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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: Angelia N. Levy

Kiss From A Rose – 20 Years On

20 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Marriage, Movies, music, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, Work, Youth

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"Kiss From A Rose" (1994/1995), 71B, Angelia, Angelia N. Levy, Batman Forever (1995), Bruce Willis, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, CMU, Dating, Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995), Friendships, PAT Transit, Romance, Samuel L. Jackson, Spencer Fellowship, Val Kilmer


Twenty years ago on this date, I re-met the woman who’s now my wife of fifteen years, Angelia on a PAT-Transit bus in Pittsburgh, the old 71B-Highland Park into Oakland. It was an eighty-five degree Saturday afternoon in the ‘Burgh. I decided to treat myself to a movie, Batman Forever (1995), mostly because I knew Val Kilmer was in it. After seeing him act as well as he did in Tombstone, I figured I needed to give it a try. I needed a break, between the euphoria of the Spencer Fellowship and the depression from the fire at 616 that had rendered my family homeless.

So here it was, 3:15 in the afternoon, with me dressed in a blue t-shirt with blue basketball shorts and sneaks. I was standing at the corner of Highland Avenue and Penn Circle South, across from my apartment building, waiting for a bus. The 71B showed up first. I jumped on, sat down on the right-hand side in a front-facing seat. As soon as I sat down, I saw her, sitting right in front of me. It was “Angela with an ‘i’,” Angelia, like that Richard Marx song from ’90.

Seal's second album/CD, Seal (1994): "Kiss From A Rose" re-released as part of Batman Forever (1995) soundtrack in June/July 1995. (http://www.allmusic.com).

Seal’s second album/CD, Seal (1994): “Kiss From A Rose” re-released as part of Batman Forever (1995) soundtrack in June/July 1995. (http://www.allmusic.com).

The thing was, I had a dream that she showed up in the Saturday before this one. I hadn’t seen Angelia in more than two years, hadn’t given her any thought. But it seemed weird that she would just show up a week later in the flesh.

So I said, “Hi Angelia!,” excitedly, wondering what she was doing on the bus. She paused, said “Hi” with the heaviest, stop-bothering-me sigh I’d heard since my high school days. That didn’t deter me. I coaxed out of her the fact that she was pissed off with Carnegie Library because a book she was looking for at the East Liberty branch wasn’t there, even though the catalog said it was. It was a conversation that was one-sided, with Angelia doing most of the complaining.

I listened, and thought, “Yep, same Angelia, same weird Angelia.” But since I was weird also, I kept listening. Finally, she asked me what I was up to. I told her about school, my Spencer Fellowship, my family’s homelessness situation. I kept it brief. I mean, I hadn’t seen her in two years.

By the time we reached Oakland — me to catch one of the 61s to Squirrel Hill to catch the movie, Angelia to walk over to the main branch of Carnegie Library — we exchanged numbers, with Angelia saying, “It was really good talking to you.” I wasn’t so sure about that myself, but at least, she didn’t seem as weird as the woman she was five years earlier.

Screen with Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis from Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995), posted February 28, 2013. (http://chud.com).

Screen with Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis from Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995), posted February 28, 2013. (http://chud.com).

I went to see the movie, but it turned out that it wasn’t out yet. It wasn’t due out for another month! I ended up seeing Die Hard With a Vengeance with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. Though much better than Die Hard 2 (1990; one shouldn’t really watch any feature film with John Amos taking up significant screen time, it still sucked, because Willis and Jackson spent half the movie yelling, and Jeremy Irons’ performance didn’t have Alan Rickman’s sense of social irony. I walked home, got together some grub, and through all preconceptions out the window. I gave her a call to tell her about the film mix-up. We ended up talking for more than three hours! It was the first time in a long time I had talked to a woman who wanted to hear what I thought about, well, anything, at least anything outside of sex. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.

A month later, we went to see Batman Forever, and it sucked, just like Angelia said it would. But Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose” didn’t. I bought his CD, though, and not the movie soundtrack!

Friendship, Marriage and Falsehoods

28 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Marriage, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, Religion, Work, Youth

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Angelia N. Levy, Family, Friendship, Husband-Wife Relationship, Love, Romance, Romantic Love, Wedding Anniversary, Work of Marriage


Me and Angelia at my PhD graduation, Carnegie Mellon University, May 18, 1997. (Edward Lomax).

Me and Angelia at my PhD graduation, Carnegie Mellon University, May 18, 1997. (Edward Lomax).

Today marks fourteen years of marriage. Statistically, we’re either a year away from divorce, or on board for a longer roller-coaster-ride of life and love, struggle and stress, revelation and renewal. Either way, it’s already been a great two decades of learning about myself and my wife, about the meaning of love (conditional and unconditional) and the limits of romance, about the real meaning of family and marriage.

Some of you may not believe this, but a marriage of any realness is hard work. We get tired of ourselves, our baggage, our bullshit. Now add another human being to the mix, the person you share most everything with. It can be a emotional meltdown of epic proportions if you’re not mature enough to have a well-honed sense of empathy, not to mention a sense of humor and a sense of when to back off.

I can say from experience that it helps to have been friends long before love, romance, marriage and parenting became part of the bargain. And not just friends, but the best of friends. Without having that, everything else is work without purpose, drudgery and painful struggles with personal and spiritual growth.

One of the many things I’ve learned in the past decade and nearly a half is that marriage itself has been loaded with context, deriving from Western ideas that have their roots in European royalty and the 19th century warping of such ideas for us ordinary folk. Including Whiteness and chivalry, of weird evangelical notions of masculinity and femininity, of patriarchy and high-born expectations. Only to realize that these ideas come out of an era of arraigned marriages, essential contracts to secure bloodlines and power for another generation of the elite classes. Romance, love, the eternal enduring bond between two soul-mates – that was never part of this bargain. But leave it to capitalism to distort a loveless process of procreation into an intense, always-falling-in-love – but without standing in love in the midst of struggle – idea of marriage.

Because of this knowledge, I know, too, that every marriage is different. And because of the unique nature of every relationship, I also know that my relationship with my wife is constantly evolving. Meaning that any ideas of marriage that I had fourteen years ago have been dead for a while. Trust me, this is a good thing. There is no singular road map to a happy and always-in-love marriage – that fairy tale is for the Anna Hathaway/Princess Bride set who remains at the mental age of eight or twelve.

No, a good marriage is about two people working toward similar goals, to a friendship that keeps changing, even if the contours of that friendship become ever more complicated. After all, it’s from that ground of friendship that our love shot up in the first place. Yay, us!

Marriage, 13 Years In

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Marriage, Youth

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Tags

Angelia N. Levy, Eloping, Family, Family Drama, Mother-Son Relationship, National Cathedral, Romance and Finance, Wedding, Wedding Anniversary


Marriage Day picture, National Cathedral, Washington, DC, April 28, 2000.

Marriage Day picture (cropped), National Cathedral, Washington, DC, April 28, 2000.

Friday, April 28, 2000. Angelia and I exchanged vows and became husband and wife. Or, to be honest, partners on a journey with lots of ups and down, twists and turns, and I don’t knows. That’s really what any serious relationship is. It is journey where the outcome is not always certain, the footing isn’t always sure, and what you thought you knew about yourself and your partner turns out to only be a tip of an iceberg.

We married in ’00, but we didn’t have a wedding. At least one defined by family and friends. We eloped. I couldn’t go through another event in which my family — my mother especially — could ruin the occasion. And with our families not being of any means, scattered between Pittsburgh, New York, Georgia and Florida, the most expensive piece of the wedding would’ve been flights and hotels. I’m talking immediate families, not extended. Between that and my experience at my doctoral graduation in ’97 (see my “Post-Doctoral Life” post from May ’08), I couldn’t spend thousands of dollars of our own money on a ceremony much more for them than for us.

So when I suggested that we should secretly elope, Angelia was more than happy to say yes. Thank God we were on the same page! We turned that day into a wedding, minus family and friends of course. We became tourists in our own town, and spent most of the afternoon at the National Cathedral, taking pictures and getting others to take our picture (like the one above).

We’re thirteen years in, and even on the worst of days and with the worst of arguments, I think it’s been well worth it. Do I know what’s in store for this journey in the future? Of course not! I’m not sure about the next six months, much less what life will look like for us as our son slowly approaches preteen status. But all in all, it’s been fun, weird and full of love, of good and great moments. All I can do is hope that these outweigh any storms coming our way.

Pregnant Pauses

02 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, Pop Culture, Religion, Youth

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616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Abortion, Angelia N. Levy, Boy @ The Window, Choice, decisions, Eri, Family, Fatherhood, Intervention, Maurice Eugene Washington, Mom, Motherhood, Parenthood, Pregnancy, Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, Reproductive Rights, Sarai, Silver Spring, Women's Rights


Ultrasound of fetus, 2nd or 3rd Trimester, November 1, 2012. (http://brmh.org).

I agree with President Barack Obama and with so many leading women. Men — especially men in leadership positions — should just shut up when it comes to women’s reproductive rights. Still, my life has given me a unique perspective on a woman’s right to choose, if only because I’ve had little choice as a child and a husband to be involved. I can only say that choice isn’t easy, even for pro-choice males. But I can also say that I knew more about choice at twelve than most men would ever care to know, and more about bringing new life into the world as a result.

The two examples of “the decision” that stand out most for me are twenty Novembers apart, in ’82 and ’02.

A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving ’82, I noticed something about my mother. At a time when we all looked starved, my mother looked round. Her stomach and cheeks were telltale signs. So I asked her, my tweener voice cracking all the while.

Sickled and normal red blood cells, November 1, 2012. (original source unknown).

“Mom, are you pregnant?!?”

“Yeah, Donald, I’m pregnant,” she sighed.

“What! You got to be kidding! You mean you’re still having sex with him?”

“Watch ya mouth, boy!”

“Mom, what are we going to do? You can’t have a baby, not now, not with all these mouths to feed!”

“Donald, what I’m supposed to do?”

“You need to get an abortion, that’s what!”

“I don’t believe in abortion. It’s against God’s will.”

“Well, we can’t feed the kids that are here now, so how can you feed it? Get an abortion Mom, before it’s too late!”

Before my mother could say anything else, I stormed out for yet another store errand for milk, diapers, and all the things I couldn’t eat. I wanted to cut Maurice’s balls off and shove them down his throat. I wanted to shake Mom until her eyes rolled back in her head. Most of all, I wanted to get her to an abortion clinic yesterday (see my post “The Quest For Work, Past and Present” from August ’12).

That “it” turned out to be my sister Sarai, my late sister, born nearly four months after I came out as a pro-choice feminist and a stress-out Hebrew-Israelite teenager. She lived for twenty-seven years, five months and two days with sickle-cell anemia, without ever knowing I once preferred her not to be born (see my post “My Sister Sarai (Partial Repost)” from July ’10).

Over the next two decades, I’d become so fed up with kids and family, 616 and Mount Vernon and so many things in my life that I once thought that I’d never get married or become a father. The people in my life growing up in Mount Vernon — like my ex-stepfather and the young folks in the neighborhood — refused the responsibility of fatherhood (and in a few cases, motherhood). The idea that there would ever be a child of mine running around without me being in their life made me determined to limit my casual relationships and ensured that I would always have protected sex.

Even after getting married in ’00, I still wasn’t sure if I really wanted a child. Out of any seven-day period, I would’ve been happy to be a dad for four days, and miserable for the other three. I wanted to make sure my wife and me could afford parenthood, that we had the emotional and psychological capacity to take care of any child we brought into this world.

By the middle of ’02, though, it was obvious that my wife wanted to have a child, a son. Coming off of a family intervention, in which my then seventeen-year-old brother Eri had made my mother a grandmother, I was even less excited than I otherwise would’ve been (see my post “Dear Mama (More Like, ‘Dear Mom’)” from October ’09). Still, I loved my wife, and I loved myself enough to think that if I liked the idea of a kid four out of every seven days, it was worth a try.

We didn’t try very long. By Thanksgiving Day ’02, I picked up on my wife’s change of emotions before she did. I had asked her to watch over heavy cream that I was warming up to make a chocolate sauce. The cream wasn’t supposed to boil. It did anyway, as my wife wasn’t paying full attention. Instead of being argumentative with me per usual about my pointing out her lack of attention to detail, she started crying, as if it was the end of the Law & Order franchise. I was startled, and said, “Honey, I think you’re pregnant.” She laughed at first, but as we would eventually find out, I was correct.

It was one of the happiest moments of my life! I had made my wife immeasurably happy, and I found myself wanting something, perhaps for the first time. To be a great father, to live long enough, to be healthy enough, to be productive enough to be the father that I never had growing up.

Noah in Baby Bjorn/my parka, Silver Spring, MD, December 3, 2003 (Angelia N. Levy).

If it had turned out that my wife had not wanted to be a mother, and she had become pregnant, and it turned out that she wanted an abortion, I would’ve fully supported her. Not just because I wanted her to be happy, and not just because I’m more firmly pro-choice now than ever. I’ve seen my mother and too many other mothers who’ve made the wrong choices for themselves and their lives.

Life can be long and miserable when making bad decisions, especially when it comes to bringing another life into this world. That anyone would think it a good idea to limit what is already one of the most difficult decisions women and families have to make is anti-Christian and immoral, not to mention just plain stupid.

After The Fall

18 Friday May 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, New York City, Politics, race, Youth

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6007 Penn Circle South, Angelia N. Levy, Betrayal, Bitterness, Carnegie Mellon University, Contaminated Food, Disappointment, Emotional Wreck, Gastrointestinal Illness, Heartbroken, Joe Trotter, Maurice Eugene Washington, Maurice Washington, My Mother, PhD Graduation, Pittsburgh, Rage, Summer of Abuse


The planet Caprica under nuclear attack, Battlestar Galactica (2003), September 28, 2011. (Gary Hutzel/SyFy Channel via http://soundonsight.org). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution of picture.

Fifteen years ago this date, I officially graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with my PhD, no thanks to Carnegie Mellon itself (see my post “The Audacity of Youth, Grad School Style” from August ’11). I’d been done with the dissertation since the Friday before Thanksgiving ’96, so the ceremony itself was anticlimactic. The week of my graduation, though, revealed more about my mother and the ugly truth about how conditional our relationship was than I knew or thought possible (see my post “My Post-Doctoral Life” from May ’08 for much more).

All of that was on top of a week that included doing an interview at Teachers College, going to my mother’s associate’s degree graduation and being followed while Black at the Barnes & Noble that used to be on 66th and Broadway in Manhattan. That week came on the heels of recovering from the ordeal that was the political struggle over my dissertation process with Joe Trotter (see my “You’re Not Ready” and “Running Interference” posts from November ’08 and April ’11).

By the time I went back into town with my girlfriend (now wife of twelve years) Angelia from Pittsburgh International Airport, I was in a space I hadn’t been in since the late spring and summer of ’82. The “summer of abuse” at 616, as I call it now (see my “To My Ex-Stepfather” post from July ’09).  My pursuit of higher education, then advanced degrees and career options, and all of the success — direct, collateral and otherwise — that came with that striving and those triumphs was apparently a lot of what had kept me grounded for the previous fifteen years.

Lava lake, Mount Nyiragongo (volcano), Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo, May 7, 2011. (Cai Tjeenk Willink via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via cc-Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.

Now that I was done, and I was able to see people for who they really were, I found myself unbound. A deep well of rage — along with a bucket of betrayal with which to haul it up — was suddenly available to me, and would remain so for years to come. For the first time since the beginning of my sophomore year at Pitt, I felt despair, as if I was homeless and sleeping on a stairwell landing in Forbes Quadrangle again. I spent that cab ride back to East Liberty in an emotional fog, somewhere between tearing up and ready to beat someone half to death.

Angelia brought me back to her place, made me sit down, and insisted that she make dinner for me. She pulled out of her freezer some leftover stir-fry vegetables and turkey from Thanksgiving ’96, and made it into a stir-fry over rice. I was about halfway through this meal before my brain began receiving messages from my normally precise palate. “Stop eating!,” my synapses started screaming. The food I’d eaten had probably gone bad long before Angelia had frozen it. And despite the sweet and sour and soy sauces, it also became apparent that the meat had experienced severe freezer burn.

Within a few minutes, I had severe bloating and pain in my stomach, and Angelia had given me water and Pepto Bismol to settle my stomach. She apologized, “Sorry, Donald,” with an ironic laugh, adding, “This just isn’t your day.” I went back to my studio apartment on Penn Circle South that evening, in pain in many more ways than one.

My intestinal pains became worse over the next three days. I wasn’t eating much to begin with, and what I

Chemical structure of bismuth subsalicylate, aka, Pepto Bismol, September 5, 2007. (Edgar181 via Wikipedia). In public domain.

had in my system as a result of Angelia’s poisonous gruel had resulted in an intestinal blockage. A clear-headed person would’ve gone to the ER and had himself checked out. But my brain was about as clear as a mushroom cloud in the middle of Central Park. I could barely move, it hurt just sitting up, and I cried, sometimes in my sleep. At some point, the pain in my gastrointestinal tract and the pain from my graduation ceremony merged as one and the same.

Was I experiencing some psychosomatic trauma? It wouldn’t have been the first time my emotional flaying manifested itself in my G/I tract. Angelia’s food may have been the catalyst, but the realization that my mother was never really on my side — along with my advisor and some of my friends — was the root cause.

By that Friday, I was able to eat again. But like my relationship with my mother, my intestinal tract has never been the same. Betrayal and loss of trust — and faith — will do that to the most confident of us.

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Places to Buy/Download Boy @ The Window

There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below:

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Boy @ The Window on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-The-Window-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00CD95FBU/

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Boy @ The Window on Apple's iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/boy-the-window/id643768275?ls=1

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) logo, June 26, 2013. (http://www.logotypes101.com).

Boy @ The Window on Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/boy-the-window-donald-earl-collins/1115182183?ean=2940016741567

You can also add, read and review Boy @ The Window on Goodreads.com. Just click on the button below:

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