Is This Real Life?

In July, I was a bachelor.

My wife was able to get a head start on our vacation and took the boys to visit friends and family over three weeks before I had time off work. 

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Repost: Thoughts on Race From a Pale Papa

Every other week my blog will feature a reposted work. I had been a contributor on two different sites that have since closed or no longer include blogs. I will be reposting pieces that had originally been featured on one of these two sites.  

This was originally posted June 28, 2011


I’ve been thinking about how people interact with each other and how we can understand where others are coming from and what their circumstances are specifically in the area of race.  I have read White Like Me by Tim Wise and I have had several conversations with people of different races than me.  I recently stated reading Why Are All theBlack Kids Sitting Together In the Cafeteria? by Beverly Tatum. Lately I have read about this issue in articles and opinion pieces in adoption magazines. 

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Freedom, Then and Now

Then

I don’t remember how old I was when I first started asking. But I do remember, with fondness the many times that I was able to “stay in the car by myself” when my parents went into the store.

I may have been tired or grumpy. But probably, most frequently, I wanted to read a book. My parents would go into the store and I had my own private time to immerse myself in whatever story I was reading at the time.  The sun in Ventura County, CA would warm the car to a comfortable, nap-inducing climate (nowhere near enough to be dangerous, of course).

I honestly don’t remember how many times this happened. It happened more than twice, for sure, but memories blur. I just remember it as a period of time in my life, not as individual occurrences. My parents probably remember the details better than I do; I remember things better from my adult years than I do from my youth. Parents also tend to remember milestones in the lives of their children fairly well. 

I assume these instances, or this period of time in my life, held the same meaning for my parents as it did for me, albeit from a different perspective:

It meant that I was growing up.

I had volition of my own.

I could make important choices.

I could separate myself from my parents in small but meaningful ways.

It meant that I had freedom of my own.

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