Migraines Update

Still fighting migraines, but now they are manageable. Thank God. They don't happen every day and when they do happen, they only last a couple minutes, twenty at the most.

I got an allergy test and now I know that I'm allergic to milk (Boo!). Still no word on gluten. Been on an elimination diet since January. I hope to be off by Easter. At that time I will start re-introducing foods to my diet to see about food intolerance. Right now, mangoes, broccoli, and paprika is on that particular list.

My life is much more livable than it has been, that's for sure. I'm doing Lent this year and since I don't have much to give up, I'm adding a whole bunch of things to start doing. Like blogging. ;)

I'll be praying three times a day. Writing letters to my family every day. Reading the same book of the Bible every day (Colossians). Writing every day. Blogging every day. And writing a poem every day.

When I put it all in one paragraph. This seems like a lot...

Digression: It's raining tonight like it's Mississippi. Lightning flashing--almost the whole works. No thunder though... Oops. There it is.

Chicken & Watermelon

My husband told me something extraordinarily funny: he won't eat watermelon in public. He thinks that  doing so would perpetuate a stereotype. He likes watermelon as well as any other fruit, but that particular one has too much negative meaning.

"Yeah, and then I'll bury my face in a wedge and spit out the seeds like a machine gun." He'd then demonstrate the seed spitting--side to side in an ignorant way. It was a messy eating of a person who doesn't know much. What would always make me laugh was how vehement he would look while doing it. "I's sho duz like me some waddermelons!" he'd say, pumping a fist to the side. Sometimes he'd add an irrelevant "Massah!" for effect.

There's sadness mixed in his portrayal. He can't be who he really is. If he reaches for watermelon, there's all of this judgment and contempt attached to it. It becomes a spectacle. Even if no one else around him would think that and he knew that, he'd know that image was in the collective mind. He wouldn't even eat any at a church friend's home because he said he can't in front of white people. His main problem was that it was still on the rind. It being cubed and in a bowl would have let him keep some dignity, I guess.

The simple act of showing like for a certain piece of food becomes a dilemma. I remember from my high school days an incident that occurred during our lunch. They had cooked too much fried chicken (they usually ran out of food) and since they didn't want to throw it out, they offered more portions to the students. Well, the principal came to the "black tables" first. I don't remember any of us accepting the offer, although some white kids did. We never mentioned what had happened among ourselves either. Why talk about the mundane?

Racism isn't the problem here. It helped to cement those stereotypes we can't quite run from, but that's not what I'm feeling now. It doesn't seem as if we can ever escape the past; we wear it on our backs like dowager humps.

There's all kinds of things that I don't dare do or say around those who aren't my closest friends (some of my closest friends are different ethnicities) because I don't want to be laughed at. I don't want to put an image in someone's head who doesn't know better that they will carry around with them and spread. It's beyond making a fool of me; I'm worried about making a fool of us. I think that's a little of what my husband faces when someone sets a plate of watermelon or fried chicken in front of him.

The Problem with Rap

"As long as it's not rap."

Then there's the awkwardness of people trying to look at me or my husband from the sides of their eyes. Trying to gauge our reactions without us noticing. But of course we notice. We see the false preoccupation with lint on shirts or pants or hair. We feel every scrape and creak of the chairs we sit in. All around us bodies make to go places, but are confined, going nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

We are black and so we must like rap. Are we offended? Not in the way one would assume. Rap is not my favorite genre of music, for one. Yet when people sneer at the thought of it, I become a target of that disdain, whether or not that was the intention (and sometimes that is the intention). At that point, I wonder what else this person is intolerant of. What else is presumed of me that they'd rather not exist?

The Hardest Thing

My husband finally announced the official date that he is leaving for San Jose, California - November 30. Ah, November 30. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

I'll have to admit that my apprehension is warring with my excitement. I have lived in Mississippi for about 27 years now, and this is the only home I have known. I find it hard to come up with reasons to like Mississippi, but I still find excuses to stay. We have small children. We don't have jobs lined up in California. Moving all of our accumulated junk will be expensive. I have no family that lives close to San Jose. The beat goes on.

The Race Card

My husband and I watched The Express over the weekend. It was an okay movie, even though it was a little distant, a little too pat and churned out. I hadn't wanted to see it because it seemed like one of those "racism" movies that have no purpose other than to make me feel angry and depressed. But, like I said, it was an okay movie.

The point of this pointless review is a line from the coach at the end of the movie. He said something about making touchdowns whether in Boston or Mississippi. What was odd to me about his line was that he named a yankee city and a southern state. Yeah, Mississippi is so homogeneously racist that you don't have to name any individual towns or cities because they are all equally bad. Moreover, people in northern states neither are racist nor experience racism.

The Fattest of the Fattest

We're number one! We're number one!

For 2008, Mississippi is boasting the title of fattest state of the USA. I'd like to thank all of the fast food restaurants, video games, and television programs, because without you, we could not have done it. But, let's not think that those things were the cause - give it up everyone for lazy, misguided Mississippians. Thank you.

Thank you for not exercising and not eating healthy or just plain eating too much. Thank you for being an example for your children to follow so that this will become a cycle of obesity that will be nigh impossible to break. Thank you, doctors, for being so ignorant that not only are you a part of the problem by not properly educating your patients, but also by being obese yourselves.

One Thousand Disappointments Part 3

I'm not much of a traveler (I've been out of the South three times) so when I experience things in other places I'm invariably impressed. And then saddened.

A simple thing like going to the movies puts me through this. I remember when I visited my sister-in-law in Florida with my husband. We went to this little local theater. I wasn't impressed by the movie selection; they were old releases. I was impressed by the atmosphere. They didn't have rows of seats - there were chairs grouped around little tables. They were all ragtag and dingy, but I didn't care. And there was food, real food. Wings. Pizza. Hamburgers. You know, food. It cost three dollars a movie for students; we all got in with old ID cards from our college days.

The JPS System and My Son...Again

The meeting that I was supposed to have had with my son's IEP (Individualized Education Program) team yesterday was rescheduled for this morning. At 8:30 a.m. (The principal kept asking me if I was all right I was so out of it.) We were trying to solidify the options for my son at school.

Basically, behaviorists will come to the school and observe my child in the class for up to 6 weeks, less if they see that his behavior needs to be controlled right away. The coordinator said that the behavior specialists were knowledgeable of autism so that's a plus. They have also decided that he shouldn't be pulled aside in the regular classroom to work on individual activities; he should stay in the regular classroom full time and be instructed one-on-one after class or after school. I'm not sure which. I guess I will need to ask when I pick my son up after school. I'm not sure what they will do about my son's behavior in the meantime, but I hope this all works.

The JPS System and My Son

Today, I met with the principal and one of my son's therapists at his school. The subject: my son's behavior. We were discussing his options in the Jackson Public School system. Those options were not pretty.

My son is autistic. He was diagnosed when he was five, just last year. How was he diagnosed? Why so late? You see, I had to research the information on the symptoms of autism, decide that my son fit those symptoms, and ask his speech therapist to refer him to someone who could test him specifically for autism. There was a six month to one year wait list. Sigh.

One Thousand Disappointments Part 1

Mississippi. The state of "last place in everything good" and "first place in everything bad." Or so I seem to always hear or read. This place where I was born is home to soft, lonely fields and grungy projects. The place that has legacies in southern rituals and bitter prejudices.

Clearly, I have a love/hate relationship for my birthplace. And, apparently, the relationship runs both ways. I feel beaten, trodden upon, abandoned, and abused. Why do you treat me so cold? But, of course, there is also the love. The pride in being a southerner and in knowing intimately the culture of the south. In knowing just about everyone on my street, in my neighborhood, and in my community. The warmth of giving a smile and a wave to every person that you see, whether you know that person or not.

California or Bust

Right now, we're leaning more towards "bust." How will a family with two small children move to an incredibly expensive city (live in Mississippi for a while and everywhere and everything will seem "incredibly expensive") with no money, with only a glimmer of a job, and with no place to stay (as of yet)? Magic, of course.

We save up money. However, circumstances happen. The car breaks down. Gas prices rise. One of us loses a job.