Let's Take a Stroll

Let's take a stroll down white privilege lane. 

My white privilege lane.

I'll start with a runner's perspective.

Here is one friend's story. He is one of the nicest people I know and a much better runner than I will ever be. But he is a black man; he doesn't run with my white privilege. When he goes to the track, he gets "watched" very closely. Sometimes people leave. And once (god, I hope it was only once), a woman stopped running, turned around, and held up her pepper spray as he approached and passed her (from two lanes over). Running. In running clothes. On a track. Where people go to run.

That just wouldn't happen to me. And you can say it's because I'm a woman all you want. It doesn't happen to my white male runner friends either.

• I don't fear taking out my cell phone for fear it may be mistaken for a gun.
• I don't worry that someone might assume I'm a criminal because I'm running. 
• When police pass me at night, they wave; they don't stop me for questions (same friend...multiple times). 
• And if I am EVER fast enough to pass another runner from behind, I doubt very seriously they will feel the need for pepper spray. 

Seem insignificant? 

How about a mother's perspective? 

Here's another story. This time, my son's.

He's had his fair share of run-ins with the law. You don't need all the details to see the point, so here is a rough outline of his experience.

Strike One

Deferred Adjudication: Just stay out of trouble for one year.

He didn't.

Strike Two

Probation: Just stay out of trouble for one year.

He didn't.

Strike Three

House Arrest: Just follow these rules for one year.

He didn't.

It wasn't until strike four that he finally saw the inside of a jail cell.

Find me a black man who was given four strikes before he was put in jail.

I'll wait.

I appreciate every mercy and every kindness shown to my son. With my whole heart I appreciate every police officer and every judge he ever came in contact with. They saved his life. How many black mothers can say the same?

My son came out the other side of this story a good man. 

Because of the compassion he was shown. 

How many black men come out the other side of this same story angry men? 

Because of the injustice they are shown. 

White privilege doesn't mean your life has been easy. 

It doesn't mean you haven't struggled. 

White privilege means your life wasn't made harder because of the color of your skin. 

Three Minutes

Today I watched my 76 year-old father start off on his first 5K.

It's odd wording to say I watched him start. Most people would say they watched him finish his first 5K. But I didn't. I didn't see him finish because he was three minutes ahead of me.

Three minutes!

He killed it. He has been walking three miles a day almost every day for over a month now. And he is killing it.

He placed 2nd in his age group, and he teared up a bit after the race when I told him how proud I was of him. He put his head down and said, "So am I."

I walked the course with my brother and sister. We talked and laughed and huffed and puffed and complained about our aching calves while we got our collective asses kicked by dad. It was a fun morning.

And everyone agreed to do another one. Here's to a new family tradition that just might kick all of our butts into gear.

I Recently Fell Back In Love

At some point last year, I fell out of love with running. Well, to be honest, even when I loved it, I hated it. But I had loved it nonetheless. I started lifting more, even dabbled in powerlifting as a sport, and running just became a chore. And I stopped doing it.

And then I took a birthday vacation centered around running the Four Corners Quad Keyah. Four half marathons over four days in four states. Doesn't everyone plan their birthday vacation around running 52.4 miles? No?

I was incredibly out of shape (remember I had all but stopped running). It was incredibly painful. It was incredibly beautiful. And it was just what I needed to fall back in love.

And fall back in love I did.

So I started up again. I was slower than before (and I was already really slow). My breathing was tortured, and my hip was protesting, but I began to remember what I had loved about the hobby I hate so much.

I love this passage from John Bingham's The Courage to Start;
"Beginners can experience the same feelings as veteran runners. It isn't a matter of how long you've been a runner, but of how running can inform your life. If you are open to the lessons of racing, every starting line can be a seminar in becoming yourself.
These lessons can occur at any distance. A 5K race is more than long enough to discover the truth. A 10K race doesn't guarantee twice the revelation, but it gives you time to reflect. And distances beyond the 10K - 15 and 20K's, half marathons, the full marathon - are out there if the answers are buried to deep within you that mining for truth takes longer."

I don't get lost in my thoughts when I run. I don't spend the time in deep self-contemplation.

I listen to music and podcasts and audiobooks. I listen to other people talk (even though I can't talk in return for fear of dying). I fall down. I take pictures. I run into trees and fall down some more. It's not a time of deep reflection.

But this passage did get me thinking about the lessons I have learned from running.

Here are a few  (OK, a few more than a few):

1. I am stronger than I once believed. Slower too. But also stronger.
2. Slow and steady does not win the race. That fucking tortoise lied to us. Slow and steady comes in last or, at minimum, back of the pack. 
3. The back of the pack is where you meet the really fun runners. Seriously, we are the cool kids.
4. The cops who pull me over when driving aren't the only amazing officers out there. The ones who stop traffic for runners and cheer and tell you you're doing a good job even when you look like you're dying are pretty amazing too. 
5. Trees hurt when you run into them. Don't run into them. Really. Don't.
6. Every step in your last mile means you have that much less than a mile to go. The last mile is my favorite mile.
7. They say the first step is the hardest. It's not. Putting on your running shoes is the hardest. Running shoes. I love buying them. I hate putting them on. It is, by far, the hardest step. 
8. You do have to walk before you run. And then walk a little more. And then you take off running. But then there's always more walking. Just embrace it. 
9. Pee happens. Embrace that too.
10. I am a runner. And if you run, you're a runner too. Your pace doesn't matter. Your distance doesn't matter. If you run, you're a runner. Embrace that most of all.

Well, that's it. That's all I've got. They're not deep and philosophical, but at the end of the day, neither am I. 

"Standing at the beginning of a race, alone but united, you can find the quiet peace that comes in knowing that your uniqueness is shared by others. Surrounded by other runners, waiting for the race to begin, you can find a calm confidence in knowing that your individual odyssey is actually just one stone in a mosaic of self-discovery. a mosaic crafted by all those who, like you, have accepted the challenge to overcome the distance set before them, using only their bodies and their will." 

And that reminds me...

      11. Medals are cool. 

      12. I like medals.

      13. A lot. 

That's Not What Hate Looks Like

I was recently accused of hating our president. Well the exact wording was, "Just admit that you hate your president and be done with it." I take that as an accusation, and I can only think of two reasons why it might have been made:

1. This person does hate people he disagrees with. See, the conversation was about something our president had done that I disagreed with (I'll get to that) and so clearly (in this person's mind) I must hate him. What a sad way to go through life, hating anyone you disagree with. That makes me sad for him.
or
2. Maybe he doesn't hate everyone he disagrees with, but he felt comfortable assuming that about me. Again, what a sad way to go through life, assuming hate in others. That too makes me sad for him.

Bottom line, the conversation made me sad. It's not the first. It won't be the last.

The topic of discussion (and I'm referring to an online discussion) was about President Trump's tweet tirade in regard to Greta Thunberg being named People's Person of the Year. The original post was a very nice and even handed statement about the media's impact on the craziness of today's political climate, specifically the current topic of climate change (sorry to the poster if that doesn't seem like an accurate summary).

And I chimed in: "Politics aside, Thunberg is just a sixteen year old girl speaking out for what she believes in. She didn’t change the world or stop climate change. But she did go after something she is passionate about. He is a grown man who pitched a cyber fit and bad mouthed her because she got an award he thought he deserved. Whether he agrees with her or not, politician or not, that’s ridiculous."

I stand behind that adjective, ridiculous. That behavior is ridiculous (no matter who it comes from). It's not OK for a grown man to engage with an autistic child, or ANY child, in a public forum even if she has put herself in the public eye. It's just not, and that's just my opinion. Be the grown up. In this case, that grown up happens to be an elected official who represents ME. My president. The president of the United States of America. On Twitter. Telling a 16 year-old autistic child that she needs anger management and that he definitely is the person of the year. I find that embarrassing (which I also stated in the conversation).

Not long before, public comments had been made about President Trump's son and Melania, who has been a very private, very quiet first lady, spoke out saying children should be left out of politics. Yah. She's right. She just forgot to tell her husband. Shame on the people who made disparaging comments about Barron. And shame on President Trump for doing the same to someone else's child.

In pointing that out, let's not forget, I got, "Just admit that you hate your president and be done with it."

And that has been a large focus of my political lense for the past three years. You see, I'm not a particularly educated person when it comes to federal policy. If it doesn't have to do with education or women's rights/equality, I probably can't chime in to your over-my-head-conversation, and those two topics are really states' issues. So federal policy? I can't tell you much.

Has President Trump's presidency negatively impacted me directly? Not that I know of. Neither has any other presidency in a concrete way I can name. I work in a field with fairly good job security and am a middle class single mom who always gets a decent tax return (but then again any return is enough to make me happy). Now governors? I can go off on a few of them, but like I said, I can't tell you much about federal policy or any president's direct impact on me. That is something I am neither proud nor ashamed of. It's just an area where I can't keep up with some of my smarty friends and family.

Politics, policy, legislation isn't my issue (if you can call it that). President Trump isn't my issue. It is how people respond to him that I often find gross. And often makes me sad.

You're going to think this is a stupid example, but it is one that has stuck with me. It goes all the way back to the time of the debates, when President Trump said, "Look at her face. Who would vote for that?" Now, if any of my family (very devout Republicans) are reading this, they have inevitably come up with at least three smartass comments about Hillary's face, but he didn't say it about her. He said it about Carly Fiorina, the only woman on the Republican ticket at the time. The only woman in his own party who had stepped up to the plate to give it a go. He didn't make disparaging comments about the looks of any of the men in the running. What were there, five of them at that time? It was only for the only woman standing that he chose to focus on her looks instead of her ideas.

But remember, I said he isn't my issue. He is just one man who made a crappy comment about a woman's looks. They're a dime a dozen. The issue was the response, at least in my little corner of the world. I can't tell you how many times I heard, "Well, at least he doesn't care about being politically correct." "He's just keeping it real." "I like that he tells it like he sees it." "Awwww, come on, he's just being a guy."

And that is the problem.

I imagine my nephew running for student council in a couple of years and pointing at the little girl next to him and saying, "Look at her face. Who would vote for that?"

Would those same people be so proud of him and respond, "That's our boy! We just love that he's not politically correct. He just tells it like he sees it." I hope not, but I don't know any more. It seems to me, and it's just my perspective, that President Trump has empowered the worst in people. He's made it OK to say things like that (and many others) because if we can celebrate it (or even tolerate it) from a president, we're giving it our seal of approval.

And therein lies my sadness. Not in him but in the reactions of people I know and love.

Like I said, many of you will think that is a silly example, but remember, I take women's equality to heart, and making a political campaign about looks, but only the woman's looks, struck a chord with me. And the fact that it was during the debates struck a chord with me. It was during a time when candidates put their best foot forward and try to convince us of WHO THEY ARE.

He did.

And we liked it.

Why is it not OK to say that a particular behavior is bad? Why does that have to mean I have hate in my heart? Or am unamerican? Have we become so divisive that those are the only options? It's all or none. Support every word and every action or you're a hater (that word was also thrown into the discussion) who needs to leave the country. I've actually been asked that: Well then, why don't you just leave?

Really? Leave the country I love because I disagree with a particular statement, idea, or behavior? Is that a serious question?

I've been guilty of bad behavior many times. Soooooo many times. And those who love me and support me have told me to cut that shit out, also many times.

Not because they hate me. That's not what hate looks like. They criticized me because my behavior was ridiculous. So was President Trump's. Stop tweeting about children, for Pete's sake. You're the fucking president.

Hey Ryan, have I ever told you the story of your birth?

I've heard women tell their stories when asked about the best day of their lives. It's such a romantic answer. "The day my son was born. It was perfect." Don't get me wrong, I'm so grateful for you and the story we've created. But that day? When I think of that day? Perfect isn't the first word that comes to mind.

The day you were born. Your birth day. It's a fun story (now). It is one of those stories that friends ask me to repeat (sometimes to strangers). It’s just one of those stories. And I couldn’t have made it up if I tried.

You were born in Huntsville, Texas, in a hospital that I now refer to as the “hillbilly hospital from hell.” Wynter drove me there. It was October 9th, 1995. Do you remember Wynter? She was one of my closest friends, and she loved you like her own. For years to come you called her Gunk Gunk. We don’t know why. You spoke fairly clearly…unless you were trying to say Wynter.

I was in labor for 28 hours, and boy were they an interesting 28 hours.

First, the nurse who did my initial exam said that upon arrival I was dilated to a 9. Apparently, you give birth at 10, so Wynter called Mamaw and Papaw and told them to get there as fast as they could. Now, you’ve been in the car when Papaw is driving. He’s not exactly a speed demon, but Mamaw swears he was driving like a bat out of hell and she was constantly telling him to slow down the whole time. To which he replied, “I’ve always wanted to get pulled over and yell, ‘We’re having a baby!’”

Turns out…there was no rush. I was not at a 9. I was actually barely dilated at all, and we had a long wait ahead of us. This was the first hillbilly hospital from hell “you have to be kidding me” moment. The first of many.

And then the real labor kicked in, and I was ready for my drugs. Which they kept not bringing me. Where are my drugs? I kept getting vague answers and nurses scurrying from the room each time I asked. Or yelled. Or aggressively demanded.

I feel like the poor, sweet nurse who finally came to deliver the news had drawn the short straw or lost the game of rock, paper, scissors that had clearly gone on in the hallway. The news? My drugs were not delayed. Because they were never on the way to begin with. They had lost my paperwork. When you pre-register, you fill out all kinds of paperwork that makes you aware of the possible side-effects of an epidural. And then you sign if you want it anyway. I signed. They lost it.

This short conversation I remember very clearly.
Sweet nurse: I’m so sorry, but we just don’t have the paperwork, and you can’t sign it at this point in your labor because legally, you aren’t in your right state of mind.
Not so sweet me: Bring me a piece of paper saying you are going to suck this kid out with a Hoover, and I'll sign it!
Sweet smartass nurse: See?
And she left. Just walked out. Hillbilly hopital from hell.

So no drugs. And the hours passed.

I’m not sure how many hours passed before the nurse known as the angel of mercy came into the room to inform me that there was a drug they could give me without the original consent form.

Yah, let’s do that. Hook me up. I’ll take extra in fact.

“Well, the thing is, it doesn’t always provide relief.”

I remember that line as well. All these years later, I remember that warning. “It doesn’t always provide relief.”

And it didn’t. None. None whatsoever.

But you know what it did do? It relaxed my upper torso muscles just enough that my head suddenly became too heavy for my neck and I couldn’t hold it up. At all. My head basically just fell over, chin to chest, and rested there no matter how hard I tried to lift it. Every once in a while, Aunt Judy would lift my head up to talk to me, but then she would grow bored of holding it and let it fall back down. I think she was doing it mostly for entertainment purposes.

At some point, many hours later, they broke the news to me that you were face up in the womb. Did you know that it is important for babies to enter the birth canal face down? I didn’t. It is.

The solution? “So Miss Piper, what we need you to do is just flip over from side to side every time you have a contraction. One contraction on your right side, one on your left side and so on.”

No problem.

No problem for someone with complete control of their neck. For me? Problem. Comical problem. Every time I rolled onto my side, my head flopped to the side as well. Which made your Aunt Judy laugh hysterically. Every time. Why I hadn’t already kicked her out of the room escapes me. Maybe it was because she was having such a grand time watching my head flop around.

After much flipping and flopping and yelling and laughter, you did indeed turn over and hours of pushing commenced. To no avail. No baby. You were stuck. Stuck enough for a c-section? No. Just stuck enough that things were about to get weird.

Picture me sitting up in my bed with my head down, resting on my chest when the nurse came in to set up what I like to call...the jungle gym.

I know no other way to describe it. It was a jungle gym. He removed two hole-covers from the floor, one on each side of my bed, and inserted a metal bar into each. I had a good view of this part of the process because remember, I could only look down. Then a separate bar was attached to each pole making a metal bridge over my bed, albeit all I could see were the two original poles. I had no idea that a jungle-gym bridge had been formed above me until the nurse delivered the news. “Alright Miss Piper, we need you to stand up on the bed, grab that bar, squat down, and push.”

Remember, I still can’t see the jungle gym. I’m still sitting there with my head dangling. “Ummmmmm, you want me to do what?”

That is exactly what I asked. And that is exactly what they wanted me to do.

And...I did. I stood up. I grabbed that bar. I squatted down. And I pushed. With my head still flopping uncontrollably.

And that, my dear boy, is how you entered the world. With your mother squatting on top of a bed, dangling from the world’s weirdest jungle gym in the hillbilly hospital from hell.

The Stories That Make Up Our Story

“The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

~ Dr. Seuss

Reading has always been very important to me. I love words, and I love Ryan, so it

reading to him just seemed a natural fit. I loved reading to him. As long as he would

sit still and listen (and that got more difficult as he aged), I would read to him.

I read Goodnight Moon to my belly almost every night for five months. I don’t

remember why I read that particular book. Someone had given it to me as a gift,

I suppose, and I instantly loved it. It’s so simple, and simple is beautiful. It was

a board book. I wish I had kept that old worn copy, but Ryan enjoyed chewing

on it just a little too much for it to have stood the test of time.

Goodnight stars

Goodnight air

Goodnight noises everywhere

And then there was Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey. This was not a

favorite of mine, but Ryan absolutely loved that book. He had me read it to him

over and over. And over. And over. He noticed if I tried to skip a page or dozed off

while reading. He loved the page at the end that shows Little Bear and his mother

going down one side of the mountain and Little Sal and his mother going down

the other. “There they go,” he would whisper. He loved that book.

When Ryan started to explore reading on his own, Danny and the Dinosaur by

Syd Hoff and The Diggingest Dog by Al Perkins were the clear winners. He had

so much fun reading those or making up his own story as he turned the pages

and pretended to read. He made me smile with both.

When he were in about 4th grade, we read the first Harry Potter book together.

Neither of us was very impressed. It was alright. We just didn’t jump onto the

bandwagon and never made it to the second book.

Enter Artemis Fowl.

That clever little criminal was the subject of our next read-aloud, and he won

Ryan's heart and imagination. We read the first one together, but Ryan tore through

the next few books on his own. I don’t remember if he read the entire series

(or even how many there are), but he sure enjoyed what he read.

Our next read aloud (and the last that I remember) was Kate DiCamillo’s

The Tale of Despereaux. Oh, what a beautiful book. I absolutely loved that

Ryan loved it as much as I did. I hope that he gets to enjoy reading it aloud with

a little one someday.

The first sentence in the book’s jacket says, “This is the story Despereaux Tilling,

a mouse in love with music, and stories, and a princess named Pea.” Even the

book jacket is well written. Maybe it was Despereaux’s love of music that

tugged at Ryan. Maybe even at that age, he knew he had music in his soul.

The Name Game

“In English my name means Christian. In Spanish it means the same. It means
potential; it means disappointment. It is like a breeze that gives you goosebumps.
And hand-me-down. It is a soap opera star with blonde hair and blue eyeshadow.

Alene is my godmother’s middle name and now it is mine. She is a caring woman,
raised like mein the small town of Danbury - which seems like a bad thing when
you’re young - but as an adult seems like a blessing.

My godmother. I am fortunate to know her as well as I do, a silent storm of a
woman who hides her intelligence and talent. Stifled by the hand she was dealt
and the life that she loves. Just like that, she refuses to fade. That’s the way she exists.

And her story goes and goes and goes. She has looked out the window her
whole life and smiled at the rural view. I wonder if she made the best with what
she got or was she sorry because she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be?
Alene. I have inherited her name,
but I want to inherit her view.

People say my middle name funny as if asking me a question, as if I might have
mispronounced it. But when combined with my first and last, it seems to fit, to flow.
At home Kristi, to my family Kristi. At school Kristen out of necessity. But in my heart,
I am always Kristi.

I think my name fits me, the me that nobody sees. Kristen Alene Piper. Yes. I think
it fits me nicely.”

This is an imitation of Cynthia Cisneros’s vignette titled “My Name.” I wrote it in
2003 after reading her piece, and I love it to this day (albeit not as much as I love
her original).

But the bottom line is I don’t have a cool story to share about how my parents
picked my name. Because they didn’t. They let Aunt Joyce, my godmother, name me.
Kristen was an actress in her favorite soap opera, and Alene is her own middle name.
That’s the end of the story.

So let’s switch stories. Let’s move forward in time and talk about how I did choose your
name.

Ryan Anthony Piper

How did I choose it? Here’s the short answer. I have no idea.

I had spent months thinking about your name. I didn’t know your gender (and didn’t
want to know), so I was doing mental double duty. I would wrap my hands around my
mouth like a megaphone and call out names as if I were a sports announcer. “Second
baseman David Andrew Piper!” Naaahhh. That’s no good. “Ladies and gentlemen,
Senator Angela Kay Piper.” Oh, I like that one.

And so it went. On and on until I landed on two that I liked. And both were troublesome.

If you were a girl, your name would be Sam Kay Piper. Mamaw was furious. She
insisted that I would not name her granddaughter Sam. Why? Because she said so.
I could, with her blessing, name you Samantha and call you Sam. But your name would
not be Sam. I insisted. If I can call her Sam, why can’t I name her Sam. It all came
down to the age old argument because she said so. Not on her watch. I would tell you
our compromise, but there wasn’t one. Secretly, Sam was still the game plan.  

Fortunately, Jesus took the wheel and helped us avert a family meltdown. You were
never meant to be a Sam or a Samantha.

You were meant to be a Danny. Yes, you read that correctly. If you were a boy, your
name was to be Danny Kyle Piper. Why would this be troublesome? Well, you probably
don’t know this, but your Aunt Judy was once married to a man named Danny.
“Ummmmm...Judy, would it be OK if I named your first nephew after your ex-husband?
That’s not a problem, is it?” See? Troublesome.

So, in summation, at this point in my pregnancy I have a girl’s name that my mother
says is banned, and a boy’s name that my sister can’t stand.  But why do things the
easy way? I’m stubborn, and I loved both names.

And then you were born...more of that story later.

And as I held you in my arms, admiring your squishy, squirmy handsome beauty,
the nurse asked, “What’s his name?”

Ryan Anthony Piper

That’s what I said. Ryan Anthony Piper. I didn’t remember saying it, but I did
remember being asked. At some point, hours later and with a different nurse in the
room, I had to swallow my pride and ask, “Ma’am, what is his name?” She looked at
me blankly but didn’t answer. “His name. I can’t remember what I named him.”

“Ryan. His name is Ryan.” It wasn’t until much later that Papaw told me your
middle name.

Ryan Anthony Piper

Like I said before, I don’t know why I picked it. I have no idea where it came from,
but I love it. I can only assume it was divine intervention because it suits you
perfectly.