What follows is the original essay I submitted 2-5-17 to the producers of LTYM-Raleigh/Durham. It was much longer than they could allow in the show and had too many similarities to another candidate's piece, so they asked me to condense and modify it a bit. I did so without hesitation to be part of their amazing program. I'll share the more polished version I read that night, but I wanted to share this one first as I think it offers (what I hope are) teaching moments that are particularly relevant right now.
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Nine years ago on a rainy Friday afternoon in early March, I was at work training my replacement in an RTP office when I received a long-awaited surprise—a call from Wake County Human Services containing a life-altering question, which was in essence, “Are you ready for motherhood?”
A quick answer was required, so as soon as I hung up, I managed with jittery fingers to dial my husband at work. He’d already been contacted, and we were equally stunned, exhilarated and terrified.
We stumbled breathlessly through a rapid series of half-formed questions and responses to one another, and suddenly we weren’t sure.
But we had been sure. Now we weren’t? But of course we were! What the hell?!
I needed to call my sister, and so I did, and recognizing I was in shock, she gleefully admonished me to “GO GET THAT BABY!”
I again dialed my husband, and he’d spoken with his mom. This time we were on the same page, our faculties having returned to us. We could again feel the earth beneath our feet, and our answer was absolutely 100% affirmative: YES, we would foster (and hope like crazy to adopt) the 4-day-old baby waiting at WakeMed Hospital.
Within a couple of hours we’d wrapped up work and made our way down a wet, treacherous I-40 East to Raleigh, where we joined each other at home and grabbed the carseat and other essentials before heading to the hospital.
Our nervous systems were abuzz with cautiously joyous anticipation; we were going to meet the infant child we believed was destined to be our son—our first-born.
We realized after parking, checking in and signing paperwork that in our haste we’d left the carseat in the car—and proof of it was required to take the baby. My ever-generous partner offered to retrieve it, which meant I’d be united with our child for the first time without him.
It wasn’t ideal (imagine being right at the point of birthing your baby only to have your partner be asked to leave the room), but if one of us was going to get to meet our child first, I was eternally grateful it would be me.
I followed a nurse down a hall and into a room attached to the nursery. This room felt like an office—around me were cabinets, countertops and a desk chair or two, file folders and various, unknown supplies. No art, no rocker, no softness existed in this strange, sterile, baby-meeting space where I was left alone to wait.
It wasn’t long before the nursery door opened and a plastic hospital bassinet was wheeled in. There was no fanfare, and I’m not even sure the nurses spoke or made eye contact with me. But their strangely ordinary behavior didn’t fully register as I was consumed by the small, solitary being in the bassinet, whose inexplicably profound presence had already altered my universe.
I carefully approached, and there he was—an angelic, little-big-baby-bundle with silky dark hair, full cheeks and skin like velvet. He was perfection—the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. I felt and verbalized to my husband, who’d quietly resumed his position at my side, that we sure were lucky.
I could barely believe that after 4 years of trying and what had seemed like a lifetime of longing to be a mother, this sacred becoming was finally underway—my most important job was beginning, and it felt like a dream. In some ways it still feels like a dream.
Hours later at home, with our first forays into parenting tasks complete—and me, still in my blissed-out, new-mama state—the crying began. It wouldn’t stop no matter what I did…and I wanted my MAMA!!
We didn’t know then, and we still don’t know whether our baby boy’s guttural wailing in those first nights was solely in response to a belly full of colic, or if it was the raw expression of pure terror a new human experiences after losing its literal life support, its mother. Perhaps it was both, the trauma of primal loss AND digestive pain, which I suspect were not unrelated.
The instantaneous maternal connection I felt to my son was not instantly felt by him. I knew to expect this ahead of time. I had taken parenting classes specific to fostering and adoption, and I had spent hours studying attachment theory. I also had beautiful examples of nurturing in my own mother and sisters.
But as all parents can attest, there is intellectual preparation, and then there is the magnitude of parenting. Not knowing how to comfort your baby when he seems utterly terrified cuts like a knife to a mother’s heart. I didn’t know what was typical and what wasn’t and just how much my baby was feeling the disconnect of not having grown inside me—of not being OF ME. This particular not-knowing as a foster-to-adopt mama was all the more excruciating.
With every ounce of my being, I yearned to make him feel safe, and I exerted every effort to attend to the slightest whimper. Not only did this immediacy feel right, it was a necessary preventative. His little body could work itself into a frenzy so very quickly.
For hours each night when he seemed the most unsettled, my husband and I took turns walking and rocking, swaying and bouncing, humming and singing affirmations—we wanted him to know at a cellular level that he was not alone, that he would never again be alone, that he was safe, and that he was loved through and through.
I kept him close as much as humanly possible with fierce mama-bear-ness, to seed the truth of my want of him, even as my belly grew with a sister surprise.
Now he is 9, and like all mamas I continue to want to protect my child from every potential danger and hurt, and I imagine I will feel this with some degree of urgency for the rest of my life. I am also desperate for him to feel safe.
Now he is 9, and like all mamas I continue to want to protect my child from every potential danger and hurt, and I imagine I will feel this with some degree of urgency for the rest of my life. I am also desperate for him to feel safe.
Yet every single day I think about the ways that he, a black boy in America, is not safe.
We live in an undeniably racialized world—clearly observable in our schools, neighborhoods and workplaces, within our healthcare and criminal justice systems, in the media and the halls of government. Deep statistical analyses reveal racial inequities within every American institution and across every system, regardless of socioeconomic status. Public video evidence has shown some police officers, charged with serving and protecting all, bullying and brutalizing people of color. In 2017.
These are not alternative facts; they are TRUTHS. But many ill-informed, mostly well-meaning white people continue to deny these widespread realities as myths, or infrequent, random events, or the “just desserts” of criminal behavior.
Despite an oft-repeated, egregiously false claim, black and brown people are NO MORE LIKELY to commit crimes than white people, yet they are more heavily policed, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be convicted, more likely to be incarcerated (5 times more to be exact), and more likely to be subjected to harsher sentences than white people who have committed the exact. same. crimes.
Here’s just one stark statistic from the nonprofit, The Sentencing Project: Black Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as White Americans do for a violent offense (61.7 months).
This is NOT justice—it is the opposite of justice, and no citizen of this country should be willing to accept it.
I certainly do not claim to know all there is to know about this issue, but as the mama of a black son, I proclaim the following:
-I should not have to worry that if my 20-year-old black son attends a late-night neighborhood party, he will be shot and killed by the white man living across the street. (Kouren-Rodney Thomas, North Carolina)
-I should not have to worry that if my 17-year-old black son plays his music too loudly, he will be shot and killed by the white driver in the vehicle beside him. (Jordan Davis, Florida)
-I should not have to worry that if my 12-year-old black son plays with a toy gun in a park, or if my 22-year-old black son picks up an air rifle for sale at Wal-Mart, that he will be shot and killed by white police officers. (Tamir Rice and John Crawford, Ohio)
-I should also not have to worry that a white vice-principal will threaten to call the police on my 8-year-old son when his ADHD and anxiety manifest as misbehavior, and then, frozen in fear, he refuses to comply. (This was MY child, here in Raleigh, at a top-notch elementary school.)
These are just a few of the untold thousands of acts of racial injustice that have been committed during my child’s short lifetime, and that is one terror-inducing reality for this mama.
What must the toll be on the collective soul of Black America, after centuries of fighting for justice and equality—to still be having to organize and march and grieve for lost children and parents?
I think about our nation’s tragic history—its dreams left unanswered and its festering wounds still bleeding in the present. I think about the psychic impact to my child and the potential life-and-death nature of simply being born in darker skin. I think about how no matter how much I want to fix this, I can’t, and neither can Black America.
We need White America to listen and accept the truth—the truth that race and racism were tools created by some elite, white folks who came before us, to oppress one group and elevate another; tools that have been re-made through centuries to adapt to changing cultural sensitivities, norms and laws; tools that remarkably are still meeting their original intent today of shutting out those deemed “other”.
While we as individuals did not create this gargantuan problem, we perpetuate it when we deny its very existence. I’m talking to you, good white people. I see you. I am you. We must change. This is OUR WORK.
I knew some of what to expect with transracial adoption. I worked to prepare myself and to become the best mama I could be. I continue to work on myself daily, and I get clearer all the time that in my whiteness I have been incredibly naive.
Inch by inch, as my beautiful boy grows older and bigger, he automatically becomes suspect in this America. How long will I be able to keep him safe? Does he already feel unsafe? What will happen the first time he’s pulled over “driving while black”--will his anxiety paralyze him, or cause him to flee, or to, god forbid, fight?
Can I count on you to care, to stop looking away, to raise your voice, to think about the impact of your vote, to consider that a “law and order” rallying cry does not invoke feelings of safety and well-being for an enormous number of Americans, and in fact does just the opposite?
My heart walks around in a brown body, and it knows the truth and feels the danger. I am begging you to listen, to learn, to change, so together we can prevent more racial injustice—keep more mothers’ sons that look like mine alive and thriving, and give them a chance for the same happy life you want for your kid.
My son’s life matters. Black lives matter. Dear people, how is this a radical idea?
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