The Little Red Hen is My Kinda Chick

Little Bitty's aunt recently gave her a book called The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza.

As I recall, the old school version has the hen running after the other farm inhabitants in search of some assistance with harvesting wheat and grinding it into flour to make a loaf of bread. In this updated version (retold by Philemon Sturgis and illustrated with cunning cut-paper collages by Amy Walrod), our chick has moved to the city and has a hankering for a pie with the works. But her urban friends are no more helpful than the ones down on the farm.

“Hello,” she said. “Who’ll run to the store and get me some flour?”
"Not I," said the duck.
"Not I," said the cat.
"Not I," said the dog.

Little Bitty was appalled and deeply offended by the idea that the other animals kept refusing to help the hen. But I told her there were some good lessons in this book.

First, that hen wasn’t stymied when nobody came to her aid. She went out and bought her own pizza pan, then went back to buy the flour, the cheese, the toppings. She made her pizza dough from scratch, topped it with everything she wanted on it (including olives, onions and anchovies) and baked her own damn pizza.

On top of it all, when the savory pie was done, she was kind enough to share it with the deadbeats anyway. And smart enough to put her feet up and read a magazine while they did the dishes. (Yes, they finally got the picture, to Little Bitty’s relief.) And she did it all in some very hip shoes.

All in all, I’d say this Little Red Hen is a very Plan B type of chick.

It was an old story I’d long forgotten, but one I was glad to share with my little girl. I hope she won’t forget those lessons. I hope I won’t either.

Suddenly I See

Her face is a map of the world
Is a map of the world
You can see she's a beautiful girl
She's a beautiful girl
And everything around her is a silver pool of light
The people who surround her feel the benefit of it
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm


I was flipping channels one late night and landed on a live performance by a woman I’d never heard of. I put down the remote, intending to have her sing background music as I worked. But this song captured me. I Googled it and I've been listening to it over and over. (So much that Little Bitty has started singing it. "She's a beautiful girl, she's a beautiful girl...")

A few weeks later, flipping channels again, I landed on opening sequence of The Devil Wears Prada and realized that this was the theme song for the movie. So it’s old news. Still, the lyrics to K.T. Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See” are fresh and vital for where I am right now. I think it says something about the way I used to feel about myself, the way I always thought I’d feel at this stage of my life—and the way I want to feel now.

Problem is, I’ve been hearing little things about myself lately—and seeing things in myself —that don’t fit that picture. The me I’d like to be is smooth around the edges. She has sea legs; she doesn’t waver or flail when things are in tumult. She does not suffer from procrastination, panic—or PMS.

The me I am has edges and sharp teeth. I do panic, quietly and frequently. I waver. I think one thing—consistently and firmly—until I say it aloud, with all possible didacticism. Then I change my mind. I have brilliant ideas that die of hunger and thirst. I think of the perfect thing to say—three days too late.

And I know I have to accept that. I have to forgive it. I have to mix it in with the fact that I can juggle a million things, think of the perfect gift, write a letter that will always get the interview, fry the best tofu anybody ever tasted, inspire someone to do their best thing, and make a comeback every single time.

My latest speech to Said Husband was all about “people being people”—being human, being flawed, and being okay with that. I believe that in theory—that it’s okay to be messy and complicated and kinda wrong—but it’s damn hard to accept in practice. Not when you want to feel like a beautiful girl in a silver pool of light.

But if you want a face that’s a map of the world, then I believe you have to accept your own humanity—the mountains and valleys, the desert places and the flooding ones. The places where the sun comes up and the ones where all the bones are buried. You have to see all of that in you. And get to know it. And learn to love it.

I'm learning.

Self-knowledge is a nourishment. Self-acceptance is imperative. Self-worth is a treasure. (How’s that for didactic.)

By the way, the chorus of the song goes like this:

Suddenly I see this is what I want to be.
Suddenly I see why the hell it means so much to me.

Dig In

Periodically, my girl Marva will send me a "brilliant carat" newsletter from business and life coach Simon T. Bailey. More than a month ago, she sent me this one—which I forwarded to firestarter Danielle. For some reason (kismet?), D sent it back to me today. Clearly I was meant to read it again. It was good the first time, but a lot can change in a month. Today I'm "standing in a different river" and this message struck me in a way that it hadn't before.

Bailey writes:

"His eyes on fire, Robin [Rampersad] explained that when a tree is going through its winter season, it is denied the ability to produce food through the process of photosynthesis. Everything changes for this tree because it is accustomed to trapping sunlight in its leaves via chlorophyll, which gives the leaves their green pigment, and transforming that chlorophyll along with other viable ingredients into food. This is normal for the tree, and it doesn’t have to think about it. It’s second nature. Yes, this is third grade science but it is so cool.

"In the winter, though, these normal functions are no longer an option because there isn’t enough sunlight to produce food, nor are there any leaves on the tree to trap the light. The tree, at this time, becomes almost dead on the outside, but internally, it begins to search for answers. As a result, it is forced to find food another way. And here’s the brilliance of God—the tree must push its roots deep into the soil to find enough minerals, salts, and water to sustain itself.

"Because the tree has spent the winter anchoring itself deeper and deeper into the soil and finding sustenance in a time of scarcity, it will be able to grow and thrive in the spring and summer months. Its fruit will be of a wonderful quality because the nutrients that helped produce it have come from deep within the recesses of the earth."

I'm struck, today, by the idea that sometimes it's necessary to rely on new and different means of sustenance. We often literally have a favorite place to go for our food. The farmer's market. A favorite bakery. The local burger joint. We rely on that spot to fill us. But what happens when the farmer's market closes for the winter? Or you realize that, for all kinds of reasons, you should probably leave the $8 slices of white-chocolate cheesecake alone for a while? What feeds you then? You have to find another place to forage.

It's true of all kinds of nourishment—physical, spiritual, emotional. Sometimes the thing you've always relied upon to "feed" you—the job, the lover, the church, the ego—can't fill you any longer. Maybe you've entered a dry season. Maybe your field is fallow. But one thing is certain: A sista needs to eat. Another thing that's sure: Spirit will make sure she does.

When you start to fear the haunting "lack" and begin to listen for the hungry moan rising from your belly, reflect on Bailey's story of the trees. Remember the parable of the manna. Believe, if you will, that Spirit always provides. (Kismet.) Believe, if you can, that what comes next may be even more delicious and nourishing than what you've had.

Maybe Marie Antoinette had it right. When your bread is gone, start looking around for the cake.

I Got Shoes

I got shoes.
You got shoes.
All God’s children got shoes….
--from an old gospel song

I was talking to Salaama today about a loved one who, we think, is missing a great opportunity. Why is he hesitating over a prospect that seems so ideal, we wondered? Was it fear? Ego? Wisdom? We don’t know—we can’t know—what keeps him from making a move. All we know is that he is a grown man, making his own choices. He must have his reasons, we reminded ourselves.

“I guess I could afford to put myself in his shoes,” Salaama said, wisely. We agreed that doing so was a sure way to conjure up compassion and push judgment aside. And thinking about things from other people’s point of view almost certainly adds value to your relationship with them.

But I told her that I realized that I sometimes spent so much time worrying about what's happening in other folks’ shoes, that I don’t pay enough attention to what’s happening in my own.

If you’re a wife, a mother or a caretaker of any kind, you probably know the feeling. You’re constantly considering the needs of the people you love. Not just what they need in the moment, but what they’re going to need, what they might need.

Take next week: Said Husband would normally be on parenting duty on Monday, a day I commute to work. But he’s doing an overnight shift the night before. And though he’ll be home in time to take care of Little Bitty, I think he’ll be tired, so I’m planning for her to be somewhere on Monday so he can rest. (And so she won't be home all day with a Daddy who's too tired to play.)

I guess all that comes with the territory to some degree or another. We’re a family after all—so one person’s choices affect the others. But what happens when it goes beyond the family schedule?

It wasn't that long ago that it hit me that I was thinking about everybody else’s career choices and health needs and financial concerns—but paying very little to my own. What was my plan for the future? Where was my next check coming from? How was I fulfilling my reason for being? Is urging someone else to move and grow really the source of my own movement and growth? I don’t want to look up one day and realize that I’ve spent all my energy worrying about other folks’ choices—choices I can’t control anyway—and have done nothing to further my own purpose for being on the planet.

My mother’s father, a poor man with ten children to clothe and feed, insisted on “good shoes”—sturdy soles and high-quality leather—for them all. And he insisted that those hard-earned shoes be well taken care of. I remember my own Daddy sitting down on Saturday nights to wax and polish his shoes for Sunday morning and the rest of the week. These are the people who taught me that taking care of your soles is a good investment. It think they would say that taking care of your own soul is, too.

Exploring Fault Lines

Finally!!

Last fall, I was ranting about couple-heal-thyself books—all of which seemed to be some variation on “your guy is great and your relationship would be too if you could just manage to stay silent and get into man-adoration mode.” Where's the book called Wow, Your Wife is Great, I wondered.

That one still hasn't been published, as far as I can tell, but Yin seems to have found the next best thing: It's (Mostly) His Fault: For Women Who Are Fed Up and The Men Who Love Them.

Author Robert Mark Alter definitely gets points for the title. (Forgive me for wanting to spread the relationship responsibility around a little.) I wonder how balanced his approach really is? A book like this could be a man basher or it could be a throw back to old "husbands should be in charge" thinking. And the reality always is that when you're fed up, you have some responsibility in that, too.

Have you read it? Let me know whether it’s worth checking out.

A Warrior

For my sisters in the midst of making change:

"A warrior is a hunter. She calculates everything. That's control. Once her calculations are over, she acts. She lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push her. No one can make her do things against herself or against her better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and she survives in the best of all possible fashions."

--adapted (by Yin) from Carlos Castaneda

Opposites Attract

That ain’t the problem. The magnetic pull of someone who seems so different from you is practically irresistible. And rather thrilling. Not only do you get to see yourself through different eyes (a view that’s especially appealing if you’re not particularly in love with your own picture of yourself) you get to decorate your homogeneous life with the exotic colors of your Significant Other’s otherness. You also get to congratulate yourself on your open mindedness and your tolerance. See how progressive and enlightened I am to make such a maverick alignment?

No, the attraction is not the problem. It’s getting the attraction to hold when all the variations of “opposite” begin to show themselves. And they will. It may take only a few weeks or months for the novelty to erode or for some circumstance to illuminate the fact that your lanes are diverging. (Say, you’re applying for a job at a Big 6 accounting firm, while he’s saving his tips for a six-month retreat to a Himalayan ashram.) But when the significance of the opposition is more subtle, you may find yourself half a decade into the thing, with adjoining paperwork—a marriage certificate, joint credit cards, a mortgage in both your names—or offspring with your eyes and an Attractive Opposite mouth.

At that point, you’ve got to ask yourself some hard questions, all of which can be summed up thus: Oh shit, what now?

You can take the “This is the Bed I Made, Now I Have to Lie in It” approach, but it rather reeks of self-blame—of wallowing in martyred suffering. A healthier tack might be to adopt the stoic maxim created by the Brit Ministry of Information during World War II: Keep Calm and Carry On. (The Negro Spiritual version of this is “I b’lieve I’ll run on and see what the end gon’ be.”) Either approach tamps down any tendency toward whining–which won’t much help in any case.

If you find yourself asking the question, What did I ever see in this person? don’t ask rhetorically. Aim to reclaim the true answer—and your appreciation for what it was that attracted you. If you find the answer, encase it in glass or bronze it or frame it to keep it for posterity.

But say your back isn’t up to lying in hard beds, and you can’t find any museum-quality traits in your Other. There is also the “Mission Accomplished” perspective with its presumed exit clause. Some people believe that they were brought together for a specific season or reason. When the purpose is past, they can peacefully move on.

I'm sure there are all kinds of beautiful stories of opposites living perfectly peaceful yin-yang lives (please share yours). From what I’ve been hearing lately, though, making a success of an opposites attraction takes some conscious, devoted doing.

I’m not advocating for homogeneity here. There’s a difference, I’d say, between opposites and people who balance each other out. When he knows how to light a fire under her and she knows how to settle him down—and each is willing to bend to the other’s influence—it can make for a beautiful whole.

In order for any of it to work, each must value the gifts of the other. It’s not about opposites attracting. It’s about appreciating your opposite.

All of Us Are Brave

Inherent in any Plan B is the necessity to consider the option of making a move. If the place where you are or the situation you’re in isn’t working out, you’ve either got to find a way to fix it or find a way out.

But which is braver—to stay or to go?

I remember listening to a friend talk about his maverick ancestors who left their land and headed for Oklahoma—homesteaders escaping the misfortune of being Black in the south. He made his clan sound so wild and free—people nourished on wild meat washed down by hard liquor. People who stood up, stared you down. People who smiled a little and dared ya.

My own ancestors didn’t ride off or steal away. They can be traced for generations to plots of land a little north of the North Carolina border or a little south, but not much more than 75 miles in either direction. They are the ones who stayed, tethered by traditions—some that kept them poor, some that kept them hidden, some that them securely rooted. They smiled a little, cast their eyes aside and moved around whatever was in their way.

My grandfather’s legend comes to mind. An orderly in the local hospital, he worked quietly, steadily for the salary that helped feed his ten children. One day he had a heart attack at work. He must have been surrounded by doctors who might have treated him. But he was colored and this was a white hospital in Virginia. So they let him lie until they could send for my grandmother (there was no phone to call) so she could arrange to come get him (there was no car) and take him to the small colored hospital across town.

He survived. And when he’d recovered his strength, he went back to work. At the hospital that had refused him treatment.

Who, then, is stronger? The ones who leave their troubles behind, bracing for an uncertain fate? Or the ones who face their troubles down—certain of them, but certain, too, that somehow they can plow on?

The Exodusters and the Great Migrators must have been courageous souls to pick up and leave for definite or indefinite destinations—someplace, somehow new. I admire them for packing their things and taking to the road, singing I'll Fly Away. But the ones who stayed must have possessed a sturdy nerve to stay and stand firm in their roots. They sang, too: I Will Not Be Moved.

I understand both urges. My tendency, when times get too tough, is to look for a new road to take. But I am transfused with the sticky blood of people who kept plowing the land they knew. A free child of people who were not, I understand that there is more than one way to make tracks.

So, who is braver? I have considered it for years now, and I don’t know. There is a noted womanist studies book titled All the Woman Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave. I would like to think that all of us are brave. And that maybe it doesn’t matter that you made the courageous choice, as long as you know you’ve made the right one: the one that keeps your soul alive.

WWOD?

I first heard Michelle Obama speak last spring during the Presidential primaries. I’d scooped Little Bitty out of school early, gone down to the city armory, and stood in a line that extended down the block, waiting. Her flight from Chicago was so much delayed that at the time she was supposed to be delivering her speech here, her plane was still on the tarmac in Illinois. But we all waited. And it was worth the wait.

What struck me most about that speech—and what has struck me consistently during these past two years (two years!) of hearing both Obamas speak—was the sense of purpose that they have individually, that they seem to share with each other and that they are offering to the nation.

She talked that day, as I’ve heard her do since, about her past—the lessons she learned from watching her father; listening to her mother; navigating school, university and the world of work. She talked about her vision for her future—the kind of people she wants her girls to become, the things she wants to do herself, the things she expects from her husband.

In the open letter to his daughters, Barack Obama outlines the same vision—one that is personal for his family, but that also places them in a larger context, so that they understand that they have an important place and an important purpose in the world. He wrote, “I hope both of you will take up that work, righting the wrongs that you see and working to give others the chances you've had. Not just because you have an obligation to give something back to this country that has given our family so much—although you do have that obligation. But because you have an obligation to yourself. Because it is only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential.”

If nothing else, the Obamas are deeply thoughtful. Their sense of purpose is inspirational. Whatever happens in the days to come—whatever the difficulties and triumphs—I anticipate being inspired by this family. Not in an abstract, political, nationalistic way; for me, their leadership is personal. They are a model for my family—or what I hope my family to be: A strong, sensible woman and a thoughtful, purposeful man together raising balanced, self-assured children and living out a life of intention.

Pomegranates and Paradoxes

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies. . . .”

—from Antony and Cleopatra

When we were courting, easing into engagement, my now-husband called me “99,” after the svelte, dark-haired Agent 99 on the 60s TV show “Get Smart.” (Remember that one?) He said that I represented 99 percent of the things he had always wanted in a woman. (Ever practical, he didn’t call me "100" to leave a little room for whatever tiny little thing about me didn’t quite make his list. No one’s perfect, he affirmed. Of course I agreed.)

Back then, I thought the nomenclature clever and fun and romantic and I loved to sign little notes to him with my new, numeric nickname. But after a while (I don’t remember when, but I’d guess it was sometime after the dreamy beach wedding and well into the getting-to- know-the-REAL-you phase) it occurred to me that 99 was a little…limiting.

“I’m not 99,” I told him. “I’m 99 times 99. I’m infinite.” So was he, I conceded. So are we all.

I rebel against the slightest sense that I might be expected to stay within the confines of someone’s expectations (even my own). I knew enough about myself to understand that I am, if nothing else, a mass of contradictions, a packet of perfect paradox. There is no box that some part of me won’t seep out of. I've done things that surprised even me and learned from the experience that, with me, anything is possible. I am a woman of “infinite variety.” So are you. We all are.

It’s terribly inconvenient. So much easier—for you and everyone around you—to settle on a definition of yourself and just stick to that. Frees your mind to think about other things. But we grow and change. We're sure of one thing today and certain of something else tomorrow. We break and hit bottom; we recover, we realize, we rise up. Shift happens.

The definition of “human” includes innate complexity. And if we are to know and embrace our own personhood—and that of the people we love—then we might as well be prepared to delve into the convoluted intricacy that makes us different from one another. If we value our own personhood—and want it to be accepted—we will demand that delve. If we crave the sweet, complicated intimacy that comes from fully and truly knowing another, we’ll be willing dig in. It’s a juicy journey, but well worth it.

Think of it like eating a pomegranate. Outside: alluringly rosy, surprisingly tough; inside: full of crunch and pith and juice. You have to deal with the seeds and the stain in order to sip the bittersweet nectar. An apple is an easier, sweeter fruit to eat, but the pomegranate has 99 times the goods.

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My infinite sister Danielle LaPorte’s recent post inspired this one. Check out her new site whitehottruth.com for more self-inspiration.