N'ap Boule

What's happening?

My heart is so heavy in the last week. I may be biased, but there's been such a hopeful energy in this election term recently, despite the fact that I'm very independent and sort of politically homeless in a two-party system, despite the fact that there's been so much more divisive rhetoric on (one of) my formerly favorite social apps, despite all the bad things happening around the country, and despite the fact that it's somehow still a very close race. 

Watching the debate, I shook my head and smirked when Trump talked about the dogs and cats and pets, just like Kamala did, because he says wild stuff like that all the time. I was cheering for the moderators when they fact-checked him on it, although I wish that Harris had done more to set it straight as well.

Then, the issue blew up. Talk about Haitians eating pets and geese, racist enough on its own, turned into talk about voodoo and crime and savagery. And all this from people who claim to be Christians. Outrageous lies and the most specious stories got elevated to the level of a presidential debate, and while some on the right have either qualified the claims or outright apologized and condemned them, most have gone out of their way to perpetuate these vicious attacks. 

I grew up in the 80s in North Miami, when the neighborhood was changing. Caribbeans of all sorts were moving in, and other families were moving out. On our block, close to 135th Street, a kind of cultural thoroughfare in the city (you had to be there), the school buses started picking up a lot more kids from Jamaica and Haiti and other islands, until I was one of the few white kids on the bus to North Miami Senior High. There were two old white ladies on the same side of the street with us, who'd lived there for almost thirty years and both buried husbands in that neighborhood. When they died and their kids sold their houses. Two new Haitian families moved in, and there were a few more kids on the block to ride with on weekdays and run with on Saturdays. 

I don't know why my parents didn't move out when other families did. I don't know if it was financial or political or just stubborn. It could have been a mix of both, or it could have been that they didn't care. We never talked about it. All I knew was that there were a lot of kids with hyphenated last names like Jean-Baptiste and Jean-Pierre, and Saint-Fleur at my school. And I got an education that, apparently, a lot of people outside of our neighborhood. It was a time when these same slurs about voodoo and foods were rampant.

Now, in retrospect, I know that a lot of that was just regular racism, coupled with that "wet foot, dry foot" campaign to let more white Cubans into the country, while turning away Black Haitians by the droves, even though both groups were, ostensibly, leaving the same types of poverty and political violence. At the time, all I knew was that people were saying nasty things, things I didn't understand, about people who were so tidy they insisted I take my shoes off in their house, even when the parents weren't home because they either ran a business, had two jobs, or worked and went to college at the same time.  All I knew was that they were so Christian that they could rarely come out to the park to play ball after school, because they were in church four times a week, for a couple of hours each time. My own parents had no such rules about keeping their floors clean, and we thought we were super-religious because we went to church on Sunday morning AND Wednesday night. All I knew was that the people saying all these nasty things couldn't possibly know my friends, zanmi mwen yo.

Obviously, another part of my education was learning a little Kreyol, partly because I needed it to order food from the trucks and the corner store, partly because we used it to call plays when I played basketball (poorly) on the Optimist team in Pepper Park, and partly because some of those Haitian girls at school were beautiful. What I lacked in looks, I tried to make up in charm and guile by speaking a little Kreyol. It was not very effective. 

There's a word in Kreyol that a lot of Haitians use to refer to their countrymen - zoe. The word itself means "bone," but in this context, it means a lot more, depending on who you ask. When you're a zoe, you're hard as bone, tough to break, but able to heal from the worst destruction. Or it can mean something like "bone of my bone," brethren, the same through and through. Either way, it's a word I'm using in all my prayers for my Haitian friends these days, past, present, and future. I pray that you remain strong as bone, hard to break and hard-hitting as well.

Romance without Finance, and Other Pressures on Marriage

This Labor Day weekend, I had my oldest daughter watch all of my younger kids, as well as her kids, in my house so my wife and I could get away for the weekend. We spent three night at a Disney resort, savored the Epcot Food and Wine Festival, and enjoyed the comforts of expensive resort restaurants and extravagant resort king size beds. It was glorious. Three nights with no responsibilities except what we owe each other, three mornings with no reasons to get up early and no interlopers sneaking into our bed, and three dinners with grown-up food and nobody making a mess. Except for that one time, but that bread was really buttery and my wife gets tipsy with even one drink.

Photo by John McArthur on Unsplash

The trip probably boosted the bonds of our marriage more in three days than three months of therapy could. Just the freedom to focus on each other as grownups, as partners and lovers, and still know that our kids were safe and entertained by their big sister. For any marriage, in any state, at any time, I recommend a weekend getaway for rejuvenating the spirit of the relationship.

But it costs money.

Luckily, we're at a place where money is no longer the stressor that it used to be. We both have good incomes and we keep expenses low, just so we can do these types of things when we want to. But I remember when things were different. I remember times in our marriage when the little kids were even littler, babies that had round the clock needs, and no trusted adults close enough to even babysit for date night, let alone overnight trips out of town. That feeling of pressure, like the scene in Temple of Doom when the spiked walls are closing in on Indy and Short Round and vicious bugs are underfoot everywhere, was sometimes an accurate description of the way the house felt. No escaping the responsibilities of parenthood, no time to focus on each other, no conversation except about bills that needed to pay, or hadn't been paid, or what sacrifices we'd have to make this month to pay them. Every day was like the day before, waking up to financial and personal stresses in the morning and begging for sleep at night to escape them for a few hours.

Poor people don't go on marriage retreats. They just work more and harder to keep all the plates spinning, find joy in each other in the fleeting moments when they all spin flat and fast, and try not to curse each other when one falls and breaks. They might want to take vacations, family vacations to delight the kids and bond the entire family together, or couples vacations to keep the fires of love and romance burning, anything to escape the pressures of suburban struggle and poverty.

But it costs money.

Compared to the way I grew up, even the hardest, most financially delicate times in my marriage have been like a glow up. I don't remember any actual family vacations growing up, except maybe to visit grandma or other family. Even those were days-long road trips fraught with fights about fast food orders and vehicle breakdowns in the worst, most remote places in the country. There may have been some bonding once we got to grandma's house, for sure, but it came at the cost of a nearly perilous journey, with the dread of a return trip hanging over our heads the entire time. I remember one cross-country trip when the Volkswagen van broke down and, instead of fixing it, our dad had the brilliant idea of push starting it the rest of the way. Brilliant idea, I know, except that Mom had no idea how to pop a clutch, so she and I had to push that van up to fifteen miles an hour so Dad could start it, and then run alongside to catch up.

After. Every. Single. Stop.

Maybe this is why I put so much effort and emphasis into vacations for my family today, and why I'm so glad to finally be in a position where I can take short retreats with my bride. It gives me so much joy to see everybody - wife, kids, and grandkids - all loving each other and exploring new places and activities. It renews my faith in my marriage to spend that kind of alone time with my wife - without responsibilities to make us nag at each other or distractions to make us neglect each other.

But it costs money.

While we were away, I was already planning the next trip, reading articles about travel tips and ways to save money and still vacation like rich people. One thread I came across on Twitter talked about a father hiring a nanny for the kids while on vacation, and what a game-changer it was to be able to break off from the kids at any time and trust them to professional care, to be able to switch modes from parents to lovers at any time on the vacation. He made it sound so good. Still, I couldn't get my mind off of two considerations. First, when am I ever going to have enough money to pay for five days of round-the-clock professional child care, even at the lowest rates going? And second, when does the nanny go on vacation? What happens to her marriage while she's babysitting my kids in some luxury resort so I can spend too much money on some surf and turf? What do her kids do for fun while she's on vacation with me? 

I'm just grateful that our crazy, mixed and blended family provides us with the support system to spend some time away. We can keep the grandkids for days while my daughter takes a break, albeit a single mom hustle style break, or catches up on school work or cleaning. My daughter can give us a regular date night, something we haven't been able to do for years since we married, because hiring a babysitter means spending at least $50 on a romantic evening even before you walk out the door, not to mention the pressure of getting home on time because the babysitter can't just sleep over like my daughter can. I almost want to say that I don't know how poor people do it, how they navigate the pressures of marriage, but the truth is that I do know, because I've been there. They fight. They get fed up with poverty and take their stresses out on each other. They grow further and further apart with fewer and fewer opportunities for bonding. And sometimes they divorce.

And ironically, that, too, costs money.