Move

View from the front of our new home.

I've moved several times in my life.  As an adult, I've moved literally 5 times. (Not including my stints abroad.)  This recent move was my sixth.  So, it's not like I've never done it before.  But this time was definitely different.  This is the first time I've moved with someone else.  Of course, I was glad to be on a team with someone for something as exhausting as a major move, but I could feel an emotional weight tied up in this move that I hadn't felt before.  It's just the idea of my destiny being bound to someone else's.  The additional responsibility of considering someone else's well-being.  I have to admit I'm still not accustomed to it.  I'm still not used to the hyper-awareness that everything involving me by default involves my partner and vice versa.

A few days before we left, we found that our storage unit had been broken into and the majority of our wedding gifts stolen.  It was a surreal, soul-crushing discovery.  More than the violation of being robbed was the violation of the sacrifice and generosity of our loved ones.  We did everything we could and were supposed to do (informed the storage company, filed a police report, filed an insurance claim).  But in the end, I've accepted the fact that they are things, we aren't getting the things back and the situation was and is out of our hands.  I know that God is a provider and a restorer.  We have everything we need, and although I don't know how, when, or in what form, I know He is going to restore what was taken from us.  I am convinced of it.

So, we're here, settling in, and enjoying living in a 3br/2ba house, a welcome change from our sardine can student apartment.  We both have our work cut out for us: me, starting a new job and essentially having to look for a new one not long after this one starts, him: preparing for comps, successfully passing them and then writing a prospectus and successfully defending it.  The prospect of possibly throwing a baby into this mix seems insane, but that's one more thing we'll have to trust God with.  If I focus on the unknowns, I could really work myself up into a lather.  But no.  I'm going to focus on the knowns: We have a nice place to live, I have a job and plenty of support from my colleagues, my husband is on track to finish his program in a timely manner, and God is for us.  We are going to work together, trust together and have faith that where we fall short, God's grace will make up the difference.

Defense Day

Today is the day.  The day I get to add three letters to my name: P, H and D!  I will stand before my committee (and a few other supporters), summarize my project, answer questions and have a "conversation" about my project as well as my future research trajectory.  The only talking I'll do will last about 10-15 minutes at the beginning, and the rest will be listening to and responding to my committee.  I'm not taking it lightly, but I'm not freaking out about it either.  So far, I've gotten very positive feedback and I feel confident about it.   Still, there may be recommendations for revisions before I submit my last and final draft to the Graduate School, but post-defense revisions are pretty standard, and I don't feel like they'll be anything major.  I'm ready to do this!

I'm happy now that my defense date is finally here.  But getting my defense date set...that's another story.  A saga.  It was originally set for yesterday, but there was an unfortunate event of a committee member being involved in an accident—thankfully she's okay, and a bit of back and forth about the rescheduled day and time.  I have to admit I'm a little bummed that the committee member who was injured won't be able to participate today, but nevertheless, we're here, and we're forging ahead.

Arriving at this day has caused me to look back.  To look back at where I was when I started this program and compare it to where I am now.  When I started this program, I was coming from a pretty messed up emotional, spiritual, and vocational situation.  Starting the PhD wasn't necessarily my dream and honestly, I initially envisioned it as an escape, a way to provide myself with a more stable environment and with an opportunity to be in a place where I always thrived: in an academic setting.  Being in a PhD program may not have been what I always wanted, but once I settled in, I was convinced that I was where I needed to be.  And I am grateful.

To all the people who always asked "when I was going to settle down" or commented about how I was "always in school" or "always going off somewhere" as an implication that pursuing an education and a career, studying abroad, etc. would somehow encase me in a husband-repellent shell, I shall now passively-aggressively address you:

I've got to admit, I almost believed you.  I mean, I always hoped I would "settle down" sometime, but I knew I couldn't let my desire for marriage and family prevent me from exploring.  But I almost believed that maybe, somehow, all my exploring was futile and that no one would ever be up to the challenge of loving over-educated-yet-deeply-churchified, identity-insecure, raised-in-weird-worlds, contradictory me.  I fancied myself a rare, endangered species.  A human Mona Lisa who may be admired, but remain undecipherable and alone, a cold and lonely, lovely work of art.  I almost believed you.  I didn't regret starting my PhD, but believed that maybe it was taking me further from "settling down" after all.

But God has a real sense of humor, doesn't He?  What I thought was taking me further from finding a life partner was actually what led me straight to him.  I guarantee you that the last place I imagined I would ever find a man was in a PhD program.  Seriously.  But here we are, having been married for a little over a year now.

So, to you, I say sitchoself ALL the way down.  Stop setting up these false dichotomies for women.  Either pursue a career OR pursue marriage and family.  Either get a "secular" education and be concerned with things of the world OR get involved in ministry and be concerned with the Kingdom of God.  These are not mutually exclusive desires or realities.  I can pursue a career AND have a healthy marriage and family.  I can get a "secular" education AND use it to further the Kingdom.  Last year, I got my Mrs., this year, I'm getting my PhD, and next year?  We'll see.  I am doing it all, by the grace of God.

Groundhog Day

A month or so ago I watched that movie on Netflix with P because it's set in the town where he's from.  The same day happens over and over again to Bill Murray.  To comic effect.

Right now, though, I'm not talking about comic effect in this particular iteration of Groundhog Day.  I'm talking about the same thing happening over and over again with respect to encounters between black men and white police officers.

These are the times that I want to absolutely withdraw.  The times where I want to shut out the world.  The times I want to deactivate my Facebook account because it's overwhelming.

I want to laugh to keep from crying at the juxtaposition between posts engaging the crisis at hand and the usual mundane posts of pictures of people's kids and dogs and the minutiae of their bland, oblivious lives.

I think social media is used and can be used effectively for activism.  Many present-day social justice movements are social media-driven, they have effectively raised awareness of many causes, and I applaud their efforts.

But what about my "efforts"?

There is a stubborn, selfish, cowardly side of myself that refuses to engage.  Why should I expose my pain, anger, sadness or ideas to people who may or may not even be actual "friends"?  To people who could view my feelings on the matter at hand as a morsel laid out for their consumption?  It's akin to the feeling I have when non-black people ask me how I did my hair if I show up somewhere with a new 'do.  Like, why do you want to know?  You don't understand how my hair works, so you wouldn't understand how I did whatever I did to it, first of all.  Second of all, you couldn't replicate the look on your own hair, so it's not like you're asking so that you could try it out yourself.  It's just this need to satisfy your own curiosity while you have nothing at stake and nothing to contribute.  My hair has some pretty personal, political, emotionally fraught things attached to it.  It's such an important part of black womanhood and an important part of black women's self-image and self-esteem.  My hair, doing my hair, etc. holds an emotional weight that people without black hair can't even begin to understand.  Why should I explain to you what I did to it just for you to have the satisfaction of knowing?

There is another side of myself, equally stubborn, selfish and cowardly, but also insecure, that wishes to engage.  But then I question my reasons for wanting to engage.  So that I can prove to people that I'm "woke" and "conscious" and black enough?  To remind people that I'm still black (albeit light-skinned and married to a white man) have a black dad and black brothers (any of the men killed could very well have been them) and express that I'm anxious about raising biracial black children in this world?  So that I could show everyone that, honestly, I do care, that, seriously, I am affected by this senselessness?  So I can "be real" and dispel any notion that I'm "a part of the problem" by not "speaking out"?  I want to rid myself of this desire to prove my authenticity.  It's haunted me ever since my family moved from a military base in Italy to the deep South and I made the mistake of opening up my mouth.

Everything in my mind is connected.  When things happen in my life and in the world, the web of my brain connects the events like they're some kind of literary motif.

A day before the back to back police shootings of black men, before this script replayed that is so time-worn we're desensitized to it, I went to a restaurant with P and my mother-in-law for breakfast in the overwhelmingly white small town P is from.  As soon as we walked in, people began to stare at us.  Very blatantly.  It felt hostile.  P and I noticed it right away.  It wasn't the first time we've been gawked at, but this time was pretty flagrant.  Eventually P and MIL suggested we leave, so we did.  I didn't necessarily feel we should have left, but I just went along.  We talked about it afterward, but we never once used the words "race" or "racism" or "interracial couple."  We used phrases like "ignorance" and "close-minded" instead.  The fact that people were staring because I was black and/or because I was a black girl with a white guy/white family was implied, understood, but not articulated.

I know the answer is not to withdraw and shut out the world.  You can't.  To leave things to self-resolve.  They often won't.

I know what reality is and it saddens me.  It sickens me.  I want to find a place where we can settle down, start a family.  I want a safe, welcoming place for us.  But does such a place even exist?