Monthly Archives: August 2009

August 25, 2009

The Elephant in the Room| How I Crossed My Racial Divide

guesswhoscomingtodinnerBack in 1997 when my teenage son began dating the blonde haired, blue-eyed girl next door, my reaction can almost be called hypocritical. After all, hadn’t I spent the years after my divorce specifically dating only Caucasian males?

Well perhaps it was this specificity in my past choices, which led me to believe (as many still do) that just as lesbians and gay men “choose” to be homosexual, so do teenagers “choose” to date outside of their race.  I was distraught over my son’s choice because I felt that in choosing to date a white girl, he was rejecting his  Black mother, and all of the other Black women in his family tree.

So, what did I do? Well what could I do?  You know from my previous posts that I love my children just the way that God gave them to me – unconditionally. And, for  that reason, I would never allow them to feel less than loved by me.  When my son was 5, he said to me “Mommy, how come you’re white and we’re black”.  Hmmm,  even at 5 my boy had deep thoughts ; as you well know, I am not white, but I am less brown than my children are and I mention this only to illustrate that kids don’t start seeing color and differences until we point them out.

When it comes to people, our childrens’  likes and dislikes are based on their feelings about those people, and race and ethnicity don’t even come into play for them. That is until we start to point it out. I think that my reaction to his choice of girlfriend freaked my son out because I am the last of the hippie chicks, the love everybody equally generation, the don’t judge a person by what’s on the outside school of thought.

And there I was being a big fat hypocrite when my son did exactly as he was taught and didn’t judge the book by it’s cover!

12 years later I am older, wiser and more accepting. I know now that you love who you love, and like Michael Jackson so eloquently stated “it don’t matter if you’re Black or White” . I know that my childrens choices when it comes to their partners is not a rejection of me or their race. I believe that if we leave them be, our children will obliterate the racial divide – if we let them.

Unfortunately, I saw on Mamapedia that there are parents who are now entering the struggle.  I have a friend who is white and her  teenage daughter likes  a Black  child in her grade. They are unofficially dating, I don’t have a problem with it, but my friend does, even though she has never mentioned it to me.  I feel like there is a big old elephant in the room every time we are together, that there is something we should talk about but don’t. We discuss husbands, diets, raising kids – you name it. But I see the elephant out of the corner of my eye, and I so want to mention him.

I know in my heart, that she will come around on her own, 12 years from now she will probably laugh about this and wonder why the situation upset her so much. You see when our children date outside of their race it’s not about us, and if we will remove ourselves from the equation we would not be upset about the color of the other person and we would be free to judge them on “the content of their character”,  just the same way we judge anyone who dares to date our child.

I think it’s telling that this interracial relationship is totally accepted by her child’s peers. The future looks bright after all.

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August 18, 2009

Why Don’t We Need Health Care Reform?

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Lately there has been a very loud and unhealthy discussion about health insurance in this country. I say unhealthy because the discussion very rarely focuses on the facts and no one walks away from the fight feeling good about it. In my discussion on the subject I would like to remove the political component:

  1. Forget about what side of the aisle the people that you voted for sit – chances are they don’t have any of your interests at heart anyway
  2. Forget about the color of our President and whether or not he has all the qualities of the antichrist as stated in the Bible – that’s just the arrogance of every generation thinking that we are so important that the world will end on our watch and in our lifetime
  3. Forget about what you have heard on TV the radio or from newspaper articles and editorials – it’s all spin since everyone has an angle on this thing and anyway for the most part those guys have good insurance that they can afford

Instead let’s talk about you and me and our experience with the health care system. If you currently:

  • pay less than $100 per month for insurance or have in the past
  • and have never paid more than $10-$40 out of pocket for medical, dental, vision, prescription or a visit to the chiropractor
  • and this is not Medicare or Medicaid

I would understand if you  drop out of the discussion at this point as it is probably difficult, if not impossible for you to understand what all the fuss is about.  But I suggest you stick around so that you can understand what others have experienced or are experiencing.

If you are on Medicaid or Medicare, or have a child enrolled in a federal or state run health plan,  then I definitely want you to stay and give us some insight on what a “government run” health care system is like. For example:

  1. What does it cost you monthly?
  2. How much do you pay for prescriptions?
  3. Have you ever been denied care because you are on “the dole” so to speak?
  4. Do you feel that you receive inferior care because you are on Medicaid or Medicare?

For those of us who fit into none of the above . Those of us who pay anywhere from $200 to $600 plus per month for health insurance. Those of us who have paid additional  health care bills of  anywhere from  $300 to $300K  over and above what we paid for health insurance. I have to ask, what are we doing? Why are we fighting each other? What are we seriously fighting for ?

Last year I wrote an article about consumer driven health care and I told the story of a woman who paid over $300 per month to insure herself and her teenaged child. She required dental surgery that would take several iterations, but was not able to finish the process because she could not pay the $3000.00 bill.  So the world turned and a year later she finds herself working for this very same insurance company, and guess what? She only pays $20 a month for her coverage.  There is a saying that came to mind when I heard about that “somebody is buying you wholesale and selling you retail”.  I mean seriously people, if the insurance company employees can pay only $20 per month for coverage, why are you and I paying upwards of $300.00? What the heck are we paying for exactly?

I’ve had a discount plan for almost three years now (read why here), even though I work full time and my job offers benefits I declined them – do you want to know why? Because my discount plan costs $360 per year, I pay a discounted fee at the doctor, the dentist, the drug store, and even when I get glasses – and I am still spending less than the $10,000 plus  per year that I invested back when I had employer sponsored health care.

When I had insurance I had to get an HSA to cover those extras that my insurance did not cover. I breezed through a $2000 HSA easily. Why is that? Why do we pay so much for something that does not do the job? And why are we letting the insurance companies spend our money on lobbyists and bad advertising? Why aren’t we mad about this? Talk to me, I’m listening…

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August 1, 2009

Cleaning Out My Closet | What Happens When Your Child “Comes Out”

Défilé de PASTT à la Gay Pride à Paris en France
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It’s summer, I’m traveling, I have Marching Band camp and I’m launching a new application at work. Finding myself in this blogging topics dead zone I checked Mamapedia to see if there were any questions that struck a chord. I stumbled upon a Mom whose 18 year old son told her that he is gay.  I thought to myself ” well there’s a topic with teeth “;  why? because I have been there and done that and quite a few years of experience that I can bring to the table.

I don’t recall exactly how long ago it was that my handsome boy came to me and said “Mom, there’s something I have to talk to you about”. I had no idea where the conversation was going to lead when we sat down in my “meditation room” to talk.  He was very straightforward and said “I’m gay”.  I don’t remember my reaction (resignation?), I recall asking a lot of questions and being a little hurt that I was not the FIRST person that he told.

I do remember telling him to never forget that I gave birth to a boy and not a girl and I’d better not catch him being a flamer. In retrospect that was probably a mean thing to say, but he has honored me by respecting that one request. Of course I  worried about him being out there in a world that can be so mean to people who are different – after all as hard as it can be to be a black hip-hop looking kid, how much harder to be a Gay black hip-hop looking kid?

When I told my husband and older son they gave me a “so?” kind of look, they always knew and wanted to know why I didn’t. I think that helped me to get through the process faster than a mother who is on her own with a revelation like this. And, yes, I think that I probably knew all along but was in denial about it. I think Moms know their children better than anyone else and when a child “comes out” they’ve really just voiced what we’ve known for a very long time.

Well back to the Mother on Mamapedia, she’s devastated, upset because she will never have grandchildren from this child (she has others), and has actually removed his pictures from the house because she can’t stand to look at him.  I fully understand how she is feeling. You see as parents we tend to see our children as both an extension of ourselves and the path to  fulfillment of  our unrealized hopes  and dreams. We think our children and their lives are about us, when really it’s about them. And that’s where we go wrong.

Imagine how hard it is to sit down with your mother  (your first love, your lifeline, your shelter in all storms) and tell her something that you hope will not cause her to cast you away. How does the child feel when their Mommy does exactly that? Throws them away, letting them know without words that they are useless and worthless because they’ve made a “bad choice” (yeah like a kid would choose to be a pariah).

My son told me that he’d known since he was young  that he was probably homosexual. He said that when he was 15 he tried to kill himself becaus eof the kids at school and his own confusion. I didn’t hear the whole story because blood rushed to my head and i blacked out with my eyes open at the very idea that I could have lost him and never known why. My children are undeniably the loves of my life, I would never for any reason stop loving them. Being gay is small stuff, being dead … well that’s pretty final.

For some, a child coming out of the closet is  in some small way like a death in the family, you will go through the phases of grieving:

  1. Shock  – you may experience feelings of disbelief or may be momentarily unable to feel anything at all.
  2. Denial – this is where you decide that it’s ” just a phase” and send your teen to counseling or a church “re-training” program.
  3. Bargaining – usually with God, but you may try to bargain with your child too (“I’ll buy you a new car if you promise to stay away from your homosexual friends”)
  4. Guilt – “What did I do wrong?” , “Was he too much of a Mama’s boy?”, “I shouldn’t have let her play sports”
  5. Anger is another totally natural part of the grieving process. Unfortunately, in these cases all of the anger tends to be directed at the child, mainly because parents think this is a choice they made out of defiance or some such.
  6. Depression – this can be alleviated by remembering that your child is still here, they didn’t die, it’s only one of  your expectations for them that died. Remember that Gay men and women do become parents, they go to college, they attend church, they live the same types of lives that we do.
  7. Acceptance  – I have read of parents who refused to speak to or see  their children after they’ve come out. What an absolute waste.

I have never been to a meeting (never thought about it actually) but I hear that PFLAG can help parents through to acceptance. Check their site for a chapter near you.

While having babies doesn’t come with a “contract” like marriage and business relationships, the act of conceiving, birthing, and keeping your baby creates a binding contract. You promise to love that baby unconditionally, treat it fairly, and set it free when it’s time. People who deny their children based on a condition ( sexual orientation, choice of marriage partner, not meeting expectations) did not deserve those children in the first place.

I did not personally go through all of the stages of grieving, I’m a pretty modern woman, have been lucky to have fantastic Gay friends (yes even in the Marine Corps back in the 70s) and was able to get over myself fairly quickly. My son has been with the same person for almost a decade and they plan to make it official some time next year -  and of course I will be there -:)

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