I've been listening to "Valerie" by Amy Winehouse ever since learning of her passing yesterday. So young, talented, and troubled. In listening to this song, a playlist started emerging in my head. A summer mix, heart open, heartfelt. A playlist where the artists connect only through the flow of my own feelings, in this season of the sun and light, of love and loss. But I think it works so I'm sharing it with you.
Oh Valerie, In Summertime
1. Valerie, Amy Winehouse
2. To Know Him Is to Love Him (Live), Amy Winehouse
For a very thought provoking, moving article about the death of Amy Winehouse, addiction, and depression, read On The Death of Amy Winehouse, by Max Sparber
To be a Somali or East African youth in Minneapolis these days involves running a gauntlet of suspicion and strife. In their schools there are cultural frictions with white and African-American students and even among Somali, Ethiopian and Oromo themselves. In their homes there is the impossibly wide straddle between the controlling fears and expectations of their parents and other elders and the need to find and forge a sustainable identity in 21st-century society. In their need for employment they are facing one of the most inhospitable work environments in American history. And a small but significant number of their brethren have been mysteriously recruited to go fight and die in the civil war of their native country, intensifying their exposure to the already magnified socio-religious passions and bureaucratic apparatus that fuels America’s “war on terror.”
But the resilience of immigrant youth is an abiding “feel good” part of our collective American experience, and rich fuel for our artistic narratives. Which is why “Ku soo Dhawaada Xaafadeena,” or “Welcome to our Neighborhood,” a play by, for, with and about the East African youth in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, running the next two weekends at the Cedar Cultural Center, seems especially well-timed…”
Lots of people think that Minnesota is frozen tundra 365 days a year. It's not. Our summers can be hot and humid, and occasionally, like right now, unbearably hot and humid. Our heat indexes have been surpassing those even in the most tropical parts of the world. Check out this comparison.
I'm grateful for my old window air conditioner and the relief it provides from this heatwave. The last time I remember heat and humidity this high for this long, my kids were babies and we lived in a small house in Powderhorn Park with no air conditioning. I remember the indoor temperatures were well into the 80s.
My daughter, now 25, was a tough baby who cried for hours on end, whose little soul was inconsolable no matter how much love I offered. Last night sitting on my hot, humid front porch, feeling the thick, sticky, still night air, my ceiling fan whirling, I remembered this old piece of writing about that time. About heat, humidity, a ceiling fan, a crying baby, and how Sade saved us from ourselves:
1986
It's the nights that are the longest. She is such a hard baby. Crying all the time. Never napping. I think she is reacting to her adoption, to being yanked from one life to another. And it's been unbearably hot and humid. She is so tiny, so fierce. But we are finding a way to each others hearts. I hope the worst is over. Last night was a turning point.
My toddler son was already asleep. It was just me, the baby, the heat, the night, the whirl of the ceiling fan, her sobs. She wouldn't stop crying. I put on some music, Sade, to help me keep it together. It was music I thought was made for lovers, but last night it was music for a desperate mother and an inconsolable daughter.
For hours we slow danced.
I always hope that you remember/What we have is strong and tender/In the middle of the madness/Hold on/It's about faith /It's about trust...
Barefoot on the wood floor, my sticky skin pressed close to her little body, as the music swirled and the fan whirled through the night air, her cries slowly, surely subsided and even more slowly, she let herself fall into my skin, allowed her head to slide down on my shoulder, her damp curly hair to rest softly against my sweaty neck. I let the record play over and over and we rocked and turned and swayed and sighed and sweated and slowly, so slowly, deep into the night, she finally fell asleep.
Nothing can come/Nothing can come/Nothing can come between us.
This morning, I read an amazing piece on Tumblr by Holly Manthei, a woman who was on the 1995 U.S. team (they were third that year). Read it all - it's inspiring - but here is a highlight:
"...The stinging consolation for today’s loss is that we’ve arguably never fielded a more fit, more disciplined, more talented squad of women. The parity of the women’s game signifies more than just an isolated 4-year cyclical interest in hot chicks with pony tails and toned legs competing in this game invented by men. Today’s loss continues to symbolize Our Arrival. Our collective ascension to the podium where little girls can look at these women and announce with conviction, “I want to be like Hope Solo when I grow up...”
Back in 1999 when the women's team won the World Cup final in another stunning game, I was a mother of a soccer playing 13-year-old girl, and I ruminated about that win and what it meant to me, a competitive pre-Title IX athlete in the 70s, in my own commentary.
That commentary was published by the Star Tribune, and I am inspired to share it once again. Since that was pre-Internet links, here it is below, in JPEG format (which you probably can't read) and the original text I submitted to the paper. The march towards parity and equity continues:
I was a pre-Title IX female athlete. Twenty-seven years later, my 13-year-old daughter is one of the thousands of soccer-playing girls riding high after the women’s U.S. World Cup soccer victory. I can say from personal experience that the recent Republican-sponsored House resolution to pay tribute to the U.S. women’ soccer team without acknowledgement of Title IX and its impact on the evolution of women’s sports was grievously wrong.
In 1972-1973, I was a junior at a suburban Minneapolis high school. The coach of the boy’s varsity ski team asked me to tryout for the team. While I skied competitively for a local ski club, there was no girls varsity ski team at my high school, and thus, no opportunity for me to compete in varsity sports, at least in my sport of choice.
So I tried out for the boys’ team and made the third-pace slot. However, the Minnesota State High School League, the governing body for Minnesota high school sports, had a rule that girls could not compete on boys’ teams, even if they legitimately earned a place on the team. The League informed my school that the entire team would be disqualified if I competed in a varsity ski meet.
My parents decided to challenge the rule and took the issue to court. The courts ruled in our favor and I was allowed to compete for my high school. Suddenly, much to my embarrassment, I was in the news as a barrier breaker. In 1972, girl athletes such as myself who trained hard, developed muscles, and thrilled to aggressive competition, were typically viewed, especially among our peers, as weird. The last thing my fragile self-esteem needed was more attention for being a jock. I just wanted to ski.
However, I am absolutely grateful that I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and thanks to Title IX, did get to ski for my high school and earn two varsity letters, something for which I am very proud.
Since then, I have thrilled at the change in both opportunity and attitude for women’s sports and athletics. In 1999, from the Sunday afternoon jogger to the serious athlete, girls and women now have a full array of competitive sports and fitness activities in which to participate.
My athletic daughter is coming of age at a time when sports, sweat and muscles are just a normal part of being female. She started playing soccer when she was nine at the neighborhood park because all of her friends were signing up to play. She now plays in a competitive girls’ soccer league full of other girls who love to play hard. They yell, “Be aggressive!” at the beginning of games. They are praised for being tough on the field, for teamwork, for pushing to the max.
I think the best thing about the post-Title IX world of female sports is that these young girls don’t think twice about being competitive athletes. They have no idea that 27 years ago there were far fewer athletic opportunities for girls. They have no idea that the general attitude toward female athletes was indifference at best and contempt at worst.
My daughter didn’t even watch the U.S. Word Cup victory live. She had me tape it for later, when she got back from the mall. For her, it was not, as it was for me, a rearrange all your plans, historic, not to be missed event. It was a cool and important thing, but just one part of the fabric of her adolescent life. Yet, thanks to Title IX, she and millions of other girls don’t have to want to be like Mike when they imagine themselves champions. They can want to be like Brianna, Mia or Christine, and think its no big deal. Now that’s a revolution.
Nearly two years ago my granddaughter had a terrible fall from a window and fought for her life for a month in intensive care, with a long time of healing that followed. Today she is a healthy, happy six year old, fully recovered. The story of her fall is recounted in this post.
"Say Hey" by Michael Franti and Spearhead (both the song and the video) helped me get through that terrible time. I played it over and over in my car, singing, crying, hoping. I watched the video on the rare times I was home from the hospital. Eventually it made its way on to a playlist called "Warrior Girl" I made for my grandchild and the circle of family and friends helping her through.
"Say Hey" became our song together - grandma and grandchild.
Since then, when the song comes into rotation, usually while we are driving, I remind her that it's our song and we sing along together. It is a happy song for us, about our deep connection, our love, and about her survival.
Last weekend we went to Duluth with a friend and her child for a day-long family oriented music festival that culminated in a performance by Michael Franti and Spearhead.
It turned out to be a magical, emotional day for me, and a day of fun and adventure for her.
One of the free activities for kids was a climbing wall, which my grandchild tried for the first time yet scrambled up like an old pro - a spidergirl. Strong and unafraid. I was flooded with emotions, thinking "the girl who fell now climbs to the sky."
Later, when Franti and his band played, she danced and danced to every song, swirling and twirling as dusk turned to night, completely losing herself in the music and the moment.
But no "Say Hey."
Then, like magic, when the band came out for its encore, Franti invited "all children and people over 60" to the stage and he played our song. My grandchild and her friend made it on to the stage. I watched her up there, dancing and singing, and my heart burst open all over again. With love. With gratitude. And with deep appreciation for a song that seals our love with a great big fat sloppy kiss.
Rocking in the dance hall moving with you/Dancing in the night in the middle of June/My momma told me don’t lose you/Cause the best luck I had was you.
Say Hey and I love you/I love you/I love you/I love you.
"Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin/ Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in/Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove/Dance me to the end of love..."
