How I Slept

Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Freddie Gray. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Christian Cooper. George Floyd.

This keeps happening.

This has been happening all my life.

I was 11 years old during the Watts riots of 1965. We lived 12 miles away.

I was 15 and a student at Rubidoux High School on September 24, 1969, the day of the race riot on campus there.

Last night I had the news on for hours and hours, just like I used to in the good old days. That’s not like me anymore. My psyche can’t take the overload of sadness, so I limit myself in the evening—usually—to 30 minutes of national news.

But last night was extraordinary. So I kept it on, watching, sometimes with the volume up, sometimes with it muted as I talked to friends and my son for hours and hours, watching, and at times, crying.

I wanted to turn it off.

I couldn’t turn it off.

I finally turned it off and laid on the floor with my good, good dog, stroking his head, massaging his back, telling him why I loved him so very, very much. Then I crawled into bed, cocooning myself between the pillows and clutching Charlie, the plush pup my cousin gave me.

My friends tease me at times about my evening routine, how I go to bed so early, no TV or movies or internet or phone. Just me and a book for an hour in another world before I turn off the light, and I am asleep in less than 60 seconds.

Not last night.

Last night I kept watching, even with the house dark and everything turned off. I closed my eyes, but I saw the violence and destruction that I had just been watching on the news… and the violence and destruction of 2015… and 2014… and 1992… and 1969… and 1965.

Lying there in the dark, it was reminiscent of 9/11/2001, when my kids—my caring, adult children—finally convinced me to turn off the television and go to bed, and they came in my room and sat around me and talked to me until I finally fell asleep.

Last night I had my dog. And I had Charlie. And a headful of memories I wish I didn’t have.

Understanding Amy

Unless you’ve been living on Mars in recent days, you’re no doubt aware of the altercation that took place last week in New York’s Central Park between a white woman, Amy Cooper, and a black man, Christian Cooper. (They are “not related”—that we know of. Wouldn’t it be something if their DNA showed a connection?)

This post is not about that altercation, essentially; it is about my post on Facebook about that altercation. Because I need to clarify (or justify, if you would have it so) something I said about that.

But to summarize (and forgive me for the lack of journalistic form as I use their first rather than last names for obvious reasons): While Christian was bird-watching in a section of the park called “the Ramblings,” where dogs are not allowed off leash, he noticed Amy’s dog diving into the foliage and whatnot (as dogs will do). When he asked her to leash her dog, she refused, so he began to record their interaction on his phone, at which point she demanded he stop, and when he didn’t, she called 9-1-1 and shouted to the dispatcher that she needed help because a black man was threatening her and her dog.

The video taken by Christian has been posted repeatedly by multiple news outlets on Youtube, so go take a look if you need to see “exactly” what happened. You’ll note that Christian is courteous (“Please do”) when she threatens to call the cops—even when she threatens him with “I’m going to call the cops and tell them a black man is threatening my life,” which clearly has not happened, and he remains courteous even after her hysterical plea to the dispatcher of “Help me! I’m being threatened by a black man in the Ramblings!” (He tells her “Thank you” after she ends the call.) I’m not going to post a link here, for multiple reasons that aren’t important; you can find it easily enough.

Initially, I simply posted a link to the video on my Facebook page. Why? I want to be very clear with my answer: I did not do so to vilify Amy. I resent that people are calling her “Central Park Karen” and other names. I am horrified that she has received death threats. I didn’t post that video to pile on. Not at all.

I posted the video because, of my 793 “friends” on Facebook, the vast majority are white. And, sadly, in that group, there are a few folks who still don’t “get” what “white privilege” is, a few folks who still claim that, yes, there are “a few bad apples,” but overall, racism died out long ago. Try as I might, no matter how many blog posts and Facebook comments I make, I can’t seem to convince this small handful of people that, in fact, racism remains a very powerful threat in America. How powerful? Powerful enough that black men like Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd are still losing their lives in modern-day lynchings in this country.

But again, that is not what this post is about, and full disclosure here in case you came upon this page after doing a search for one of the topics or names I’ve tagged in it: I am a white woman with a white daughter and a black daughter and two bi-racial (black and white) sons. This post is about what happened after I posted Christian’s video on Facebook. Sean, a good friend and fabulous teacher with whom I have discussed race issues in the past, commented on the post regarding how discouraged he had become in trying to teach young people about racism. I replied with this:

“Getting people of privilege to ‘get it’ is so, so daunting. And always keep in mind, love, that people like this woman are reacting out of fear… because she has been taught to fear.”

My comment was not well received. A couple of friends—good friends, great people—commented, “She was NOT reacting out of fear….”

Well, but… she was. Yes, folks, I’m right there with you in terms of how horribly she behaved, how his very life could have been at stake by her false accusation. Trust me, I get that. It is something I fear for my own sons all the time as they try to navigate through a world populated by a privileged majority. And yes, yes, I agree! Of course! Racism is still out there (only now it’s filmed), and we should expose it whenever possible. I’m right there with ya. You only need to read my blog (keep scrolling after this post) to see that.

But I feel—agree with me or not—that it is imperative we find a way other than shouting and name-calling to help racists see themselves as they are. I’m pretty sure calling Amy Cooper names and threatening her life is not going to encourage self-examination or self-awareness on her part.

Quick side note here: Yes, Amy Cooper is a racist (despite Christian Cooper stating graciously in an interview that ‘only she knows whether that is true’). Simplest definition I could find online: “Racists discriminate against other races.” Did she? Yes—immediately, without even thinking twice.

You’ll have to trust me on this next bit: I’ve confronted a lot of racists in my day. This is how I used to do it in my youth:

At age 16, I was sitting at the dinner table in a friend’s home when the father of the family made some reference to “niggers.” I responded with this gem: “Ahem. My dad was a nigger.” Not my proudest moment, and I have rarely shared that, for obvious reasons. What a jerk! (Me, I mean. Well, the dad was a jerk, too, and a racist.) Most folks knew my dad had died when I was young. No one knew what he looked like. My skin was dark enough that kids in my neighborhood when I was small called me “nigger baby,” so I just responded in that way to shock the guy. Because I was profoundly offended by what he said, and I wanted to profoundly offend him in turn.

Would that have helped Mr. So-and-so to an epiphany wherein he became open and accepting of all races? Um… no.

We have been shocked and offended by Amy Cooper. Will offending or threatening her in return help her to a similar epiphany? No. No, it will not.

Can we please just try to take a breath and realize that the majority of racists don’t even realize that they are? Yes, I know, blatant white supremacists have become emboldened by persons in power who turn a blind eye to their hatred. I get that. Amy Cooper is not one of those people. She is a white woman with a nasty temper who lashed out from a place of deep-seated fear. Let me clarify: She was not fearful of Christian Cooper or anything he did. She is fearful of black people in general—whether she is aware of it or not.

Case in point: Just before the publication of The Tainted Legacy of Bertha Gifford, I went back through the book, deleting all the parts I thought might hurt my mother. Mom was 91. I wanted the book to bring her closure about her beloved grandmother. I didn’t want it to hurt her or cause yet another rift between us. So I took out the part where she barked at me, “Keep your eyes on your purse!” when she saw that our shuttle driver from the airport in St. Louis was a black man. I also took out the part in which I described her reaction when I got us lost in the rental car one day and we ended up in a predominantly black suburb… and how she literally slid down in her seat to hide, fumbling for the door lock, screaming at me in near-hysterics to “Turn around!” and “Get out of here!” Amy Cooper’s tone in her brief exchange with the 9-1-1 dispatcher was reminiscent of that.

This was my mom, though. Grandma to my children, who loved her, and whom she loved in return.

But… Mom was taught from a young age not to trust black people, to be fearful of them. I was not. Thank all the gods and the Universe that, in my childhood, I never once heard my parents speak ill of anyone of another race. I knew people were “different.” I was never taught that “different” meant “inferior or “dangerous.” Mom and Dad knew what was right and just, and we saw them, as our role models, practice that at home. But taking Mom back to the location of her childhood after she’d been gone for decades triggered that latent, sub-conscious fear in her.

In the decades since being an ass to Mr. So-and-so, I have had a lot of heartfelt conversations with racists. With the exception of my former father-in-law, who told me when my son was an infant that he would never be as smart as my daughter because he was black, the vast majority of racists I have known will eventually (with enough patience and careful listening on my part) admit to some incident in their childhood when they learned to fear black people. Or Mexicans. Or Japanese people because of the racist propaganda distributed by so many (including the U.S. government) during WWII. (Ever done a Google image search of WWII propaganda posters? Take a deep breath first.)

I could write an entire blog post (or book, really) about how fear is the most powerful weapon in controlling people. When fear of certain things, certain people, becomes ingrained in our psyche at a very young age, it is very, very difficult to root out—because, while we may mature and begin to think of ourselves as nice, grown-up people with good manners who treat everyone with decency and respect, it remains there, on a sub-conscious level, until something happens to trigger that fear.

I don’t advocate that you feel sorry for Amy Cooper. I just ask that you attempt to understand what motivated her to do what she did.

As for me, I was a nerdy kid who grew up fascinated by TV and newspaper coverage of current events, so I watched the Civil Rights Movement unfold before my very eyes, and it left a huge impression on the very strong sense of justice I inherited from my father. Thus my intense anger toward Mr. So-and-so or anyone else who crossed my path who referred to others by racial or xenophobic slurs. I’ve never been able to tolerate that sort of thing. Only now, instead of shocking and offending, I really try to consider the source and engage in a conversation that leans more toward enlightenment than further anger and hatred.

Ipso facto

I have a point to make here, dear Reader, and I have to tell a couple of stories to get to those points, so I hope you will bear with me if this post seems a bit lengthy. I would say, “I’ll try to keep it short,” but doing so would be a disservice to the man whose untimely death I am mourning.

In 1994, I bought my first home in Rancho Cucamonga, and before your brain tells you, “Ooooh, nice,” it was a repo that had been sitting vacant for a year and had been vandalized multiple times. Definitely a fixer, but it was mine. The boys and I moved into our own home, the married daughter lived just up the road, and from my bedroom window, I could see all the way to I-10 and beyond the freeway to watch planes take off from Ontario Airport.

Between my home and those planes, there was nothing but vineyards and long lines of towering eucalyptus trees, planted as windbreaks, as far as the eye could see. We quickly collected a few geriatric dogs in the years after we moved in, and every weekend I would take them for long, early morning walks over there.

Then the property was sold, the new owners tore out all the grape vines, yanked out all the trees, and began leveling those acres for a huge housing development with large, two-story homes—as far as the eye could see.

While they were building them, there was no fence around the property, so I still walked across the road of an evening to stroll along the unpaved streets with the dogs, hating the fact that the homes were going up but curious about the process, the floor plans, etc. On occasion, I would follow the dogs up onto one of the pads and poke my head in the framed doorway, or walk in a few feet to determine where the kitchen would be or how big the living room was. I did this with no malice, no ill intent. I just walked in, looked around, and left.

Fast forward to a few years later when the completed development loomed just yards from my bedroom window. It was now a gated community, and my then teenage son made the acquaintance of a young lady who lived there. I have to state here that my boys are bi-racial. That shouldn’t matter to anyone at any time, but it does, which is why this story must be told.

One warm summer night, he drove across the way in his newly acquired car, a buddy in the passenger seat, to visit this young woman. She’d given him an access code for the gate, so he drove in, but didn’t go straight to her house. He doesn’t remember now why they pulled over; he thinks maybe to listen to a favorite rap song. But minutes later there was a spotlight shining through the windshield of his car, blinding them, and they were given commands through a loudspeaker to step out of the car. They assumed it was police; they couldn’t see anything beyond the glare of the spotlight. The two were placed in handcuffs and made to sit on the curb—for all the world to see. His car was searched (with his permission), his license run for warrants, while they sat, saying no more than “Yes sir” or “No sir” in answer to most of their questions, except when they were asked why they were in this neighborhood, one officer remarking that they didn’t look like they belonged there.

Finally, when they had detained them long enough to publicly humiliate them and make them wonder if they would actually end up in jail for some unknown reason or someone else’s crime, they were let go with the explanation that they “fit the description” of someone who had “recently committed a burglary in that area.”

All of the aforementioned that happened long ago in my life has to do with this story that happened three months ago:

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man, left his home to go for a run. Along the way, he stopped at a construction site where a home was being built and stepped inside for a few minutes. Conjecture now is that he was stopping to get a drink of water from a functioning sink in the building. He is seen on a security camera walking out of sight, then back into view, wiping his mouth. He leaves then, having disturbed nothing.

Several minutes later he is shot dead after being confronted by two white men who chased him down in a pick-up truck and tried to stop him. When he resisted, they killed him.

When I say to people, “This could have been my son,” I feel those words all the way down to my heart and soul. I wish I could say that what happened to my own son was an isolated incident. Sadly, both my boys in their younger years had to endure similar fear and humiliation after being pulled over for contrived reasons. “You fit the description….” “You were weaving….” “You failed to stop completely.” I know how these things go. I was a police chaplain once, and I rode with an officer who told me that if a person “looked suspicious,” all he had to do was follow him long enough to make him nervous, get him to make the slightest error, and then he “had cause,” and he delighted in that. He was a white officer working in a primarily Latinx community.

I digress.

I stopped writing here for a moment because I couldn’t think of a gentle way to express what I need to say next, and that is this:

If you find yourself feeling even slightly less horrified by the modern-day lynching of Ahmaud Arbery because you found out that, ‘Oh look! He was snooping around at that construction site first!’ then you’re part of the problem. Because it doesn’t matter if he did. People do that sort of thing all the time. I keep telling my own story of doing the same thing, and those who hear it keep saying, “So have I!”

Ahmaud Arbery wasn’t guilty of any wrongdoing. But let me just say this: Even if he was, even if he took a piss on the dirt floor or picked up a power tool and shoved it in his cargo pants on the way out, those two men are not excused from chasing him down and killing him.

Because this is not about what Ahmaud Arbery did or did not do. This is about what Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael did. They chased a man down, confronted him, and when he refused to comply with what they demanded and he attempted to defend himself, Travis McMichael shot him multiple times point blank with a shotgun. Arbery didn’t even have a fighting chance of survival.

I don’t care what Ahmaud Arbery did in the moments before his execution. I don’t care that the autopsy report shows he had “no drugs or alcohol in his system” when he was murdered. None of that matters, because that’s not what this case should be about, but that’s all I keep hearing about in the news. We seem to be focusing primarily on the victim here, instead of on the man who committed the heinous crime.

The same was true in the case of Emmett Till, a young black teenager who, in 1955, was dragged out of his uncle’s home in the middle of the night by several white men, beaten, tortured, and finally drowned. They did unspeakable things to him. He was 14 years old. The men who lynched him were acquitted of their crimes by an all-white jury. One year later, in an interview for Look magazine, two of the men admitted to killing Till, and they felt justified in doing so because he had allegedly flirted with a married white woman.

The entire focus of the case in 1955 was on what Emmett Till may or may not have done, not on what was done to him, nor on the individuals who perpetrated those acts.

Do you see my point here? I pray that you see my point here. In the case of an unarmed black man who is clearly chased down by two white men and then killed, it is not necessary to “wait until we have all the facts” before we make a judgment. A gross and tragic injustice has been done here. Nothing we learn about what Arbery did or did not do in the moments or days or weeks before it happened is going to justify what was done to him.

Checking out

Fair warning: This post includes a frank discussion of suicide.

If you're the type of person who believes suicide is a failure or weakness of some sort, or that it's "a long-term solution to a short-term problem," move on, tend to your own business. Nothing to see here. 

If you've clicked on this link because that dark cloud is threatening, let me go no further before I share this information:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Or you can visit the website at suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

Or you can click here to chat online instead of on the phone.

Or if you prefer to text, text HOME to 741741.

The TTY number is: 1-800-799-4889.

The veterans' crisis line is 1-800-273-8255.

If you feel awkward or uncomfortable about calling because you're not sure what to say or how it works, click here for a brief summary of exactly what happens when you call. (Thank you, BuzzFeed News. I love y'all for that.)

While you're summoning the courage to do that, go to Netflix and watch the entire first season of After Life with Ricky Gervais. The episodes are only 30 minutes, and there are only six, so you can binge watch it if you like. Trust me on this one; the series is delightfully course and profane, and you'll find yourself laughing at things you feel guilty laughing at--despite your sadness. Just do it.

And one more note before I go any further with my own stuff: I just want to state quite honestly that I am fine today. I know that over the next couple of days, some certain friends who know me well and love me anyway will call or text to check in and see how I'm doing. Because they'll be concerned. For those folks: I'm good right now. I promise. I love you, too.

So....
A doctor killed herself last week. Lorna Breen was a forty-nine-year-old emergency room physician who worked in New York City. She contracted COVID-19. Her body recovered, but tragically, her psyche did not.

I haven't stopped thinking about her or feeling heartbroken for her family.

Edwin Schneidman, author of The Suicidal Mind, coined the term "psychache" to describe the psychological torment a suicidal person endures when he or she experiences an unresolved sadness or yearning for so long, suicide seems the only escape from the unbearable psychological pain. This pain, by the way, worsens with stress.

You see the problem here.

I have no doubt there are far more people than we realize hovering on the brink right now, ruminating on what a relief it would be to simply check out.

Because life has some really shitty aspects right now. What are we supposed to be doing at this point in the pandemic? Should we keep isolating? Break out? Wear a mask everywhere? Or give up because others aren't? Will we be able to meet our basic needs for food and toiletries ongoing? Will we lose everything in our retirement accounts because the stock market keeps fluctuating? If we get sick, will we recover?  Or languish alone in a hospital room until we die? When will we ever get to see our friends and family members again?

We're all trying to sort our way through, and every day is frustrating and exasperating and don't even get me started on how really, really, lonely this isolation can be for some folks. Even those of us who are profound introverts enjoy the company of a few close friends. I haven't seen my friends or my kids or my grandkids in months. Yes, we talk on the phone. Sort of. Is texting the same as talking?

Loneliness eats away at potential suicides. And I'll tell you a secret about us: We don't tell people when we're lonely. In fact, we tend to withdraw even more. Because when we get lonely, we assume it's because others have stopped calling because they've stopped caring. I know, I know, it's not true, but the fact is, self-loathing and depression are bosom buddies.

Most people struggling with clinical depression have learned through conditioned response to stop mentioning it. Because mentioning it often brings on platitudes that, at the very least, don't help ("You just need to get out more, have some fun once in a while"), and at worst, might push us a bit closer to the edge ("You wouldn't feel this way if you weren't so self-absorbed all the time").

So we back away quietly (so you won't notice we're missing), wrap ourselves in a mantel of sad thoughts, and go sit somewhere (on a couch, in a bed) so we can listen to sad music or watch sad or dark TV or movies or videos.

This is what I imagine happened with Dr. Lorna Breen. She went from working 18-hour days with colleagues she loved and patients who needed her to being quarantined alone with a disease, day after lonely day. The feeling is that the world, that life, goes on without you, and you aren't needed anyway... so why linger?

I'll tell you--from experience--why you should linger: Because it gets better. No, really, it does. Life is just shitty at times. There is definitely a yin and yang to it, though, a balance of pain and pleasure, sadness and elation. Yes, there are moments of intense despair. But there are dogs. And sunsets. And sunrises. And incredible constellations stretched across the night sky. (Go on, pry yourself out, have a look.) There's ice cream and lasagna. And there are books. Thousands and thousands of books that will transport you so far into your imagination you will forget (if just for a time) how shitty life feels right now.

And there are definitely people who care. I met one of my most beloved friends in an online chat room for clinically depressed people. We have been friends for 20 years now, and I treasure that friendship because he gets it. He'll always be there for me, and I for him. (And just as a side note, if you're thinking an online chat room for really depressed people might be a bad idea, it's the polar opposite of what you would imagine--lots of highly intelligent, very caring, very funny people riffing on the absurdity and/or shittiness of life can be profoundly entertaining. Trust me.)

If you're feeling that dark shadow closing in, please, please reach out. Call someone who is non-judgmental and supportive. Or call the lifeline number above. Sometimes talking to a stranger is much easier than opening up to someone you know. And yes, I realize how very hard it is to take that first step. Just know that there is someone here who knows how hard it is... and how much better you'll feel after you've taken it.