FinalLy

My final paper for a Chicana Feminist Theory class, where I immersed myself in feminism, praxis, and the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

The Reconstruction of Female Self 

The Chicana is beginning to face true genesis and transformation through the power of praxis, poetry, and alliance with other third world women. However, she fights the legacy of the patriarchal woman. Social constructs formed by patriarchal rule work to suppress any idea of the female self, any exploration of one’s own power, and have successfully stripped the identity from the woman. The Chicana is in a marginalized group that is particularly affected by the dismantling of the individual. She struggles to know herself, pulled into two realms of self: the steadfast spirit of the erotic and the submissive good mother, socialized into creation. Feminist writing forcefully closes the gap between the two worlds, refining the relationship between woman and world, reinserting her into a life beyond the home. As we begin to redefine the relationship of the Chicana to the world, a new force occupies the borderlands. Creative writing threatens to make audible the silenced Chicana, challenge the traditional structure of family, and reclaim the bodies of women of color.

Third world women become allies through their shared intersectional oppressions. Chicanas involve themselves in the struggle of third world women as a way to amplify their voice and emphasize the political power of the creative social minority. During colonization racializing bodies became a necessary strategy for establishing supremacy. A body of color was easily distinguished, vilified, and sexualized. The medicalization and display of the female body of color during colonial expansion secured a tradition of violent dismemberment revolving around female sex. Anzaldua writes in The “Coatlicue State”, “Though darkness was ‘present’ before the world and all things were created, it is equated with matter, the maternal, the germinal, the potential… Now Darkness, my night, is identified with the negative, base and evil forces – the masculine order casting its dual shadow – and all these are identified with darkskinned people”(Anzaldua: 71).  Here Anzaldua shows how the naturally feminine qualities of bodies and earth have been manipulated to represent evil forces.  

The third world woman is constantly vilified and fetishized by men. The results of this are women internalizing this dehumanization by dismembering themselves, tearing apart their own images in an attempt to understand their constant feeling of incompletion. This emptiness is a void that lacks the feeling and joy of the erotic. Lorde writes, “When we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone the individuals.” (Lorde: 58) A body torn from the erotic and stripped of community faces the patriarchal world on her own. A lone body charged with intersectional inferiority has much to fear, and is epitomized as “the other” in American society, distancing her further from any sort of community. The efficiency of this classification is that it affects the victimized body on an individual level and on a communal level. While the individual struggles with internalized blame, hatred, and terror, the body in community suffers from a position of silence and invisibility.

The hyper sexualized woman challenged the indigenous tradition of equal political contributions from the sexes. As the patriarchy tainted woman’s relationship to her community through the rejection of sexual impurity, she was restricted to a more controlled role, eventually dismantling the matriarchy as a whole. Mexican culture today is rooted in post-imperialist patriarchal traditions, leaving women as politicized bodies, therefore something to be feared and controlled for the good of the community. The identity of the Chicana has been formed by language, stereotypes, and sex roles all decided and defined by the man’s political power. The all-encompassing “role” of the Chicana is a blueprint of stifled female existence beneficial to powerful men. What is the Chicana’s role in society? She is well bred, quiet, obedient, devoted, submissive, pure, domestic, and docile. “Hocicona, repelona, chismosa, having a big mouth, questioning, carrying tales are all signs of being mal criada. In my culture they are all words that are derogatory if applied to women – I’ve never heard them applied to men”(Anzaldua: 76). This restriction is a result of a woman’s sex, and is therefor a permanent fault of the woman never to be questioned or remedied. Her inferiorities are explicitly tied to her sexuality, and whether she is the virgin or the whore, she is ostracized.

With the “role” of women came a domestic specialization effective at for dominating and controlling women. Women’s sphere of influence was narrowed to the home, authoritative to none but her children. Within the home the mother is in charge of the maintenance of the house, care and nurturing of the children, and devotion to her husband. A woman is allowed to function within the construct of “the good mother”, a stereotype created to normalize the restricted influence of women. Her relationship to the world is all but destroyed, and her relationship to her husband and children will always be clouded by her compliance or defiance towards her role as “the good mother”. “The good mother” is self-sacrificing, taught to deny all wants and desires and remain faithful to the duties demanded by her family. Both the stifling effects of the intersectionality of “the other” as well as the pre-established lifestyle that comes with her role as “the good mother” denies the Chicana the chance to discover her true self.

“As women, we have come to distrust the power which rises from out deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears the same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves” (Lorde: 53-54).

 As patriarchy teaches women to suppress their voices, a reserve of power becomes lost and forgotten. This creates a submissive woman and a fortified man at the same time. “The good mother” is the ultimate embodiment of this suppressed power.

We cannot discuss the dismantling of women’s role as “the good mother” without understanding the polar role of the man. The Chicano rules over all matters of the home, granting or denying permissions to the wife and children. His authority is absolute and his will is unquestionable. We can argue that a being in a position of power will hold onto his power at all costs. The Chicano faces the unique plight of being denied any power in the American hierarchy, leaving him a victim of aspects of intersectionality. The oppressions of race, class, and sexuality wield great power over the marginalized mind.  The Chicano is denied the privilege of manhood, stripping an entire race of their gender privilege. This causes a critical backlash within Chicano culture, where Chicano manhood still holds merit within the community and the home. The desire to compensate for the power they lack in political and economic representation is evident by the dominance men assert over their women within the home.  This destructive imbalance of authority between men and women causes violent opposition to changes in women’s roles. In order for women to gain any power in the Chicano home and community, the men would need to give up some powers they currently posses. Fear permeates this potential shift in power. Women face the fear of attempting to gain power and failing. Men face the fear of losing their existing power. This fear dilutes the efforts to instill change within the Chicano community, which could potentially lead to change within the American hierarchy. The pen is one of the only weapons poignant enough to challenge the patriarchal tradition and redefine the relationship of women to family and community.

Third world women writers have recognized the power their truth instills in others. It is in the creative truth that oppressed bodies create discourse for transformation. Lorde writes, “For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we dedicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action” (Lorde: 37). This action takes root as we begin to redefine culture outside of the parameters of patriarchy and imperialism. La raza cosmica celebrates the blending of cultures, the mixing of peoples. It first recognizes its opposition to colonialism and systematic oppression and then continues to transform the culture into something new and constructive.

“A counterstance locks one into a duel of oppressor and oppressed; locked in mortal combat, like the cop and the criminal, both are reduced to a common denominator of violence… At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once”(Anzaldua: 100).

 Ending in opposition only goes so far as revolution. But when the existing structure falls and the revolutionaries are left without a plan, they have lost all sight of the original goal.  The power of la mestiza lies in the scheming and collaborating, the exchange of ideas that result in action. This cultural mixing creates a people who defy borders and reject the Truth made to easily oppress bodies.

In a space where clarity is acclaimed and distinction is appreciated, blurring the lines of something as oppressive as race confuses and irritates white superiority. This attitude towards hybridity encourages flux in cultural appropriations. Anzaldua describes this as tolerance: “The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity” (Anzaldua: 101).  It is the creative experience that allows such an understanding of ambiguity. The duality of Truth, men and women, dark and light, individual and collective, are constructs to be healed by a process of the soul. This process comes with love, the breaking of internal conflicts, and the urge to be heard. The new mestiza is called to destroy her role as woman, as mother, and reinsert herself into a relationship with the world. The dismantling of the Chicana’s role as “the good mother” denies her access to her culture, her race, her religion, and her land. As a woman free from her role, she enters a larger community of dispossessed people across the world. This is where the Chicana finds allies in third world women through writing. The utility of liberation becomes a utility of connection. 

A family rooted in a patriarchal structure cannot withstand the change of a woman assuming a progressive relationship to family and community. When a woman shifts her role without the compliance of society, she is left with a neglected home and the reputation of betrayer.  In order to support the new relationship of women with the world, the role of child-raiser must be dispersed throughout the family and community. With the assistance of men, community leaders, neighbors, and extended family, a woman could afford to be a powerful member of society while assisting in raising moral children. Community unity is essential not only to the well being of its children, but also to the financial strength and safety of the neighborhood. The affects of strengthening working-class communities would be sustainable and support the pull away from individualism towards a more representative collective Truth.  The support of men and community are essential to women’s migration into the world. Men and community can be convinced of the importance of women reclaiming their relationships through the written testimonies of oppressed beings. Audre Lorde writes, “As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences lose their control over us” (Lorde: 36).

As Chicanas living under the oppressive forces of imperialism, we write as a form of rebellion. To write is to piece together our broken image of self. A woman who has come to know herself despite the forces breaking apart her identity is a powerful threat to the American hierarchy. The third world woman writer exposes the injustices of intersectionality by politicizing the personal. Her truth becomes Truth to all oppressed people, allowing them to speak words that contain power. “I could name at least ten ideas I would have found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems” (Lorde: 37). As hatred and inferiority is internalized, our voices omit powerful ideas that are formed deep in our erotic subconscious. Writing is the fearless expression of that inner consciousness, the voice of a woman who has never known dismemberment or terror. This strong voice paired with the fragile, intimate experiences of the oppressed Chicana creates a narrative that speaks to those living in the borderlands, verifying their realities.

In Sister Outsider Audre Lordes speaks to the importance of feeling and joy within a craft. The third world woman writer is substantial because her craft entails using knowledge and information accessed through the erotic as a source of power.  By understanding feelings and irrational thought, the erotic functions not as an agent of pleasure for the man, but as a source of affirmation and joy for the woman. The suppression of the erotic in the female body works as a tool to place sex and stimulation of men on a pedestal. The woman serves as a utility of physical stimulation, turning an erotic experience into one of pornography lacking joy and the attainment of knowledge. This distortion of sex and sexuality draws all power away from the woman. Accessing emotion through writing is a way to tap into the erotic, allowing it to permeate all aspects of self and satisfaction.

The new mestiza crosses boundaries of self by accessing the erotic in her life. This well of untapped power is essential to the cultural shifts of supporting a woman living outside the role of “the good mother”. By using erotic as a tool for expression and joy, both men and women will need to respond to shifts in power. The conscious woman will offer knowledge and wisdom imperative to the success of any great people. The specific consciousness of third world women will not only speak to the defiance of gender roles, but also will lead to the dismantling of institutions of race, class and sexuality. Sexuality will become joyful and expressive, void of empty pornographic distortion. Race will fall apart due to the celebration of the female in all its forms. Class distinctions will gain equality with the abolition of race and sexuality as tools to degenerate bodies.

The Chicana writer has the power to dismantle the long-standing imperialist structures of patriarchy and white supremacy. Through expression of personal truths, allies form in other women of color, family structures are challenged forming a new sense of community activism, and women will gain the power to reclaim their bodies through the wielding of the erotic as power. Women will continue to question their oppression, defying the silence forced upon them, making art that has the power to tip the balance of power. Lorde writes, “In the forefront of our move toward change, there is only poetry to hint at possibility made real”(Lorde: 39). The Chicana woman, the new mestiza, makes her transformation real by accessing her true self as a way to piece together the broken bodies of women in the world.

 

Works Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987. Print.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing, 1984. Print.

Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color, 1983. Print.

 

Landed in Los Angeles

First and foremost, an apology for dropping off the face of the web. I was not kidnapped, vowed to blog silence, nor did I suffer from loss of extremities, I simply hit a writing wall. Writers block is a strange thing, as agonizing as any illness, requiring nurturing, encouragement, and lots of liquids. But no more! 

Last time we talked, I was living in a minimal three-room house in the middle of a Nicaraguan farm. I taught English to 120 high school students, and quickly found my role as the loud teacher girl from America. To my Nicaraguan students, I was a novelty. I was getting old at nineteen, and instead of having a child and marrying the father, I was traveling the world. My students needed about six months of very personal questions to comprehend this idea. My girls were phenomenal. They were bright, poised, assertive, aggressive, and somewhat sad. The boys were hilariously witty, most of their intelligence and charm channeled into throwing pick up lines to any girl walking past. Even me, their assistant teacher. On the first day of school a boy in Septimo B,  my homeroom, smoothly walked up to me, put his arm around my waist and began kissing the air near my face. Adhering to the appropriate American teacher-student code of ethics, I quickly pushed him away, scolding him in the week of Spanish I had acquired so far. I thought I would get in trouble for attracting the attention. But after about a week the social norms of Nicaraguan culture set in, and everyday when Marvin entered class with the pomp and circumstance of a king, booming buenos dias for all to hear, with a smile and an arm thrown around my waist, I would simply tell him sientate Marvin, comezamos el dia. Every day at recreo one or two students would sit next to me, asking me questions of mi familia, mi color favorito, or my life in general. Often I would just talk to them, rambling in nonsensical Spanish about school  or traveling, what I want to be when I grow up. I know most of the time they couldn’t understand me, but every time they would smile, nod their heads, say ohhh as if they had just taken in some deep wisdom, then pat my head and walk away. Adios Anita. 

It was early October, I had about two months left in Nicaragua, and I realized it was time for me to make the decision. What in the world do I do next? I made the decision to go back to school, recognizing my ache for an assignment, any prompt to get my words flowing. But where? And when? The gap of time to apply as a transfer for the Spring semester was closing, and applying to college is no small feat. I got to work, researching schools with an urban studies program in every major American city. I found schools in Seattle, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Detroit, Atlanta, and San Francisco. I wanted a small school, demographically diverse, vocal on social justice issues, a population of international students, study abroad programs, and I wanted them to throw money at me. It came to narrowing down my search to the city I liked the most. A fantastic city was my safety net as I prepared to blindly apply to a schools I had never heard of. I chose LA, a city that has always intrigued me from an urban studies standpoint. This city is massive, an enormous community of people each claiming different cities within the city. There is every kind of person here, origins from all over the world, everyone has a beautiful story. There is poverty and homelessness, immigration issues and illiteracy problems. There’s a crappy transportation system. But theres also a huge community of young urban planners and social thinkers. The colleges LA claims are some of the best, with a revolutionary history of student involvement in effectively changing the fabric of the law. Before that this was a battle ground between American peoples and the immigrant Spanish and British. Apparently the immigration policy back then wasn’t so good either. Needless to say, Los Angeles had all the components I was looking for, I just needed the school. To be honest I chose the only one that was still accepting Spring admissions, but what a stroke of luck, it’s an incredible school. 

 I had seven days to complete the application process. I went to work on my letters of recommendation, sending transcripts, entering family background and education levels, furiously searching the deep archives of my brain for a section labeled: high school extra curricular activities. Then there was the long short answer questions and the test score entry and then, the personal statement. The end all be all of college applications. And I wrote the shit out of it: 

 

 

“Anna Rose Castellanos

For the entirety of my college career, I have been on a tireless search for two things: innovative alternatives to receiving an extraordinary education and justice in the form of love to heal the city of Chicago. After two years of searching for answers and finding more questions, I have come to the conclusion that in my personal academic journey I will not accomplish my mission of opening the eyes of Chicago to love without first bettering myself through a complete and diverse education. My hunger for uncensored truths has led me from the country’s top art school to a community college on the west side of Chicago to Central America and back, and it has all been done with a very particular end goal in mind. Dr. John M. Perkins, renowned pastor, community leader, neighbor, father, and teacher taught me that we better ourselves so that we might better our communities. I don’t read books, travel the world, engage in discussion, or take on challenges so that one day I might maintain a steady job and live a comfortable life in a suburb far from the strife of my hometown. I educate myself so that when I return to the poverty, joblessness, lamenting mothers, and broken homes of my neighborhood I might have a clearer sense of how to address the community’s needs, and gather the resources for us to pull ourselves out of oppressed living.

I would not say that I have the privilege of knowing Dr. Perkins, only in the sense that any of us know and respect the great leaders of whom we’ve read and heard so much about. Dr. Perkins reintroduced me to God in a brilliant and powerful way. While reading his book, With Justice For All, it became clear in my mind and heart that I could not fulfill my purpose in life to serve and raise up the great people of my community without the guidance and love of Christ. It is only while living in Christ that we might sufficiently serve those he has specified: the poor, the ridiculed, the admonished, and the oppressed. It was Dr. Perkins’ teachings that focused my vision of what it means to have faith in a time when fear dominates our culture. During the height of the civil rights movement, Dr. Perkins followed Christ’s terrifying direction to leave his life in California to return to Mendenhall, Mississippi where he was born. He moved his family into the danger and poverty of Southern life, leaving wealth and security behind to complete God’s mission. Dr. Perkins offers these words on fear and faith:

“God never calls us to do something we can do in our own strength. He always calls us to get in over our heads – to move out to where we’ll have to either depend on His power or sink… Ever since God first called me, I have lived on the verge of panic. I’ve always been in over my head. I’ve always been doing things I knew I couldn’t do. I’ve been like Peter walking on the water – always on the verge of sinking because he was doing something that took more power than he had. If he took his eyes off of Jesus – off of God’s power – and looked at the storm, he would sink.1”

It was with this blind faith that led Dr. Perkins to relocate himself to the heart of the poor, knowing the needs of the community because he himself was a needing member of that community. He started a church, tutoring programs, health clinics, job centers, anything the neighborhood lacked that hindered them from leading healthy lives rich with love and unity. However throughout his honorable work in one of the poorest communities of the South, Dr. Perkins faced the severe obstacles brought on by one of the most hateful and diminishing eras in our nation’s history. It was fear that caused the segregation and degradation of a group of people based on the color of their skin. It was fear that caused politicians to value money over the lives of human beings. It was fear that caused white police officers to beat Dr. Perkins within an inch of his life in a cell in the Rankin County justice complex. That fear was so power that it is still alive and tended to today, fifty years later, laced in laws, prodding into politics, even storming uninvited into our homes and hearts.

Today in Chicago an innocent human will be shot. I know this because it has been a consistence occurrence in our city’s ongoing war. Everyday a stack of Chicago newspapers is distributed to the city, and in the bottom corner of some back page there is a ‘crime watch’ section listing the shooting and fatalities of the day before. The nation has shifted its attention to the City of Big Shoulders, the city that is killing itself day-by- day, and waiting for the proposition that will end in ceasefire. Yet I honestly cannot tell you what our city is doing to stop this, because the way our city is designed leaves certain undesirable neighborhoods out of the minds and concern of the majority of Chicagoans. Uninvolved parties have stopped caring long ago, or maybe they think this is a sad solution, but a solution nonetheless to assuaging the terrorizers in Chicago’s south and west sides. It is clear to me that Fear is a battle our city is consumed with, like an uncontrollable fire in a drought. As Dr. Perkins faced his tormentor in the midst of this same battle, he heard the word of God whispered in his ear, “Love was the final battle”. It was then that he realized that he had not reached an end, but faced a new mission of following God’s plan to reconcile the hearts of Blacks and Whites alike. It is with those same words that I will approach our city’s battle, fighting back with the only force stronger than fear: love.

It is a rare gift when the heart blazes with excitement and direction. I have felt it twice before, once when I made the decision to leave art school to pursue a degree in urban studies and community development, again when I made the decision to take a gap year to work with Opportunity International Nicaragua. I feel it again now as I have decided to put my education into the hands of LMU’s urban studies program as the next stage of preparation before retuning to my community in Chicago. My neighborhood deserves leaders who are invested, capable, and excited to bring out the potential in each and every community member. I hardly feel worthy of such a task, knowing full well that it is the people of my community who will complete my education with pillars of hard work, patience, and faith. My education will not be compromised because it is not me I am learning for. It’s for Chicago, for Little Village, for North Lawndale, so together we may realize that love was the final battle.”

So I submitted the essay and waited a month and half until the verdict. If I hadn’t gotten accepted to the one school I applied to, I would probably be back in Chicago, living with my momma, bumming rides from strangers like I learned to do in Nicaragua. That’s probably not true, but I was really banking on this acceptance. The verdict comes: accepted to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. I did a dance, my students where all over it. 

Today I’m a month shy from finishing my first semester. That’s right! In a traditional college, though I avoided it as long as I could. But the ease of the application process this time around, without the stress of high school and the pressures of the world weighing me down, it made me realize that having a direction makes college a lot more effective and efficient. I transferred in as a sophomore Urban Studies major, a new fish on campus, fully submerged in a college campus for the first time in my life. I have a wonderful roommate, she has a ziplock bag full of homemade tamales in her freezer so I know she’s aight. I have joined a service organization, Sursum Corda, where I’ve met a family of students dedicated to social justice and living in service to others. I am taking Sociology, Race and American Culture, Chicana Feminist Tradition, African American Studies, and Global Encounters History. My teachers are insightful and challenging, all of my readings fit together in a web of anti-colonialist theory and understanding the intersections of race, sex, gender, and class. Since I’ve been away so long, I’ll post a few of the essays I’ve written throughout the semester for various classes. Each contributes to a deep understanding of social ills that have caused Chicago so many of it’s problems. Chicago, I’m still working for you. I’ve been away from home for a long time, jumping right from Nicaragua to LA with only three weeks in between. But that’s the goal: stay working, stay motivated, stay passionate. 

Blades of Steel, Blades of Grass

Somewhere on the slopes of a volcano black rubber boots press into the soft soil, sinking underneath the weight of a man with a hard face and few words. A red hat sits moist atop his thick hair, beads of sweat collecting around his temples. In front him a field of tall plants rustle with the wind, behind him a sweet odor of cut grass and dew steep from piles of garden waste: heaps of shredded leaves and twigs and stems waiting to be collected into large plastic bags. The birds add a melody to the whick-whick-swick slow steady beat of many men swinging machetes into the earth. The motion of their arms swoop low-left to low-right, like a proud parade bystander enthusiastically waving a small flag back and forth, back and forth. To reach the ground the man bends his back into impossible Cs and Us, always crouching, feet set beneath the shoulders, the edge of the machete just brushing past the extra fold of denim gathered around his slim calfs with each downward fall of his blade. He sees a full semi-circle of proud grass fall to it’s knees at the mercy of his blow, and as he steps forward, forward, the grass breaks beneath him. His damp shirt brightens into a cool blast with the early morning breeze. He looks around him and thinks of how the entire field, as well as the next field over, will be trim and neat by midday. At that time he will sit in the partial shade of a tree, the sun beating through branches and leaves, greedy with the space it consumes, and he will eat his lunch while thinking of his son. A little way down the slope of the volcano in a town called Diriomo his son is standing in the same sun his father is resting from. He is at school, but he too holds a machete. Earlier that morning, like so many mornings, he took his father’s large, old hand in his and ran his fingers against the yellow ridges and bumps accumulated on his palm. He looked into his hand and saw it carried things he didn’t understand. He examined these bulbous calluses as his father’s voice snuck into his ear, something about making him proud, doing well in school, staying out of trouble. Now, as the sun ripped at the son’s face and back, he threw his machete into the ground and brought his own hands up to his eyes. White layers of skin peeled off in some places, revealing a tough yellow bulge. He closed his eyes and touched at the skin, wondering if he would feel his father’s, but no, still a boy. Teacher Anita called over to him, asking him if he was working hard in her jumbled Spanish. He yelled back at her he was, he grabbed his machete and aimlessly wacked it at the tiny patches of grass littering an otherwise neat garden of newly planted roses and young trees. Agriculture class was his least favorite, even though he handled a machete better than anyone in his grade. However it reminded him of his favorite days when he had been suspended from school and his mother made him to go to work with his father. He would sit underneath a tree picking nancistes off the ground, saving the big ones for his father, relishing in the joy he got from watching him pop the bright yellow fruits one by one into his mouth as he rested. The son gnawed on their seeds as he watched his father’s bent back, examining his shirt stick to his spine, raising and twisting as he worked.  Now, another year passed, nancistes once again littering the ground, he saw teacher Anita bending over to collect a big, perfect one, and put it in her pocket. She called him over to her, help me with this area, she asked. He began slicing into the ground at the small blades of grass popping out of the dirt. Teacher Anita got down on her hands and knees with a small shovel, and carefully dug up the earth around each blade of grass. A student yelled over to her, you’re doing it wrong Anita! The son furrowed his brow at her, she was strange sometimes, she worked differently. He knelt beside her and watched as she dug the grasses deep roots out of the ground, shaking the plant until all the good soil fell back into the garden. She evened out the earth, filling in the hole she dug with fresh, mixed soil. She patted it carefully with the back of her shovel before moving onto the next blade of grass. It’s easier like this, said the son. I want to take out the roots, so that we don’t have to cut the same piece of grass tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, she said. Thats a lot of work, huh, the son remarked. A lot of work today, hardly any work tomorrow, said Anita. The son turned back to his machete, slicing at the soil, cutting the grass where it met the ground, leaving the blade limp and green on the dark soil. Anita sat on the ground, continuing to dig as the rest of the class stood around her, whick-whick-swick wacking the ground with identical machetes. She reached into her pocket and brought out the nanciste. She handed it to the son, placing it in the center of his palm. The small yellow fruit rolled around his hand, landing in the small hills of calluses gathered where his fingers met his palm. He smiled and thanked her as he pushed it into his pocket.

For Chi.

About a year ago I began to carefully examine the constructs of a typical American education.  The apparent patterns of successful students versus unsuccessful students lift some to acclamation and others into a stagnant pool of mediocracy, though both are assured a fruitful future for those who work hard and follow the rules of the game. Those who are exceptional are ushered into exceptional schools and receive exceptional scholarships, while the others work to keep their head above water from the rising level of student on student competition and debts closing in around them. The exceptionals are introduced to alumni exceptionals, and exceptional jobs wait for them upon graduation. The others are left fighting for jobs, searching for the satisfaction that is promised with a degree, waiting for the fruits of their labors.  This was my observation.  I saw a game that was rigged, yet so many people continued to play. But they wouldn’t get me so easily. 

I decided to treat my education like a game of my own creation, one with a clear objective, many ways to reach that objective, no time limit, no winners, no losers, only a player looking for the same thing anyone looks for in a solid game:  strategy, interesting challenges and stages, and an absurd amount of fun.  With that decision came an assumption of sizable risk, a lack of security, and the responsibility to take my education into my own hands. If I wanted to learn, I would have to give myself projects to do, assignments to complete, books to read, topics to research, data to analyze, and most challenging in my case, time to manage.  I started my new adventure with a trip to my community college. Less than a day later I was enrolled and picking out classes, my jaw dropping at a bill with no more than three digits. I began to immerse myself in community college, realizing that if I was going to get the full experience I had to not only do all that was asked of me in my classes, but also take notes on the teachers, students, and hallways of the city-run establishment. That was my first lesson learned: you get as much as you ask for, so ask for a lot. Next came the phone call that would change the next year of my life.  A chance acquaintance made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, and two months later I was headed for Nicaragua, leaving behind all I knew so well for something completely out of my comfort zone. Scared out of my mind, I accepted a journey I knew would change my life, having no idea where my path would lead me come the end of my experience. Lesson two: do what scares you. 

Almost eight months in, I could create an extensive list of newly acquired skills, acquaintances, and epiphanies that came with assuming a new life. But more interesting than that is how this informal education has come to change the way I think about academia, universities, and that daunting decision: what do I do next? Continuing in my belief that the best decision is the one that fills you with joy, I have decided that I’m ready for textbooks. I’m ready for wacky professors and sprawling campuses, grade point averages, essays, and assigned reading. So what has changed in the past year? Learning on my own taught me amazing things about myself as a student. It taught me how to filter the lessons worth learning from inapplicable chatter. It taught me how to find the teacher in anyone, extracting every drop of insight even the strangest stranger has to offer. And it taught me how to listen, because you never know when you might find yourself in class. Once my role as a student had been tightened and refined, it was time to tap into what made my eyes widen with excitement, what made the gears churn. As is evident from my previous posts, anything that has to do with people striving to live together in an urban space makes my ears prick up in a particular way. After having studied a few models of cities solving problems in unique ways inside and outside America, I am anxious to lend my voice to my own city to work hand in hand with Chicagoans from Rogers Park to North Lawndale to the South East side.  There is beauty and worth in every resident of my city, my job as an urban planner is to help people recognize their common needs and joys so they might recognize the worth in each other. In a city setting it is easy to live a life disconnected from all others, unwilling or unaccustomed to giving up the privacy we covet so carefully. Creating a city that draws a single resident from one side of town to the other, creating destinations in places people never would have otherwise explored, that is the development I’m interested in. We are in the thick of war time in Chicago, and the masses need to propose a truce. If the structure of the city doesn’t support that peace, we will fall as soon as we pick ourselves up. During the rest of my college education I will learn how to make it easy for the people of a city to coexist because I believe that deep down all of us have an urge to love. So I guess I can say I’m going back to school for Chicago, for my city, my first and deepest love. I will pretend to play the game they’ve made while secretly playing my own, leaving nothing unquestioned, challenging everything. I’ll let you know my solution to student debt as I find it, assuming both the risk and rewards. Lesson three: follow love. 

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain

Nicaraguan Blackout Survival Guide

When faced with a blackout in The Middle of Nowhere, Nicaragua, there are a few things one might want to remember.

1. Wear shoes in the house because you won’t be able to see the scorpians.
2. Use the hours of daylight wisely. Light is a precious thing to waste.
3. Don’t be afraid of the silence. To quote Will Rogers, “Never miss a good chance to shut up.”

During the last five days in the Nicaraguan campo I have surrounded myself with the deepest silence I’ve ever known. The morning of day six, a Wednesday, my day off from teaching teenagers the complex art of the great English Language, I took a seat on the commode, closing my eyes back into dream state when I heard a strange sound. It was a sort of buzzing, like a storm of angry flies hovering over the same doomed spot, a current of a raging hum that refused to cease. For a few confused seconds I was scared, threatened by this invasive racket during the earliest hours of my morning peace here, alone, in a volunteer house that had been unresponsive to the marvel of electricity for a full five days.  I poked my head out of my bedroom door to find a miracle, perched on the wall between two sets of windows, one overlooking a field of yucca and another humbly accepting the view of the great Volcan Mumbacho, was a small fan, blasting the breeze into my face with such a merry force it was almost as if it had missed being able to oscillate as much as I had missed it oscillating! I felt a great surge of excitement for here was the power I had been needing since that distant Friday night when the lights went out as I was in a dull state of comatose watching some unremarkable television show. I looked around into the darkness, realized that it was time to bring out the set of unopened flashlights my mother had bought for me before I came, and decided to deal with the conditions as best I could.

Now, you must understand that this is not an uncommon thing to happen in Nicaragua. Lights, water, internet will shut off for no particular reason at any time of the day or night for God knows how long. While living in Granada I experienced my fair share of showering in the dark, strategically placing a flashlight to maximize the reach of the light so I might see if all the dirt from the day had indeed been washed off. I have lived for days and weeks without internet connecting, giving up the luxury of watching a movie in bed before I fall asleep. I was familiar with the sensation of coming home from a long ride on the bus after accidentally touching that mysterious gelatinous substance on the seat beside you, and turning on your bathroom sink to feel the sweet relief of cleanliness that you can only respect in a developing country, and having my heart broken to find not a drop of water spill from the spout. So I wasn’t surprised or anxious when the electricity went off in my small house in my rural town, I figured it would come on when it came on, and I would just have to wait. Until then I finished watching my television show, brushed my teeth and went to bed. The next day, a Saturday, with no obligations or specific reasons to leave the house, I decided to in fact stay put for a while, seeing if I could occupy myself with a dead computer, dead phone, no light save the sun, no refrigeration, microwave, toaster, or coffee pot, and no music. I read my book. I wrote a bit. I thought. When the sun was out I did things around the house like sweep the bugs off the floor or mop up the water melting out of the refrigerator. I made meals for myself using the gas stove, the only appliance that still worked. I looked out the windows at the vastness of the sky, relishing that feeling of solitude you get when you cannot see a single building in all directions. Around 4:30 or 5:00 I prepared dinner and did all the things I had to do before the sun set, and darkness fell upon the house. I changed clothes, took a shower, placed the flashlights where I would find them, and watched the sunset until there was nothing more to be seen. When no more light could creep through the windows, I closed the shutters, turned on a few flashlights, and sat around in the dark. I was completely alone but not at all lonely. I wouldn’t have asked anyone in the world to share that night with me, or come keep me company, I didn’t wish for a movie or music to fill the silence that I used to be so afraid of. I balanced a flashlight on the curve of my neck and finished the book I was reading, then started another one. When I got tired I got into bed and listened. I cannot remember the last time I went to sleep without a movie on, some music playing, a fan humming in the background, anything to keep me from actually listening. But that night I heard every cricket chirp, branches snapping, leaves cuddling, distant cries from faraway neighbors, cows calling out goodnight, I listened to it all. I was asleep by 8:00.

The next day was Sunday. Everyday I have the option of leaving my little town of Diriomo to travel the 35 minutes it takes to reach Granada by bus. I woke up with the plan of going into Granada to charge up some appliances, get a good meal, and come back home before dark, but instead I just sat. I was having trouble pulling myself away from my own silence. At this point I hadn’t said a word in more than 24 hours and I was thoroughly enjoying the conversation going on in my own head. The thought of taking a bus full of people to sit in a cafe full of people then take a bus full of people home sounded unappealing and silly when I had a whole house of peace all to myself. So I read my book. I wrote a bit. I thought. I made a meal for myself and did some things around the house. I placed the flashlights where I could find them and I finished another book. I went to bed and remember thinking that this is where all the activity of the day really accumulates, right here in bed, in my head. I thought with such fervor I wore myself out. I talked to myself, to friends and family, to God, to my deceased cat and grandmother. I thought about my place in the world, I asked myself a lot of questions.

Why am I important?

Who am I meant to serve?

Where should I study?

What should I study?

What should I pay to study?

Why don’t I take things seriously?

How can I appreciate the present?

How can I get closer to God?

Why do I stay when everyone leaves?

What does it take to make me emotional?

How did I get so calm?

What do I really need to be happy?

Why do I trust some people but not others?

What should I eat for breakfast in the morning?

While few of those questions came with satisfying answers, I felt some weight lift off me, like I finally had the balls to ask the hard questions despite my ego, pride, or shame, and now I could find a bit of peace with myself. It was my weekend of solitude, my respite from the world, my breath of clean air, my time to recharge my batteries. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my time here in Nicaragua, and what I should do when it ends. It is when this big choice comes and looks me in the face that I remember why life is such a challenge. There are a million different choices I could make, I just need to arrive at the one that is already destined to happen.  I could easily say I am going to Malawi, Africa next year, or maybe I am going to finish college at The University of Washington, maybe I am going home to Chicago to start my community development initiative. The amazing part about it all is, the choice is all mine, I get to choose, just as I chose to stay in a house with no light. It was revitalizing for me to remember that a choice that may seem absurdly impossible or radical like moving to Nicaragua or choosing to live in premodern conditions will sink into a truly beautiful experience. It is even more exciting to realize that it wasn’t the conditions that changed and became easier to handle, it was me that grew stronger, more adaptable and confident to face any given situation. Monday and Tuesday had no power either, those days were easy as pie. I walked to my school, taught classes in the morning, delivered the school’s organic produce to a few restaurants in Granada in the  afternoon, came back to my house at night to keep myself company. My final night in darkness I had a computer full of juice, charged during my trip to Granada, and I chose not to use it, because what a waste of precious time. Precious, precious time.

Chicago, The Great and Terrible | The Apartment

She was a great and terrible beauty. She was burned to the ground, rebuilt, elevated, stabilized. She was exposed, publicized, she was made of steel, she defied gravity. She changed the flow of water, she gave a home to workers. The blood of animals soaked into her soil. She was separated by neighborhoods speaking different tones and tongues, she tried to used the wind to scatter the segregation of her sections, but to no avail. She watched in horror as administrators advocated for the destruction of the needy, she predicted it, she watched her brainstorms torment into actuality, the cracks of gunpowder stronger than thunder. And through it all she keeps her neck so straight and poised and proud. The blood of men soak into her soil, she cries as her hands are stained red, five pointed stars caught between two water ways. She is patient, but disappointed.

It was not what I imagined, it did not have exposed brick walls, creaky hardwood floors, or a built in bookshelf, but my first apartment was perfection. I walked into the building, surveying the off-white carpet, drooping blinds, and dirt smudged walls, down a narrow hallway into a kitchen with linoleum floors, plastic tiles on the walls, and exposed plumbing lines. The rooms were small, there were three of them. One had a window facing the grey-blue back stairway leading to the other flats. That was the room I wanted. My parents tried to sell me on location, price, practicality, but I wasn’t hearing any of it. I had already begun to imagine how I would be spending my days and nights of freedom here. Now all I had to do was show it to Giuliana. As complimentary opposites go, Giuliana and I make, bake, and take the cake. I am a thinker, she is a doer. I am the risk-taker, she is the joint-gluer. We signed the lease to our apartment on the day of our senior prom, and got the keys on our graduation day. A week or so later, we went to work. While I would have been completely satisfied slumming it out with floor seating and no counter space, Giuliana took the reins on turning our humble house into a home. Because of her (and her genius mother), we had a house that had a place to set your shoes, a seating area in the kitchen, and a patio that belonged in a magazine. As thrifty and spirited as it was, this was not your typical first apartment. This apartment was the kickstart of my education as a community developer.

The thing that our apartment was able to achieve that so many other buildings do not, was a sense of community. As hard as an organization may try to create a space that meets the needs of their community, there must be heart over design, functionality over fashion, and brains over budget. Giuliana created a space not for herself as much as for the people she knew would be visiting. She cleaned the carpet before company because she knew how uncomfortable it was sitting on a dirty floor. She made a pound of pasta incase anyone hadn’t had a meal yet. She made a fire pit in the back yard so that people would be encouraged to spend cooler months outside instead of cooped up in the house. She created a space where people felt comfortable, so people returned time and time again. As important as the space is to house a community, establishing a community is just as important. In our case, the case of recently graduated high school students, our audience was teenagers around the Chicago who wanted a centrally located space to feel creative, safe, loved, and comfortable. At the time we were the only ones in our community with our own space, a space without parents and rules, but a place that still had the comfort and resources of home. Before we knew it, our apartment was no longer just an apartment, it was “the apartment”, the place of meeting before or after events, a place to relax after work or school, a place to eat, and occasionally a place to party. If you build a place that serves many functions, it will attract many kinds of people.

The reason I would call our community a success is because as time went on, it grew. And it did not grow upwards or longways, it grew in a circular fashion, attracting people that had nothing to do with our original community, but now found a strong connection to very different groups of people. How does this happen, and how does it happen in a way that attracts the kind of people who will benefit your community? For Giuliana and I, who were not in any way planning who came into our home, and had no community development intentions, it happened the way all good things happen: naturally. Friends came into our home and loved the experience. A close group of friends got a bit bigger, one friend invited another, and they came back as well. Our community was expanding simply because of our hospitality and ability to make people feel welcome and accepted. In this manner of growing through association, people who were not originally in our close group of friends began to come over even when our mutual friends weren’t there. As our community was growing, our relationships with individual members of the community grew as well.

Now this idea is not revolutionary or worthy of a news story, but in our case, the extreme case of Chicago youth, I feel blessed and proud to share our story. In the extreme case where kids run home from the train every night, praying they’re fast enough to outrun bullets, where kids have had to burry their friends, sometimes more than once, where black and brown kids don’t talk like that, I feel blessed. I feel blessed because on the nights where my friends are gathered in my apartment, late into the night, and they choose to sleep on the floor so they don’t have to travel home, I know I will see them the next morning. I feel blessed when my friends choose to party in my house instead of in some warehouse, because I know there won’t be knives thrown or bullets flying in between songs. I feel blessed because in the city of segregation, where kids can grow up never having a friend that’s not his race, I see blacks and browns and whites and girls and boys and atheists and christians and college goers and music makers and drug dealers and bus boys and track stars and businessmen sitting together, sharing time and space and love. And that just doesn’t happen all that often.

Chicago is a place of terror and terrible beauty, sorrow and strife that creates warriors of hardened stone. Chicago’s warriors have been cheated and manipulated, making them prideful and confused. Many years ago they began to fight each other, and they were good, violent warriors. They formed armies for the eyes, their skin tone was their coat of arms, enemies were made instantly. The armies each conquered land and defended the honor of dead warriors before them. They took revenge by taking children, at first it was a tragedy. Sometimes they even took their own warriors children, they just couldn’t make it stop. They took so many we forgot to cry, we forgot to shake our fists in rage. They took so many no one was left to scream for help, for justice, for peace. I wonder what they would want now, all those stolen children. Would it be vengeance? No, children know better. Children’s thoughts are much simpler than ours, they lack the pollution of money motivations and ego retentions. The answer is much simpler than us grown folks think it to be. We have bought into the lie that it’s better not to know each other, it’s better not to look each other in the eye. We use our lives to gain capital and success instead of self-worth and strong relationships. We live under the false assumption that if we make ourselves great we will have a great life. We are selfish, we are terrorized, we are brain dead, almost. It is easy to loose hope in this place. But if you look, it is just as easy to find it. I have seen the power of love between two people, and it is stronger than any weapons our warriors carry. As instant as the journey of a bullet to it’s prey, a smile passed between strangers is quicker.

Lightness Visions

I was in the corner of a garden, sitting on a chipped wooden chair. There was a man’s voice in my ear, he talked of life things, and how if he didn’t touch the ground while he was close he would be lost, floating forever. As I listened to this man’s life opening in front of him, like a pop-out book with vivid illustrations, I saw it too, his life. I clearly saw a bulbous bubble of a shape, it was clear, like a drop of water with reflections inside. The ambiguous shape was wide at the base, and it contained all the floating one does for as long as they can manage. Growing out of the base were branches, arms, also clear and pulled, like the dome of water stretched over a penny. Each branch contained an option, a path of life that held the promise of success, happiness, fulfillment.

For a while, we all float. Some of us float with great purpose: to find oneself, to see the world, to learn a language, to discover a passion. Other’s float for the sake of floating, to escape the constrictions of a factory line life, to get away from it all. There is a point, after enough floating has been done, and you’re naturally sinking back down to ground, that you can choose to put your foot down, and walk in a direction of your choosing. It is then that you pick a career, accept a job offer, apply to school, marry someone. Or, you push off the ground and float forever, not ready for the resolute strictness of the ground. I am certainly floating, but I can’t wait to hit the ground. Limitations, when approached correctly, are an agent of patient creativity. When approached lazily and hastily, they are just what they promise to be: a limit, an excuse, a restriction.

I am here in the garden and I can’t see very far ahead. My vision is slightly blurred from smokey fog and thoughts laced with distractions. But this does not worry me, I can see the branch of a tree, I’m reaching for it now.

The History of A Community Developer

Three months ago I came to Nicaragua in search of something. I came here to find some answers to my questions about life, to discover questions that I didn’t know I should be asking, to experience direction and purpose, and to explore faith. While it feels like only yesterday I drove up in the thick Nicaraguan darkness to my first night in another world, more has happened here than I can accurately process. I have grabbed on and let go of love. I have experienced the far away death of loved ones, and dealt with it over the phone, and through emails. I have learned how to travel and live alone, keeping my own company. I have learned how to meet people, and how to say goodbye. I have taught classes full of children, feeling them all look at me, waiting for me to speak. And I have learned how to be a part of a culture completely different than my own, learning customs, language, history, politics, economy, and day to day life of a country that I never would have expected to end up in. So far this experience has been everything and nothing like I would have predicted. I am learning about myself just like I knew I would, but the things I discover are always surprising.

When you meet someone for the first time, a traveler, just passing through, you realize that this is a person that will come into and leave your life in an instant, and it can have as much of an effect on you as you want it to. The things about yourself that you tell strangers, the ones you’re never going to see again, those are the things that are important. The information you choose to leave out of the summary of your life, the fact that you went to this school or that, the job you kept for so many years, the kind of car you drive, is not important anymore. The cat you miss so dearly, the city you know and love, your dream of becoming the mayor, those are the things you realize define you, and those are the things you want people to know about.

Discovering yourself in an honest way, away from the expectations of family, close friends, the role you’ve assumed in some corner of the world, is an intimidating discovery. Sometimes you find things that you weren’t ready to find, or realize you want something you’re too scared to go out and get for yourself. Before I left Chicago, I had a general direction I wanted my life to take. Early on I witnessed the problems of my city, and a large part of my heart has always been dedicated to the reconciliation and revitalization of Chicago’s disconnected and broken communities. It is a passion that runs in my family, my parents moved into Little Village, a community struggling with poverty and violence, to work from the inside out for the neighborhood. My father is the CEO of Christian Community Development Association, a non-profit that promotes committed people to inspire development in a struggling community. A value taken from their website: “Those of us who orient our lives around this practice we call Christian Community Development (CCD) Practitioners. As Practitioners, we often commit to living in an under-resourced neighborhood for a minimum of 10 years. This is obviously no easy task. But we believe that true and lasting change takes time and requires real relationships. We think this approach is pretty unique.” This idea of relocating yourself into the neighborhood you want to work for has driven every aspect of the way I think about community development, and it is the core of what I believe will bring successful change to a neighborhood. Being brought up with this attitude towards the kind of effect fostering loving and compassionate relationships can achieve, I have learned to make people the focus of my life, specifically, the people of under-served neighborhoods in Chicago.

Looking back on my short, blessed life, I can clearly see how each chapter, from elementary school to Nicaragua, has prepared me to inspire change by putting the love for people at the wheel. When I was five years old I learned two things, to love my neighbor, and that my neighbors didn’t just come from my neighborhood. I attended a magnet school on the near west side of Chicago, which drew in students from all sides of the city for a quality public education. I shared a classroom with kids of all races, religions, and zip codes, growing with them for nine years, realizing that these kids had just as much potential and worth as I did. As simple and obvious as this idea sounds, most kids in Chicago, or cities across the country for that matter, do not get the benefit of growing up with that piece of knowledge. I went on to Whitney Young High School, also a magnet school, that I chose for it’s diversity above all else. Here I continued to meet people from around the city, and my awareness of different Chicago neighborhoods, and the value of their people became clearer and more defined. Here I learned to use the arts as a way to reconcile people that are under the false assumption that they have nothing in common, and I began to realize how uniting people through the love that comes out of sharing something beautiful is a power that seemed to go unnoticed by world leaders and politicians. I continued to nurture this decision as I chose to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I spent a year surrounded by people who were dedicated to use the arts to begin learning how to learn. I was taught to see everything around me, and find the interest and beauty in things often overlooked. This manner of creative thinking was another angle I wanted to bring into my method of community development. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago then led me to Detroit, where I learned just as much about community development in two weeks as I did in all my years in Chicago. It was there that I saw how arts could be used to draw positive attention to a neighborhood in need, and how the power of relocation was changing the way communities and community developers were relating to one another. I learned about community development working through schools, churches, housing programs, community gardens, cooperatives, and economic redistribution, and all of it was being done by people who were passionate about their neighborhoods and dedicated to meeting the needs of the community members, not the needs of an organization, a grant, or themselves. Detroit made me see the hope growing in a city broken down by corrupt policy and racial hatred, and I made it my mission to bring the hope I found there to the neighborhoods of Chicago facing the same strife.

I used that trip as a turning point in my life. I dropped out of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, feeling too distanced from the people I wanted to work with, and enrolled in Malcolm X, one of Chicago’s community colleges. It was during my semester there that I learned how to listen to the views of my neighbors on they ways they viewed American history (American history course), the use they believed they had for basic math skills (math course), their opinion of public schools their children and siblings attended (education course), and they way they raised their children (child development course). Their comments, discussions, and opinions taught me more about the needs of Chicago’s neighborhoods than any acclaimed urban planning course teaching the effects of poverty and joblessness could have. In all my years of education it was there, surrounded by my peers in community college, that I felt the most comfortable. The decision to follow my nose instead of the visible pre-paved path led me to community college, and then to Nicaragua. I came to Nicaragua with no expectations as to what I would find, but so far I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. However even here, surrounded by horse drawn carts and baskets filled with mangos, I am thinking of the neighborhoods of Chicago, and how what I’m learning here will help me once I return home. We do not become successful when we educate ourselves, we become successful when we use our education to serve others. While I am anxious and excited to return to work in Chicago, I know my chapter here is not over yet, and I have so much more to learn and experience. I am continuing to roll with the punches, go with the flow, and above all remain open to learn and grow.

Waking Up A Child

My parent’s doorknob was one-hundred years old. You had to jiggle it a bit to fit it into the right groove before you turned it. It was also loud, you couldn’t sneak in, the door announced you. There were weekend mornings where I would wake up with a loud stretch, pulling my limbs this way and that, letting out a primal yawn-like sound that scared people who hadn’t heard it before. The hallway was bare, the walls a cream color, maybe even white back then. I would pass the hall closet, my secret lair, an undercover agent’s safe house, my mighty fort, then pass my brothers’ door, a huge rectangular room, windows on three sides enveloped in trees. If you didn’t look down to street level, you might have never guessed you were in the hood. My parents room faced the east, they had five windows dressed in delicate lace on the bottom halves. The top halves were open to the morning sun. I remember the light as I would squeakily turn the ancient knob, pouring into the hallway. I would always shut the door behind me, as if to keep that glorious white sun all to ourselves. The queen sized bed was on the left as you walked in, my mother slept closest to the door, the home phone sat on the floor next to her head, she could open her door and greet a child sleepily climbing up the stairs without getting out of bed. My father slept beside her, shirtless, sometimes snoring. I would climb into bed in between my mother and my father, soaking in the warmth of a night’s worth of body heat, indulging in their thick down comforter, their sheets were so much silkier than mine. I would turn towards my dad, who had fallen back into sleep after making room for me, sharing a bit of pillow, and I would watch as drops of water rolled from the crease in his right eye into the system of dips and grooves you get from laughing as he does. I would watch the drop until it left his face, running down his coffee brown cheek. At first I thought they were tears, and I was sad. Then I realized late at night as I fell into sleep, and early in the morning when I thought of the day, I could feel drops seeping from my eyes, thick tear drops of sleepy salt water, and I realized that I was not sad at all. Sometimes, on the days after my father returned home from a trip late in the night, after I had fallen asleep, I would jump out of bed and run into my parent’s room to wake him. I would climb up on his stomach, which was bigger when I was a child, and bang my little palms on his chest, celebrating his return with music. I got such immense delight out of this, sometimes I did it even when he hadn’t been away, just as a festive way to start the day. As I grew older I stopped climbing on my father’s stomach in his first moments of daily consciousness, and I stopped coming into my parent’s room first thing when I got up. It didn’t take long for my mother to point out that I was my father’s small copy, giving my father’s reactions and using my father’s inflections. Maybe it was inevitable, something I couldn’t help. Maybe I relished the idea, and studied his ways so I could mirror them accurately. As my father continued to leave the city for a few days at a time, late at night I would grab my pillow and climb into bed next to my mother. She would already be sleeping, and I would rub my cold feet against her warm ones. She would talk to me about my day, as she fought off the sweet temptation of sleep, until she couldn’t fight anymore, and got quiet. I would find my father’s imprint in the bed, pull the comforter over my body, and wet the pillowcase with the drops rolling down my cheeks.