My husband and I bought my grandparents' house about a year and a half ago. My grandparents lived here for 35 years. These two people have brought such joy and nourishment into my life that I couldn't bear to let their house go to strangers. So when Grandpa passed and Grandma had to move to an assisted living facility, we moved in. It was decorated like an octogenarian couple lived here. When our shower flooded, we had laminate wood floor put in the living room and two walls were re-textured and painted the color of our choice. The other wall was left with my grandmother's wallpaper.
About a month ago, I read something (I can't even remember what!) that inspired me to think outside the box on my art. I have a HUGE wall in my living room that is going to be textured and painted before we move...what's stopping me from having fun on it now? I first checked with the husband to make sure he could live with this. He said he didn't care.
One day a few years ago, I got off work a bit early. I piddled around some of my favorite spots for creative inspiration-a few stores on Route 66. When I came home, I still had time before picking up my boy. I turned the corner into my living room and there was that wall in all its crazy-flowered-wallpaper-glory! I tore a little piece off...then another little piece. Before I knew it, I had a big white spot on the wall. I hesitated as I thought of my husband coming home from work to see the wall torn apart but no art. I looked at the wall again and decided it was too late to turn back now.
I threw on some grungy clothes, cranked up my Pandora Pink station, spread out an old sheet and started in earnest. As I pulled off layers of the wallpaper, symbolism overcame me. This shiny, colorful, traditional wallpaper began to take the form of conventionalism, and fear, and being who everybody else wants you to be. Underneath, I found my grandfather had left the previous layer of wallpaper. This one was a tiny pink (my grandma's favorite color) pattern that instantly took me to my childhood. I was back in the days of innocence, the days when I was still whoever I wanted to be, as yet unmolded and as yet unscarred. There are places I went a little deeper taking the wallpaper off than I intended to just the blank yellowed color of the wall underneath; I thought of places where my life stripped away even the good I started with. There are places my grandpa had plastered over some hole or otherwise covered a blemish; places where I needed to fix where I had started with or fix where life gouged a bit too deeply.
I had an unfinished wall in my living room-as unfinished as my life. But now I face a wall on which to paint whatever I want. It's so much better than the blank white slate of a canvas. It's as though I can start with the little girl of unfettered potential and add the self I long to be. And because I hope to raise a child who always feels like he can do anything, my son helps when he wants.
As I listened to every song that played, it was like I was doing hard
therapy...working on my inner self as I worked on that wall. As I ripped off layers of old lady wallpaper to the soundtrack Pandora provided, I swore I smelled vanilla pipe tobacco just like my dad smoked.
When I picked up my son, we covered that wall with rainbows and blobs and whatever else! Months later, I added a huge ocean patch with a bubble in which a rose is suspended. My son helped me again with (a little) more sophisticated art than the previous time.
Every time I look at that wall, I smile. When people come to my house for the first time, they are surprised. If they know me well enough, they are not too surprised. But everyone is delighted (well, maybe with the exception of my mother-it was her parents' house) and I think a little bit jealous that they don't have a wall like this in their living room. I have had friends express a desire to paint on it themselves-they are welcome! So far, time or inhibitions have kept them from it....but I'm sure it will happen soon.
I love that we have this wall. It is a part of my life that is exactly as I want it. And it is made all the better for the memory of how it came to be!
Monday, April 6, 2015
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Why Should We Talk About It?
I was browsing my Facebook newsfeed today and I came across an interesting interview with Mike Wallace and Morgan Freeman. In it, Morgan Freeman (an actor I greatly admire) says we should stop talking about race. Of course, this got me thinking. Why should we talk about race? Or why should we talk about gender?
There has recently been a definite uptick in the amount of chatter about race and gender recently. Between Ferguson, MO and GamerGate, or even the Kim Kardashian photo "scandal" (a two-for-the-price-of-one: race AND gender), discussions about racism (particularly in a white vs. black context) and feminism are not only being discussed in the serious circles in which they've long been discussed; they're now permeating even the most benign pop culture. Unless you've been living under that proverbial rock, you've heard about at least one of these issues recently.
But does talking about it just perpetuate the problem? If, as Mr. Freeman seems to suggest, we are contributing to the problem of people with brown or "black" skin being treated differently than those of us with beige ("white") skin just by talking about that difference, then the easiest solution is to stop talking about it. I have a former professor who is terribly brilliant and successful. She lives and works in an all men, very powerful world. She has told me that her approach to making career opportunities more equal for women is to simply live it. And kudos to my former professor and Mr. Freeman for their abilities to live beyond the everyday discriminations facing the majority of women and people of color in this country. But will stopping the conversation make it better for the rest of us?
I must at this point in our conversation offer a clarification. I am white. And I am a woman. I absolutely benefit from white privilege so my observations about race are fully subject to scrutiny from those people who may speak from a place of personal knowledge (i.e. people of color). I am not saying I know better than Mr. Freeman or any other person who has been the victim of racial discrimination on a firsthand basis. However, I live in this world and desperately want to see it become a better place where people of all color and gender live in harmony. From that perspective, and my perspective as a woman, I offer a reason not to stop talking about these issues.
If we stop talking about it, hate becomes the only voice in the room.
By not talking about these important issues, we amplify the messages of those who want our differences to hurt, diminish, stunt, restrict, constrict, limit, or incapacitate us. Many of those who are perpetuating these messages do so because it gives them an advantage. Many others continue these ideas because they don't know better: it's how they've always done things. Why is it so bad to have a majority of men in the media, or the CEO office, or the White House? The world has been running just fine that way-we even finally put a man of color in the latter. Why is it so bad that black mothers teach black boys how to avoid looking suspicious to police while white mothers teach white sons that police are our friends? The black boys are probably up to no good anyway, right? Why else would a police man target them? Their ignorance may be bliss for them, but it is hell for those on the receiving end.
We cannot allow people to continue in their outdated, harmful, ignorant ways. It would be lovely if, by not talking about these issues, we could erase them. If by not pointing out that Morgan Freeman is one of only a handful of award-winning, black leading men (and even fewer leading ladies) we could just even the playing field in Hollywood, I would recommend we just shut up. But not pointing out the issue, not speaking up, has gotten us even further into the mire of discriminatory practices. We must point out all the ways girls and women are disadvantaged from infancy so that people will begin giving them not an advantage, but an equal footing. We must point out that people of color are hindered at many points in their lives so that we can begin to remove those hindrances-not so that people of color have more opportunities, but the same ones as the "white majority."
Please, please, until things are much, much better (and maybe not even then), don't ever stop talking about it.
There has recently been a definite uptick in the amount of chatter about race and gender recently. Between Ferguson, MO and GamerGate, or even the Kim Kardashian photo "scandal" (a two-for-the-price-of-one: race AND gender), discussions about racism (particularly in a white vs. black context) and feminism are not only being discussed in the serious circles in which they've long been discussed; they're now permeating even the most benign pop culture. Unless you've been living under that proverbial rock, you've heard about at least one of these issues recently.
But does talking about it just perpetuate the problem? If, as Mr. Freeman seems to suggest, we are contributing to the problem of people with brown or "black" skin being treated differently than those of us with beige ("white") skin just by talking about that difference, then the easiest solution is to stop talking about it. I have a former professor who is terribly brilliant and successful. She lives and works in an all men, very powerful world. She has told me that her approach to making career opportunities more equal for women is to simply live it. And kudos to my former professor and Mr. Freeman for their abilities to live beyond the everyday discriminations facing the majority of women and people of color in this country. But will stopping the conversation make it better for the rest of us?
I must at this point in our conversation offer a clarification. I am white. And I am a woman. I absolutely benefit from white privilege so my observations about race are fully subject to scrutiny from those people who may speak from a place of personal knowledge (i.e. people of color). I am not saying I know better than Mr. Freeman or any other person who has been the victim of racial discrimination on a firsthand basis. However, I live in this world and desperately want to see it become a better place where people of all color and gender live in harmony. From that perspective, and my perspective as a woman, I offer a reason not to stop talking about these issues.
If we stop talking about it, hate becomes the only voice in the room.
By not talking about these important issues, we amplify the messages of those who want our differences to hurt, diminish, stunt, restrict, constrict, limit, or incapacitate us. Many of those who are perpetuating these messages do so because it gives them an advantage. Many others continue these ideas because they don't know better: it's how they've always done things. Why is it so bad to have a majority of men in the media, or the CEO office, or the White House? The world has been running just fine that way-we even finally put a man of color in the latter. Why is it so bad that black mothers teach black boys how to avoid looking suspicious to police while white mothers teach white sons that police are our friends? The black boys are probably up to no good anyway, right? Why else would a police man target them? Their ignorance may be bliss for them, but it is hell for those on the receiving end.
We cannot allow people to continue in their outdated, harmful, ignorant ways. It would be lovely if, by not talking about these issues, we could erase them. If by not pointing out that Morgan Freeman is one of only a handful of award-winning, black leading men (and even fewer leading ladies) we could just even the playing field in Hollywood, I would recommend we just shut up. But not pointing out the issue, not speaking up, has gotten us even further into the mire of discriminatory practices. We must point out all the ways girls and women are disadvantaged from infancy so that people will begin giving them not an advantage, but an equal footing. We must point out that people of color are hindered at many points in their lives so that we can begin to remove those hindrances-not so that people of color have more opportunities, but the same ones as the "white majority."
Please, please, until things are much, much better (and maybe not even then), don't ever stop talking about it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)