Struggle & a Rosebud Moment

It's a wonderful verb, "struggle."

It conjures up images of a gritty and vocal resistance.  A fight of words, fists, bravery, cowardice. Against indignities, inhumanities, and malice.

I am not entitled to use this verb "struggle" in relationship to my life.  Hyperbole, perhaps.  Nothing more.

This struck me this morning.  Clad in pajamas dribbled with creamy banana yogurt.  Nora's warm clothes even more indulgently splashed with yogurt and a wide variety of other breakfast foods.  NPR chirping the background, our beloved "Banana Boat Song" coming across the air waves.  It was an interview with Henry Belafonte, speaking of his mother.

Their family's poverty, so severe, that they had to "struggle to survive."  Struggle.To.Survive.

As I sit at this computer, an hour later, in those same pajamas, sipping cold coffee, monitor lighting up red with Nora's mild protest against her morning nap (we are separating nursing from sleep...a notion that strongly offends her).  My world has become myopic.  My fixation with child-rearing, child-feeding, parenting methodology...all pool into the cavern created by my abundance of time and energy, my fortune, my true "need" for nothing.  Vexation and analysis spawned from the privilege of lacking nothing.

I have no struggles...and my eyes glisten just typing those words. 

Boo hoo, I'm fat.  Boo hoo, my daughter likes to nurse and wants to be held too often.  Oh, it's so stressful to buy a nice home.  And piss to have a husband who craves another degree to further increase our financial stability...so I can stay at home...and pack picnic lunches for our afternoon at the nature center...and write this blog post...and watch the monitor still jump red while our daughter groans.  Not out of hunger or fear but of pure irritation...cause she likes me so much.

So, thank you, Mr. Belafonte.  Your eloquent words slipped under my skin.  They will stay with me today.  Make me slap myself around a bit.

Your mother also said, "Never let any injustice go unnoticed" and you claim this as your "rosebud moment." As you forged ahead in your career as a close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., fighting for civil rights and human rights, and as your songs of Jamaican folk became part of every child's musical memory.

 

Comments

[Aunt Kathy & Uncle Shane]

I only caught the end of that interview. Glad to hear you are back to Glass Is Half Full perception ;)