A Journey Through A White Bread (We’re talking POM Gold white bread) Coming Of Age – In Parts.
Part 1
It is a rough topic, a soul-searing topic and a topic of intense shame, if you will. This topic and the inherent journey that it involved is intensely personal but I need to write it out. To see it, in order to…I don’t know, sort myself out?
Let’s be honest, I’m now in the “end years”, a decade or two left and then, only a memory to my kids. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of it. Death is a reality. Life/death, day/night…it is a fact. And no, I don’t believe in heaven or hell. I don’t believe in savior’s loving arms when my “soul” leaves this mortal coil, or the devil’s pitchfork in my arse. Those are simply tools of the powers that wish-to-be.
“Where was I? Oh yeah, White Bread Upbringing…suburbs of a city in Canada, blue and pink collar background. Very, very little exposure to any cultures but our own, Irish/Ukrainian. White folk. Racial slurs were tossed around, regularly. I thought this was just a part of our vernacular. I absolutely did not understand that these words were hurtful and unacceptable. Then television took up the banner; All In The Family was my most memorable exposure. Rob Reiner taking on Carol O’Connor’s character. I sided with Rob and of course, it started an decades long internal conversation with “self”
Then I found my community hit with prejudice during the FLQ crisis; army personnel patrolling the streets, in my high school parking lot. Halloween cancelled, mailboxes blowing up because? The English. That was something that drove my mother and grandfather nuts; being lumped in with the “English”. There were fights between English and French high schools, in fact, my husband, who attended school in French, was told by a fellow student to stop speaking English to his friends, at school, who had English as the mother tongue. (This still goes on by the way and yes, it is still as stupid.)
The news streaming in, riots due to homophobia, racism, feminism…a lot to process for a teenager. Then hearing derogatory terms for P.O.C. at home. I remember an incident, a Hindu family moved in a few houses down from us and my brother called their son a “Paki”; no idea why, I have forgotten but what I did not forget was how angry the mother of that child was – she, haughtily, declared that they were not “Pakis” but Indian. My Mom took my brother down for that little incident and I did ask her later, why it was wrong because Dad used that expression all the time. She said, “Your father is not always right.” Whoa…that was a real shock for me. My Dad was not always right.
There were more incidents similar to this; friends using the slurs, overheard conversations between adults in my sphere. It didn’t sit right but I was in a “I’ll think about it tomorrow” mode. I was growing up, everything was changing at breakneck speed from society, to my body and mind.
Out in the real world, I began to meet people from other cultures, religions, backgrounds; started to file information away for later consideration.
…..To Be Continued
Wicked Emerald - Live From The Montérégie 