Catching Up

I have so many things to catch up on for this blog. It's been a wild and busy ride the last two months! Money reorganizing, personal changes, family matters, of course, the election and the economy have all pulled my attention elsewhere.

Here is a little thing I wrote recently and will include. Soon, I will have some open time to really organize a lot of my more disjointed but "important" thoughts and update my blog again. For now, I had a contemplation about "Prejudice" so here goes.

Prejudice

The first time I felt really discriminated against put a wound deep in my heart. My longing to love and longing to be loved was scarred. It remains so to this day with the exception that each twinge I feel reminds me and encourages me (in a slightly punishing way) of my own prejudices and lack of attention to rooting them out.

It's like walking the walk while talking the talk. I never felt discriminated against as a kid or even as a teenager. Oh, I felt "left out" or "unfairly treated" that sort of thing. But I was a long legged shapely, nice girl from the Midwest, blond and waspy.

My family wasn't rich, but we weren't poor and we could hold our heads up just fine thank you. I know I did. I was always out there. Always showing off. I used to be called a show off and I was called it more than once. So I experienced some conditioning that kept me from feeling fully "ok", but I still didn't feel discriminated against.

Then the hippies came into our world. They were like the gypsies arriving from afar. It must have been like in the middle ages, they began to show up in groups, with colorful dress and different looking hair and jewelry and all sorts of wares to sell.

I was living in California by then. A 25 year old mother of three, married to a producing artist/teacher and I longed to be a hippie. I reasoned that I must think "hippie" first then act like a hippie out of that. It was a choice I took on that in my place in society was somewhat dangerous. No one I knew at the time was doing it. So I spent a long time on the thinking like, part.

I remember it was a major decision when I started wearing "love beads". They were NOT just adornment, but a statement that represented one who values love. It was very cult like when I look back on it now.

I kept my distance from the wild and free hippies by associating with "responsible" hippies, the ones with families and houses and who attended political rallies and had strong opinions about how the world should be. The responsible hippies lived the life, but remained on the right side of the law with the exception of smoking pot and protesting.

It was a day I'd chosen to look for an apartment/house for rent that I received the blatant prejudice. It was time for us to move. My husband and I both knew we could no longer keep out three children in two rooms with mattresses on the floor. They needed more stability and they needed a neighborhood. We were living in our pottery studio, selling ceramics and Mexican goods while my husband taught school during the day and created at night. Not much family time.

So, I peddled a way everyday after my two oldest had gone off the kindergarten and 2nd grade . I put the baby in a special padded basket on the front of my old bike and we'd travel up and down the streets of Huntington Beach looking for For Rent signs.

On this particular day, I set off and on one block saw a man trimming hedges in front of an obviously empty home that was being painted on the inside. Sure enough a For Rent sign was in the front window.

"Hello" I greeted him. "Will this house be for rent soon?"

He didn't stop trimming. I asked again. He looked at me, looked at my beads, looked at my hair in braids and colorful clothes and went right back to his work.

I felt like I'd been slapped and the anger rose up in me. Still, I was young and compliant and had never had to fight for much of anything. "Excuse me!" I asserted. "My husband is teaching school and we are planning to move here, will this be for rent?"

I knew I'd used the referent power on my husband's position to get to him. Of course, I didn't know what referent power was, I only knew he was not going to talk to me because he didn't seem to think I was human. It was indeed the first time I felt treated like a sub-human being and I was aware enough to make note of it. I thought to myself. "This is what colored people feel."

You see, Black is beautiful hadn't even reached my consciousness at that time and the word negroes was a little used term in my family. Colored people was common. We never, never used the "N" word and for that I've been thankful. But I knew it and I'd heard it and I was gentle enough in my soul to know it was not something I would say. I knew I'd been treated as someone not worthy. It hurt so deeply, I've never forgotten it.

So, I left and I didn't rent that particular house. We did find a sweet little two bedroom home that served us well for a couple of years until we finally bought one of our own back near where my husband taught. That's another story as is how I continued to turn into a "responsible and sometimes irresponsible hippie".

Sandy