Sat 01 Sep 2007

Category : Dappeled Sunlight

40 years later both of us are living in paradise, D.D. in Connecticut, me in N. Minnesota. We got here by the most unlikely route, not at all what you might be thinking. I know if I read that beginning I would think, wow, what a dedication to an ideal, what determined kids, how cool! I would be way wrong. I'm going to skip over a bunch of gory details, the short version being that by 16, D.D. and I had became heroin addicts, travelled to opposite coasts. I had a shit load of adventures, near misses miraculous escapes. I had ended up in S.F. at Art school. I was derailing a great career — somehow got my MFA while becoming bemired criminals, drug dealing, and turning into a walking skeleton, 98 lbs at 5'8". I never saw the daylight except to vote for Jello Biafra for mayor. Some fantastically brave friends called my mother, organized an intervention and offered me a one way ticket to MN. I had to look it up on a map, I vaguely remembered tossing the catalog from MCAD back in 1975 because who would want to live in frozen nowhere?

O.K. So at Hazelden I think, nice scenery but why don't A.A. people speak proper English? "God don't make no junk" being the first lecture I walked out of. 35 days later I'm a lot less hostile, 20 lbs heavier and off to a halfway house. The whole Hazelden 1/2 house world is very like a space station on Startrek. Not really in the world, I have this theory that all the planets have to line up just right for anyone to be able to leave.

So I'm in Richfield which is the worst kind of dull American suburb, the place itself is a converted convent (no pun intended), all done up in orange and yellow formica. I don't think it's just because I'm an artist that I found this depressing.

You have 6 days to get a job or they place you in Burger King — panic — I went down to the art school (MCAD) to see people like me doing work and to try and calm down. I was not fitting in well. They hired me on the spot, a combination of pity, knowing all the same people in the art world and the fact that I will work for $100 a week for 3 months. It became a truly bizarre anthropology study to go from one cloistered specific environment to another every morning and every night. Two really different worlds.

I met my future husband — a great romantic story. We bought a house in N. Mpls — we are good urban folks, he started a special effects and scene shop, I was teaching — I helped out on a Target commercial and made more money in 2 weeks than in 6 months of teaching, and with no faculty meetings. We had dreams of the neighborhood crawling its way out of the ghetto (though as a New Yorker, it took me forever to realize it was a ghetto, in N.Y., our ghetto don't have trees and lawns, and nice if rundown houses).

It was having kids that got us thinking of moving more uptown — before you get all judgmental with the fact that the ghetto gets better because as soon as people make money, the leave — no role models, etc. All true — but... the school sucked and we are white, which only matters in some situation, one being when the little comes home from playing across the street and says, "What does nigger mean and why is it bad that we listen to jungle bunny music?" Ok, so she's not going over there anymore. We fed a 3 year old everyday who's parents didn't know where she was and didn't come home till after dark (her words).

We had an informal Saturday morning art thing when all the kids came over to make stuff, paint the sidewalk, and talk — wow, the things they say — most white middle class people really don't have a clue. One kid had been told not to come over because we are white and his folks don't want him talking to us. Weird being on that end of racism. One mom told me she had never (NEVER) talked to a white woman before and we were like those dynasty women? This is not Harlem, this is a small, tiny, few blocks and these people do not go beyond its borders very often.

Back to Saturday a.m. A 5 year old is asking if it's actually legal to hit a kid with belts and brushes and stuff, another kid was stealing a 50 cent toy. I told Sasha to let it go, and go talk to the kid about asking instead of stealing but she's ashamed about having nothing and wanting something not hers. It's asking her to do the impossible. A lot of these kids don't have gloves or coats — this is MN, -20 degree — these kids don't have much at home. Some of them don't even have food, their parents trade food stamps for drugs.

The neighbor's kid came over and asked me to dial 911, they won't come if he calls, the cops say they came to that address too often but his dad just stabbed his mom and she's bleeding on the floor of the kitchen, He's 10 years old.

That year the gangs were only just moving in, mostly from Chicago — A lot of the moms are really religious, they take the kids to church all day Sunday ( a little says, "Church is cool, good cookies.")

They are losing their teenagers. They are scared, they don't know what to do. One day when I was pregnant, I was sweeping leaves off the sidewalk. Our house was on the corner. It was built as a drug store in 1926. It has huge windows and a lot of people remember getting milk there. They feel more inclined to walk in than usual for a stranger's house. Anyhow, I was sweeping away and this 60 year old skinny black guy came up, looked me up and down, grabbed the rake and mardres into the house, went up to Jeff. He was 6 inches from his face and said, "What are you doing, letting your wife do this work when she's about to have your child? What kind of man are you? Get out there now and let her put her feet up." I loved it, it seemed like a snapshot of the past, an old fashioned America.

A lot of times in movies and T.V., there are animals. At the end, they don't know what to do with them. Funny, as I wrote this, it suddenly dawned on me that the idea of no harm farm started years before we even thought of moving. So they started to end up in our house. There were these 2 bunnies that spent the week riding a miniature roller coaster for some ad. They were completely psycho and very cute. I had them on this 2nd floor porch thing that used to be some kind of loading dock when it was a store. There was a knock on the door, standing there was a policeman who said, "You have to get a permit for those bunnies. You have 10 days. Call this number for the form."It was a surprising form when it came. There were questions with 2 columns, yes and no, with comment. 12 neighbors' names and addresses were listed. People must agree to bunnies on our block. Are you amazed yet? I am not making this up. I have witnesses. One woman looking over my shoulder said, " Oh, honey, you can't go knocking on that door! Those folks are drug dealers.They'll shoot a dumb little white girl like you. I'll go with you." One address has already been torched and burned to the ground, so I supposed I checked "agree" to the bunnies.

When we went to the crack house, the guys there fell apart laughing. They couldn't believe their ears. "You want us to sign on this form saying it's o.k to have bunnies on this block?" There were now 15 people or so out on the street, all laughing and saying things about crazy white chicks (like this was my fault!). They decided they have to escort me to the other addresses for "safety's sake". So our little parade continued down the block. We eventually get most of the signatures. One old lady won't sign because she thought it was a joke or a trap. I don't blame her a bit. I sent in my $10 and the form. Some months later, when we were packing to move, animal control showed up — apparently, my check bounced and all signatures were needed. I forgot to mention, according to this document, you need permits for lizards, hamsters, guinea pigs, and snakes — who knew?

So all this is just the preamble to how a city kid from N.Y. ends up 5 minutes from Hazelden in the middle of the woods. After the bunny thing and a few ugly incidents between nervous police and some local kids occurred, Jeff and I decided we wanted to raise our kids, in a place a little safer and less volatile. So I made a list, pro and con, country or city. The city side is 3 pages long — friends, art, movies, restaurant, etc. The country side had one line, "You would live in the country."

I was really afraid of isolation — something that happens when you have 2 toddlers, whether or not you live in the country. But I had gone to camp in the woods of New Hampshire as a kid — those were the happiest moments, really magical. When you grow up in the city, you have a very limited idea of space. One acre seems huge. After a while, not so huge. Kind of like when you get a new closet and you think, wow, look at all that space and 6 months later, you don't have room for your new sneakers.

Posted at 1:44PM CDT | permalink