While Black

I was standing in a hotel elevator in Columbia, Maryland headed to the lobby. A black adolescent male stepped in shepherding a gaggle of five or six kids; cousins and siblings, I assumed. His charges were no older than eight with the smallest, the only girl, about four. The adolescent doing all the shepherding was as tall as a man, but his facial features said he was about 15. All of them were dressed for the pool. The elevator doors closed.

Image Copyright, Teece Aronin

"Wow, it looks like you guys are going swimming," I said to the younger ones.

"Yeah!" the goslings chorused.

"You are so lucky," I said. "I'm hoping that I get to go tomorrow."

The young man and I exchanged smiles. He spoke to the goslings softly and with a tone of bottomless patience.

"Now, listen to me very carefully," he said, and amazingly  they fell silent and all the little faces tipped attentively to his. "When we get to the lobby, we're going to be very quiet." His index finger rested gently against his lips and the thought struck me that this was a kid who lived his whole life gently.

"Okay!" the gaggle promised.

The young man looked at me and sighed. "All I can do is tell them, and know that it probably won't go well."

"You are doing a really great job," I told him.

When the doors opened onto the lobby I waited because one of the little boys was darting off the elevator. The young man in charge stopped him.

"We let the lady go first," he explained.

As I stepped off the elevator, the words, "Thank you sir," exited my mouth as naturally as if the young man had been an old one.

Behind me, the gosling protested. "Why did I have to wait?"

"Always be a gentleman," I heard as I walked away.

I got in my car thinking of a neighborhood boy who was a friend of my kids in what felt like another lifetime. His name was Paris and like the young man on the elevator, Paris was black, tall and mannish-looking. The last time I saw him he was 12. He was a little younger than my daughter, Sydney and a little older than my son, Jon. He spoke softly and had a dry sense of humor.

One day I was driving with the three of them in the backseat. Jon found a cereal bowl back there and put it on his head.

"Look! I have a bowl for a hat!"

Drawled Paris wistfully, "I wish there was milk in it."

Paris had a younger sister named Maya. Maya was very little and hadn't been around me much, so at her birthday party, fully expecting her to shy away, I asked, "May I pick you up?" And Maya shot her arms up in the air as happily as if I'd offered to take her for an airplane ride. 

One time my then-husband and I took Paris with us on a weekend trip. He, Jon and I were watching the news where one of the top stories was about someone's insistence on using the N word as part of his right to free speech.

"Jon, change the channel please," I said.

Paris' expression was even more serious than usual. "Thank you, Mrs. Aronin. You know, that word is offensive to people like me."

"It's offensive to me, too, Paris."

"What do you mean, people like you?" asked Jon.

"Black people," explained Paris.

Jon leaned back for a better view of his friend and looked astonished. "You're black?" he gasped, dead serious.

Not long after Paris' weekend away with us, his mother learned she had terminal cancer. She moved out-of-state with Paris and Maya to where they had family.

The night they left, Paris gave each of us something to remember him by; I got a "rock formation" from his aquarium and a can of Planter's peanuts. Maya gave the kids her hula hoop. When Paris' mother put the kids in the moving van and literally drove into the sunset, it was one the bleakest times the kids and I had ever known.

Paris' mother died soon after, and Paris and Maya moved in with the extended family. He and the kids keep in touch, but only sporadically.

The day after my exchange with the goslings, my daughter and I were in the hotel lobby. In walked the young man with four of his charges. 

"Syd, that's the kid I told you about," I whispered. "Doesn't he remind you of Paris? I still can't get over how well he handled all those kids."

"You really should go speak to him, Mom," she said. They were in a snack shop near the hotel entrance. The young man was patiently guiding the younger ones through their choices. I walked up to them.

"Excuse me," I said. Despite my smile, they all looked a little startled so I addressed the goslings first. "I was in the elevator with you last night, and I just wanted to compliment each of you on how grown up you all acted. You guys are pretty impressive kids."

"Thank the lady," the young man prompted.

"Thank you!" they chimed.

The little girl put her arms around my waist and laid her head against my side.

"And I wanted to tell you," I said, looking at the young man, "that you have a gift for working with little ones and it's obvious how much they respect you."

He looked shocked, then relieved, then delighted. Did he think I was about to criticize him? He put his hand over his heart and thanked me. I walked back to my daughter.

"Whoa, Mom, the woman working at the front desk was eyeing you like you would not believe."

I glanced over and saw that she was a young black woman.

"Probably thought I was harassing them for 'shopping while black,'" I said. "You know what I mean, right? Driving while black, running while black, walking while black. She probably thought that white woman better not accuse those kids of stealing."

"She was right to be suspicious," Syd sighed. 

"Yup, I know." I sighed too.

I wondered if that young man's parents had felt the need to teach him what so many black parents teach their already law-abiding kids: to keep their hands out of their pockets whenever they're in stores, to keep them visible if pulled over by a cop, and to be careful where and how they run. I'm sure there are lots of other lessons, too, ones I'm too white to have thought of. 

You know, we can argue until we're blue in the face, instead of whatever color we were born with, about the past acts of both sides, but children like Paris, and that kid at the hotel have to live through the present before they can live in the future and be the kinds of young, black men who'll help break the stereotypes.  

Paris was awfully young when his mother died. I hope she had time to teach him all the lessons.

If Sr. Martha Was Right, My Kids Are a Real Snooze

I am the parent of two of the brightest candles on the cake, two of the sharpest knives in the drawer, and two of brightest bulbs in the marquis of motherhood. These future captains of industry, United States presidents, Nobel Prize winners, or better mousetrap builders are, in my humble opinion, destined to accomplish great things. Why, just look at their picture!

How is it then, that these two mothers of invention (Sydney, age 15 and Jon, age 13) can’t come up with one simple plan to alleviate their occasional run-ins with boredom? Why is it their mother, not nearly as clever as they, who is expected to come up with the solution?

Jon actually had the audacity to tell me one day that he was so bored, the only thing keeping him awake was the discomfort he felt from being bored.

“Read,” I suggest to them. They say. “Nah.”

“Let’s go for a walk,” I offer. They say, “We don’t feel like it.”

“Go do something together,” I urge. They gasp, “Yuck!”

One day, after an exchange very similar to those above, I shared with my offspring what Sr. Martha used to tell us back in high school: “When you’re bored, you’re boring,” she would say.

As I quoted Sr. Martha to the kids, I thought how cleverly I was throwing the ball back in their court. Throw a ball; no, they'd shoot that idea down. Skeet shooting; hey, how about that? “Too loud,” they’d complain.

Even Sr. Martha’s retort, enough of a verbal slap back in the day to straighten my friends and me right up, was met by my youth of today with sullen, unfazed silence. If Sr. Martha was right, and Sr. Martha was always right, then my kids can be a couple of real snoozers. 

Though their boredom is neither my responsibility nor my fault, I am endeavoring to come up with a list of activities guaranteed to blast out the bilge of boredom and restore the busy bee buzz that happily engaged kids generate. Following is the list I’ve come up with so far and I can be ready to implement it at a moment’s notice.

Mother Teece’s Boredom Busters:

• Make water balloons and use them to play dodge ball.
• Paint each other’s faces with washable markers.
• Groom the cat - a friendly and patient cat (or dog) is required for this activity since trips to the E.R. do not constitute good boredom busters. 
• Script and then shoot a movie using their phones, laptops or cameras.
• Make a house of cards.
• Visit an elderly neighbor and offer to help with errands or yard work.

Now . . . following is an alternate list that I often wish I could trot out. I call it:

Mother Teece’s House of Horrors Boredom Busters

• Force your children to sit through every Barney, Blues Clues, and Dora the Explorer episode you had to watch with them when they were toddlers.
• Make plans together for you to ride the bus with them to school, then coordinate your outfits just to make the trip more fun.
• Hold hands with them and skip past the basketball game the kids up the street are playing.

Granted, my real list isn't very lengthy, nor, you might argue, as inspired as my alternate list, but I plan to keep working on both until they're as long and as priceless as the Mayflower Madame's client register combined  with Heidi Fleiss' little black book. 

Other parents no doubt can come up with even better ideas than these, but if they're ever feeling stuck, they can borrow my list. EITHER ONE THEY WANT.