dara t. mathis

5 Great Things I Gave Up to Be Grown

Confession: I only pretend to be a serious adult. I love having a kid because I can indulge in “immature” activities with a living, breathing excuse. When I chase my daughter around the house, both us wearing ducky towels flowing from our heads, nobody can judge me. I’m being an engaged parent. If I tried that on my own, my husband would wrap me in the nearest straitjacket.

In the grand tradition of all blogs, I came up with a list of things that I miss because I choose to be Grown Up.

I really miss climbing trees. Strolling past a knobby oak on Saturday, I paused. The gnarled bark on the tree would naturally lend itself as grips for my fingers. The leafy top was dense and I would have to climb very high. The branches looked sturdy. But the groundsman wouldn’t appreciate seeing me six feet up in his tree, sneakers dangling. I sighed and kept it moving.

Boys were only girls with short hair. I would trade every high heel in my closet if I could un-learn the word misogyny from my life experience. I remember when boys were just playmates who ran a little quicker and forced me to prove that I could run just as fast if I tried. The boy-girl stakes are so much higher in adulthood. I find myself arguing against my perceived inferiority instead of my speediness.

Being black was fun all the time. Childhood held all of the jazz and none of the blues of blackness. I could speak my vernacular with no shame, love my hair in all its states, be friends with little girls of different hues because they had Barbie Jeeps. Black was not a Thing; I was a just little girl with brown skin. I still love my culture and my heritage, but the weight of it sometimes tricks me into forgetting to take unabashed joy in it.

Romance was a 1+1=2 equation. Now it looks more like |z|^2-2z=1+2i. Game was something you played with someone, not tools you used on someone. From a girl’s perspective, you met someone, you fell in love, you kissed, and then the movie screen faded to black. There was no wondering if he liked you because he abruptly stopped calling after a week straight of mind-blowing conversations.

Sallie Mae was just your grandmother’s name. I don’t remember who told me that education was ‘the key’, but they didn’t specify what door it unlocked: Debt. I was optimistic about higher education until I graduated and learned that it’s hard out here in these corporate streets. I no longer believe wholesale that we can be anything we want. Sallie Mae is emblematic of everything wrong with the student loan industry.

For all the innocence that childhood afforded, I am still grateful to have a fun grown up life: to find my highs in things I enjoy, to engage in meaningful conversations about women and men, to have met someone I love dearly, to know the creativity of my people is boundless, and to have received an education that allows me to do what I am doing now.

What are some trade-offs you made to be Grown?

Good Morning, I Can’t Stand You!

There comes a time when your principles run smack into your actions and you realize the awful truth about yourself: you’re more two-faced than Harvey Dent.

I have long prided myself for being a transparent human being in my interpersonal relations. That is, not pretending to be best buds with someone and then bad-mouthing them two hours later. I hated that trend in high school. I never knew who to entrust with the ball of feelings I carried around as a teenager; the wrong person would beam me with it like I was the last girl standing in a dodgeball game.

Yesterday, I realized that it’s not so simple as being nice to only people you like. Adulthood and most civil interactions require a pesky thing called cordiality. The truth is that we’re not going to like everybody, even if we try. I’m not talking about people you have a niggling feeling about. I mean folk who have bounced trampoline style on your last available nerve, drop kicked your patience like Bruce Leroy, or proven themselves to be utterly distasteful after opening their mouths and spewing garbage.

I ran into such a person yesterday. This Person’s voice was coated with honey and I wondered if I could keep my privately held resolve to ‘not fool with This Person’ in public. I failed miserably. I smiled back. I oozed the molasses tone that I reserve for Good Folk. My reason for disliking This Person looped in the back of my head, a merry-go-round of mockery to the display I was putting on.

Until you get caught up when they set a date!

I walked away more than a little ashamed of myself.

But how do you express dislike without expressing rudeness? As much as I would love to be true to the revulsion coiled in my gut, I have no stomach for public confrontation. I know, that makes me more hypocritical than a little bit. My perennial penchant for keeping the boat steady means that I rarely act overtly mean;I just won’t entertain conversation. But this time, I went so far as to be nice.

I dreamed up a scenario in which I finally served lip back to This Person, who threw a Last Straw of snark my way recently and made me admit, ‘I do not like This Person. AT ALL.’ Brave Dara said politely, “You know, Person, I really can’t stand you. I’d be super grateful if you never spoke to me again. Mmkay? Cool. Now get out of my face.”

My yellow bellied sensibilities will probably ensure this never happens. Until then, I will be stuck with my private screw face, searching for the words to appropriately express my distaste.

How do you handle people you don’t like but are forced to interact with regularly?

MLK, Jr. Should’ve Kept His Day Job?

Martin Luther King leaning on a lectern. Deuts... — Martin Luther King leaning on a lectern. Deutsch: 1964: Martin Luther King Português: Martin Luther King (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. I grew up a black girl in a mostly white fundamental Baptist denomination. Only one white pastor ever let the truth leak out on their opinion of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our youth group climbed into the church van on a Friday evening for a youth meeting at an area church where the pastor barked loudly and carried a big black Bible. He made as many teens as could fit squeeze onto the dreaded first pew. I had brought a notebook to write down the verses he read, but I was too afraid to touch ballpoint to paper. He wanted all eyes trained up front. Without my pen recording his words, much of his message snaked through both ears. But one statement held fast.

“You can do good things and still be outside of God’s will for your life,” he said. “Remember, the most important thing is the salvation of others. Take, for example, Martin Luther King, Jr. To the world, he was a great man. But did you know he was a preacher and then he quit preaching to do Civil Rights? He would’ve done better to stick to preaching the Gospel!” he bellowed. He cleared his throat. “Think of how many souls he could have reached for Christ if he had followed his calling.”

To my left and right, I peeped heads nodding in agreement. Something wounded drummed inside my chest. The words replayed themselves: “He would’ve done better to stick to preaching the Gospel!” Oh, but what if he had? I thought. I recalled the “I Have a Dream” speech, portions of which I could recite like Scripture. I thought of the role MLK’s Christianity played in his quest for American civil rights.

If the barometer was preaching salvation through Jesus Christ, then would not Martin Luther King, Jr. be the greatest witness for Christ by his very conduct? He ran out of cheeks to turn and so, proffered the one thing he had left in his possession: life.

So often, I’d heard pastors revere America’s Founding Fathers. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a founding father of my freedoms as an African-American.

I wondered if he felt he had the luxury to “stick to preaching the Gospel” while Emmett Till lay bloated in the Tallahatchie River.

Was this what most fundamental Baptists thought of the Civil Rights Movement: a clamorous throng led by misguided preachers who shirked soul-winning duty? (Yes. King wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail for this same reason 50 years ago.)

Right or wrong, I was glad King found his calling in physical salvation, in lifting the burden from the soles of black folk to speak to the souls of black folk.

I swallowed the acid creeping into the back of my throat. The pastor kept preaching, but I had heard all I needed to hear:

Don’t quit your day job, boy.

For Girls Whose Mamas Dressed Them Like Boys

I never devised an appropriate way to get back at my mother for the shame of it all. I dreamed of it for years, though.

We were shopping in the Post Exchange department store (called the PX by military folk). I stood still as she whipped a pair of jeans from the rack and held them against my waist. The hem of the pants lay across the carpet, so she shoved the hanger back onto the metal arm. The second pair she chose grazed the tops of my LA Gears. Those, she tossed into the shopping cart where my two-year-old brother sat.

I grimaced. We were in the wrong section.

Mommy had rolled the cart right past the land of sequins and butterflies into the staid neutrals of the boys’ section. She was not shopping for my brother. No, the olive pants and navy jeans piling up were meant for me, and they were Boys’ Clothes.

“No reason why you can’t wear these bottoms and hand them down to your brother,” she quipped. Five years stretched between my age and his; he would be waiting to wear those pants for an eternity.

Nothing made Boys’ Clothes look cute. The rough-and-tumble fabric stood stiffly against my limbs. I had the washboard build of a boy but did not play like one. I peered around to make sure no one recognized me. If my friends ever found out, they would add this tidbit of knowledge to their arsenal, aim, and shoot jokes like spiked Nerf balls.

As it happened, I would grow up, grow out of the boys’ clothes my mother bought, and voluntarily drape my developing body in XXL tee shirts and baggy jeans. I eventually found the girls’ section. The Boys’ Clothes I used to wear became an anecdote, even though I swore I would never do that to my kids.

Yesterday, checking out at the grocery store, my 18-month-old daughter glowered at me from the cart because I wouldn’t break her off one of the pickles in the basket.

“He sure is mean-mugging,” the cashier commented.

I almost corrected her with “She,” but then looked hard at my baby. I laughed and nodded. My daughter wore a red tee-shirt and too-big khaki pants, both purchased from the boys’ section. In a hurry that morning, I had neglected to mark her as female with hair bows.

It was not an affront for the cashier to call my girl a boy. My baby did look rather androgynous without Pepto Bismol colors on.

I guess my mother got away with one this time. I hated every minute I wore Boys’ Clothes, but indirectly, it taught me that the clothes never make the girl, anyway.

Jealousy and Other ‘Female Traits’

“Males shouldn’t be jealous; that’s a female trait” —Jay-Z

It’s not hard to tell that ‘a female trait,’ by Shawn Carter’s reckoning, is not something that a male would want to have. Simple psychology would’ve told him that men experience jealousy, too. Despite the fact that rappers (and their verses) are made of 15% truth, 59% BS and 26% cotton, I’ve heard men actually regurgitate the above line as fact.

Come to think about it, I’ve never heard any positive sentence followed by “like a woman.” Only negative connotations coupled with derogatory euphemisms for women. “He’s ranting on Twitter, acting like a b*tch/woman/p*ssy!” No, he’s acting like a salty man. Because he is one.

Whenever I’m having a conversation and I hear those words, anger melts my smile off my face. It’s a conversation-ender for me. In a nutshell:

Women do not hold a patent on emotions; men express them, too.

I have extremely little patience for explaining to people that logic and emotion are not mutually exclusive, that men and women exhibit both in different situations. When a woman screams and yells at her boyfriend to listen to her, she’s emotional; but when a guy screams at his 48″ TV, “He was FOULED!” he’s just a sports fan?

As Jay-Z also said, We don’t believe you; you need more people.

Given the dismal image “like a woman” usually projects, I thought it would be fun to start a personal revolution of sorts. Maybe the reason I’ve never heard a positive statement ending in the phrase is because I’ve never said one.

Here’s my little list. Feel free to join me and add your own affirmations in the comment box, or tweet me your lines using the #LikeAWoman hashtag.

What do you do #LikeAWoman?

I love fiercely and deeply #LikeAWoman

My family knows they can count on me to take care of them #LikeAWoman

I make logical decisions and choices for my life #LikeAWoman

If anybody threatens me, I will fight just #LikeAWoman

I split infinitives and spit definitive truth onstage #LikeAWoman

I occupy ALL rooms (not just the kitchen) #LikeAWoman

Yes, I’m complicated, #LikeAWoman, but there’s no such thing as a simple man, either

I would move heaven and bust hell open for my sisters #LikeAWoman

I laugh from the wells of my belly #LikeAWoman

My mama taught me not to take no mess #LikeAWoman

I walk with sugar in my sway and spikes on my heels #LikeAWoman

I write #LikeAWoman