January’s Fever and the Killing of Songbirds

   It all began during those long timeless dream-dazed days in a house stricken by high fever. The national flu pandemic penetrated our family and hit us hard, felling everyone but me. There were days when everyone slept and some days when no-one slept.

The normal regulators of time: work and school, disappeared. Further more, the loss of appetite destroyed the marker of meal-times. Mail delivery marked the middle of the day. The school districts’ absentee call marked the end of the afternoon. The sun came up and went down.

Sometimes unable to move, the girls’ single comfort was to be read to. And so the days became like bedtimes, without end. Chapters turned slowly and pensively. Some story lines blurred as they fell into sleep and had to be told over another time.

We read the other Welsh Master of words, Dahl. Matilda. A 6-year old trapped and unloved by her greedy family, seeking to rebalance the world. The girls were especially captured by her first grade teacher, Matilda’s collaborator.

One of those January afternoons we took Matilda outdoors. The girls sat bundled up in blankets on the front porch, for the restorative healing of direct sun.

The day after Matilda we began Harper Lee. At first I read it only for Havana, but her sister eventually sided up to us on the sofa. Also written in the voice of a spirited first grader with an older sibling: Scout was tailor-made for Ilyana. Like learning a second language, Ily got the feel of the sentences and only now and then its depth. Havana listened more intently and missed very little.

As the girls’ fevers came and went, we read more. Age appropriate issues crept into the pages. We changed the unspoken N word into the word negro and the definition of rape was made very, very general. Boo Radley intrigued the girls as much as he did Scout, Jem and Dill. But our real challenge was to be with Tom.

Tom’s trial was coming and Tom’s death was already written, pages ahead. As the trial began, Jem and Havana were completely convinced that justice would inevitably prevail for Tom. Each of them still too young to untangle objective reality and subjective desire.

At this point both girls had returned to school. Mockingbird had become the first choice for bedtime, just as the storyline was no longer the last thing you’d want to hear before fading into your dreams.

The girls had each invested into the story. Each at their own level. Ily, who is more likely to express her anger, is also often herself unsure of her feelings. When Havana gets sad or angry, she knows exactly why.

But here we are as parents halfway through Tom’s trial. A friend even suggested we put down the book and leave it unfinished.

What, when and how to tell kids about the problems of the world depends so much on where our children are at and what they can process. We live on a block where we’ve had guns pulled on people, where swat teams have descended, and also where all the kids know each other and often play basketball in the street. The girls have the good fortune of going to schools where the majority of students are African American. They learned about Martin Luther King’s assassination in Kindergarten. They know who Rosa Parks and Carol Jemison are. Equally, they have friends who have siblings or fathers shot dead.

We did not tell the girls about the recent school shootings because it would not make sense to them. But Mockingbird made sense, even if it was not how they wanted the story to go.

We finished the story. The sin of the book’s title was committed; Tom was found guilty and then murdered by prison officers. Scout and Jem guardedly walked home in the darkness and Robert E. Lee Ewell got what was coming to him. And the unlikely hero stepped forward and retreated into darkness.

When I asked Ilyana about what she thought of Mockingbird, she said nothing. Two days later she asked me how to spell the word racist. A couple of days later she handed me a drawing of five stick people with picket signs, each one saying something about the wrongs of racism.

When I asked Havana how she felt about the book, she was direct. She was sad. Sad about Tom, but sad more than anything that Scout was gone. That the story was over. That there were no more chapters to be read. Scout is still with her, mixed in with all the other stories of our lives. With the fiction and the facts. With the imagined and with the unimaginable.

A Day of Tears and Joy

A small emotional moment can sometimes capture all the important stuff, where grey facts and figures can sometimes simply confuse.

It was the 8th of June. It was the day of our closing school's Yearbook Celebration. The day our school Yearbook was handed to the students at Ily and Havana's school.

As a blue collar worker I am rarely called Mr. Rooke. But on this day I probably heard this formality fifty times or more. Some of the younger kids thanked me for the Yearbook while speeding past on their way to play, some fourth and fifth graders stopped and waited to get my attention and then thanked me.

The journey to that day started six months earlier with the decision by the Oakland school board to close our school, along with three other schools with African American student majorities. Our school's PTA was launched after this decree with the hope that, as parents, we could collectively help our children through the emotional turbulence of the final months of our school.

I felt a yearbook would be something concrete for our school community to organize around, something through which we could express our defiance at the closure and our joy for both our school and our school community.

Maxwell Park had served as our neighborhood school since 1924. In the 60s, with Oakland's booming economy, the neighborhood and the school became racially integrated. But as the 70s set in, America's deep-riven racism unfolded and the white population completely abandoned the school. And this, in the final analysis, is why the school was eventually closed. In August the school building will reopen housing a bilingual-emersion school, transforming the African American student population of the school from 70% to 10%. Essentially our school got gentrified. As parents, we saw this coming, but in the end there was little we could do to stop this process unfolding.

So I pledged about four months of my life to producing the yearbook. A yearbook that would potentially help our students understand that their displacement was not their fault, that our school was a good school and that it was a mistake to tear up our schools' history and roots. A book they would treasure for the future.

On the day of our Yearbook celebration, the children were totally hyped up. In previous months they had walked in our Walkathon to raise money for it, they had each had their class pictures taken, five student's graphics were used for the yearbook's cover (below), three fifth graders' essays on what the school meant to them had been picked to open the yearbook,  and dozens more students contributed to the contents of the Yearbook.

In the Yearbook we'd honored our veteran teachers and staff, all African American women. One of whom was awarded elementary school Teacher of the Year in Oakland for this year. The 3rd graders who won our city's Oratorical (spoken word) contest were celebrated. Letters to Jackie Robinson shone a light on how our children view racism and second graders wrote about their Oakland, about hearing fast cars and gunshots and police sirens along with going to the movies and wanting more toys.

But one moment still resonates with me from that Yearbook celebration in June. 

Ms. Leslie, a twenty-something mom of two, and I were on the playground. I was looking for a couple of girls that would perform a hand-clapping song that was in the Yearbook and another child to read something else out of the Yearbook at the assembly. Leslie suggested a couple of fifth graders to perform and pointed out a small African American boy to read at the celebration.  

The kids were all excited to be a part of the assembly. I also noticed the older girls tease the boy that he was too young, saying to me, "he's a first grader! Really, he's a first grader!" Despite his height, it turns out he was a fourth grader and did a brilliant job at the ceremony. But the moment that moved me came later.

After the slideshow of our Yearbook, our veteran teachers took the mic to speak. One was Ms. Pitts who taught at Maxwell Park for 17 years. She was immensely popular with our students. As she spoke, her tears wove through her speech. The bubbly, excitedness of our elementary students slowly hushed until the entire hall was utterly silent and captivated. Ms. Pitts spoke of her family and how they'd joked to her that Maxwell Park School was her actual first family. Even the Kindergartners who'd been sitting on the floor for forty minutes had stopped fidgeting.

And then I watched at my side, the small boy who had read from the Yearbook had tears streaming down his cheeks as he quietly cried. 

And in the row ahead of him were the two girls that had teased him on the playground. I noticed as one of the girls turned and saw him crying. She then turned a second time, reached out her hand to his, held his hand and looked into his eyes and asked him if he was going to be okay. He thanked her and gestured that he was fine.

It was a small moment. But the most important moment for me that day. It summed up all the heartache and all the love. It reminded me that the politics of today, of money and brute force, will be rejected by the next generation. It signaled the wonderful hope for the future that is embedded in our children.

I am so glad Ilyana and Havana got the chance to go to Maxwell Park Elementary School and that I got the chance to get to know such wonderful parents, teachers and children.

Eventually we will win the future our children deserve.

The Girl Who Read Too Much - Chapter One

Chapter One: The Coffee Shop Incident

Hazel lived in two worlds.

Every morning she pushed back her bed clothes and stepped into her flat, black and white world. In this world, each chapter began and ended predictably. Each page turned painfully slowly.

But Hazel had long ago fallen upon an opening in that wall of boredom. A door which led everywhere and anywhere she wanted.
She remembered, the days before she could even read that books had put a hook in her. At three, she thought nothing could surpass an illustrated book. And then she deciphered the age-old grown-up code of the written word and the letters and sentences became seeds in the soil of her green imagination. Color came. Depth came. And the sun came out.

But today this was all to end.

Today was the day her parents put an end to this all.

Hazel had become used to the background nagging noise of her parents yelling at her to put her book down. To listen. To pay attention. To eat dinner.

She never understood why her parents constantly complained about repeating themselves. If they were saying something important, then surely repeating it was just as important as saying it once. (Although she knew that the vast majority of what her parents said to her was not that important. It was mostly about telling her to do things she was going to do anyway, but just not at grown-up speed.)

The day when things crashed was a Tuesday. Hazel was standing in line with her mother at the local coffee shop. This was the moment when everything came to a head when her two worlds collided. One of her worlds was about to be extinguished forever.

Now it is true, Hazel enjoyed a good book. That is not a crime. Not a crime that any adult would admit to. In fact other adults were constantly lavishing her mom and dad with praise. “Oh, Hazel is such a good reader. Oh, look at her, you are so lucky. She’s so good.” Many parents would die for such admiration. Hazel was especially praised by parents who had 8-year old boys. Boys seemed to have trouble sitting still long enough to get into a good book.

Sure, there were times when reading was not appropriate. While it is possible to read and walk, even on a sidewalk teeming with pedestrians, using your finger to keep a line, reading while crossing a road was understandably forbidden. Although if Hazel were allowed to debate this most un-debatable contest, she would argue that crossing the road did not necessarily need to interrupt a good storyline. You can keep your ears open to that bleeping thingy that make a noise when it’s time to cross and there’s really little danger. However, even Hazel understood, that this was not the strongest card to pull on her parents, and so she kept this argument for moments when she and her friends would gather to complain about their parents.

Sure, when you’re supposed to be eating, you shouldn’t read a book. We all need to eat. But reading never stopped anyone digesting. Really.

Hazel would read anything and everything. There were those rare moments in her life when no book was at hand. Then she would read non-book stuff. Her eyes would scan for letters in unusual spots. Like public restrooms. She knew all of Oakland’s different laws of sanitation by 6. By 8, she knew the sanitation laws of just about every city her parents had dragged her to. But usually when visiting a public restroom she would have a book under her coat or sweater. Why waste a moment peeing when you could be educating yourself? And yes, she’d wash her hands before and after turning a page. She’s wasn’t crazy.

And then Tuesday came. The coffee shop incident that sent everything into the current crisis she now found herself in.
Her parents described it as the straw that broke the camel’s back. An analogy which makes no sense whatsoever and another reason to be wary of the wisdom of adults. Anyway, you could say that it was that one coffee house worker who ruined everything. The hippy girl with the jingly-jangly bracelets and the braids that make her look like she’s in 3rd grade.

Hazel’s mom was ordering her usual triple shot, no foam, no caffeine, no something or other and she turned to Hazel and apparently asked her (in her indoor voice) several times what pastry she wanted, before giving up and yelling,
“Stop reading NOW!” It must’ve been loud because everything else went quiet, like during school lunch when someone drops a plate. Hazel looked up from her book and thought, wow, this doesn’t looked good for mum.
1. She yelled in public. 2. Hazel simply looked sweet and innocent, reading her book. And 3. Apparently other folks misheard her mom.
So the hippy dippy lady, who is very nice, sternly scolded Hazel’s mom, “you can’t tell her to stop breathing, she’s a child!”

That didn’t make much sense either, but at least a grown up was taking Hazel’s side, for the first time in 8 years.

Hazel's wide grin probably made things worse as she looked up and read the loudly silent rage that made her mom's eyes almost pop out. Hazel knew the second she crossed the coffee shop threshold that she was gonna be knee-deep in very big trouble. Resisting the tug of her mom's hand wasn't gonna save her, but it was all she could think to do.

Today was about to be the worst day of Hazel's life.

The Brick and the Girl's Grandparent's 50th Anniversary

This is a speech Ily and Havana's grandparents asked me to write and give at their recent 50th Wedding Anniversary.

....for posterity

My name is Rob, I am married to Mary and Richard’s fourth creation, Karen.

I guess I’ve been in an in-law/outlaw in the family for about 13 years.

Mary and Richard asked me to retell the story tonight of the moment when their relationship began. I am kind of familiar with public speaking through my union activities. I’m used to adlibbing a speech, but I wrote this down as Mary and Richard wanted to be able to run this by their lawyer first.

So here goes.

Firstly, the brick. I have never brought a brick to a party before. What’s more unusual is that I’ve never been given a brick by my father-in-law to bring to a party before. But here it is. We’ll get to the brick in a minute.

Toward the end of the decade of the 1950’s, Mary and Richard were both members of the Catholic Social Club. What was the Catholic Social Club? Under the auspices of religion and with the social lubricant of wine and beer single people, Irish, Portugese, Italians over 21 found partners. It was a wholesome version of what would today be called partying.

Mary had noticed Richard. Richard had noticed Mary. But it was to be at least two years before their first date.

Richard asked Mary several times to go on a date and each time she sheepishly shrugged “No.” She felt Richard, in her words, “was a bit of a player.”

And even though he’s now 75, you can see Richard probably was once a good looking lad, but he denies he was ever a player. Just because he drove a Thunderbird, a hot blue, two-seater, that didn’t make him a player. Just because he asked a lot of girls out, we shouldn’t narrowly define him as a player. However if you were to ask him why he kept a cushion on his passenger seat, the issue becomes more cloudy. To quote Richard, “the girls would ask what the cushion was for. I’d say, look: I have bucket seats and a stick shift, the cushion is there so we can get closer.”

That’s a player, even by modern standards.

So for a couple of years they’d cross paths.

They went to the same dances. And this is how it worked in the late 1950s. Someone organized a dance, they sent a letter in the mail to the President of the Catholic Social Club, then when their next meeting came around, the President in turn announced it and then through word and mouth people would come along. It somewhat slower than organizing a Facebook event page. But it worked, albeit at a slower pace. It was a different time, a different world.

Anyway that’s just for background.

Mary’d turned him down Richard’s casual offers to go out with him until June 1961.

At that time one of Mary’s best friends was about to leave the Social Club. The only way to leave the club was death or marriage. Her friend was getting married. As a bridesmaid, Mary was at the Wedding Rehearsal dinner and had got in her car to drive home to West Mckinley. She was a couple of blocks into the drive and realized she needed to pee. Going back to the rehearsal dinner site seemed a bit embarrassing so she decided to stop at the local bowling alley.

It was the Mid State Bowl at Clinton and Webber.

As she walked in, she noticed that playboy with his friends and went over for a chat. Then she headed off to the bathroom and left.

This was an important moment for Richard in particular.

One of his bowling friends, who was not a great guy, turned to Richard and said, “wow, that Mary is a good looker, I’m gonna ask her out!”

Richard was invited to the wedding the next day and spent much of the night thinking about this scenario. In the morning he resolved to get to Mary first and so at the Wedding Reception, he walked up to Mary, stuck up a conversation and by the end of the evening he’d asked her out and she’d said, yes.

So maybe it was Mary needing a pee that brought them together or Richard trying to save Mary from a bad guy, but whatever the trigger was, their relationship has worked.

On December 8^th 1961 Richard showed up at the old farmhouse on West McKinley with a ring. He knocked on the kitchen door. Mary opened the old screen door and there he was with his arm outstretched and an open ring box in it.

About 10 years ago Mary and Richard were in their sixties. They were driving back to the old Vasconcellos farm on West McKinley, their home together, at that time, for some 40 years. The home where they’d reared six children, all of whom were now grown and had left home. They were now grandparents. As they drove home that night, they passed Clinton and Webber, the spot where their relationship as a couple had begun.

It was being torn down to make way for something, someone somewhere, thought was something better. They stopped and took in the moment. They both got out and asked one of the workers for a couple of bricks.

So this is one of those bricks.

It’s a brick from another time, another world. It’s a brick from a place which led to a million different events, including me meeting my wife, Karen and everyone being here tonight.

A Bully-free World

Ilyana has been a bit grumpy lately. Unwinding at bedtime, she mentioned that she has been pushed by a girl in 1^st grade, with whom the Kindergartners share some recess time. For younger children, it can be a fine line between an invasive, pushy child wanting to be your friend and someone deliberately tormenting another child.

Bullying can become more blatant as kids get older and then, bullying can become more subtle in adult world as individuals use their power over others to their advantage.

In Ilyana’s case, the un-named first grader's behaviour appears to be a little reckless and a little pushy and she seems a bit insecure: ingredients in bullying, but maybe not yet meeting its full definition.

On hearing of Ily’s suffering, my first inclination was to get Ily to learn to physically defend herself, and secondly to get her older sister to step in to give the bully a warning. Both ideas would not necessarily have played any positive role in outcomes, but were motivated by my sense of the importance of our children being bully-free and not victims of someone else’s aggression.

Bullying has been in the news lately. Most of the coverage seems to be on the need to identify children that are being bullied and giving them support. There seems to be less coverage on the roots of bullying, on what makes a child angry and hungry to overpower others.

Our own children’s experiences routinely return us, as parents, to our own childhoods. Last night’s conversation took me back to Dean Nettle. A kid who was the receptacle of my own violence when I was at elementary school.

I was just 9 years old. I had just started at a new school. One particular day I was full of anger. I could not focus on class and remember looking around the group table where myself and a group of six boys were sitting. I sized up everyone and decided to target another boy. I was probably the tallest in the class, Dean Nettle was the next tallest.

I systematically began kicking him under the table whenever the teacher was not looking. It didn’t feel right to me, but I wanted to do it. I didn’t really know this other child and had had no particular conflicts with him.

Later that day on the playground, I continued to taunt him, and finally began to hit him. I can remember the crowd of kids gathering around us as I beat on him and beat on him. It was horrible, but I could not stop myself.

Eventually I beat Dean Nettle unconscious. This was about the time that the recess teacher showed up. Dean got up, dazed, and we were both sent to the school nurse and then the Principal’s office. The Principal was reasonably soft on me, trying to reason that the playground was not for boxing matches. I specifically remember him telling me that I was not Cassius Clay, which dates the moment.

At school I got the reputation for knocking out another kid. The glory that this world drapes on the violent.

But it is only yesterday, after talking over Ilyana’s situation with Karen, that the worst part of this story occurred to me.

After beating up Dean Nettle, I never gave him another thought through elementary school. I never taunted him. I was done. It was out of my system. What occurred to me last night in processing this with my partner, was how that other 9-year old may have spent the rest of the year coming into school worried that I was going to turn on him. So while I never gave Dean another thought that year, I now know that he was probably terrified of a repeat, unprovoked episode.

So was I a bully?

I had many other fights before that fight, mostly on the public housing project I was brought up on. Those were the fights that were critical to surviving. It was fight or be bullied. But I never had another intimate fist fight again in my life.

So what could have stopped this? Could Dean have done anything different? Could the teachers have done anything to prevent this? The short answer is No. Could I have been prevented from unleashing this violence on Dean. Yes.

Part of the reason I remember this story so vividly, is, I think, because it happened during the very worst week of my entire life.

That week had begun with a social worker driving my brothers and I away from my sobbing mother, who had been our sole caregiver. It had become the week where we were moved into a state-run group home. It was a week where I saw my younger brother savagely beaten by older kids while the social workers’ backs were turned. It was a week of feeling betrayed by my mother, who bore no blame, and the entire adult world. All this for a 9-year old child to process.

I processed it, without a single thought. I processed it with my feet and my fists. And another 9-year old was the victim, who probably will never be able to rationalize the incident.

I’m not ready to forgive myself, or the child that I was. But I am ready to dole out blame. I blame the penalty-driven, old-school social services system. I blame poverty and its weight that it bears down on families. And above all I blame an economic system that rewards bullying, economic bullying. The enemy of bullying is solidarity and equality.

Solidarity seeks to listen and hear pain, and seeks to share resources and repair the damage that the promotion of inequality does to small children and the adults they become.

With help and support, Ilyana’s struggles will not weaken her but help her to survive this rocky world that we share.

NOW SHOWING! In Oakland, California

Maxwell Park wins the Martin Luther King Oratorical regionals!

Havana wore her medallion to bed on Friday night. Her class placed 1st of 11 schools in the regional round of Oakland's public school Martin Luther King Oratorical Festival. A competition to celebrate choral-speaking that has been held annually in Oakland for 33 years. The closest way to describe it may be as spoken word.

Ms Hurrell's Maxwell Park 3rd grade Elementary classes have won the District finals for five years in a row. And now Havana's class has made the finals after their regional win.

It is a very Oakland event. It's held at a Gospel church in deep East Oakland. It is no coincidence that her teacher, Ms Hurrell, is a veteran school teacher and African American. The majority of students in the class are also African American. The competition in a way, is a celebration of a culture that is under attack, even moreso than in the past. Oakland is going through big demographic changes flowing from gentrification and recent years of population flight to cities where fake mortgages attracted Oaklanders. Oakland in many ways is no longer an African American city.

If Havana's class does win the finals then this will be the last time Maxwell Park Elementary will do so. The school District leadership are closing 5 elementary schools, four of which are schools where the majority of students are African American. Their business plan, however it is carefully packaged, does not include the preservation of Oakland's unique culture.

Money with its heavy leaden feet crushes everything in its path, making everything grey and colorless in its wake. But in young people there is the greatest hopes of hopes.

We video-ed Havana the night before the Fest. We will video her whole class at the finals.

CLICK BELOW FOR THE YOUTUBE LINK to see it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN9U6EhPxIE&context=C357c559ADOEgsToPDskJy2tXARVip9ehhcfxsemvG

Imagination

Imaginations are limited.

Some people dream in miniscule detail. But reality in all its color and depth cannot be fully or completely imagined.

I imagined one day the girls growing up. Maybe the girls would be carpenters or electricians; in hard hats and work boots. Maybe they’d work at a beauty salon, cutting hair and enjoying the pleasure of small talk all day long.

I imagined them close as grown-up sisters, or in their language, in sistee-hood. The kind of sisters that text daily. Even as children, they’ve already chatted about getting an apartment together as a part of their post-parented life.

But more than anything I imagined for, I imagined them as people who would be thoughtful. People that would be tough enough to travel life’s big roads and sensitive enough to be open to its smallest intimacies. People who enjoyed life’s bumps: savoring the ups and surviving the downs.

I still imagine this for the girls.

But today the blurry edges of imagination are becoming more defined.

Naturally, the girls are more like other children than different to other children. They are no better than other kids and deserve no better, but they already have the uniqueness that their parents are the first to see. That uniqueness that someday their best friends will see. That uniqueness that one day they will share with the love of their lives.

In retrospect: Our big event of 2011

She pointed out of the car window every time we drove past it. Our five year-old talked Kindergarten all summer. For three years she’d walked to Maxwell Park Elementary School with her mom to drop off her older sister. Then she’d be off to pre-school. Now it was her turn to go to big school.

In August, Ilyana packed her backpack and began public school at the school that has served our neighborhood for 85 years. But she would not complete her elementary years at Maxwell Park. In September the school District announced that our school was on a list of five schools for possible closure.

District leaders came to our school and heard dozens of parents’ plea to keep our school open. Children, parents, grandparents and even one great grandparent spoke. Our school is genuinely rooted in our community. We not only have students that are siblings, we have cousins, and many students are the third and fourth generation to attend our school.

Like four of the five schools scheduled for closure, our student population majority is African American and 98% of our students are children of color. Our families are predominantly economically poor with 85% of kids eligible for free or subsidized lunch.
When District board members came to our school it felt like an exercise in political expedience. Parents were angry, tearful and focused. In contrast, the Board members appeared to be checking their watches, eager to get out of there.

In the end, for all the arguments on the table, the issue was money. And when its money verses the people, money usually wins out. Especially when its money verses the group least likely to vote: the urban poor.

Many parents joined the 6-week fight between that meeting and the final School Board decision. Other parents felt it was already a done deal and didn’t fight. They were used to being ignored and treated with disrespect by those in power.

For those that joined the fight, we marched on the School Board, packed hundreds into meetings, delivered a faux eviction notice to the steps of the District headquarters. Hundreds of children made home-made picket signs. We spoke on radio stations and on TV. We were drawn into the Occupy movement who helped us bring a thousand people to the school District under the banner of Save our Schools and another 3,000 people to rally outside Lakeview School, one of the other closing schools. We finally organized a recall petition against Board members who voted to close our five schools, collecting many hundreds of signatures.

But the Board voted. It voted on the side of the status quo. On the side of bailouts for banks and make the poor pay the tag. The five schools are to be closed at the end of the school year.

In the wake of these closures are hundreds of angry parents and disappointed children. But not simply that. Our five-school community has been drawn together. Our own school’s parent community is closer than it has ever been. Our children have been educated in their right to fight and right to organize: a lesson that will last a lifetime.

When a school like Maxwell Park Elementary is closed, a thread of history is torn off. Memories are cut across and children are emotionally scarred, some more than others. When communities are split up, anger is nourished. But all these cuts and bruises is the history of working people, and with it, our distant hope that one day we will be on top. And with today’s rising tide against inequality, that day may well come. And when working people and the poor are on top, we will treat children like people, not numbers.

Havana's Christmas Roots

wrote this for Ilyana and Havana

It was Christmas Day 1997 and I was driving a luxury Lincoln Sedan through the dense fog of the Central Valley in rural California. I neared my face to the windshield as if it would help my eyes better penetrate the wall of greyness that hid everything but the road.

Two tall palm trees. Two tall palm trees. I kept looking down to check the scribbled directions I’d been given. Seeing the pair of palm trees, I veered off the country road and onto a fenced property. The sandy dirt under my tires, bumpily I pulled up to the disheveled old farm house. Seeing my lights approach, the family had come out to greet me.

It was a trip with some uncertainty hanging over it. I had met Karen a couple of times before, but I'd decided to come to Fresno to ask her out. To ask out the woman who would some day be the mother of our children.

In many a sense, there are no beginnings to things. Just as there are no ends. But this is the closest to the beginning of Havana’s history. A child’s history is a shared history and this is where that shared history begins.

Fourteen years ago Havana was just a city in Cuba. Nothing more. Karen and I had not shared a room on a remote Greek island. We'd not been up all night at the ER. We'd not cooked or cleaned house together. We'd not held hands. We had met and we had flirted.

I knew all three of Karen’s sisters before I’d even met Karen. I was close friends with her younger sister's husband, Pierre. Pierre and I had conspired to get me invited to the Harper family gathering at Christmas in Fresno.

I’d met Karen at a couple of times at house parties hosted by her older sister, Ann Marie. On the last occasion, we’d managed to hang out long enough that I felt drawn to get to know Karen better.

I had prepped for this trip. Pierre was in on the plan, his wife Monica, perhaps less enthusiastically. I was not shy in sharing my intention to ask Karen out, and if word leaked to her directly, all the better. I hired a large black Lincoln Continental: big enough for all four Harper sisters, and Pierre and I, to go bar-hopping as one group.

While in line for drinks I shared my plans with Karen's other sister Paula, with whom I am closest today, and she said she'd let the other sisters give Karen and I some time together. Finally late in the evening in a dingy night club somewhere in Fresno's Tower District, we found ourselves alone at last. Sitting closely to speak above the music at a small table, the intimacy of the moment was just right.

I looked at Karen. She was very attractive, politically conscious, insightful, and smarter than me.

So I took the leap. Past small talk, past opines and joking and nonsense and innuendos. I asked Karen out on a date. A real date.

Well, not exactly. I shaped the question in the most general way possible, asking her instead, to let me know what my chances were of receiving a positive response if I were to ask her out. That broad approach left me room for a fairly dignified retreat. But that wasn’t necessary.

Driving back to the bay area that weekend, I cranked up the radio, opened the windows wide and watched the fog rise and fade away, stepping aside for the warmth of the late morning sun.

The three-legged feline the girls want us to adopt for Xmas

After a 2-day trial period we handed back our young kitten to its original owner for the holiday weekend. On Monday we decide if we want to keep this cat that generally pulls itself around by its front legs. It was probably in a car accident, it's one hind leg so badly shattered it was amputated. It's other back leg is only partly able.
On Christmas day one of the girls presents will include a wrapped photograph of the wee feline with the words: yes, we can.

BIrthday Pinatas 2007-2011

Occupying Havana

It’s not the same old suspects. It’s not a bunch of tired lefties. It’s the new movement. It has its own energy, its own songs, its own language. And unlike protests of the past it has captured Havana’s imagination.

Now instead of her dragging us away from the protest, it’s us dragging her away.

The large encampment at Oscar Grant Plaza below Oakland’s ornate City Hall was like some kind of earthy, disheveled Disney Land for her. We’d walk through the scores of tents, over the wooden sidewalk to the mass kitchen, the library, the tech center, the supply center, the girls were in awe. “It’s like a whole village” Havana remarked as she longingly stared at the youth busy about their days in Occupy Oakland.

Havana has undoubtedly been politicized by her school being closed. While 5-year old Ilyana who had only just begun Kindergarten to hear her school was closing and is somewhat disoriented by the process, Havana is fighting mad.

On the day after the School Board announced its final decision to ignore parents, children and teachers and close 5 Oakland schools, Karen sat the girls down at breakfast to let them know we’d lost this fight. Havana who had doodled through the previous nights Board meeting, did not miss a thing. During the evening she had even asked me for the names of Board members.

On that next morning when Karen had sat the girls down for the bad news, Havana bounced up in her chair. “Well we need to have a flier for school today! A flier with all the pictures of the School Board on it. With boos next to the ones that voted to close our schools and yays next to the others,” she paused and then emphasized, “I need the flier to give out at recess.”

Bloody hell. . . .

Bloody hell.

Karen told me this story over cell phone while I was pounding nails at work at 7am. I was initially shocked and then I felt so happy, that it felt like something big rising in my chest that I couldn’t control.

And then yesterday the girls and I put on our Maxwell Park Elementary t-shirts, while their mom worked, and we marched with Occupy to another school on the closure hit-list. About 3-5,000 people marched by five big billion-dollar banks where we announced each banks’ profits and tax evasion numbers. It made the School District’s savings from closing schools look like pocket change.

About 10 of us collected hundreds of petition signatures for the Recall of the 5 School Board members. They’d voted to close schools so that the rich can stay tax-free and our wars can be fully funded.

Towards the end of the march Havana wanted to be at the front and wee Ily was so tired I had to put her up on my shoulders.

At Lakeview Elementary where thousands amassed, I spoke on the back of the Occupy truck with 3 other good comrades: two parents from Lakeview and Mike from Santa Fe.

I spoke about how our school had been a foundation of our neighborhood for 85 years and how many kids are the 3rd generation to go to our great school. I talked of the wrong direction the country is heading in, the need to kick out all those politicians that put money before people and the need to end the dictatorship that big business holds over this country.


I concluded by talking about the emotional impact of school closures. “What do we tell our children when they walk past the schools they were evicted from and see kids in the playground from the new charter-private school there. Or they see private businesses on our school ground?

“More than 80% of Maxwell Park children are eligible for free or subsidized lunch. Our students have had hard lives and now they’re being evicted. Will this make Oakland more safe and less dangerous? This has got to end.”

After we got in the car, Havana insisted we drive downtown to see the confrontation as several thousand people marched back downtown to takeover an empty city lot. There were a hundred cops waiting for them. As we got stuck in traffic by the march, the girls got out of their car seats, opened their windows and gave “v” signs to the passing marchers.

A PG&E truck was pulled up beside us; the driver got out and took pictures of the march on his cell phone. We chatted and then he summed up the current movement, “You know, all I can say is . . . it’s about time this happened. It’s about time.”

Havana and Ily’s generation will either be a part of tearing down what's rotten in this world or building the new world. A world where equality and diversity are cherished and where the 99% become the 100%.

Soccer, Evolution and Season's End

Evolutionarily, parenting has one simple goal. Our job, as parents, is perpetuation. Or put more simply: our job is to raise parents. And the strangest part of this process that has been going on at least two million years is that when you’re doing it you don’t realize you are.

Inversely, nothing brings us back to our own childhoods like becoming a parent. Our past can stand at our window, like Banquo’s ghost, pointing fingers at our errors. And we know we’ve erred when we do those things we hated about our own childhoods. Those things we thought we’d never repeat.

I’d never planned on being a soccer dad. On passing on the obsession of soccer. But, the door was left ajar and now I am perpetuating my mild obsession. And sadly, this week ends Havana’s first season of soccer.

Tonight, instead of our last practice before our last game on Saturday, the 14 girls of the Super-Strikers team are to watch-and-learn from a televised British Premier League game at the coach’s house.

Tonight is the crossing of two paths. It’s a small cultural convergence. British soccer, my own roots and the pick up and drop off sport of children, American soccer.

I admit, I like the game. I like the shape of the ball. I like watching it move. I get almost as much satisfaction watching 22 people I’ve never met play with this ball as I do from playing with it myself. Yet my own evolution towards the sport was somewhat rocky.

Like most things forced on me at school, I rejected soccer for many years.

The notion of going out onto a freezing soggy field in the middle of winter and swapping your long pants and long sleeves for short ones made little sense to me. At my school, the soccer field grew longer the longer winter was with us. Its potholes were filled with ice, its flat spots rose glacially up into small hills and traversing the length of the field even without a ball was an endeavor.

Twenty unhappy boys, heads lowered, would march onto the pitch. The teacher would yell, blow his whistle and resume yelling. Then twenty young boys with mud plastered up and down their legs and matted in their hair, heads bowed, would leave the battle field.

This ritual did not enthuse me for the game.

And yet soccer did eventually ignite something in me.

At 16, I started full-time work and had the money to enter the world of grownups. Specifically, I could now enter through the mythical door to the cultural epicenter of British life: the local pub. A year or two later, the 20-odd pubs in my area of West London were my life’s main reference points.

We’d meet at the pub, cram into cars and make the weekly pilgrimage to Stamford Bridge, the Chelsea stadium. We donned our colors, sported our self-inked tattoos and joined the 50,000 other young men that pressed themselves into the stadium stands. We sang, we chanted, we jumped so high that the concrete stands seemed to shake. I entered the world of men, as I knew it to be.

And we occasionally went to Away matches that involved both increased cost and increased risk. I was once on a train intercepted by rival fans. Thud! A brick bounced off the plexi-glass window of the train car. We all hit the deck, wild-west style. And then, more thuds, this went on for about a minute, which I calculated at the train’s speed meant an assault by the rival fans over a distance of a quarter mile. These lads were well organized. And the Chelsea train had not yet gotten into the rival town's station!

My baptism of soccer could not contrast greater with Havana’s.

On Saturday afternoons I get my camping chair and we head out to watch Havana and the local Under 10s league. The language of the supporters is more cautious and more clean, and there are no anthems sung by parents. There is even very little mud, with games sometimes canceled on the rumor of rain. And yet for many of these girls this is the place where they will find themselves. Where they will test themselves and where they will be challenged. It’s a safe environment for young girls to experience physical conflict.

No-one would question that the winding roads that led Havana and I to soccer have been different. But then our childhoods have been remarkably different too.

What I honestly do not know is if hers is a better childhood than my own. But then, in a sense, that is for her to judge and not I.

Our Day at the Oakland General Strike

Seven weeks ago the lives of 900 Oakland children and their parents were seriously disrupted. Five Oakland elementary schools were being considered for closure. After a dozen meetings in half as many weeks, the School Board ended its period of so-called consultation. For hours upon hours, parents, children and teachers expressed their love for their schools. And up on the stage, the School Board simply sat there checking their watches.

Subsequently we have heard that many concrete plans were in place to close the schools a long time before the final vote of the Board.

It’s in this background that a thousand young people, parents and teachers marched on the School Board on the day of November 2nd, 2011, the historic Oakland General strike initiated by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Two of the 900 students that will be kicked out of their schools this year are Havana and Ilyana, our daughters. One is in 3rd grade and one a Kindergartener. We kept them home from school on the day of the strike. Their mom, the following day, handed in a note at the school office. It read “Havana and Ilyana were absent yesterday, as the closure of their school made them sick.”

At 9.30ish on the day of the strike, friends, parents and kids began arriving at our house to make picket signs for the day. About 20 of us were scattered around the front room busily using sharpies on our pink poster boards. “Kids are the 99%” was one, “Keep our schools open” was another. Being mostly younger kids there was a fair amount of animation used to get their message out. Later on BART I noticed one parent “x” out a crown on a princess, with a sly smile to the other parents as she did it.

Our ragtag group entered the quad at Laney community college where a couple of hundred students were listening to speakers and rappers. There was plenty of music to keep our kids totally in awe. It’s funny, but Occupy just makes a good fit with kids. It’s just not shaped like the boring protests of past. A parent arrived from another elementary school on the closure list, Lakeview, with news that they’d shut down their school altogether. Wow! Only 20 kids were on site out of 300 children. It was solid.

More feeder marches of dozens and sometimes hundreds entered into our rally site and in less than an hour we were heading off with a huge head of steam to the School Board. The plan for the action at the School District building was for a couple of parents to hand in an Eviction notice to the elected School Board members that’d voted to close our schools. They’d evicted 900 young children from their schools, now we were putting them on notice that their time in office is going to be over.

We sent three runners ahead of the march to let the District’s smooth-talking spokesperson know we were coming and for him to come down and meet us. A secretary sent the three young people up to his office, but they lost their way in the hallways. The sight of one of our people in a hoodie wandering the offices of the District set off a small panic, “we’re being occupied!” Our people explained to their people, that, well, that wasn’t totally true. The District’s PR guy headed downstairs.

A thousand people were coming up the street, with banners, signs and an incredible loud energy. The press mounted the steps to get their best shots in. And we took a bullhorn and read out our eviction notice: for evicting our 900 children, for doing this dirty work for the 1%, you are hereby given notice: we will evict you from office. Our children’s future’s will not be cut!

A harried and anxious School Official stood in the background as the Eviction Notice was read out. We handed him the symbolic Notice. He looked somewhat shocked, but not nearly as pained as our parents have felt over the past seven weeks.

I looked over the crowd of mostly high school students, union workers and people that just care. Every color of humanity was there. And then in a creative curve I personally hadn’t anticipated, one kid yelled, “You’ve been served! You’ve been served!” And within seconds everyone was chanting to the School Board, “You’ve been served! You’ve been served!” And I looked out from the steps of the School Board at the crowd and thought, this is my Oakland. This is why I love this city.

And our huge convulsive energy of a thousand people, with more than a thousand reasons to be there, headed out down the street to join the epicenter of Occupy Oakland at Oscar Grant Plaza. In our wake we left behind a stunned Education official and a couple of sweating School Board cops and a group of journalists busily scribbling down what they’d just witnessed.

They had just witnessed the future. And I thought of Havana and Ilyana and how upset they are about Maxwell Park school being closed. And on this day I saw their excitement and shared their feeling of power. And more than ever before I understood that we will have a future because the youth of today will turn this world upside down.

Two new front teeth: thru 50 daily photos

Click above to see video

Birthday Witches for our new 8 year-old

Havana found her self in a photo in the San Francisco Chronicle this week. With family and a large throng of Oaklanders, she’d protested the possible closure of the girls’ elementary school at the School Board. Her mom was even on TV.

This week also, the Super Srikers lost 2-0 against the Angry Birds in U10 girls’ soccer. Additionally we went to our first drive-in movie, Friday night. And this is how Havana crammed her last days as a 7-year old.

On Sunday we hosted our smallest ever birthday party.

This was Havana’s response to her parents 80+ peopled birthday parties, with huge homemade piñatas and puppet shows and games and microphones and magic. We had more friends and kids backstage working the puppet show at the last party we hosted than attended Sunday’s party. This was Havana’s choice: an intimate party of close friends.

Her parents were not happy with hosting a small party. Every call we got over the weekend we had to explain, “Oh yeah Havana decided on a small party this year.” We kept the curtains closed and the 9 kids inside or in the backyard. Our previous policy was far simpler.

We always have a huge home-made piñata precipiced off the front of the house: we’ve had pigs, fish, rats, hedgehogs, even the Children Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Our largest was a 6-foot long pink pig that almost pulled up the house off its foundations. There's no hiding this kind of party, hence all kids in the neighborhood were welcomed.

Our home-made puppet shows started a couple of years ago and added a new dimension to the parties. We also added a PA system more recently because of the size of crowds. Things were bigger, more complex, crazier and the kids loved it.

But Havana said, No. She wanted a quiet day of playing board games. Mmmmm. “Well, that’s not exactly what kids expect at a party. Do you want a cake?” “Yes.” “Do you want games?” “Yes.” “A puppet show?” “Yes,” Havana replied emphatically. Havana had voiced the key character in the last puppet show and was extremely excited before, during and after the performance.

“It’s a lot of work to put together a puppet show, girl, and we can’t pull in all our friends if they’re not invited to the party.”

This whole thing’s been coming a while. Last year Havana rebelled by demanding a store-bought piñata. So we compromised with one store-bought Mexican giraffe and one home-made large grey rat. At the last moment Havana decided she’d grown too attached to her giraffe and so it won a stay of execution. And today, the large yellow paper-tattered giraffe is up in the attic and the head of the rat, which miraculously survived the beating its body took, has been mounted on a piece of pinewood and is up in our front room.

For about 3 years the girls’ cakes have been made by our roomie Laura whose skills have increasingly excelled. Ilyana’s last party, a hedgehog-themed event had both little spikey hedgehog cupcakes and a massive spiked one.

For her 8th birthday Havana wanted a witch-based party. Despite the intimacy of the numbers, our other roomie Arya organized a guess-the-witch treasure hunt in and around the pink playhouse. We had pass the black cat and pass the witches hat. We had a spell-driven game of animal charades, and everyone made and decorated a witch’s hat for themselves. Our buddy, the mad scientist, Pierre, brought dry ice for the cauldron, and we ate severed finger hot dogs.

At the end of the Witch party, Karen and I sat, exhausted on the sofa, reflecting. Havana was happy. Ily too. And the kids had a good time. And our clean-up was a pushover.

We showered the girls. Havana painted her entire face green sometime after the sun came up. As the day wore on her various additional makeups merged and faded. By 6pm she looked like a zombie and maybe felt like one too.

However, our parental gem for the day was long in the past. This was Havana jumping into bed with us 12 hours earlier, snuggling inbetween the two of us, and loudly whispering, "I just wanted to let you guys know that I appreciate every little thing you've done for me since I was a baby."

Through thick and thin, our daughters could not have made us any happier.











. . . . . . . The giraffe doubled as a reindeer that Christmas.

Stepping Out from behind the shadow

Each new life transition that Havana steps up to, she does so no longer simply for herself but for her younger sister too.

Her little sister follows her like a happy shadow.

They walk together through life, hand in hand, and generally only fight when Havana wants to go off and do her own thing.

Havana will be 8 on Sunday. She can spell, she can read and she can articulate herself very well. Her sister until recently was the listener, the observer and the absorber.

Then last month came Kindergarten. It was as if Ily had been impatiently lingering in the wings. As if she was waiting for her new definition of ‘big girl’ to be bestowed on her from without.

She now goes to Maxwell Park Elementary with her 3rd-Grade big sis. After starting at her new school, Ilyana changed. Overnight, it seemed, she began to have something important to say at the dinner table. Every night. The half-joking grunting that is taylor-made to both annoy and draw-in her parents, gave way to more fullness and specificity in her sentences. It was as if the shoes of her life began to feel that they fit better.

Chasing, picking up and generally irritating our cats has fallen down the list of at-home pleasures for Ilyana. It’s still on the list of course. So now the cats are happier too.

As Havana reads stories to Ilyana, Ily can now poke a finger of recognition at a word now; here and there. She still yearns to copy, but she wants to do things her way too.

In a way, the 3 of us: Karen, Havana and I, have also been waiting for Ily to join us. And now she is no longer the family's ever-present but often silent partner. We’re now 4, in a way that we were not before. And it’s not as if we all wanted Ily to change. We loved her as she was.

Consistent with encouraging Ily’s small explosion of development, I think we’re all unconsciously avoiding the “c” word. Ily is still as cute as a button, but we don’t want her to stay cute, we want her to be her own cute, her bigger, smarter, confident cute. Barring an immaculate conception, Ily will always be the youngest in our family. That place is hers. But now she’s let us all know that she may have a small frame, but she wants to be seen shoulder to shoulder.

She is now a big girl. And we’re all happier for it.

She has taken her first steps out of Havana’s shadow. She has seen that life can exists outside of it. She also knows that Havana will always be there for her, in hard times and through joy. And when she wants to nestle under her sister’s arm that place will always be reserved for her.

Children in Film: Kes

Cornering the urine-stinking stairwell at full pace, we would race out of our building and across the road, over a fence and were out into the fields and trees that edged the public housing block where I grew up. It was on this abandoned land that we built forts of branches and tall grass and where teens and pre-teens together learnt about collective play, nettles that sting, bullying big kids and all things not under the nose of an adult. We routinely played until it was too dark to run. Our pocket of wilderness was bordered by our housing estate, the canal and a used tire stock yard, yet it was always big enough to loose yourself in.

Havana, here in Oakland today, cannot walk to any countryside, nor does she routinely take off with other kids to play hundreds of yards from her home.

In Ken Loach's 1969 film, Kes, the main character lives in a mining town, a knot of urban poverty deep in the South Yorkshire countryside. Kes tells Billy Casper's story. Billy is fourteen and will be done with school in a few short weeks. His older brother, with whom he shares a small bed, is already working in the local coal pit, a fate Billy is resisting. The tenderness of Billy’s story is his relationship with the young Kestrel he has taken from its nest and trained by a falconry book he stole from a local town store.

Yesterday Havana and I watched Kes. All my conscious life I have been watching the authentic story telling of working class life, in its full depth and humor, as told by director and socialist, Ken Loach. While the British Film Institute rates Kes as the 7^th best movie of the twentieth century, it was only this year that Kes has become available in the US on DVD. In many ways I have been waiting to see this film for 20 years.

The joy of Kes, for me, was not just in the insights of the the rich content of the film but moreso in sharing the movie with Havana.

Havana took in the emotional roller coaster of this boy's life: his abusive older brother, his torn clothes that set him apart from the other working class kids, the brutality of the teachers and the great love and respect he had for his Kestrel. Kes is rich in truth; in the complicatedness of truth.

Education, in Kes, as it has always been for the poor, consists of a series of cold facts to be swallowed whole and inseparable from the series of punishments for those unwilling or unable to consume the facts.

In one memorable scene a young boy is sent to the principal’s office with a message from his teacher. The hurried principal herds the boy into his office alongside the boys awaiting a caning, mistaking the kid's pleas with the empty excuses that preempt harsh punishments. At one point in the nerve wrecking two minutes of lecturing before their punishment, the boys almost break out into hysterical collective giggling at one of the more bizarre aspects of the principal’s rant, before offering out both hands to be whipped. Later, when Billy has a quiet moment with a fairly decent teacher, the teacher laughs at the story of the messenger boy being mistakenly caned and Billy explains, “but the boy was really crying.” Again Billy brings us back to reality: the world from the view of the small, the abused, those not in power.

Havana loved the scenes where Billy is in an open field alone with Kes, his bird. Billy's glove would be held high and the Kestrel sweeping to and fro would dance around the air above him. But as the story unfolds, Billy's tenuous joy is endangered. Havana asked me why the one decent teacher in the movie, who had described Billy's falconry as one of the most wonderful things he'd ever seen, had not been there to help out Billy. That's how life often is, I replied.

Kes mirrors the beautiful tenderness and sensitivity of children and their ability to survive the harsh realities of poverty and the hostility of the adult world.

Oakland from the eyes of 7-year olds

Havana's classmates wrote poems describing their view of Oakland while Havana was away this month. Below are four that were among a number that were posted on the wall outside Havana's Classroom.

My own favorite line is by Lucy, "Oakland is lovely, filthy, thick, violent and wonderful." These kids are just fantastic.

Sweet Oakland by Juan

Oakland is red Walgreen signs;

The taste of hotdogs with ketchup;

Dogs howling, neighbors fighting and people screaming;

Oakland is me and my family going to the movies;

Oakland is my house;

Oakland is killing, stealing and robbing

Oakland is sweet and Oakland is king

All About the World by Patricia

Oakland is purple houses and green trees;

The taste of salad and fruit salad;

Gun shots, wolves howling and chickens;

Oakland is going to the movie theatres with my family;

Oakland is hometown buffet;

Oakland is murdering, dying, stealing;

Oakland is peaceful, lovely, Bright, Beautiful and nice.

Oakland is Dancing by Eduardo

Oakland is orange houses;

The taste of hotdogs with ketchup and mustard;

Dogs howling, gunshots and neighbors fighting;

Oakland is the train museum with my whole family;

Oakland is going to the bowling alley with my godmother;

Oakland is dying, dancing, killing

Oakland is lovely.

What’s your Favorite by Lucy

Oakland is white and green, blue sky day and dark purple ducks

The taste of vanilla and ice cream;

Oakland is birds singing at night, fire crackers, dogs howling,

People jogging, neighbors fighting;

Oakland is going to the movies at bay fair;

Oakland is brookdale park;

Oakland is boxing, dreaming, praying

Oakland is lovely, filthy, thick, violent and wonderful

Wild Horses and the Mother I did not know

(right) A picture I was given this week of my mother aged 17

Next week my mother would be 81. This past week my brothers and I traveled to west Wales at the headlands above Swan Lake Bay to a lone, white-washed farmhouse where my mother was born. On those green cliff tops we scattered her ashes.

My cousin, who also grew up on that windswept farm, joined us. She shared a story with us from my mother's childhood that has forever changed how I think of my mother.

My mum had four boys. She was forced to give up her first child from her first marriage when she married my father, with whom she had three more children. Both of my mum's marriages ended in divorce. She would tell us that she never regretted not having a lasting romantic love in her life. “I have you boys” she would always say.

I have always defined my mother by her role in raising us. She struggled to protect us from the outside world and to prepare us to function in it. But she had more hurdles than most. With no car, 3 part-time jobs and 3 children to raise, life was complicated. She kept a roof over our heads although we were sometimes hungry. I specifically remember as a child, complaining when all we had to eat was bread, not understanding how painful that must have been for her to hear. This is the mother I knew, that I have perhaps retrospectively idolized.

Twice my mother fled the farm where she was born. Both times she was pregnant and left to marry. Had she stayed, her brothers would have inherited the farm and she would have been forced to be their servant. Urban poverty was the price of freedom for my mother.

As I stood there on that Pembrokeshire hilltop overlooking the sea, absorbing the roar of waves and being pummeled by the ocean wind I could feel the power of nature that my mother grew up with. We were to scatter mum’s ashes at a place where mum would’ve been able to see both the farm where she was lovingly raised and the ocean where she learnt to swim.

It was here that my cousin told me the thing I’d never known of my mother. As a teenager, my mum would come home from school, do her chores and rush off to ride her horse across the cliff tops. More than that, she became known throughout the area as a “girl” who understood horses. People from all over the area would bring their horses to Eastmoor farm.

They would hand the reigns of a young horse that could not be trained to my mum. They would probably go into the farmhouse and have a mug of tea with my grandparents. My mum, June, would take the wild horse across the fields and over the bumpy headlands along the coast. A couple of hours later she would return to everyone waiting, and as my cousin had heard it, she would dismount the horse she’d broken-in and simply say, “There. It’s all done.”

This is a story of my mother that I never imagined, but one consistent with the mother I knew: someone who had a deep bond with nature, someone who was strong and powerful, and someone who could not simply follow the rules set down for her. I now think of the choices she faced, and the life and the skills that she was forced to leave behind her. And when I think of mum now I no longer remember her the same way. I think of the place where we scattered her ashes and her youthfully galloping over those wind-ridden headlands.

The Day the Cat Stood Still, as told to Havana and Ilyana

Having tucked them in and kissed them goodnight, I turned out the light in the girl’s room.
Sitting atop a chair in the kitchen was Milou, our family’s long-haired black cat.

It really was no surprise to me when he asked for a ride to our local coffee shop. He was familiar with all penguins, monkeys, the lion and the other animals that spent their whole days at the café: socializing and on the odd occasion ordering some food or drinks. And Milou was also familiar with the half-mile hike that entailed getting there. Sure, he has two more legs than us, but they are somewhat shorter.

So we agreed to head out together in my truck. As I put the key in the door, we exchanged glances over who was going to drive. This evening Milou deferred: so I took the wheel. With the two of us buckled in, we headed down Walnut Street, making small talk, like one does.

Craning his neck to see out the window, Milou reminded me that a stop sign meant you’re supposed to come to a full stop. He mentioned it without eye contact, casually but with authority. After another small criticism of my driving, I asked if he knew anyone else who doesn’t have a driving license that like to teach Drivers’ Ed.

Milou apologized. I asked him why he was so nervous. He’d not left the house in months. Perhaps he’d gotten agoraphobia. “Nope” he responded.

Lately he’d been fighting a lot with Kitten, our other cat, but Milou denied that this was making him anxious. “Well, what is it?” I persisted. “You’ll see” he said.

As we stepped into the café, it was as if all the animals had been waiting for Milou. Paws went up, and a long receiving line of high fives greeted Milou. “Hey!” Milou said to a squirrel with his wee paw up as high as he could reach. It wasn’t like Milou knew half the critters he was greeting, but this was him, all-walking-around-on-his-hind-legs, acting bold. A distant relative of the same day-time cat who grumbles every time he’s picked up and carried around by the four-year old.

We settled down at a table with our drinks: coffee and a large cup of milk. As Milou drank his coffee, he explained how it helped keep the shine on his coat. I've kept a fairly long list of things I do not like about Milou, and his vanity was near the top. But then, he was family. Unlike my children, Milou was not likely to grow, emotionally. We are into the 14th year of our relationship and he is just as completely dependent on me now as the first day I picked up that small ball of fur that he once was.

“So what’s going on mate?” I enquired. He slid his coffee mug aside and edged up to me. “You see that grey short-hair in the corner?” I turned and saw a cat sitting in the corner by themself. “That’s my date!” I looked at Milou and my scrunched-up face asked, “Whaaat?”

“Hold on; I gave you a ride here for you to go on a date?” was my first question, followed quickly by, “Hey you don’t think I’m sticking around to give you a ride home, do you?” Which was followed by, “why aren’t you going over to say hi to her?”

Milou’s chest deflated, “ I’m nervous dude, this is my first date in years!” He stood there frozen. He stood up on the chair, his front paws perched against the table, like a small furry statue. Perhaps somewhere in the world there is such a statue.

Then he broke out of his empty stare. “Well, and to answer your other question” he continued, “for your information, cat dates are not long affairs.” Mmmm. I may have stepped over the boundary of polite conversation when I asked if a cat date is the same as two cats making a kitten. I can still see the look of disgust and contempt on that whiskered face. Hoping to bridge the awkward-gap I’d just dug, I asked where Milou’d met her.

Milou reached into his fur and pulled out some kind of smart phone. “What is that?” I asked. Milou looked down, “Oh, it’s a cell phone”
“No, no, no. I mean, you have a pocket in there” I pointed. “It’s a coat, it comes with pockets” Milou replied, then tapped his touch screen with a single extended claw.

He leaned over to me, “Check this out: Kittencupid.com. It’s a pretty popular site. It shows everything you’d want in a partner, but of course with cats the likes and dislikes, they’re pretty much identical on everyone’s profile. Location is the main thing I look at. It’s true, the site is probably a front run by Purina. You can chat online and if you mention dinner or lunch, a pop-up comes up advertising Purina’s new line of canned food. Well, if you can get past the corporate stuff, sometimes you can meet someone special.”

“Oh and on your other question,” Milou stated, “Cat dates are pretty much taking a whiff of the other party’s behind. She sniffs you, you sniff her and if it’s all roses, so to speak, then we’re on for a second date.”

For a minute, I got cynical and showed my age, “Why do you have to go online, on a computer to find a date? What’s wrong with the neighborhood cats?”

“Well, that’s okay for you guys, but with cats its different. Dating in your neighborhood, well, there’s a lot of baggage with that. Everybody’s about territory. You lift a leg, you mark and you don’t want anyone to invade that space. Online dating removes those issues.”

We sat there quietly mired in the pleasant absurdity of it all. I was trying to get my head around the whole idea of online dating, Milou was trying to get his furry head around his current online date.

Eventually he bit the bullet. And like he’d promised, the whole thing was over in a flash.

“Well, how did it go?” I asked, as we dumped our cups in the trash, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. “We’re on!” he said as he rubbed his front paws together with a typically cat-like subdued glee.

As we crossed the threshold into our family home, Milou plopped back down onto all fours and went into the girls’ room and got up on their bed and curled up.

And tomorrow, I will tell the girls this story, and one daughter will be wide-eyed with mouth gaping and the other will act like I’m making this story up. Well surely, it’s too absurd to be untrue.