A Kiss, a Memory, and the Long Road Between Then and Now

Jean has always believed that memory has a mischievous streak — especially the kind triggered by music. One moment she’s driving to the grocery store, minding her own business, and the next she’s dropped straight into a full moon‑drenched scene from the 1960s involving rum, steel drums, and a kiss that would age into something far more complicated than it felt at the time. What follows is her attempt to braid that long‑ago moment with the world she lives in now, and the distance between the two...AI

Music has a unique way of hooking us up with memories buried deep in years past. When a song manages to bring a vivid memory alive, you can’t help but marvel at our brain’s computer‑like ability to retrieve data our conscious self had long forgotten. That’s what happened to me on the way to the grocery store when Riley Green’s voice came over the country station singing, “...I know I can’t stand or sit, but if I was hammered, could I dance like this?...I ain’t as think as you drunk I am.”

I can count the number of times I’ve been truly drunk on the fingers of one hand. And all those times were in the last century — the 1960s, to be precise. There are different kinds of drunks, and I was a happy drunk, the kind who wanted to be on the move, dancing and singing. One particular time I was on vacation with another twenty‑something girl down in the Bahamas.

If you’ve been to the Bahamas, you might remember, as I do, the buttery‑smooth rum and the steel drums those notes rang like laughter as they tumbled through the warm air while the rum settled me into my happy place. As I remember it, it was the kind of intoxicating combination that loosened my world at the seams, making everything feel a little softer, a little friendlier — the perfect prelude to that warm, tipsy, rum‑drunk joy with a side of “I love you, man,” delivered to bartenders, strangers, and possibly a palm tree.

And to the Black taxi cab driver who delivered us back to our hotel that night. After he opened the taxi door and let us out, I gave him a long, deep kiss, much to his surprised delight and much to the disgust of my friend. Later she said she couldn’t believe I actually touched a Black man, much less kissed him shamelessly. And in a public place, no less! It was sometime after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law and before the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed, better known as the Fair Housing Act. But in my friend’s world, Blacks and whites mixing was still a sin.

Try as I might, I can’t remember her name or what she looked like, but I still remember that taxi driver’s sparkling eyes and wide, toothy smile as he enjoyed my drunken state as much as I was. 

It’s a sad statement about how limited my world has been that when I got home from that vacation, I’d have to fast‑forward to when I moved here, four‑and‑a‑half years ago, before I’d have real contact with Black people again. And those in my daily life, now, are all employees of my continuum care community — the wait staff, the cleaning staff, and our CEO. As a flaming liberal I, of course, loved having Obama as our president but that's not the same as actually talking with someone from another race on a daily basis.

When I see our very capable CEO at our monthly Dialogues, standing in front of my fellow residents, his skin as dark as the night, I can’t help noticing the irony: a Black man confidently leading a room full of old white people in a country where that simple image would once have been dangerous, even impossible. I sometimes wonder if he feels that history humming under the floorboards the way I do.

The universe has a way of pairing my life experiences so neatly that it often feels like a deliberate plan to call attention to something I might miss otherwise. When I got home from the grocery store with that feel‑good memory still lingering in my mind, I went to a lecture here in our all‑purpose room. It featured an Abraham Lincoln impersonator who put on a fabulous one‑man show about the Civil War.

There’s roughly a hundred years between when the Civil War was fought that ended slavery and my trip to the Bahamas, and over another half‑century between that trip and now. Still, I’ve always been proud of the fact that my generation has done so much to move race relationships forward — although I’m not sure Black people would see the progress in the same light as most whites do (not to mention the backtracking our current administration is attempting). In terms of history, it wasn’t all that long ago when a Black man would have gotten strung up to the nearest tree for kissing a white woman, even if he wasn’t the one who initiated it. Few days go by when I don’t see someone hug our CEO. I wonder what my long‑ago travel companion would think of that. Has she changed over the decades, or does she still hold onto the belief that races shouldn’t mix? Is prejudice so deeply ingrained in some of us that we can’t change?

I didn’t know where this post was going when I started, but somehow it feels like I’m at the end except for saying that sometimes a silly, rum‑drunk memory from sixty years ago can remind you how far we’ve come, how far we haven’t, and how strangely a single impulsive kiss can echo across a lifetime. And looking back now, I can finally see what I couldn’t then: the kiss was never the scandal. The scandal was the world that insisted it should be. ©

See you next Wednesday!

Touring Hearts, Homes and Dark Memories

When I was young I was a fast worker. Now that I’m a septuagenarian I clean at a turtle’s pace. Finally, my bedroom has been deep cleaned but it took me five days. I used a mop to wash the walls so I didn’t have to get on a ladder and for the first time in my life I skipped doing the ceiling. But the blinds and windows are clean, the mattresses were flipped, the bed skirts have been washed and ironed, the furniture was polished and all the wall hangings are sparkling clean. The carpeting will wait until spring when I hire a professional to do the whole house. I changed my bedroom color scheme along with the deep cleaning project. The red sheets are gone and the red fabric that was framed to form a sort of headboard was swapped out to what you see in the photo above and I have enough fabric left over to make a decorative throw pillow. For under fifty bucks the room has a whole different energy. This is the room’s third reincarnation using framed fabric and new bedding which is one of the reasons why I love having neutral colored carpeting and walls.

After I got a haircut Monday I went to the Guy Land Cafeteria, one of my favorite people watching places. But the most interesting thing that happened was two black guys came in and not for the first time I wondered what it feels like to be black in a sea of white people. I’ve been going to this place for years and this is the first time I’ve ever seen a black person there, which tells you a lot about my white-bread neighborhood. They were wearing sweatshirts with ‘UChicago Tech’ written on the fronts which reminded me of a bus trip I took to The Windy City. It was in the spring of 1963 and we were a bunch of college students on our way to the museums. 

There was a detour in the city that took our bus through a ghetto complete with the driver’s mocking voice coming over the intercom describing what we were seeing, a dilapidated area with black people sitting on porches and kids looking with interest at our shiny motor coach bus with its tinted windows---at least I hope they were tinted back then. I'd hate to think those people outside the bus  saw us all staring at them. It was the first time I’d seen severe poverty up close. A few days after we got back home images of the police in Birmingham, Alabama using high-powered fire hoses and police dogs on black students, who had gathered to do a peaceful walk, dominated the nightly news. "They Fight a Fire That Won't Go Out" was the caption used on a photograph that appeared in Life Magazine of what happened that day---a day the world, including mine, woke up and started paying attention to the Civil Rights Movement. Over the years when I remember that bus trip I'm still stuck by how dehumanizing it was for the bus driver to treat that ghetto the way he did, like it was just another “tourist sight” along the way.

I thought about that tour recently when it was time to decide if I wanted to sign up for a senior hall tour, or not, of the oldest black church in town followed by a tour of a Buddhist Temple. I’ve wanted to go to the Buddhist Temple since I first learned about it ten years ago, so I put in my reservation although I’m slightly concerned that I’ll feel like we’re a bunch of white tourists when we visit the black church---like it’s an upgraded version of that trip in the ‘60s. This church tour is part of a monthly series billed as “How We Worship” and they include a talk by the church leaders so I’m sure my apprehension is for nothing. It’s not like they don’t know we’re coming or have no control over our visit. 

Race is such a hot button topic in recent years…well for some people. Maybe my naivety or flaming liberal nature will show up here when I say this but I don’t get how some whites can feel that being born white makes them better. It’s a crap shoot being born white or black. It’s a crap shoot being born into poverty or plenty. It’s a crap shoot if we get supportive, loving parents or those who aren’t. How can a person feel superior about something they had no control over and didn’t work to achieve? Opportunities matter and without a doubt just being born white before the Civil Rights Movement gave us more opportunities. Those opportunities compared to starting a 26 mile marathon at the 13 mile marker and wondering why the black kids, who started at the first mile marker, didn’t finish in the same time frame. 

Two black guys walked into a cafeteria on Monday and they ordered their food to go. Maybe they were traveling and didn’t have the time to sit down and eat, or maybe they wanted to talk shop while eating in private. I hope one of these two things is true because I’d be sad if they didn’t feel comfortable enough to eat their lunch inside. I looked around at my fellow diners and I didn’t feel an undercurrent going on. I listened to the cashier interact with the guys and noted no changes in her tone or demeanor. Still, the fact that their presence in my white-bread neighborhood was so unusual could be used as an example of how far true equality still has to go. ©

Levi on his side of the bed. He thinks it's cool he matches the decor`.

Laughter, Politics, War and Race

LAUGHTER: Monday morning I had brunch with my Red Hat Society sisters before we went to the multiplex movie theater near-by. I hadn’t been to an I-Hop in over a decade so I was looking forward to it. Where else can you get an enormous sugar high before noon and we should do it more often. We were being old, honest women opening up about our changing bodies and our sense of humors were operating on all their cylinders. Yup, I had a great time. After the movie we stopped for ice cream at one of those places where you build your own sundae and pay for it by the pound. I was relieved that my sundae wasn’t the heaviest one in the group. It was a pig-out-day, and I paid the piper with a pair of tighter pants. Next time I’ll remember to wear an elastic-waisted model.

POLITICS: The movie we saw was The Woman in Gold. What a good film! It was based on the true story of an elderly Jewish refugee who fought the Austrian government in the courts to recover artwork she believed---and eventually proved---belonged to her family. The Woman in Gold was valued at 135 million dollars and it was considered to be the crown jewel in the Austrian art world and they didn’t want to let it go. Sounds boring, doesn’t it, but it’s not by any means. There’s a lot of flashbacks to when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany and the topic was kept from getting too dark by the interplay between the main characters, octogenarian (Helen Mirren) and her young lawyer (Ryan Reynolds) which was often laugh-out-loud funny. If you like story-lines that are ripped from the pages of the history books, don’t miss this movie.  

WAR: The next day I went to a lecture titled Mr. Lincoln’s War given by a Fulbright Scholar and history professor from a near-by college. He was born and raised in Texas, still had a southern drawl and he had a gift for making history relevant to modern times. He was also great at interjecting humor into his presentation and that kept it from being dry and boring. As I sat listening to him describe the ‘Velvet Glove’ approach to war as opposed to the ‘Iron Fist’ approach I finally got it---got why people join Civil War Round Tables. When he talked about how the Confiscation Acts helped to humanize the slaves that had been confiscated when found doing work for the Confederate military, I was fascinated. He made you want to hear more. Especially when he touched on how the war fed into West Michigan (where I live) becoming---at one point in history---the most segregated state in the union. 

When the lecture was over a woman came up to the microphone and she asked any women in the audience having ancestors who served in Civil War to come up front to see her. I did, along with seven or eight others. We were invited to join the Daughters of the Civil War. I asked what they do at their monthly meetings and she talked about their projects around the community. When she calls with more information, I just might give the group a try. If nothing else, she offered to take me to my ancestor’s grave at the Veteran’s Home. Her group actually plants flowers on his plot! 

RACE: Honestly, it gets increasingly hard to keep a blog and not write about current events. It feels weird sometimes to be writing about milk toast when the media is serving up chili pepper pie. However, I probably won’t shock anyone if I write about growing up in a white bread community where the only black people I ever saw were the bathroom attendants in the department stores downtown. It might, however, surprise people to know that here it is sixty years later and the only black people I see day-to-day are on TV. I thought about all this a few weeks ago when there was a panel discussion on a local news segment on how businessmen here in West Michigan are concerned about the lack of diversity in the community. Headhunters, they said, are having a hard time recruiting specialists, scientists, doctors, chemists, engineers, etc., to move here to work in our growing medical research facilities and their supporting industries. Surprise, surprise people of color want to live in a more diverse environment. The recruiters, it should be noted, are recruiting from all over the world. It seems we’re not producing enough professionals here in the States to fill our growing needs.... 

….And yet too many politicians want to bleed the schools dry, demoralize teachers by chipping away at their benefits and not invest in higher education. Does that make sense, especially in places where there’s so much civil unrest, due in no small part, to the fact that industrial bases have disappeared drying up all the middle class jobs? When I hear fans of FOX TV pundits parrot: "Baltimore is all the President’s fault” I can’t help wondering how it feels to live in such a simple-minded world where everything is Obama's fault, where history has no relevance to current events, and where white America never, ever has to accept an iota of blame for any chaos that goes on around the world. Please don't misconstrue that to mean I'm giving a free pass to those creating the violence and destruction in Baltimore. I'm not giving a pass to anyone; what's going down there is wrong, plain and simple. I'm just saying it's far more complicated than a catchy, baseless bullet point from FOX pundits and tweets from the likes of Donald Trump. We didn't blame Bush for the 1992 LA riots after the beating of Rodney King and to blame Obama, now, for Baltimore's disenfranchised is race baiting in its most insidious form. And it bugs me, can you tell?

Note: I'll go back to serving up milk toast in my weekend post. Maybe sweet, savory milk toast with a clown face gracing the top. ©