Back when I took History of the Old South, somebody brought up the topic of whether Florida is really part of “The South.”
I never knew this was a topic for debate until that moment. I grew up in the Florida, and, yes, ma’am, why I do consider myself a Southerner.
I mean, sort of. Minus the legacy of racial tension. Hey, my people were chilling out and drinking lassis when all that nonsense was going down.
Anyway, this past weekend, we went to Savannah for my birthday and as I munched on some of the best fried green tomatoes a human being has ever eaten, I started thinking about that question, “Is Florida really the South?”
I suppose you could define it in terms of the Civil War. Confederate state? Check.
Or whether people have an accent. Most people who grew up here say “Y’all,” “Yes, Ma’am” and “No, sir,” and have a tendency to drop the last letters of their words, as in “goin’ ” or “surfin’.” Check.
South of the Mason-Dixon line… check.
Racism or racial tension. Ummm. I’m going to go with “check” on that one, too. Trust me.
Hospitality? Hello, we have Disney. So, check.
Although, I think there’s a viable argument to be had in the idea that Disney has actually made Central Florida decidedly less southern with the passing of time.
Sweet tea. Check.
Don’t get me wrong, if there was a big “Who’s the most Southern?” contest between, say, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, Florida would definitely go running from the stage faster than Kanye on a day he forgot to take his meds, but I stand by the fact that I am a southerner.
Sort of. Sigh.
Is Florida southern? How do you define “The South”, anyway? And what the hell is rule for capitalizing the word south?
Obviously, this news was shocking and bizarre. And, of course, sad.
It was particularly sad for me to read about it because something similar, if not even more horrific, had happened the day before.
There’s a lot of ways a blog post about this incident could pan out. We could discuss gun control, mental health, a distressed economy or some permutation of them.
But, really, the only thing that keeps playing in my head has to do with how the people who walked into the Gateway Center’s eighth floor had no clue of what an incredibly bad Friday they were about to have.
It’s a pretty trite perspective, I know, but that’s all I can seem to think about.
Being human is so … hard, isn’t it?
Animals and plants have it easy. Nourishment, shelter and reproduction. There are no complicated nuances. Any complications generally arise as the result of our complications bleeding over into their efficient existence.
But us humans? We’re complicated creatures.
I keep wondering about the two people who have been reported dead.
Who were they?
And, myGod, why them?
Why not you? Or me?
I don’t mean that it should have been me or you, I mean, it could have been me or you. Easily.
We lock our doors, look both ways before we cross the street, take our vitamins, eat right… and we think that this is going to make a huge difference. The truth is that it makes only a little difference.
I’m wondering about those two people… reports are preliminary right now, so we don’t know anything about them.
I’ve got these sappy movie scenes playing out in my head.
Like, a pretty, middle aged woman slams the door shut and makes sure she mutters, “Jerk” in earshot before she gets in her car, pointedly refusing to say good bye to her husband after the argument they just had about who was going to take their son to soccer practice… or maybe she got in the car, put the keys in the ignition, sighed deeply and then went back in the house and yelled, “Hey, I’m mad, but I love you, OK?”
Some single twenty something guy stumbles into the kitchen, makes some coffee and then trudges out of the door feeling a slightly numbed despair as he realizes he hates his crap job… or did he jump out of bed and greet the morning with joy and purpose, knowing that whatever he was going to do today was really going to mean something to him?
And, let me get really morbid and ask, what words spin in one’s head as they lay on the floor bleeding to death because of someone else’s complete madness?
“This can’t be happening… is this really happening… I’m not done here…Oh, God, is this really happ…. “
The End?
I would imagine that it would play out that way. I don’t think in a situation like that most people are evaluating whether they’ve lived a good and meaningful life. I would imagine you cling to the hope that this is not it.
There has to be more. Please let there be more.
I don’t know about you, but I’m done living for that last moment as of right now.
It gets bantered about quite a bit, this idea of “When I die, I want to know that my life meant something.” I figure we spend the majority of our time and energy trying not to die, so I imagine in that moment, I’m going to be too scared to make sense of anything.
The fact is that every single moment in our lives means something. Every single second, actually, and we consciously choose what each of those seconds mean.
Or whether they don’t mean anything at all.
In the end, we are not who we are in the last moment of our lives.
We are who we are right now.
It’s not “When I die, I want my life to have meant something.”
It’s, “As I live, I’m making this moment mean something.”
The notion exists that, in some way, every person who leaves their nation to settle in the United States is running away from something bad and towards something good.
Frankly, nothing could be further from the truth for a great deal of the immigrants that I know. The truth is that in this nation there are many foreign born individuals who were neither tired nor hungry when they arrived on our shores.
The leaving of one’s homeland is a concept that is more than familiar to me. I’ve often referred to my family as jet setter bedouins of the modern era. In my head, of course.
Nearly sixty years ago, both of my grandfathers left their ancestral homes in India and crossed a man made border and became Pakistanis. Twenty years after that, their children left Pakistan and magically became Americans.
I am a woman who is quite aware of the artificial aspects of the construct we call “nationality.”.
Still, nearly two weeks ago when we received a letter from INS instructing my husband to report to his oath ceremony I reacted with a considerable amount of glee. “Daddy is going to be an American,” I cried to our daughter, “Isn’t that wonderful? Congratulations Daddy, isn’t this exciting?!”
My husband smiled an odd smile, not the kind of smile that I expected. It was not the usual smile, the one that can brighten any room or get us free tickets to Disney while we’re standing at the gates with our wallet out (yes, that happened, twice).
It was… a sad smile.
The kind of smile that you force onto your face when you know that you are leaving something precious and meaningful behind. The kind of smile that you must put on your face, so that others are unaware of the pain that lives behind it.
You see, like so many immigrants in this country, my husband has nothing to run from.
If he lived in India, his life would be beautiful and amazing. He would fit in all the time. He wouldn’t have to bend his mind around the most simple cultural nuances that we take for granted here. He would never have to mow a lawn, do the dishes, or clean the pool. Because, back home, they have people for that.
In all ways, his life would most likely have been easier in India.
These things didn’t occur to me until I saw that sad smile on his face.
That smile told me that being the native born American child of immigrants is not the same thing as being a naturalized American.
We, the children, are the beneficiaries. We do not feel the pain as acutely of turning over the old passport for the new one. We do not feel the sensations in our hearts that make us feel that we are somehow betraying who we are and those we have left behind.
I have no words for my husband on this day that will quiet those thoughts. They may very well be true, I don’t know.
I do know this, though.
I can recognize that he did not decide to become American because India is a bad place or that the people were bad there.
I can recognize that opening one door means closing another, and that it is alright and completely understandable to feel ambivalent and even a little sad about that.
I can recognize that he, like my parents, did this for me and for his children.
I can recognize that as our children get older and he tells them that he became an American for them, they will grow up, as I did, with a deep feeling of importance and a sense of destiny because of his actions today.
I can recognize the incredible strength it takes to forgo one set of emotional attachments for another.
I can recognize the wisdom that we live in a world where international alliances are precarious at best, and the borders and hearts of every nation become less welcoming with every year that passes. At the very least, having matching passports would offer us the perceived comfort of knowing that we will always be together.
I can recognize that like my parents, more than the word, “Congratulations” from me on this slightly bittersweet day, he needs to hear the words “Thank you.”
Thank you, Tariq, for becoming an American today for our family.
May this day open the doors before you to all sorts of joys, prosperity and goodness that will quiet the sad feeling that there may be some that are slowly closing behind you.
I didn’t own cassettes. Genius child that I was, I was into reading, playing outside and begging my parents for cable.
We were sitting in my uncle’s living room in Lahore (Pakistan) and my cousin and I were trying desperately to find something in common with one another. I was there for the summer. We were stuck with each other, after all.
He was a boy. I was a girl. He was Pakistani and I was American. He was 11 and I was 8.
So far, not so good.
His eyes lit up, “Do you like Michael Jackson?”
“Sure,” I said.
He smiled and ran to his room. He entered the room with a battered cassette tape in one hand and a little red boom box in the other. He popped in the cassette. “Billie Jean” blared from the grimy speakers.
We sat and listened and smiled. “What is he saying?” my cousin asked.
“Ummm, he’s saying that Billie Jean isn’t his girlfriend. That she’s just someone he knows. But nobody listens and everyone keeps saying she is.”
“Ohhh,” he said in deep thought. And, then, we both giggled. Because, we were kids and you’re supposed to giggle at that sort of thing. “Do you have this cassette at home, in America?”
“No.”
“What cassettes do you have?”
“I don’t have cassettes.” He raised his eyebrows in a way that clearly indicated that this surprised him. After all, American kids were supposed to have everything, right?
I smiled feeling a little embarrassed at my complete lack of coolness.
“OK, then” he stopped the tape player and carelessly tossed the cassette towards me. “You can have this one, then.”
I held it in my hands and felt a surge of excitement. For some reason, we didn’t have a problem coming up with things to talk about for the rest of the summer.
Later that evening, I sat in the guest room of my uncle’s house and listened to this little piece of America that my Pakistani cousin had given me earlier that day. It was the beginning of something deep. Something that makes me smile every time I hear “Thriller” or “P.Y.T.” When I got back to the States, I listened to the tape with my brother and we memorized all the songs.
After that summer, I scrimped and saved every nickel I got so that I could go out and buy more music like this. No matter how vacuous or how inane pop music became, I couldn’t help myself. I loved and still love pop music. Even in the 90s, when we all wore flannel and contemplated the darkness of the journey between late adolescence and adulthood, nobody changed the station if a good 80s pop song was on.
Pop music. It was an escape. It was lightness in a world that can often be a little too dark. It was joy in a world that could be a little too painful.
It was my piece of American poetry. And it began with a little bit of Michael.
Michael Jackson was undoubtedly a flawed man. Undoubtedly. If the allegations that had been brought up in the past regarding his relationship with children are even remotely true, his musical genius doesn’t excuse that depravity. He was a victim of his own genius and a prisoner of his own fame in a lot of ways.
Regardless, though, in my mind I don’t remember Michael Jackson as the American pop icon or accused pedophile.
To me, Michael Jackson is a cassette tape that someone who started off as a stranger and became a brother handed to me in an act of friendship almost 25 years ago.
He’s the commonality in a conversation that Tariq and I, who grew up on opposite sides of the world, share in our childhoods.
He’s one of those links that, because of his music’s ability to transcend borders and language, binds Americans to everyone else.
I’d also like to take a moment to acknowledge the death of the lovely Farrah Fawcett who taught those of us born before 1980 the special and unforgettable brand of American beautiful that can be achieved by a large round brush, a hair dryer and massive quantities of hair spray.
I used to collect Disney villain figurines, until they started getting silly.
And by “silly” I mean male.
Self proclaimed post feminist status aside, I assert that real fairy tales, at least the good ones, have female villains.
The later Disney villains, like that guy from Beauty and the Beast or the one from Pocahontas, are just not scary enough. Scar from Lion King? Although quite evil and crush worthy given the Jeremy Irons voice over, he still doesn’t hold a candle to the lovely ladies who ruled the empire in the early years of Disney animation.
The exception to this rule would be Jaffar from Aladdin. For a few reasons, but mostly because he has a turban. Also because let’s face it, he was a little effeminate. He was basically a queen with facial hair.
The traditional symbolism in fairy tales revolves around the juxtaposition not just of good and evil, but of purity and impurity (both of the soul and the physical). They also reveal the traditional view that life is polarity… that there is good and there is evil and that little exists between them.
This point of view fascinates me because it’s very different than what I believe. The difference exists, I assume, because existentialism and relativism were being born when these movies were first made. As a child born in the late 20th century, they were well grounded, or well on their way ot being so, in the American psyche when I happened on the scene.
Additionally, the female villains also fascinate me because women often play central roles in the discussion of what is pious versus that which is sinful in my heritage (and among those discussing my heritage). Another dichotomy: paramount importance and unabashed objectification.
Anyway, I started collecting the villain figurines when I was 13 or so. I think I realized early on that life isn’t exactly the way it is in fairy tales (or in family room discussions). I would look at these little statues and admire how beautiful they were. How determined they were in getting what they wanted at all costs. How completely irreverent they were regarding expected mores and behavior.
And as I considered the costs for their determination and irreverence, I reveled in the depth that those struggles represented. I pondered over the truth of the consequences presented.
Snow White, Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, they remain unchanged and exist as eternal virgins.
The queens, the stepmothers, the evil fairies, though? To me, they blossom in each telling of the story. Every visit exposes a new layer, a new motivation, perhaps even a new explanation for me.
Unlike their virginal victims, they’re twisted, varied, glorious, flawed… human.
