Category Archives: Marriage

The Third Armpit of Hell

27 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Upper East Side, Upper West Side, Work, Youth

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Illustration of Dante’s Inferno, Map of Lower Hell, 16th century. (Giovanni Stradano via Wikipedia). In public domain.

During most of my Pittsburgh years, whenever someone I knew asked me what it was like to live in the New York City area, I often said two things. One, that “New York was a great place to live if you have money.” But, “if you don’t have money, New York could be like the third armpit of hell.”

I didn’t even bother to discuss Mount Vernon until I was well into graduate school. Too unknown, too complicated to explain its proximity to the Bronx and to midtown Manhattan. And from the average Pittsburgher’s perspective, it was a distinction without a difference. As far as some were concerned, Mount Vernon could’ve just as easily been outside of Buffalo as it could’ve been in the heart of Harlem.

But I definitely knew better, that my relationship with Mount Vernon and “The City” was a love-hate one, born from my growing-up experiences during the Reagan years. The lens with which I viewed the New York City area, a trifocal one of race, poverty and “outsider” status, made me ambivalent about my times growing up in Mount Vernon and all of my times in New York.

2 NYC subway train with graffiti (cropped), 1980s, December 20, 2009. (Cope2 via http://www.doobybrain.com/). Qualifies as fair use – low resolution picture.

I have my father Jimme to thank, though. Without him, I would still be afraid of New York, not just ambivalent about it. Drunk or not, working or on his way to a hole-in-the-wall bar. Jimme would take me and my older brother Darren out and down to the city often enough, to ride the Subway, to hang out with him in Harlem, Spanish Harlem, and especially Midtown. Whether it was to help him with his janitorial work on weekends, or just to hang out, we frequented Manhattan and other parts of the five boroughs off and on between ’80 and ’85, ’82 — the year of abuse — excepted.

Because of that year, the longest time I spent outside of the city growing up was between April ’81 and July ’83. After not making it down to Manhattan in all of ’82, we went to Midtown in July, where we learned about two of my father’s watering holes between 43rd and 47th. They were both near Mickey Mantle’s restaurant on 47th. He also had an Irish pub he’d like to go to around East 59th and Third, a drinking bar near his job on 64th and Columbus, and a couple of places near Macy’s on 34th Street. Because of our height and the times, when it was still legal for eighteen-year-olds to drink in public watering holes, me and Darren were allowed into these fine establishments. I learned a lot about vermouth, vodka, Cosmos and Long Island Iced Tea that summer.

Grand Central Terminal Main Concourse in New York City, March 4, 2006. (Janke and Diliff via Wikipedia). Permission granted via cc-Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.

I also learned a lot about the not-so-nice side of New York in those years. I recognized this as I’d board the Uptown 2 Subway from West 42nd Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan at the tail end of rush hour. As I’d board the train, I’d notice the crunch of humanity in all of its oblivion, self-absorption, and diversity. As the doors close, I’d watch as the express train passed 50th, 59th, and 66th Street before it would grind to a halt at 72nd Street. I’d notice that a fair number of the White passengers alighted here. Between 96th and 125th Street, the load of the train would gradually lighten as about half of the passengers who’d crushed me between a tall, stale-breathed smoker and a woman who wasn’t my girlfriend were now at street level.

About three-quarters of the passengers for the rest of my trip would be Latino and Afro-Caribbean. After another hour of endless stops in the Bronx, the 2 would pull me out of my slumber as it would slowly roll into the rickety East 241st stop.

By the time I was a rising senior at Pitt, I certainly didn’t need my father to accompany on my trips into Manhattan. I also avoided the long trek from 616 across Mount Vernon to 241st to take the 2 whenever I could afford to. Metro-North was a luxurious godsend compared to the puddles of piss and infinite amounts of graffiti on the Subway I’d seen throughout the ’80s.

Toph’s “Hairy Pits” from Avatar: The Last Airbender (screenshot), July 26, 2012. (Donald Earl Collins). Qualifies as fair use — low resolution picture.

But it introduced me to other odious issues. Like Grand Central Station, which by the summer of ’90 was in desperate need of renovation. Especially the restrooms, festooned with enough garbage, feces and bodily odors and fluids to make a coroner vomit.

Off a return trip from Pittsburgh that summer, I made the mistake of having no choice but to use the almost  unusable facilities there, which in the end I couldn’t use. Meanwhile, I observed homeless males hanging out in the restroom with carts, along with an individual who looked to have Kaposi’s sarcoma, an obvious sign of full-blown AIDS.

That’s when I coined New York to be “the third armpit of hell,” the place where poverty had meant your dreams were dead on arrival. For once, it made me content that I was from a place where many smug New Yorkers disdainly considered “upstate.” Though the New York City area has changed — and mostly for the better — since ’90, it’s still a place where economic inequality can easily grind the life out of people.

It’s Been 25 Years

18 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Me and My Uncle Sam, June 18, 1987. (Donald Earl Collins).

Today’s date marks a quarter-century since my Class of ’87 marched and graduated from Mount Vernon High School at Mount Vernon’s Memorial Field (see my post “It’s Been Twenty Years…” from June ’07). I guess that the seventeen-year-old version of me would look at me now and say, “Boy you’re old! What happened to you?” And the current me would say, “Life, you pathetic dufus!” in response.

I write this today a tired professor, educator and consultant. Tired from a week of scoring AP World History exams, grading students’ papers from my survey-level US History course, traveling to and from Salt Lake City. Tired from the vicissitudes of life, marriage and parenthood. At least, that’s how I feel sometimes. Most of the time, though, I feel like the person I’ve been for the past twenty-four years, someone who has a real bright present and even brighter future, regardless of how things may look from day-to-day or moment to moment.

That was and wasn’t the case twenty-five years ago. I really only had about three or four things on my mind on that hot and sticky 87-degree Thursday evening. One was about my family. Good, bad, and ugly all at once. My Mom, my idiot stepfather Maurice, my older brother Darren, and all of my younger siblings, and all going to my graduation. Getting myself and my younger brothers and sister ready was no easy task, especially without air conditioning.

Then, my Uncle Sam showed up, a pleasant and unexpected surprise. I hadn’t seen him since October ’84, at the one-time book store on Gramatan Avenue, where I used to buy all of my Barron’s test-prep books for the New York State Regents Exams, SAT, and AP exams. That was the only time I’d seen my mother’s brother since the picnic to end all picnic’s in August ’83 (see my post “Good Times, Good Times…Not” from August ’09). He still looked larger than life, all six-four and 240 of him, despite his bum knees.

Canadian Club bottle and goblet, February 12, 2011. (Craig L. Duncan via Wikipedia). In public domain.

My father Jimme was supposed to show up at 616 before we all left for the ceremony. And he did, just as I was about to pile into a cab with Mom, my sister Sarai, and Uncle Sam. Jimme was three sheets to the wind, liquored up real good, to celebrate my graduation. “Oh no!,” I thought, pretty much keeping my distance from him the entire evening. I already knew that Jimme would embarrass the hell out of me and Mom, not to mention any parent who talked with him.

Thought number two came in all of the folks to whom I said good-bye or good riddance as the ceremony came to a close. After throwing our burgundy and yellow caps in the air, we went over to our now former classmates — who were now friends, lovers, acquaintances, and in some cases, foes — to embrace and hug, to cry and scream and dance and twirl around in the air with. Along the way, A (of “The Legend of ‘Captain Zimbabwe’” post from May ’09) grabbed me and gave me a hug. “You made it, man,” he said. It startled me that he did that. The late Brandie Weston and I hugged, but not before saying, “You’ve changed a lot over the years. You used to be an asshole you know!”

I caught up with Crush #1, giving her a long hug and a mug as a gift. “I’m really going to miss you,” I said. I also gave a mug to H, V (the valedictorian in my post “Valedictorian Burdens” from July ’09), and Crush #2, telling them all that “when you’re drinking coffee late at night and trying to finish a paper, think of me.” When I gave a mug to Crush #1 and embraced her, T apparently was nearby watching the event unfold. I went over to her to say “Good-bye” afterwards. T snorted and raised her nose up in a huff, as if I’d given her the coup de grace (see my post “The Silent Treatment” from June ’10)

But the thought that has stayed with me over the years wasn’t something that I was fully conscious of that day, given all of the excitement that was and is a high school graduation. It had been in my head for more than five years. See, despite having erased much of the stigma that was me being me at twelve in 7S and at 616, I knew that I could never fully be the person I knew I could be while living in Mount Vernon. People think I’m weird now, but at least I know what it is about me that makes some dumb asses act that way about me. The dumb asses who thought that “book learnin'” and listening to “White music” was wack back then were too numerous and too vocal for me to avoid. Especially since some of them were at 616 or my parents.

Grandstand at Memorial Field, Mount Vernon, NY, November 28, 2007. (Anthony22 via Wikipedia). In public domain.

I knew that I had to leave. That’s what I thought about the entire walk home from Memorial Field. And I did walk, alright, for a full hour afterward. If I could’ve, I would’ve walked all the way to Pittsburgh that night, as I knew it wouldn’t get any better for me in Mount Vernon than a high school graduation. I’d already left my first hometown, at least in my head. It would take another fifteen months to confirm it.

When my wife came to Mount Vernon with me for the first time during Christmas ’99, we walked through downtown and The Avenue. After ten minutes, she asked, “Are you sure you weren’t adopted?” Sometimes, looking back, I ask myself the same question.

Before The Fall

28 Monday May 2012

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Cylon Raiders, Battlestar Galactica miniseries (2003), May 28, 2012. (http://tombsofkobol.com). BSG Theme Music (2003) [UK Version]

It’s Memorial Day ’12. It’s been thirty years since that fateful Memorial Day ’82. A part of me, the child that I was, still remains in that day, in the weeks and months before that day.

Little in my life in the previous three years bore a real resemblance to a carefree childhood. But I somehow managed to pretend my way through the three-year-period that included the birth of my younger brothers Maurice and Yiscoc, my idiot stepfather walking out with our food in October ’80, and the first year of the Hebrew-Israelite experiment (see my “Peanuts Land” post from last month).

The speed-of-light shockwave that was my love for Crush #1, and the interrelated turnaround of my grades

Solar flare, aka Coronal Mass Ejection, c. 2010, May 28, 2012. (NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory’s AIA Instrument). In public domain.

in the previous three months gave me a tenuous lifeline to what remained of my childhood self. Making it rain A’s in March, April and May that year reaffirmed the person I thought I was in sixth grade, despite the “Captain Zimbabwe” taunts that began from A and the Italian Club as we approached Memorial Day Weekend (see my post “The Legend of ‘Captain Zimbabwe’” from May ’09).

But the teetering and temporary bliss of grades and the crush on Crush #1 could only distract. They couldn’t delay, even as much as they helped me deny. They could in no way prepare me for the blinding light, the initial shockwave and heat, the full blast effect of what was coming.

It was 5 pm that Memorial Day Monday when it began.

“I’m sick and tired of you treating me this way. I’m sick of you not lovin’ me!,” my stepfather yelled.

“What do you mean ‘love you’?,” Mom said. “Most women wouldn’t even put up with your stinkin’ ass. And now you want more money for a business that I’m not even a part of? You must be kiddin’!”

Mom was on the phone in the master bedroom, while my stepfather yelled into the phone in the kitchen, back in the days when land-lines ruled the world. She picked up the bedroom phone because my stepfather had made a long-distance call to his wayward mother in California, at a time when we were seriously behind on paying the bill. I didn’t understand why he’d want to continue to talk to a woman who abandoned him as a baby to his relatives in Richmond, Virginia and Trenton, New Jersey in ’50. It seemed to me that Maurice was wasting time and money on a woman who cared for him as little as he cared for us.

I was lying down on my bed across the hall from the master bedroom, trying my hardest not to pay any attention to the unfolding drama. With both of them yelling over the phone, though, I couldn’t block their argument out any longer. So I sat up in my bed — giving me a view from our room across the hall into Mom’s bedroom — and continued to listen.

This was one of many arguments over bills and my stepfather’s wack attempts to start a telecommunications business. He had used $2,500 of Mom’s precious money to get a New York State business license for “Sun-Lion Communications” (see my post “Dumb Ass Communications, Inc.” from March ’11 for more). Somehow, Mom’s $15,000-a-year income was supposed to be enough to feed six people and get a business off the ground floor? “Their arguments are insane,” I thought.

I usually could tune them out. But not this time, and not anytime since.

“Who you talkin’ to, bitch!,” Maurice yelped as he punched Mom in the jaw. He followed up with a kick to her stomach and a forearm that knocked her into the queen-sized bed. With each hit he shouted “Are you gonna gimme some respect, bitch!” A moment later, Maurice poured an industrial-sized bucket of water on Mom to wake her up, but that didn’t completely work.

Parisians in shock, tears as German soldiers march into Paris, June 14, 1940. (National Archives). In public domain.

For a full two-minutes, I just stood there. I was in shock, scared for Mom, scared for all of us. Somewhere in that time, my stupid stepfather had escaped the apartment, not to come back for two days, while my mother lay there, nearly lifeless.

I snapped out of it, determined to wake my Mom up. She was groggy, concussed from the battering she took. I sat her up, talked to her, and eventually helped her out of her waterlogged bed down the hallway to the living room, where she lay on the couch for the next day or so.

I should’ve called the cops. As much as I’d been taught not to trust them, I just should’ve dialed 911 and done the deed. What a coward I was! I should’ve done what Jennifer Lopez’s character did in Angel Eyes (2001). It certainly would’ve been easier. In that one decision, I could’ve reported Maurice’s heinous crime, gotten him arrested and jailed, and ended this sham of a marriage and family. Assuming, of course, that my Mom would’ve pressed charges.

Instead, I settled for a psychological and literal guerilla war which left me battered myself by summer’s end and willing to commit suicide within nineteen months. Most of all, I was stuck in that moment (Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of), in the weeks and months before that moment, for nearly seven years.

The Women In My Brain

28 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, Eclectic, eclectic music, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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Angelia & me on honeymoon, Seattle's Space Needle, May 20, 2001. (Donald Earl Collins)

Today’s my twelfth wedding anniversary. It means that I already have one woman in my brain almost all of the time, mostly around the mundane tasks of running a place of residence, other domestic duties, and watching over/nurturing the midsized human that is our eight-year-old.

Gaius Baltar & Caprica Six, Battlestar Galactica image (2004), June 25, 2009. (http://25fps.cz). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws due to low resolution of picture.

But the reality is, there have always been women in my brain, with images that inspire, voices that encourage, and actions that embolden. This post isn’t about undressing a woman in my mind’s eye every six seconds. Nor is it about putting women on some pedestal so that I can mentally kneel and worship in an empty space. Trust me, I’ve done both and more over the years. No, this is about who gets into my head and how they stay there.

Of course, no one has had more air time on my mind’s screen over the past forty-two years and change than my mother. She did give birth to me, after all, and for better and worse, helped me make it to my preteen years before things in our lives fell apart at 616. For years, I’ve lived with the lessons learned at my mother’s hip, lessons about race, trust, religion and relationships. Many of which I’ve had to revise in order to make better choices in my own life. Still, I can hear my mother’s voice, bad jokes and all, in the things I do with my son, in the mistakes I hope to avoid as a writer and as an educator, in the bills that constantly have to be paid.

I hear my wife’s voice every time I go the grocery store. Or when I’m dealing with my son. Or when I think about our travels over the years. Literal and figurative. I think about all of things we’ve made happen, and all of the things that are still works-in-progress for us, as individuals and as a family. I hear her doubt, her most critical of voices, her scalpel sense of editing in what I write, in how I speak and in the diplomacy I show the folks in my life who otherwise don’t deserve it. Though our marriage is as complicated as astrophysics shows the universe to be when accounting for dark matter, my wife’s voice bounces around my 100 trillion nerve ending almost as much as my own.

Then there’s Crush #1. She’s more insidious than my mother or my wife. The tenacious ballerina of a

Inception (2010), Paris dream construct screen shot, April 27, 2012. (http://dpmlicious.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of poor resolution of shot, not intended for distribution.

tomboy who one represented my personification of Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman often will show up when I least expect. Often enough in my dreams, and usually when I’m writing in my head. I hear her giggles and see her smiles under the strangest of circumstances. A pirouette here, a punch to the jaw there, an encouraging word and a thoughtful look will surprise me in my dreams as much as it would’ve in real life thirty years ago.

Are these women anything like the folks I’ve known and learned to know again over the past three decades? Yes and no. They likely represent the many sides of me as much as they each represent themselves. Loving or not, caring or not, forever elusive, and yet always there for me to grasp, love and even despise. They all represent the best and worst in me, the best and worst I’ve seen, endured and overcome in this life. Hard, tough, blood-from-a-turnip love. Unrequited, one-sided love. And deep, conditional, familiar love. They’re all there. They seem to always be there.

Jennifer Lopez in dream sequence in The Cell (2000), April 27, 2012. (http://media.avclub.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of screen shot's low resolution.

God, my own thoughts — however deep or shallow —  the billions of images of sports and men and women in my head from every walk of life and every song made in the past four centuries also remain constant in my brain. But mother, wife and first love can’t be shut off or out either. I could use some endorphins for the headache I have now.

Anatomy of An Abuser, Hebrew-Israelite Style

07 Saturday Apr 2012

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Abomination as played by Tim Roth, The Incredible Hulk (2008) screen shot, April 6, 2012. (http://www.comics2film.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws, as the image is only used once and is rendered in low resolution to avoid piracy.

This month marks thirty years since my idiot stepfather Maurice Washington first attempted to make me a man, a Black man, a Hebrew-Israelite man, all at the same time, through karate and physical abuse. But there were any number of signs that his conversion to this strange mix of Afrocentricity and Judaism wasn’t genuine, and that his re-entry into our lives as husband and father in April ’81 was teetering on the edge of disaster only twelve months later. At least for me, my older brother Darren, Maurice’s two young boys, and for my mother. Certainly not for him.

As early as September ’81, my chronically unemployed stepfather had started acting strange, expecting us to run errands for him without question or comment. Armed with the conviction that comes with a recent religious conversion (who during the early-80s was “Judah ben Israel;” see my “The Tyranny of Salvation” post from April ’11), Maurice began to demand that we call him “Dad.” We were required to wear our kufis whenever we left 616, which identified us immediately as our stepfather’s kids to our idiot 616 and 630 East Lincoln neighbors.

Maurice also made it mandatory for us to pray aloud every night, giving us a four-page, single-spaced document full of “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe…” lines to recite as part of our daily Black Jewish ritual. The first time we went through it, in both Hebrew and English, it took well over an hour. If we started to nod off, Maurice would slap us upside the head, or actually give us one of his “whuppins.”

His language was also changing, becoming coarser and more threatening as ’81 turned into ’82. For just asking, “Why?” or “What?,” my stepfather would often say, “Take that base outta ya voice, boy, before I cave yo’ chest in!” Maurice would sometimes sing his threats, bellowing “I’m gonna beat yo’ ass, jus’ like a car burns gas,” adding, “And you know that!” at the end. That last part was something he pulled from a song by a disco group called The Jammers. His language was worse now than it had been before he had separated from Mom eighteen months earlier. I found myself scratching my head, and not just because it itched.

By April, Maurice had become a hanger-on at a newly opened Karate studio down the street from 616, next

Benson & Hedges Menthol, hard green pack, April 6, 2012. (http://cigarettespedia.com).

door to the old dry cleaner business on East Lincoln Avenue. He made me come to the studio because he wanted to show me “how to be a man.” But when I saw him on my almost daily runs to the grocery store, he mostly hung out with young Turks and wannabe thugs from the Pearsall Drive projects across the street. Maurice smoked up a storm of Benson & Hedges Menthol while talking about women, being a Hebrew-Israelite, and about me as his kid, at least when I happened to walk by.

My stepfather made it known that he thought of me as soft, a boy who spent too much time in books and not enough time on New York’s mean streets. These despite the fact that we lived in Mount Vernon, a quietly violent city whose meanest streets were on the South Side, the part of town that bordered the Bronx. Not that 616 and the Pearsall Drive projects (consisting of six five-story buildings) down the street didn’t qualify as “mean.” They were tough by North Side standards, but at least people didn’t go into parks with baseball bats attempting to head hunt (see my “A Baseball Bat and a Father’s Absence” post from July ’11).

Maurice had tried to teach me and my older brother Darren Isshin-ryu Karate two years earlier. Despite myself, I did pick up a few moves. Now he decided that I would learn how to fight no matter the consequences. It was all about breaking bones and inflicting maximum pain. When I told Maurice that I didn’t want to learn, he said “You will learn because I’m your father” as he started to throw hard punches into my midsection.

Squidward losing to Seabear, SpongeBob camping episode, 2011, April 6, 2012. (Nickelodeon). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws due to picture's low resolution.

After I yelled “You’re not my father!,” he drop-kicked me to the floor. Maurice, all six-foot-one and 270 pounds of him, then pulled me up by my arms, slammed me back-first into a mirrored wall, and punched me several times in the head, chest, and stomach until several of the men in the studio surrounded him. My stepfather, completely exasperated and winded, yelled “Don’t you EVER say that again, muthafucka! I’ll kill you next time!” I ran for home with a knot on my forehead that didn’t go down for almost a week.

I was slowly learning a very valuable lesson (see my “Never As Good As The First Time” post from April ’11). I didn’t have control over anything in my life, even my emotions. I also learned to not trust Black men, especially fast talkers who thought with their fists and penises like dumb ass Maurice. It took several years for me to unlearn part of that second lesson, no thanks to him.

Peanuts Land

01 Sunday Apr 2012

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Snoopy and Charlie Brown taking a nap, circa 1964, March 10, 2012. (http://wallpaperpimp.com via United Features Syndicate). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution, subject matter and is no longer in production.

I loved Charles Schulz’ Peanuts comic strip and his Charlie Brown and Snoopy books growing up. From the time I turned seven all the way through sixth grade, they helped expand my mind and world beyond 616 East Lincoln Avenue, apartment number A32 and Mount Vernon, New York. So much so that when I had read all of the books available to me through Mount Vernon Public Library, I took the idea of Charlie Brown

Lucy and Charlie Brown, from a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, November 20, 1973. (http://billluton.com via United Features Syndicate). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution and subject matter.

to heart. I saw myself as the Black version of the lonely misfit of a kid, who could almost grab the brass ring but couldn’t quite hold on to it, who had some friends, but not close ones.

World Book Encyclopedia literally changed my life between December ’78 and April ’79. And with that change came my ability to use Charles Schulz’ Peanuts as the image in my mind’s eye for understanding it all. It was after running away from home to get away from my new stepfather, the now-and-forever abuser and idiot Maurice Washington, whom had married my mother in October ’78. Because my stepfather had pissed me off with another one of his rules, and because I knew that my guardians had already started to argue about money, I ran away from home. I packed two days’ worth of clothing and walked out with the plan that I would get to New Rochelle, find a boat, stowaway and eventually get to Europe or France. There, I could be free.

The Pelham Manor Police found me three-and-a-half hours later, having lured me into the squad car with the promise of hot dogs and orange soda. My mother gave me the belt-ass-whuppin’ of my life at the time, as it seemed to last forever, with her screaming, “You do this again, you won’t be around to cry about it!” I was on lockdown in me and my older brother Darren’s bedroom for six weeks afterward.

It was during those six weeks of no TV and no going outside that I decided to punish my mother and stepfather by ignoring them with books. I cracked open the “A” volume of the ’78 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia and began reading. And reading. And reading. “I’ll show them!,” I thought. Pretty soon I didn’t miss TV. I didn’t have lots of friends, so going out to play became less and less of a hardship. So I kept reading.

By the time I decided to go outside again, it was April ’79, well past my six-week grounding. But going

McDonald's Big Mac styrofoam container, 1975, February 27, 2011. (bolio88 via Flickriver.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws, as picture is for illustrative purposes only, and said container is no longer manufactured by McDonald.

outside to play for the first time in four months felt more alien to me that what I had been doing after reading sections of World Book Encyclopedia. I’d taken what I’d learned about city government, taxes, urban planning, population density, and created what I called “Peanuts Town” in our bedroom. Charlie Brown was the mayor, and Lucy Van Pelt was his wife. Snoopy, of course, was the deputy mayor and in charge of law enforcement. Once my father Jimme came back into our lives, I’d buy Matchbox cars to drive around the city, and created a restaurant and entertainment row of the city that included a McDonald’s Big Mac and Burger King fries containers as restaurants.

By the end of fifth grade in June ’80, my encyclopedic world view had expanded to include national and international issues, including history and World War II. And not just through World Book Encyclopedia, as I cruised through Ebony’s four-volume Pictorial History of Black America collection that spring also. I made “Peanuts Town” the capital of “Peanuts Land,” and Charlie Brown was the president. By this time, Charlie and Lucy had kids, just like I had a younger baby brother in Maurice.

Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace on his doghouse Sopwith Camel, circa 1964 (scanned from Thermos lunchbox), January 23, 2008. (Maravin via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution, with image no longer in production.

I made up maps of this country, including its natural resources and its naval bases. I’d make ships out of aluminum foil, stamped into shapes using the old, heavy wooden frame windows we had in our bedroom. I had made at least fifty battleships, aircraft carriers and cruisers, preparing for the Soviet threat. All without the prospect of nuclear war.

As I kept reading and using my imagination, my SRA tests for fourth and fifth grade confirmed that all of this deep thinking was paying off. I had raised my reading score from 3.9 (just barely at the fourth grade level) to a 7.4 (the equivalent of an above average seventh grader) by the end of fourth grade, and to an 11.0 by the end of fifth. A story of irony, imagination and naivete, the story of my young life, a boy at the window. One of success, of living, of wisdom and love and understand, of self-discovery, of all the things that makes one human.

My Wife, My Life

07 Tuesday Feb 2012

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My wife (then girlfriend) sleeping, Pittsburgh, February 8, 1996. (Donald Earl Collins).

I don’t spend a lot of time talking about my wife and son on this blog. Not because I don’t want to. It’s mostly to protect them from my thoughts, my feelings, which can change from moment to moment and from context to context. But it’s also because our marriage and our family is a work in progress. Most of what I write about here has already occurred, and I’ve emotionally already moved on from those happenings. Or my posts are about educational policy, politics, race and racism, inequality and unfairness, places where I can tap into my past and present emotions and relate to events of my past.

My wife, April 2010. (Angelia N. Levy).

Today, if only for one post, I’ll talk about my wife. Today she officially passes into that grey area of life known as middle age. She doesn’t look it at all. Heck, about seventy percent of the time, she looks a good five or ten years younger than me. God knows, though, that our life over the last sixteen years (including nearly twelve years of marriage) has been anything but an opportunity to stay young.

The last four years have been especially stressful. Between my work on Boy @ The Window and piecing together teaching and consulting gigs, with feast and famine moments throughout. Between Noah growing up and reaching the full-blown kid stage (and a year or two away from being a preteen), her two years as a masters student in interactive journalism at American University, and living in the DC area. It hasn’t been easy for either of us.

There have been moments, days, even a couple of weeks like in October, where we haven’t been in sync emotionally and psychologically. I have habits that drive my wife to drink, literally. She has an attitude about her life that sometimes makes me feel like picking up a jagged rock and pounding myself in my right temple until I hit grey matter. And, for the past year, we’ve spent as much time sleeping alone as we do collapsing together after another day of school, Noah, teaching, writing, working, consulting and cringing at our finances.

But we do have a few things that remain in our favor. We do love each other, and we do talk to each other about the things we care about the most. In the latter case, about eighty percent of the time. It would be nice if it was 100 percent. But after a decade and a half, we both need our space. We also have an eight-and-a-half year-old who is a joy to be around and nurture, even if he’s way too nosy, knowledgeable and smart-mouthed for his own good.

Today, though, while the Giants celebrate in New York City and at City Hall their fourth Super Bowl win, I

Camera-shy/mean look from Angelia at The Balcony, Pittsburgh, February 7, 1996. (Donald Earl Collins).

must celebrate the fact that I’ve been together with my wife as boyfriend and husband since she was in her late-twenties. I think back to sixteen years ago today, when I threw a surprise birthday get-together for my new girlfriend at my cramped studio in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty section. I made her a lemon cake with vanilla icing, took her to The Balcony jazz club in Shadyside for dinner, and afterwards, she came to my place and fell asleep.

She looked so peaceful after such a simple evening that I took a picture of her in my bed. Sometimes I think that this is the most peaceful I’ve ever seen her, that night, that birthday, seven weeks into a decades-long relationship.

There are so many things that I want to see happen, for me, for Noah, for my wife. But one thing near the top of the list is for her to see herself the way I see her. A person who persists, who fails and is disappointed time and time again, until they achieve and exceed their goals. A person who, somewhere in that process, is at peace with themselves. Happy Birthday, my sweet duck of a love!