I CHANGED MY MIND

April 28, 2010

I CHANGED MY MIND

I changed my mind. I decided I would go to Wal-Mart for bicycle tires before going to the produce market. I needed to turn the car around. I was right in front of the county health department and other social offices with a huge parking lot and an in-and-out circular drive. So I whipped the car into the parking lot and starting crossing it cautiously to reach the exit. It is a half-moon circle. I was cautious because there are always so many people walking back and forth, going in and out of the offices. Almost always there are 1 to 3 children with each adult traversing this parking lot. The adult is almost always female. Often one of the children is still in the uterus of the mother, but pushing hard at the world making it known; I am coming soon. These are children whose parents didn't get the opportunities to gain skills and knowledge that would preclude them from having to be at these offices. Reared in homes with often screaming, fighting, frightened parents whose frustrations and angers stem from realizing that their lives have been winnowed down to 'just getting by'. These parents did not have the capacity to give their children (now these adults walking across the parking lot with their children) the necessary 'tools' for making choices and decisions that would enable them to be self-sufficient and to be smart about the world and how it works. They weren't taught how to make the world work in their favor. They weren't taught how to keep this unjust world from trampling them. They weren't encouraged to think about 'what college do you want to attend?', they weren't told they were 'smart enough' to go to college, (what is 'smart enough'?) they weren't taught how hard parenting is, they weren't taught how not to become parents until they were capable and ready, they weren't taught that they could CHOOSE not to become parents, they weren't taught how to stay healthy, they weren't taught not to smoke, they weren't taught how to manage money, they weren't taught much of anything because the parents didn't know much about these things either. The parents were too busy going to work each day and coming home exhausted due to the type of work they did which left little time for the nurturing and educating of kids. In fact, these parents weren't given much education nor taught how to effectively parent . And if you could look back a generation you would probably find that the parents of the parents lived a very similar life. Just managing to pay the bills and make it until 'next payday'. At the mercy of what the world threw at them. None of them were ever taught how to throw back.

One of the parents starting across this parking lot was a very thin, bleached blonde woman who looked to be in her late twenties. Her face was dry and colorless. It had the wrinkles of a woman twice her age. She was exiting the offices. She was weeping. She struggled to hold a small child with her left arm looped under it’s belly as it bounced on her hip, it's blanket flailing in the wind, the child uncovered . Her purse hung from her right arm in the crook of her elbow. She had a cigarette sticking to her bottom lip and a lighter in her right hand. She struggled to bring the lighter up just far enough to set fire to her cigarette and put out the fire in her brain. No doubt the time she had been in the offices was long enough for her nicotine craving to be screaming for a feeding. It refused to wait for her to get to the car (hopefully) and put the child down. She turned her back to the wind, giving the child a jolt, flicked the lighter quickly and pulled on the cigarette in relief. This mother looked like a skilled juggler while performing these tasks; hanging onto the child, carrying her purse, and lighting a cigarette. The smoke curled across the child’s face. I thought about that child being in a vehicle with cigarette smoke, a home filled with cigarette smoke and it's mother teaching it each day how to smoke and that it is acceptable. I reigned in my judgment of this precious mother as I thought about how that cigarette may be the only pleasure she finds in her everyday existence of juggling her life in a circus of uncertainty. I lifted a prayer that the child would not smoke and turned it loose.

And then I thought about the 'circus' going on in Congress as I write these words. The hearings which are probing the practices of Goldman-Sachs. Despicable, deliberately unethical practices which put many others in the same plight as this young struggling, juggling mother. They arrogantly deny their wrongdoing as they defy our Congress of These United States. "How dare you ask us for accountability? We are rich! We made ourselves rich by making many others poor. We put people out of work and out of their beloved homes. We put a horse in the race that we bet against! How smart are we to think of that! And before goldman-sachs there was bear-stearns, lehman brothers, aig , washington mutual, countrywide, wachovia found to be laundering drug money (which they admitted to and paid $160 million in fines) (1.). Sub-prime mortgages granted to thousands as the mortgagors knew these thousands could not pay back their loans. All of them practiced deceit in order to make the poor poorer and themselves richer. I use lower caps because these entities do not deserve to be recognized with capital letters. They are little, lowly, lying crooks.

Many of those who are in the circumstances that brought this young mother to these offices and to her tears are the Men who fathered the infants and children. The men who are now out of work and out of options. Men define themselves through their work. These men no longer view themselves as providers. They feel helpless and out of control and in a despair that they cannot voice to anyone because of (ironically) what they were taught by their parents; "You are a man. Be strong. Never admit defeat. Never show weakness." This despair leads to an anger that cannot see a way out. Since the 2008 beginning of the sharp rise in unemployment and loss of homes and jobs, (directly related to the crooks at the banks and the ‘Snydley Whiplash’ mortgage brokers), domestic violence has spiked nationwide. This blinded anger (which is masking fear), takes on a physical life which strikes out at those closest to these men: the women and the children.
He reaches for the one pleasure he has left. She holds the baby on her hip and lights her cigarette through tears. He goes outside, squats out of sight and weeps in regret as the smoke from his cigarette curls across his face.

Clydia Stillwell Jackson

1. cbs4.com/business/wachovia.money.laundering