Commitment to the Rescue!

Writing is a funny thing.  It is that paradoxical zone where nothing and everything is sacred; where real life and the spectacle we create on the page coexist.  One cannot exist without the other, fear has no place here because it will offset the delicate balance that one must achieve to write something worthwhile.  I am completely aware of this because I am afraid.  I guess celebrated writers like Hemingway and Poe relied on substances to alleviate their fear.  Although I am no expert on these writers or what they actually feared, I do know mine.  Yes, I know them well. 

The first is good old fashioned confidence.  Do I have what it takes to be a good or even great wielder of words?  I guess this remains to be seen.  But it goes even deeper than this.  I think that this greatness might only be discovered if I am willing to pull the veil off of some of the things that make me unhappy.  And when I do this I have to be unapologetic.  So here it comes.  Last night I had a date night with my wife, which is already a step in the wrong direction because the very sound of words “date night” are analogous to nails on a chalk board to me.  I remember my friend once clowned us for having such a night.  He decided to announce to everyone on the street as we passed by him on our way to the restaurant where our legendary night would take place.  I was mortified, because in my mind his laughter highlighted the cliché’s that are cosigned by so many married couples because in our search for sanity, common ground, and spontaneity, there is the irony that marriage by its very nature is often in direct conflict to these goals.  I suppose last night was no different.  Every date night I find myself saying a little prayer to God that my cynicism doesn’t rear its ugly head and undermine our efforts.  I guess I’m a purest in the sense that I feel like date nights, Valentine’s and anniversaries seem too unnatural to evoke any real bliss.  Not to mention, it always helps when you have something in common with your date.  There are days when I feel that besides bills and parenting my wife and I are often hard pressed to find something that we both enjoy immensely.  Of course there are those things that we both kind of enjoy, but that immense joy seems to always be out of our grasp.  And whenever we are given the rare opportunity of a date night it doesn’t take long before this unfortunate reality is exposed.  Now here’s the part where I must be honest and unapologetic.  Although I love my wife and I know she loves me, I can’t ignore the nagging little buzzing in my brain that says “you are boring her to tears” whenever we go out and I would be lying if I said that she didn’t bore me a little as well.  Feelings like this scare the shit out of me because there is always another gremlin in the back of my mind that makes me wonder what will happen if I continue to bore her or vice versa.  We have had countless discussions, which often morph into long drawn out arguments where ex-boyfriends and girlfriends are thrown into the mix and the conversation spirals into a dark murky place that sometimes takes days to dig ourselves out. 

One of the major catalysts for these explosions comes when she starts going on about her past and how glorious it was when she was in her twenties, a time that was not as glorious for me because I was in my thirties and dealing with the pre-midlife crisis that occurs after obtaining a liberal arts degree and the bubble bursts on all of the rock star fantasies that artsy folk like me hold so dear.     Although it was a time when I obviously fell in love with her (We met when she was 23 I think), there were many growing pains that came after, most of which could be attributed to her adjusting to life in committed relationship with a man who was 7 years older.  I of course had to adjust as well.  Needless to say these adjustments led to many painful moments that I would sooner bury than engage in nostalgia.  Another factor is that our nostalgias don’t match.  Her coming of age occurred in the nineties, the age of Bad Boy entertainment and Biggie Smalls, soon to be followed by everybody’s friend Jay-Z, a time that I view as the dark ages of music and art in general.  My time came just before that in the age of Native Tongue, A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul.  Need I say more?  So the question remains, how do two people with such contrasting sensibilities manage to hold it together?  The answer of course is love but often more paramount is our value of commitment. 

Commitment is the blessed and cursed glue that holds us together.  So during those times when I’m rolling my eyes when she is shoving pictures in my face from Instagram or going on and on about her hair or how her sense of fashion has evolved since the nineties; when she feels a migraine coming when I’m going on about how much pop culture has changed for the worst or raving about some comic book I just read, commitment often swoops in and saves the day.  Commitment is the caped crusader of our marriage.  Although it saves us often from imminent disaster, its methods are unconventional and often messy.  Like when extinction level events like arguments occur it will unabashedly send in children armed with cute little faces and high prepubescent voices to redirect our attention to seemingly trivial things like juice and Chef Boyardee.  It will often redirect our attention from internal strife to greater threats of stability like shut off notices and threats of foreclosure.   It’s in moments like these when we transform from enemies to allies never questioning why we must band together.  And when the dust settles, we discover that without love, commitment means nothing.  And sometimes getting to that place requires superhuman strength.   I think the theme of our next date night should be a celebration of our collective superpowers. 

Good Days in February

It is African American History Month again and I find myself with the same anxiety that I feel every year about this time when my students start getting restless, questioning why they must endure my lessons, answer my questions and read my required texts.  And although keeping them motivated is a monumental task, it is a labor that always bares fruit.  I am no psychologist but I am certain that each time I lead my students through the tumultuous annals of our complex history there are distinct psychological effects.  Students rebel against this history in ways that are both varied and intriguing.  It seems that the very thought of reading any piece of literature that involves Jim Crow, slavery or racism sometimes hurls even the most docile African-American student into attack mode.  These assaults fluctuate between the passive aggressive to the overt, ranging from students falling asleep to flat out causing disturbances aimed at the primary goal of removal from class.  At first, I thought that I was imagining such behavior but now that I am in my ninth full year of teaching, I know that the correlation between the month of February and student behavior is real.  

But there is one variable in these occurrences that I have not mentioned; me.   Although I have often questioned my part in all of this, I am only just now discovering that I am just as affected by oft-difficult to-digest parts our history as my students. The beginning of my discovery began in AP English class when I introduced Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.  In week one of the text reactions were mixed.  Although some were excited about the aspect of finally leaving Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 behind, they soon discovered that in terms of complexity they might have been leaving the frying pan meeting the fire.  What I didn’t expect however, was the level of resistance that I would receive in getting them to accept it.  Much of the rebellion came from the promise of reading The Color Purple, another African-American classic, which many of them were familiar due to its Hollywood interpretation. Although I could blame my decision to teach Ellison on my principal’s suggestion, I must confess I was more interested in giving my students a literary experience that was not as influenced by the big screen.  And not to discount Alice Walker’s work, what I have discovered is not only can Ellison’s writings cause discomfort in students, but in educators as well especially the educator is Black and male. 

About two days ago I gave these students the task of finding a pivotal moment in the text that marks the beginning of the narrator’s journey to maturity.  One such moment is in the prologue when the narrator’s grandfather gives him deathbed instructions on how to survive in the white man’s world.  My first reading of Invisible Man was over twenty years ago.  And although I cannot recall any deathbed instructions from my elders, I remember my father once telling me that my life would always be difficult and that things would never come easy for me.  His words have now come full circle especially in my last five years as a teacher where I have met at least three incarnations of Dr. Bledsoe, the head of the college where the narrator attended and the man who later removed him from that same school teaching him the true meaning of power and the trappings and disappointments that admiring our own can sometimes entail.  It is only now at age 43 that I am able to recognize my father’s words as a pivotal moment in my life. And because of that moment, much of my life’s journey has been a quest for confidence. On the other hand, my students are in the middle of their pivotal moments and I can only assume that many if not most don’t grasp their significance.  And it would seem that they resist any connections that they may have to Ellison’s text because many of the pivotal moments that his main character experiences are painful at best. Either they don’t think that the events that render this character invisible are possible in their lives or they choose to ignore them if they are.  I cannot find fault in this because it is a symptom of youth.  But even my awareness of this does not alleviate the tension that exists in my African-American and Afro-Caribbean classroom; a tug of war between what the world was and what it will be for blacks in this country; one side pulling for the memories no matter how tragic to remain alive, the other pulling with all its might to remain unaware.

My awareness of this tension was further enhanced when I introduced my tenth graders to text called A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines where the main character is an African-American teacher in the Jim Crow south that has been given the task of helping Jefferson, a native of the town a chance to die with dignity after being wrongfully accused of murder and sentenced to death. In contrast to the twelfth graders, tenth grade students are a bit more expressive about their feelings about the goings on in a classroom and unlike the seniors, they expressed their disdain for this book from day one.  I have come to expect this from them.  In fact many of the comments that I have heard since we have started have been somewhat innocuous. But other behaviors such as sleeping in class and incessant talking have increased.   In addition to these behaviors, two recent comments have provoked my interest. They were both related to my blackness and they both questioned its authenticity.  Again, I must state my biases.  Like the main character, I have experienced many moments of frustration working for a system that doesn’t always have the best interests of the students at heart.  And there are some passages in this book that echo my occasional feelings about my job in general.  For example, the main character Grant often reflects on the lives of his former students that have been stifled by Jim Crow and wonders whether or not he is even making a difference.  Although the Jim Crow era is long past, I have still witnessed my students fall to unemployment and the criminal justice system.  And coincidentally one of the comments I mentioned earlier was made by a student who is currently facing such a dilemma.  I don’t think I will ever forget the look of sincerity in his face when he asked me “are you black?” simply because I used the word “outstanding” in class.  The other comment of course was that black men don’t use that word.  I thought about this later and thought to myself how can I teach my students to be outstanding if they can’t even say the word?

These occurrences have taught me that there is an abundant fear of words in black class rooms; words that tell where we have been and words that tell us where we should be going.  This is why as a black male English teacher there are times when I feel just as invisible as the narrator in Invisible Man and just as disillusioned as Grant Wiggins in A Lesson Before Dying; but not every day, just the bad ones. So with that in mind I can only hope and pray that the pivotal moments in my student’s lives involve words of encouragement that alleviate fear and that the good days outnumber the bad.  And if I’m lucky, maybe some of those good days and pivotal moments happen in my classroom.