What I did over Spring vacation

I spent most of this April vacation focused on things not going right, that I could do better, that were imperfect and disappointing. In each corner of my family someone I love is suffering with injury or serious illness. It must be frustrating for them to feel broken and sick, and it is frustrating for me to realize there's nothing I can do to heal the people I love.

Uncle Jason came to visit and together we traveled to see Kevin and Jason's mom for an early Passover celebration. Iris and I took a trip to Crown Market for prepared kosher sides and stood together in line, laughing about the mad rush to prepare for the holidays, and the deals the bakery was offering before closing for the holiday. Pareve black and white cookies were 10/$10 -- who could resist? We would take them home since Iris would not eat anything with hametz during the holiday.

Iris cooked a beautiful meal and we ate with silver utensils off of good china. We recited the names of the plagues and the children wore funny masks. We talked about freedom and justice, and considered the meaning of the elements arranged on the seder plate. Something about life and sacrifice, food, family, and staying together as a community. It was a lovely holiday, clouded by the sense of all I'm not doing to raise my children with a clear sense of their religious upbringing. The kids were confused but delighted -- Raimi insisting several times that he was a FIRST BORN and had a special connection to that particular plague.

We returned to Cambridge with Uncle Jason, but Raimi came down with something like the flu -- high fever and chills, coughing, exhausted and achy for days. Jason took Kinnell out to the park and museum while I stayed home with Raimi. It was a godsend that Jason was there to get Kinnell out of the house. We were sad when Kevin had to take him to the airport on Wednesday morning.

The plan had been to travel to Canada on Wednesday but we postponed our trip when Raimi's fever climbed to 103. With Kevin at work all week, I spent 3 more days inside with the kids, making soup and jello for one, entertaining the other. Raimi watched entire seasons of Mythbusters and Kinnell drew picture after picture of his mommy smiling. We decorated construction paper flowers and bunnies. We read books inside a blanket fort in the corner of the living room. When Raimi's fever broke I began to think we might be able to get on the road by morning... until Kinnell's temperature began to rise. I let him nap inside the blanket fort while I did dishes and laundry, coaxing a still pale-looking Raimi to read a book instead of watching tv. I'm such a bad mother, I thought, to let him have so much screen time, sick or not.

When I realized it was almost Easter I became overwhelmed remembering the holidays of my childhood. Yes, my kids were sick and plans had changed, but I thought surely there is something wrong with me that we don't belong to a faith community; that the kids had no new spring clothes; that we don't have friends in the neighborhood we can just drop in on; and I don't have the perfect recipe to pull off the shelf in keeping with tradition.

In my family Easter meant time with extended family, an indoor easter egg hunt, new dresses, a full sanctuary at our UU church, and a beautiful meal cooked by my mother. I was not raised to believe in the trinity or resurrection, but the holiday offered the chance to welcome the spring and consider the role of Jesus the social justice activist -- alongside other great men and women who have fought for the rights of the poor and oppressed. I was raised to believe that Jesus was just a man, not perfect or better -- as imperfect and human as the rest of us.

Kevin & I took stock on Friday night. One kid on the mend, the other's fever reaching a peak of 103, I raced to the store for more ibuprofen and tylenol, and candy and trinkets for Easter baskets. Saturday morning I left Kinnell with Kevin while Raimi and I ran errands to pull together a very human and imperfect Easter dinner. Kevin suggested dolmades, the kids wanted corn dogs -- Raimi wanted to decorate them like bunnies. We found allergy-friendly cake mix, organic icing and natural food-coloring at Whole Foods. Raimi's vision was to bake a cake and decorate it using the candy the Easter Bunny would bring. We debated what flowers to buy for the table, settling on a mix of fiery tulips and yellow snap dragons.

Today, Easter morning, Kinnell woke up at 5 unable to swallow, feverish, thirsty and sad. We gave him some advil and I snuggled him back to sleep, and when he woke up he felt well enough to appreciate the nests of candy and eggs tucked away in nooks throughout our tiny apartment living room. We ate breakfast and snuck bites of candy. I worked on a project on my computer and kevin read a book on his Kindle while the kids played with legos.

We baked and iced the cake, discovering just how awful the organic frosting and food coloring really was. But the kids excitedly created jellybean flowers and birds' nests, then floated marshmallow peeps on a purple "pond" and brownish "grass." Kinnell unwrapped a caramel egg, declared "this is gonna be funny" and poked it into the surface of the cake.

We got dressed and went for a walk around Mt. Auburn cemetery -- enjoying the view from the top of its mountaintop tower. I realized just how sedentary I'd been all week as my tired and shaking legs carried me back down the 95 steps inside the monument. As we walked around the grounds Kevin and I noticed the many older family plots containing children. We found a tombstone sculpted like a bassinet. Another monument depicted a boy cradling a baby in his arms, with the names and dates of an 8-year-old and 15-month-old.

We are lucky, I said to Kevin.

We saw tadpoles in Willow Lake and two turtles sunning themselves on a log. Dogwoods, forsythia and magnolia were blooming and the graves of the newer section were adorned with potted tulips, hyacinth, and easter lilies. We found the grave markers for Buckminster Fuller, Amy Lowell, and B. F. Skinner. We took Kinnell's picture cradled in the thick arms of a tree that looked as old as the cemetery itself. Its insides were beginning to hollow but its branches were dotted with the bright green leaves of early spring.

We came home and began dinner. Kevin and I rolled out the grape leaves and discussed how big to make them and how tightly to roll them -- our words part of the ritual for making dolmades. How many times have my mother, sister, Kevin, father, brother-in-law talked about the arrangement of ingredients within a perfect stuffed leaf.

We made salad and chicken strips (no corn dogs at Whole Foods). Kevin opened a bottle of wine and I chopped vegetables and apples for the kids. We shared what we were thankful for and talked about whether this had been a good April vacation -- what our favorite parts had been.

It was not a perfect dinner, a perfect week, a perfect holiday. We stumbled through the ancient rituals and I felt inadequate at nearly every turn -- doing my best to soothe my children and connect with family despite all plans going wrong. Holidays bring this out in me, this fear of inadequacy, awareness of my imperfections. I despair at the blooming pile of dishes and nearly miss the blooming branches outside the window of our apartment. I feel time passing us by as I fail to find the perfect OG-certified tutor or social skills group for Raimi, or give Kinnell enough attention as his vocabulary explodes and he needs me to talk with him. Still, I do my best for my children.

Religions speak of sacred time, and it is tempting to think of sacredness as an escape from the everyday instead of finding the sacred within the mundane details of our lives: Drawing pictures for one another with Kinnell inside a blanket fort. Listening to Raimi describe why he loves the mall and delighting him with a warm pretzel. The view of Boston from a mountain in Cambridge. The pots of flowers left by mourners, the thick trunk of a wisdom-old tree. Jellybeans on cake, my husband's hand taking mine while watching Netflix, the squeals of delight as he tickles two sick kids, shouting "laughter is the best medicine!"

It's an illusion that Spring brings new life. Spring comes every year of this same old life. May I be reminded of the beauty of my life as it already was, the beauty of my life as it continues humbly on.

Meditations

Meditation for Riding the Subway

My feet are flat on the solid floor.

My body is moving through space.

The subway car rattles.

What is that burning smell?

Meditation for Doing the Dishes

Clatter of bowls.

My four-year-old sorts the silverware

carefully into each compartment.

Perched on a chair, he holds up the basket to show what he has done.

Under my washcloth, stains vanish from the countertop.

Water and soap. My son's soft skin.

Meditation for a Science Guy Who Treats Me Like I'm an Idiot

You're not the first boy to make that assumption.

They were wrong, but I allowed myself to fold inward and stop trying.

Math used to appear to me in visual models.

I was filled with wonder at how explainable it all is and how beautiful.

The pop and click of scientific clarity,

a light switch, a light bulb, a lightness, a freedom: understanding.

A stronger girl would have had light sabers and calculus to defend herself.

I decided I was not good at math.

Take a piece of graph paper.

Do you create a graph, or fold it small?

A paper crane. Peace.

the universe, dust and ashes

Stephen Hawking says we don't need God to explain where the universe comes from. Back in his Brief History of Time days, he was saying it's a mystery what got this whole thing started, our universe. But I guess he's figured out a way maybe we don't need God. He's not saying God doesn't exist, just, there's no particular reason to think he does.

Just what I needed to hear.

This year we learned that our four-year-old son has a heart condition that may require open heart surgery during his childhood, and will likely require open heart surgery during his lifetime. We also learned that our seven year old has Aspergers syndrome, a neurological difference that means that he will need extra help to learn skills that other kids learn more naturally such as how to perform a gross motor task and how to figure out social interactions. For our son, it means he struggles a lot at school despite being bright and insightful and wise.

When my husband was subsequently laid off from his job ("It's not you, we all think you're great. We just needed to restructure our business," they told him) I was beginning to wonder what the universe was trying to tell us.

So this news from Stephen Hawking comes as a kind of a confirmation: the universe isn't telling us much. Things just are the way they are, we don't need God to explain it.

My second thought about Stephen Hawking's new book was about his disability. I thought, "it's interesting that someone with his disability and long-term prognosis would figure a way that we don't need god, rather than a way that we do. I mean, shouldn't he be wanting there to be a purpose, meaning, afterlife, God, etc.?" A patronizing thought, considering we're talking about Stephen Hawking. But still, it's what I thought--I wondered about Stephen Hawking's suffering and whether it would trouble him to believe there might not be any God at all.

In the last few months as I've researched my children's disabilities, I've done a lot of thinking about this question of why. Why did this happen to my beautiful children? Why me? Was it because of something I did during my pregnancies? Is it because I'm not a good enough person?Are we being punished somehow?

These questions led me, at the encouragement of a spiritual teacher, to re-read the book of Job. "Read it slowly," she said. So I read it in several sittings, including two that involved paying a babysitter to let me get a black & tan and read the Tanakh at a local Irish gastropub. I took notes.

One of my favorite passages is when Job says (21:23-26)

One man dies in robust health,
All tranquil and untroubled;
His pails are full of milk;
The marrow of his bones is juicy.
Another dies embittered,
Never having tasted happiness.
They both lie in the dust
And are covered with worms.

The story of Job is that he is suffering, horribly sick, his livelihood destroyed by misfortune, and his friends gather around him to comfort him, but all they can think to say is, in effect, "God has a purpose," and "Repent -- the righteous are rewarded, the evil punished."

And Job rejects that. In effect, he says, "I want God to come to me RIGHT NOW, and explain why I am suffering. I have been blameless. I have been loving to my family and generous to those with less than I have. I have been a good person." And he has.

So God does come, and says, basically, "Who do you think you are, Job? I'm before everything and stronger than everything, I know more than anyone and can defeat anyone who is against me."

But then he turns to Job's friends and says (in so many words,) "you don't know what you're talking about either. I should smite you -- you deserve it for being such blithering, thoughtless, sanctimonious idiots. But I won't, because Job is right, he's a good person. And since he's your friend, I'll spare you."

And Job repents, with one of my favorite lines in all of literature:

I spoke without understanding
Of things beyond me, which I did not know.
Hear now, and I will speak;
I will ask, and You will inform me.
I had heard You with my ears,
But now I see You with my eyes;
Therefore, I recant and relent,
Being but dust and ashes."

In my notes from the pub, I wrote, "Job is blameless in his suffering, and he doesn't know shit.

I hear about Stephen Hawking and I focus on his suffering. What an incredible contradiction, that I would feel sorry for Stephen Hawking. That I would feel sorry for someone because he lives his life in a wheelchair, despite the fact that he has a mind that can comprehend the structure of the infinite. A man whose books are read by thousands of people and who influences the ideas of millions.

I'm just a mom in an apartment in the U.S. -- a person who attends PTO meetings and stresses about bills. A person who feels sorry for those I imagine have it worse, and a person who feels sorry for myself. A person who wonders if it matters whether my children have disabilities because of a scientifically-explainable genetic codes or whether it's just the cruel hand of unseen fate.

Everyone suffers. It's just the truth. We make ourselves feel better by thinking, it could be worse. We feel sorry for others. We promise, I'll be better and different and then my future will be different. If I try hard enough maybe instead of dying embittered I can die with "pails full of milk."

In the midst of our despair, God may appear to us out of a whirlwind and tell us to shut the fuck up. But more likely we will discover in some mysterious and ridiculously undramatic moment that we are loved, as Job's friends are loved, despite our imperfections and dumb ideas about the universe.

Like today, as I sit at a table with two children in bed and my husband doing the dishes; with a vase of roses in front of me from my mother-in-law, who thought I could use the cheer, and knowledge that tomorrow we will go to a museum and look at art made entirely out of legos.

We don't need God, and yet meaning appears. I believe in transcendence, and believe I am dust and ashes. Somewhere between those two beliefs is where I'll have to live.

Where we are right now

"Mommy! I want the Iron Man popsicle." Then he whispers, "Iron Man."

We're relaxed and smiling after a frustrating, tearful, stressful, fight over whether he, a four-year-old, can swallow an adult-sized pill. At one point I was so angry at his refusal that I almost (almost) threw a plate onto the kitchen floor. In my mind it shattered, but my body carefully placed it on the kitchen counter.

His dad and I tried holding him down and putting medicine-laced yogurt into his mouth and holding his mouth closed. His nose and mouth were covered momentarily and I thought, we are suffocating him. We tried joking, we tried threatening. We had started with bribes and promises of how proud we'd be. We ended up so angry we were shattering.

Finally I became the boss. "Time out until you are ready to take the pill." Confident, no longer angry, I told him he could do it. He did it, and we all dissolved in a pile of hugs and praise and relief. I love you so much, we said. I'm so proud of you. I knew you could do it!

Taking a pill this size is a tall order for someone his age, but I've seen him do it three times, twice during our overnight stay in the hospital this week. I've also seen him take what he calls his "small white pills that are just white and small" -- beta blockers intended to prevent the aneurysm in his ascending aorta from growing larger until it bursts.

He needed to take this pill to get rid of strep throat, and he needs to overcome strep so we can restart him on a new beta-blocker, because his small white pills caused his blood pressure to drop so low he couldn't stand up.

So today it is the big pill, tomorrow we'll add a new beta blocker and watch for signs of dehydration and over-medication--the combination that landed us in the hospital for an overnight this week. After a week, the big pills will go away, and we'll slowly increase the beta blocker and hope the next time he gets sick his body can handle it and he won't need iv fluids. When he went faint in my arms, floppy and unable to answer questions, I thought it was his heart--I thought, it's happened. His heart has exploded. I called 911. But it wasn't that. It was just his medicine was too strong and he had a case of strep throat.

My son's aorta is enlarged because the heart valve that controls the blood flowing through his aorta isn't shaped right. When we learned this a couple of months ago, the echocardiographer showed me what his brother's (normal) aortic valve looks like: with each heartbeat three flaps open wide, hugging the aortic wall; then snap precisely shut, intersecting in three ridges that look like the emblem for Mercedes Benz. But our four-year-old has two flaps inside his aortic valve. The third is fused in place, leaving two valves flapping open and shut imperfectly, like slightly leaky fish lips.

This morning I took him to his pediatric cardiologist, a specialty you know exists but can't quite picture until you shake her hand. My son and I sat in the waiting room with serious-looking parents and children at play, and my son played peek-a-boo with a little baby in a stroller. She smiled and gnawed her cheerios, and her mom flashed a worried and distracted smile, then asked her father, "Why are they taking so long? I hope nothing's wrong."

I looked at her worry and saw my own. I thought, here I am, a mother among mothers in a pediatric cardiology waiting room. I said something to my son about going to get a treat at the coffee shop afterwards, and the other mother looked up and said, "There's a healing garden on the eighth floor. You should take him there and he can pick out a stone to bring home with him." I said, "Oh, a healing garden? What a nice thing to have here." With weary warmth, she agreed, "It's a good place." Our eyes connected in a way that scared me. I looked away.

We rode the elevator upstairs. The doors opened and I read, pediatric oncology. I noticed flyers advertising support groups for parents of children with cancer. Things could always be worse, I thought. Beautiful flags decorated by children decorated the hallway. "Think positively!" one said. "Hope, Peace and Love" offered one. Another challenged me, "Live Strong-- I Do!"

The healing garden is a peacefully landscaped balcony with glass walls overlooking the city skyline, Charles River, and Longfellow Bridge. You can see the Red Line subway trains move in and out of the Charles Street station, and you can see the Citgo sign that overlooks Fenway Park. My son threw pennies into the water of a polished-stone fountain and I made a wish on each one. My first wish was too small--I want him to make it to being a teenager without needing surgery. He wanted another penny, another wish, so I wished, "I want him to grow up and become a man and have a family." A third penny, "I want him to be happy."

My son drew a scribble and I wrote in the guest book--our names and "pediatric cardiology patient and his mom feel thankful for this place." My son selected a stone--smooth and brown with layers worn away to reveal black rings like a topographic map. He handed it to me. It was bigger and heavier than I thought it would be.

Hope / Hopedale

Last semester I took a course on 19th Century Unitarian and Universalist thought. I audited the course but my very generous and supportive professor allowed me to act as if the course were for credit so I could get a grade and get his feedback. For my final paper, I did primary source research into the Hopedale Community, a 19th Century Socialist Pacifist Abolitionist Temperance Feminist Christian community in Massachusetts led by Adin Ballou.

I was interested in the way that the community balanced the values of duty or obligation against the dictates of individual conscience. I was also interested in how concretely they put their feminist values into action. Like many utopian communities associated with Unitarian Universalism, they believed in compensating women for their labor outside the home, but remarkably, they also compensated mothers for the raising of infants and for household tasks. While there were gender divisions--men didn't take up pots and pans--women did assume leadership within the community and carry out work traditionally assigned to men.

Abby Price was one of their most outspoken leaders, and she had a lot to say at major national feminist conventions, particularly about the way that economic injustice led to moral ills such as prostitution. Really, really gripping stuff--ahead of its time in so many ways.

Anyway, I wanted to share my conclusion from the paper because I used it as an opportunity to diverge from the academic issues into the question of why someplace like Hopedale matters. The paper had some errors but got an A (stands for Awesome, btw). I learned a lot.

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Hopedale’s Relevance Today

The Hopedale Collection of Hymns and Songs for Practical Christians contains a hymn by Abby H. Price which reads in part:

Intemp’rance be demolished,
See the light, how it breaks,
And oppression all abolished,
See the light;
Let earth’s poor sons and daughters,
See the light, how it breaks,
Drink free salvations waters,
See the light;
Come of Savior! hasten on,
Make earth a happy home.

When she prayed, “Make of our earth a happy home,” Price evoked the love of an egalitarian family as a model of hope for the wider world. Violence, domination, and individualism make for unhappy homes and unjust political systems. While Hopedale’s interpretation of these “family values” would necessarily have been challenged to include same-sex partnerships and other family structures not recognized during this time period, it is clear that the underlying foundation of love, equality, respect and mutuality are the ingredients of joyful homes and a better world.

Beyond Hopedale’s boundaries of geography and time, feminists have struggled to address inequality at all levels of human interaction. The battles that were easiest to win were those that were fought on male terms—opening male spheres to women while demanding few changes to the way women and men organized and ran their households. Feminist victories in demanding support for children and mothers would have affected women of all economic classes, but these reforms have been much slower in coming. Opposition by men to granting women the right to vote was overcome long before women earned the right to be free from violence in their homes. As a society we have yet to embrace our responsibility to children. While social safety nets do exist, they are tattered. Our politics continues to idealize an elitist construction of motherhood that encourages affluent and highly-educated women to stay at home with their children or pay for expensive private childcare and preschools, while offering shoddy subsidized childcare and demonization to poor women, judging them as bad mothers for “leeching” off the welfare system to provide for their children’s basic needs.

Contemporary platitudes claim that “children are our future,” yet today we fail to provide children with the richness of opportunity and nurturance provided at Hopedale over a century and a half ago. It is hard to imagine what it would look like if the boundary between home and workplace were as fluid as the boundaries between family and community at Hopdeale—if baby swings hung from the doorways of meeting rooms and teenagers were invested with the responsibility of providing moral instruction to younger children. It’s nearly unthinkable that mothers might be compensated by their community for the labor involved in nursing and nurturing infants. And it is considered both radical and self-serving to call for free communal childcare for all parents, in order to maximize their contributions to the broader workforce, while offering flexible hours to parents to allow them to maximize the time they spend raising their children.

Paradoxically today, all kinds of individualistic decisions are justified through reference to our children—we close our doors, buy “safer” SUVs and speak of “doing what’s best for my family.” With the best of intentions and often with painful deliberation, parents blessed with resources and therefore options are confronted with choices that force us to weigh our individual children’s needs against broader community goods. We could learn a lot from Hopedale, which did not romanticize childhood or use child-raising as an excuse for indulging in selfishness. Parents were also not expected to be any more selfless than other members of the community. They were not expected to sacrifice their own fulfillment at the altar of raising perfect children, nor to sacrifice their children in the name of personal fulfillment.

If the residents of Hopedale failed to multiply and replicate their experiment, they did multiply their beliefs through the most common means—their children themselves. While most of Hopedale’s children grew up to lead rather ordinary lives, their memories of Hopedale are among the community’s most evocative and moving documents. Some stayed in the community, others moved on. Lucy Ballou Heywood and her husband devoted themselves to the task of editing Adin Ballou’s unpublished works and distributing them to libraries around the country. Hopedale’s children kept the community’s ideas alive.

It would behoove those of us who work for justice, peace and equality to do so not only through our public efforts, but through the most basic means by which we can transmit moral lessons into the future: our children. As we face new ecological and political challenges, our children will be saddled with the work of solving problems we and our parents set into motion. On the most literal level, the future depends on the values we instill in the next generation.

As we face our future, we must recognize that individualism and freedom must be balanced against the values of sacrifice, duty, and interdependence. Children are both a physical gift to the future, and among our greatest teachers of these values. Freedom means nothing to a parent cradling an infant who is not hungry, has a clean diaper, and is not in pain. Sometimes babies cry, and sometimes we must learn humility about the limits of our power. We are humbled, and also strengthened by our children. Not only my children, but all children are a gift from God sent to teach us about sacrifice and love. We owe it to them to learn this lesson.

The Sound of Music

My sister Carol posted a link to a Sound of Music dance performance in an Antwerp train station on her Facebook, and watching it made me so happy I started crying.

I love the surprise and delight on the faces of the people at the train station--to have stumbled into such a wonderfully well-conceived work of art and dance on their way to catch a train. What a gift!

I love that the dancers are all different ages, with tons of children mixed in. Then there is the clever simplicity of the choreography -- especially when they Vogue to "La, a note to follow Sol." So good!

But the main thing, I think, is just that these people are dancing, in public, just for fun. When was the last time I did something beautiful and joyful just for the sheer fun of it? Even with my children, I'm so often playing for a few minutes "before" -- "we can play for a few minutes and then we need to go to the grocery," I'll tell them. Being home with them this summer, I realize how hard it is for me to just enjoy the moment, much less do something creative and art-filled just because.

I'm reading a book about what happens in the rest of your life after a mystical experience or experience of awakening -- Jack Kornfield's After the Ecstasy, The Laundry. He prefaces one of the chapters with this quote:

A young monk asked the Master:
"How can I ever get emancipated?"
The Master replied:
"Who has ever put you in bondage?"

For me, the answer is, "I have." My ideas about how I should be, or what's the right thing to do, or how other people should treat me--these ideas have not always been helpful. Over many years of growing up and young adulthood, I've gotten in my own way and limited my own possibilities. When the truth is, every day is a new day.

It's not a new idea... but still, a new day!

I remember my father quoting Blake at my sister's wedding: "He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity's sunrise."

To kiss joy as it flies. Not holding onto the moment--grasping after love and happiness--but simply giving it a kiss as it flies by.

I've lately been telling people that I figured out the secret to happiness is, "be happy." I don't always practice this rule, but I do hope I can find my Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do.

Safe Neighborhoods

My family has moved to Cambridgeport, a neighborhood in Cambridge near Central Square. Our apartment is nice, newer than many, small, and just about right. Some of our neighbors are young single people but many are families, some are retired.

There's a lady across the street who I hear shouting nonsense sometimes, and I think she's probably imagining people are talking to her. There are children who ride bikes and scooters in the nicely maintained courtyards -- we've met some of them. Denalise, Isabella, Ahmed & Nora, Ting-Ting, Leh-Leh and baby Kai-Kai. I love these children--these city kids who are glad to climb and bike around with my kids.

I broke up a fight between some teenagers the other night -- one told me, "this is just how we work out our problems. It's ok!" as his friend rubbed his nose and caught his breath. Their younger, more responsible-seeming friend had been videotaping, and he encouraged his buddies to cut it out. "I've got little kids, ok? So keep it cool so they don't have to see you fighting," I asked. "Ok," they said, and told me their names when I asked them--names I can't remember, except Eric, with the camera. Good kids, just bored on a summer night.

I love my new community. I love asking someone which way is a particular store and them answering in an unexpected accent. I love the young Ethiopian woman wearing a long headscarf, who rang up new sneakers for Raimi at Payless, asking about our kids' names and ages. I love the store down the block that sells Indian clothes and spices, and the shop nearby that sells gaudy suits and shoes "from Italy." I love meeting my neighbors, who tell me what country they were originally from before I ask. Sweden. Egypt. China. Ethiopia. I wonder if they expect me to believe I'm the one who's "from here" -- me, the person who just moved here from the Midwest, who grew up in an affluent white suburb in Connecticut. If anything, I am the foreigner among the Boston accents and Brazilian cultural centers, the tatooed skateboarders, reggae muscians, barber shops and Middle Eastern restaurants.

I love the Boston accent of my downstairs neighbor. I love to see the way people let their children decorate the doors to their apartments. I even have come to love the sound of a horn honking, announcing that someone has arrived to help the old woman across the street--take her to the grocery store, make sure she's ok. At first I thought it was rude--go ring the bell, I thought. Now I imagine they tolerate and appreciate the relationship, and it is nice to see that an elderly person on my street has someone watching out for her. So I tolerate the horn. I tolerate the cigarette smoke wafting in from a neighbor's balcony, and I tolerate the drum kit I heard someone banging on at 11:45 last night. They stopped, after all, and anyway it was a Saturday night. These are my neighbors.

I didn't grow up with such a rich and diverse neighborhood. I imagine that the neighborhoods I grew up in, the pools I swam in, were a lot like the Pennsylvania pool and community you may have read about, where elementary school children were recently denied access to their contractually-arranged swim schedule on the first day they showed up. Over the phone the pool club was happy to accomodate an extra 65 kids; when those kids appeared in person--and when those kids were African American and Latino--the pool could no longer accomodate them.

Some children heard racist comments from pool members. Chaperones witnessed parents taking their kids out of the pool, leaving to complain to management. One of the children asked their teacher "if I'm too dark to swim there."

The really remarkable thing about this story is not that it happened. What's remarkable is that it was caught and the outcry was so widespread. After major media attention and a federal investigation, the pool club is now claiming it was a safety issue. Isn't it always?

Of course we're not racist, the board members said. We live in a white suburb of a racially divided city. Yes, our membership is all white. We weren't comfortable with these kids coming into the pool--but it was about safety. The pool felt unsafe when these children arrived.

Look. I've got my own baggage and work left to do. I've grown up white and privileged in this racist culture. But I am sick and tired of hearing stories about black children getting told to quiet down, move out, break things up, move along. White people: this is our problem! Racism isn't something that can change unless we want it to. So let's figure our paranoid, stupid, fearful, racist baggage out and address this problem.

When I was growing up, I remember believing a racist story about a peer who was Muslim. I remember him approaching me to tell me that he heard I was repeating this story and that I shouldn't talk about things I know nothing about. I was ashamed, and years later, I am also grateful for his courage to call me out for being so stupid. I remember when a new girl moved to our affluent CT suburb, how there was this buzz and excitement because she was African American... and rich and ultimately very popular. She passed the test... but the test was there. How she dressed, talked. Her light skin, her preppy hair. Several years ago I reminisced about about the lack of racism I'd witnessed in the small town where I went to high school, and my friend from school, who is Colombian-American, asked me if I was serious. Despite growing up in the same town, we lived in different places, it seems.

More recently, when we sold our home to move to Massachusetts, a neighbor told me that another of our neighbors had asked if the people buying the house were white, because, "we've got enough black people on our street."

....

Ten or so years ago, my partner and I decided to remain unmarried in solidarity with same-sex couples who were denied the right to marry under the law. We did not want to belong to the married people's club when so many of our friends and loved ones were denied entrance. In the last few months, we legalized our commitment because I needed health insurance and we were moving to a state where gay marriage is legal. It was a compromise I'm not particularly proud of.

So now I'm thinking about the other clubs I'm a part of and wondering, is there anything we do to get out of this club of whiteness--this place where being white earns my children the right to swim wherever they want to? This place where our children can gather in large numbers without being told the situation has become unsafe?

How can we, a white family, make the world safer for all of our neighbors? How can we make it safe for children on their bikes and children in swimming pools? How can we make sure it's safe for children to be children? Because a world in which 6 year old, 11 year old, 17 year old children have to change their actions to avoid making white people feel uncomfortable is not a safe world.