Today is my birthday; I am now 41 years old. That’s old enough to have a child old enough to ask me what things used to be like.
I woke up this birthday morning on the living room couch. My wife had asked me to sleep there, not because we fought the previous night but because she wanted someone on the same floor as the children.
For two days, we had gone to bed with the sound of sirens blaring in every direction. One hundred yards away from our home people had broken into the Best Buy to loot it. One of them stole a car from the parking lot. A few of them fled the police into our neighborhood and cut through our yards or hung around in our alleys.
I woke up this birthday morning talking to my wife about how quiet the night had been after all. Lucky us.
Those Early Birthdays
The version of the story growing up was still some version of the boomer’s American Dream. My parents were trying to live it. It was expected my brothers and I would live it.
That dream didn’t involve cops killing people who were driving, jogging, or sleeping. The cops were there to protect us, and we were supposed to respect and trust them.
The stories we’re sold…
This was the 80s, when TV shows followed cops around to somewhat luridly document confrontations with drunk, shirtless dudes on the front lawns of run-down houses. Cops in the 80s fought a War on Crime and a War on Drugs. They were protecting us.
They were protecting “us.”
By the time I got out of graduate school to finally take my piece of the pie, the educated elite and the powers that be had destroyed our economy on the backs of other Americans who had been told they, too, could have the American Dream. On my 30th birthday, we had just had a kid, and there were suddenly no jobs in my field.
I’ve written about that elsewhere. The Dream failed not only my generation but my parents’ generation. It’s not that we have had bad lives but that we were sold a bad story.
Birthdays of Late
We began to revise the story. We joined a multi-cultural church. The country elected a black president.
Then we elected another white president. A president who made some of our church friends afraid for the safety of themselves and their families.
People told stories of growing up in the South or on the South Side or even up the street here in Evanston and being bullied, intimidated, and abused.
One man, a spiritual grandfather of mine, told of how his success in his career depended not just on his work ethic but on the favor of white bosses. These men became his friends; he spoke at their funerals.
The point being that for some time, now, the American Dream has not felt like the promise it was meant to be. For some time, now, it has not felt like the powers that be were looking out for us, were protecting us.
Us has changed, for me. It has grown larger, more inclusive, more complicated. Us doesn’t always look or think alike, doesn’t usually look or think like I had grown up seeing and thinking.
Us has become more like “all of us,” all of America.
How to Celebrate a Birthday after a Looting
Ask me to “say their names,” and I could probably give you a dozen. My son and I marched this weekend with 10,000 fellow citizens who believe the American Dream can mean more than it does. Some of them carried signs with 20, 30 names, names I had forgotten or names I had never heard.
That night, where we live on the other end of town, the looting hit our city. Several stores shut down and the police closed off a shopping center. There was no burning and no violence, no throwing bricks or paths of destruction.
In other words, it could have been worse. Another friend, a lifelong Evanstonian, said he feels like we’re in a bubble, here. That it’s a blessing, at least.
Wishing you well on your special day…
Everyone wishes you well on your birthday and hopes you can do something fun and relax and have a “special day.” It’s nice to have special days, and I’m looking forward to a nice meal and seeing some friends.
But it’s strange to celebrate a birthday when fires burn around your country. When passions rage, when the pain of centuries boils over again because it’s never been given anywhere to go.
I try to recognize that it’s a privilege to have the option of celebrating a birthday, today. A privilege no one wants to take away but to have for themselves, and rightly so.
As I get older, I’m getting better at feeling more than one feel at a time. “All the feels,” as the slang goes (or did a year or two ago). One can feel joy and sadness at the same time, gratitude and outrage from moment to moment. That’s part of being an adult.
The Impressionists showed us that shadows are rarely all black, like we would draw them as kids.
Let’s be adults about this. Let’s allow our brothers and sisters to feel what they feel, let’s be okay with our own complex and uncomfortable emotions.
To pretend that a birthday, that any day, can admit of only one emotion is to live in a dream.
I’m a writer. I help people tell their stories with words. Words on websites, words in emails, words in books. If you have a story that needs telling, I’d love to find out how I can help. I’m especially interested in businesses, brands, and individuals who are trying to make the world a better place. Contact me today.
Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash
