OK, so I returned. My adventures in looking at other places still made me want to be "home" But in 2020, it is a weird place to be. The whole year is filled with a strange, distorted sense of how to be. This time, returning to Philadelphia is almost like a TV trope where I might have traveled to a parallel world that isn't quite the same as the one I am from.
I was back just a little over a month when one of my former students from FACTS was shot in the head and killed in a driveby. This is the 2nd death by gun violence of someone related to the FACTS family. (Another was a son of my former Dean). Both young black men with incredible mothers who would do anything to get them away from situations that structural racism set up to oppress black people. I couldn't ever explain this in a way that captures the pain to people in the school I just left...
Ming and I are thinking of getting a 2nd home since there are now 6 of us in this one and sometimes when the other kids come it just gets crazy. So we started looking in the mountains. But I always look with an eye to my black and brown "sons from another mother" and where they can be safe. Us too as Asian American, but them much more so. I wanted to find something tucked away, surrounded by trees. But outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a pretty scary white state. I would like nothing better than to be on a farm raising some chickens and tending a garden. And it kind of sucks that doing that makes me feel unsafe.
PJ wants to go somewhere he can hunt (I don't understand that obsession) and is it strange to find comfort in a gun being around if I moved to that imaginary home in the woods? What 2020 has driven me to. I will meditate with compassion but what do I do with my fear?
No comments:
Post a Comment