlight, warm breezes and palm trees, for me to realize what only my bones truly knew.

We came to Minnesota twenty-five years ago – newcomers by some standards. I was convinced we would only stay for a year or two because there was no reason to believe otherwise.

Instead it became a life.   

We lucked in to renting a house in Linden Hills, a sweet neighborhood tucked between two of the city’s lakes that has become a tony enclave. Although we arrived in December – a very cold December at that - we were greeted with the warmth that makes Linden Hills so very special.  It started with two little girls ringing the doorbell.

“Do you have any kids?” they asked.

At the sound of those voices, our two children ran towards the door shouting, “Yes, we’re here!” And lifelong relationships were begun.

A day or so later, there was another ring of the bell.

“Hi – since you’ve just moved in you probably know where your potato masher is,” said a warmly wrapped woman from across the street.

Indeed I did, and offered it up for her use at her holiday family gathering.

Another lifelong friendship began.

That first summer sealed our connection to the neighborhood, with children roaming between yards, always featuring a ready and watching mother on a stoop, and a weekly porch gathering to celebrate the continued health of our kids and our neighborhood. 

Within ten months, we purchased the house on the corner across the street and that has been our home ever since. But I didn’t think of it as “home” until recently.

Yes – despite the Polar-Vortex-Horror-Inducing-Winter-of-2014, we found ourselves missing the warmth of Minnesota.

Don’t get me wrong. We have made some wonderful friends in Southern California, and there are amazing cultural aspects to life in LA.  But it’s not home.

Despite access to the Pacific, we missed the lakes. We missed the well-groomed and easy public access to our natural resources in Minnesota. We missed the vibrant restaurant scene that’s remarkably adventuresome. And we missed the accessible arts community that percolates and launches great performances in music, theater, and literature.

We missed the well-earned confidence of Minnesotans in politics as the art of getting things done.  People participate in government here because – despite arguing over size and scope – governing in Minnesota is recognized as a valuable service to a higher quality of life.

Mostly, though, we missed our community of friends. We missed the easy camaraderie of those who helped us raise our children through sports at the parks and school plays and performances. We missed the friends who bring potluck hot dish at the drop of a hat whenever there’s a call to gather. We missed the deep relationships that only come through years of shared experiences – including winters – that strengthen bonds of understanding.

And so we’ve come home to Minneapolis where the faces and smiles are warmly familiar and each season has a distinctive character.

We also now know that there are warm wonderful faces waiting in California, and already have plans to run away to the sun and warmth of the left coast when its time for respite from bitter and brutal weather on the north coast. 

On and Off the Road

Road trips are the ultimate test of a relationship. A long drive for a weekend can be a quick read on how a long term relationship will work – or not. It’s hard to remember how many boyfriends fell by the wayside early on when their curiosity failed or they demonstrated an inability to riff off a provocative All Things Considered piece.

On the other hand – it was our first two-week road trip along the right coast of this country that let me know Jacques was a keeper. He noticed odd roadside spectacles, asked interesting questions, and added context to radio commentary that was hysterical.

And here we are – 32 years later crossing half of the country from the left coast to the North coast, and it’s still fun. We toddled from Los Angeles to Minneapolis with a few detours along the way and experienced spectacular vistas mixed with mind-numbing prairies and landscapes that were merely puzzling.

What was with that smoking and steaming ground in Nevada’s Great Basin?

Why did anyone choose to live here?

And why was there no wildlife visible anywhere?

That’s where Jacques began a deeper relationship with his iPhone’s Siri. Suddenly we had an authority to answer all of those questions that occur as you’re staring at miles of nothing. And the nation’s network of relay towers really stepped up to answer our questions despite a few predictable gaps in service.

The drive took me back to a cross country drive from decades before when my father joined me in Scottsbluff, Nebraska for a drive to see his brother Uncle Paul and Aunt Marge in LA. This was 1980 so smart phones – heck, even radio towers – were absent in the country.

It was during that first day of straight line flat-open-spaced driving that Dad came out with the comment that makes me laugh to this day. 

“Isn’t ear wax wonderful?” he said.

I knew I had not heard that correctly.

“Excuse me? What did you say?”

“I said isn’t ear wax wonderful?”

“Uhhh – I have no idea how to respond to that, Dad.  Are you feeling ok?”

That brought a soft chuckle from the passenger seat.

“OK. Let me explain. There’s a fly in the car, and I was just sitting here thinking of how awful it would be if that fly flew into my ear.  Just imagine. That buzz, buzz, buzzing would drive me insane.”

He was quiet a minute while I pondered the impact of a fly buzzing in my head.

“And then I remembered ear wax. If a fly flew into my ear, it would get stuck in my earwax and wouldn’t be able to drive me insane after all. So… isn’t ear wax wonderful?”

That’s when I laughed. 

“You’re an amazing human being, Dad. I’ll bet few humans have ever realized the true value of ear wax as an insanity prevention device.”

We both laughed and that ear wax comment kept us company into the mountains of Western Wyoming. 

Today I realize that we really do marry a version of our fathers. For me, it’s a tech-enabled quietly funny version who is still good company for more than 2000 miles. Jacques, his new best friend Siri, and continuous access to music made this a much easier trip than the one of 30-odd years ago.

This drive really needs a sound track and curiosity and humor.

Discombobulating Ambiguity

How will we pack that poster?

I’m just not convinced that there’s any amount of preparation that can lead to a smooth moving experience. There’s always that moment near the end when one more cupboard is found, filled with unusual objects having no clear place in a box and no easy way to package for shipment. And as the van pulls away, I am perplexed by a series of specific item questions.

“Did you see the lamp get packed up? How about the vacuum? And did they put the files on the van?”

Then I let it all go. The deed is done, and the vans are rolling in some version of zigzag pattern, collecting and distributing loads along the way. I know there will be an unpacking event on the other end to include the revealed surprise of mismatched items in unlikely boxes. And I know we will re-achieve our grounded status once again with paintings and posters affixed to walls, and drawers organized by function.

Now we’re in the discombobulating middle with either important or last minute items tucked into the back of the car as we check off the to-do list of sites we wanted to see while in California –nothing like a deadline to focus one’s plans.

The idea is to drive north on the Pacific Coast Highway and turn right when we hear from the movers that they are four days away. That will give us time to hightail it cross country to the thawing North Coast of the U.S. to assist in pointing out locations for the stuff that needs to be resettled.

And just as all of this seemed like a batch of overwhelming mayhem for any one life, we see the image on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal. It shows Somalian families huddled around their remaining possessions after even their temporary shelters were destroyed by soldiers.

That puts it all in context. I can’t help feeling extremely fortunate that we have access to friendly movers, a packed up vacuum, and a place to call home far from marauding Somali soldiers. With that feeling of gratitude, the discombobulation and ambiguity float away leaving the simple desire to help the truly scattered lives of the women in the photo.

The Act of Leaving

Leaving D.C. in 1984, when we moved ourselves, and called friends for help.

It’s boxes again for us. Fortunately we have kept the good ones from past moves, which provides an interesting guessing game as to their first use.

“Was this from our original move to Minneapolis?” I ask Jacques, wondering how that could even be possible. That would make this particular box that I’m re-taping a 25-year-old box.

And then I find myself wondering if there’s a market for vintage moving boxes.

It’s a conditioned response from a year of scouring online vintage sites trying to understand what it is about the stuff of life that retains value from generation to generation. Why is one silver doodad more valuable than another?

I still don’t quite understand the vintage market, but I do know what I will be packing for this move.

We are packing the unusually unique, the meaningful, the art – and the kitchen - to take back with us. We are closing the book on this chapter of adventure in Pasadena and moving to Minnesota, a place with four distinct seasons, albeit one that lasts a tad too long for this woman.

It’s time to go home, however. I’ve learned that there’s a remarkable pull that comes from the place that helped us raise our children – our village, in many ways. We miss our synagogue community, the lakes, the Mississippi River, and the culture of the North Coast. I even miss the sweetly reticent kindness of our Scandinavian neighbors.

Now we’re focused on the leaving and that’s turning out to be harder than we thought it would be. We’ve grown close to a number of dear, creative, and engaging people in Southern California. It will be hard to wake in the morning with no mountains on the horizon. I will miss the predictable light from the sunshine. I will miss the LA Opera, the Hollywood Bowl, and the beaches.

Jacques likes to point out that we will be back. And he’s right. We will make a point of coming to this part of the country when the wind starts its 3-month-long howl out of Northern Siberia. We know we can return to meals with friends, explorations of canyons, and performances on Bunker Hill’s music-mecca.

I suppose in that sense it’s less of a leaving, and more of a change in our relationship with LA. We’ll become long distance friends of this part of the country rather than residents. We’ll be long-term visitors and drop-ins when projects arise. And we’ll maintain our recent friendships virtually – which we’ve learned is remarkably easy. It’s how we know what’s still going on in Minneapolis three years after leaving.

Back to the boxes…

And now, 40 years later...

Clare mastered Carol's selfie stick to grab this shot in Hollywood earlier this month.

The “girls” from my college freshman hall came to visit earlier this month. It had something to do with escaping the winter mayhem of the east coast for the warmth of Southern California. Whatever the excuse, we girls try to reconnect every few years or so to take stock of our lives – and this year we marked 40 years since our first meeting.

Just writing those words is shocking. There was a point in my life where the thought of even being 40 years old was unimaginable. And now it’s the number of years it has been since we pulled up to our college dorms as 18 year olds. Who knew we’d get old so fast?

Now I realize that 40 isn’t old at all…it’s about the time we start getting the knack of things, gathering experience and knowledge that is actually of value.

This year my daughter joined us. She lives here, knows all the best restaurants, and although she arrived much after college, she fit right in. It was her perspective that made me reflect on the importance of these women in my life.

“Mom,” she said. “Your college friends are really different than your other friends.”

Curious, I asked, “In what way?”

“Well, they believe different things. They’re not all Democrats, or the same religion, and some work from home and others have jobs,” she noted. “And most of your other friends are more like you.”

She’s right. And that’s when I realized how much is lost when accidents of forced geography stop determining those we meet and get to know.

As kids, we grew up in neighborhoods our parents chose. They were filled with kids who were different than we were. There was the fun girl through the backyards always seeking adventure; the kids with the pool whose grandparents lived next door to watch us; the kids with new bikes, old bikes, and no bikes. That diversity of circumstance, belief, and economics taught us tolerance. We were shushed when we were too loud, told to be kind to the kids with few toys, and always learned to be respectful of people we didn’t always agree with – the credo of the 1960s in our Ohio hometown.

The same was true as freshmen in college when some invisible force - or the residence hall committee – determined where we would be living. There was little ethnic or racial diversity in our dorm, but wide difference in every other way.  We were Southern belles, damn Yankees, from huge cities, and tiny hamlets with parents both liberal and conservative leading to both laid back and high maintenance children.  Some serious jocks mixed with dedicated sedentary sorts, poets, scientists, math majors, and “undecideds” comparing curriculum and schedules during all night studying. And we generally got along by being respectful, tolerating differences, and working to hear and understand each other.

Today the people I spend the most time with are a pretty homogenous bunch. We generally agree on politics and perspectives on life.

And that’s what my daughter noticed when the college girls came to visit – my old friends have opinions, strongly held, well-articulated opinions.  And we violate all of the polite rules of etiquette when we get together. We discuss politics, sex, and religion – always with underlying respect and genuine interest in understanding. 

I need to exercise those diversity muscles more often than one weekend every year or so – I’m thinking it’s time to broaden the invitations to our dinner table to ensure we get to listen and hear diverse opinions to broaden our life perspective. Life moves too fast and is too short to get narrow in the way we view the world, don’t you think?