Happy Juneteenth!

Today is Juneteenth—also known as Freedom Day—a portmanteau of June and nineteenth and the anniversary of the 1865 emancipation of the last remaining enslaved African-Americans in the Confederacy.

Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. But it was largely unenforceable in Confederate states and Confederate-controlled remote areas, so the last of the enslaved people there didn't know they'd been free for more than two and a half years.

But on June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and read General Orders No. 3, announcing with full Union enforcement that all enslaved people were legally free, releasing more than 250,000 people who didn't know their liberated status had been deliberately withheld from them for a cruelly inordinate amount of time.

I first learned about Juneteenth in a high-school history class, and I’d often wondered since then why it’s never really been a massive national holiday. And now—despite the ongoing, pervasive racism that's finally brought it to the country’s attention—I’m thrilled it’s officially become a national holiday … and an integral part of our larger dialogue about race.

The national-holiday designation came quickly and largely unexpectedly in 2021—especially given what little awareness Juneteenth had up until then—so federal agencies and even private companies didn't have a lot of time to plan and coordinate procedures for proper celebrations and shut-downs that first year.

But many found a way, and they've continued to close their doors and encourage their employees to take the day off to celebrate the milestone … the freedoms … the progress … and the hope for continued communion in the march toward equality in our country’s minds, our hearts and our shared American culture.

Inpatient

After a year of unemployment in Chicago where I half-assedly looked for jobs and shuffled back and forth from Cedar Rapids, I more or less officially moved home eleven years ago this month.

My bipolar disorder was escalating and I was seeing what I now understand was a hack psychiatrist (because how can you know what to look for and who’s competent when you’re new at finding mental health professionals and you’re crippled by a mental illness?) who kept prescribing medication after medication (including the anticonvulsant Depakote that I had NO business being on due to its highly problematic interactions with my Lamictal mood stabilizer) without following up or even letting me know what catastrophic side effects to look for. And my unmanaged Depakote cocktail was a living nightmare of day-long blackouts, terrifying hallucinations, and sleepwalking through what was thankfully benign but could have been fatal odd behavior.

Every psychotropic drug gives you temporary—sometimes awful—side effects as you ramp up on a new prescription and wean off of it when you find out it doesn’t work. And thanks to this doctor’s random changes of drugs and cocktails, I was in a constant state of up-and-down side effects that left me miserable and confused and unable to function in a multitude of ways.

On top of all that, I was newly single and living alone for the first time in seven years, which meant I didn’t have an extra brain in the house to remind me to take that litany of changing meds on their prescribed schedules.

So by the time I decided I was moving home, I was a mess. A catastrophic, dissociative, emotional-train-crash mess.

And as Christmas drew nearer and nearer, I found myself more and more overcome with panic and dread about holding myself together through our family activities, worrying that I’d ruin them for everyone and inevitably escalating even more.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t comprehend.

I didn’t want to live.

So eleven years ago today, my parents—my terrified, confused, helpless parents—and I together made the heart-wrenching decision that I needed to be hospitalized. Two days before Christmas.

The ensuing details are still hazy to me, but from what I can remember: I sobbed on our couch in Greek-tragedy emotional pain as I slowly wrapped my muddled brain around what I was about to do. Mom and Dad came with me to the emergency room. I was evaluated by a doctor. We were put in an empty holding room for four hours while they looked for an open bed, which they eventually—thankfully—found right there instead of in a hospital 200 miles away. We were taken to the mental ward where we first had to go through a room where Mom and Dad had to leave their coats and Mom had to leave her purse.

When we got in, I had to forfeit my coat and clothes and phone and basically everything but my glasses. I was given scrubs and hospital socks. I met privately with a doctor, who took me off every drug I was on and prescribed yet another new cocktail of drugs. Which meant more simultaneous ramping-up-and-down side effects.

And when I was finally done being triaged, I was given an opportunity to say goodbye to my parents and then I was escorted to my room.

I made one last look back as I was halfway down the hallway, and the looks on my parents’ faces—their anguish, fear and inconsolable sadness—will be forever seared in my memory.

And so will my feeling of complete, comforting relief from accepting the fact that all of this was bigger than I was, I could finally release the demons fighting inside me, and I was in the protective, hopefully healing care of people who could manage whatever it was that was tearing me apart.

Eleven years ago today I launched into an unknown of what ended up being a full week in a locked mental ward in a hospital.

Eleven years ago today I started yet another roller coaster of the disorienting, miserable side effects of changing medicines.

Eleven years ago today I finally knew I was safe from myself, I was being cared for by experts, and for some reason what I found to be the most important: I wouldn’t ruin my family’s Christmas. I knew that not being there would be disruptive. But I also knew that being there would have been even worse.

Eleven years ago today, I started what would still be a long, bumpy road to healing, but I knew I was at least on the road to healing. It was one of the worst things I’ve been through and one of the best things I’ve ever done.

If you’re struggling with the out-of-control pain and confusion of mental illness, please know there’s no shame in asking for help—even to the point of being hospitalized—and putting yourself in the focused care of others.

There most likely won’t be immediate healing. But there will be hope. For you, your family and your support network.

There will be calming, restorative, essential hope.

I'm dreaming of White Christmas

White Christmas is the dumbest, plot-hole-iest, staggeringly-implausible-storyline-iest movie ever made—and I adore every second of it. I used to host a party every year in Chicago and invite only the friends I knew were able to shut up for 120 minutes so we could all enjoy its ridiculous awesomeness together in peace. And then I usually watched it again on my own. And maybe one more time. I have yet to watch it this year, but when I do I might invite a few devotees to watch it with me who can do it QUIETLY AND RESPECTFULLY.

All that said, it still drives me NUTS that Rosemary Clooney runs (well, clomps in four-inch stilettos) away from Bing Crosby in a self-righteous fit over a laughably stupid misunderstanding that she could easily clear up with a simple question and then boards a train with a little satchel in which she's packed all her clothes, wigs, makeup, gowns, those ridiculously slouchy white sequined oven mitts she wears in "Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me" plus four of the Vermont dancer boys. And then she happily—yes: happily, despite the white-hot fury she had about Bing's appearance on TV that was so toxic it prompted her to sneak away from Vermont in secret—watches Bing's appearance on TV, suddenly has a mis-misunderstanding revelation, sneaks back to Vermont in the dead of night with her sensible orthopedic Army-issue oxfords in tow, ties up her understudy and throws her in a pile of horse manure (probably) and somehow absorbs all the "Gee, I Wish I Was Back in the Army" choreography out of thin air from some secret backstage rehearsal room in that drafty barn that apparently a cast of 1,000 people had mysteriously never even known about.

But those gowns!

And don't get me started on that overplayed "Sisters" number—it sure gets a LOT of mileage for having only one verse and an enormous dance break where Rosemary and Vera-Ellen basically just stand on stage and smile dewily at Bing and Doofusface (also: Don't get me started on Danny Kaye, the poor man's Donald O'Connor) while presumably the rest of the audience watches and thinks they're being somehow entertained by all that standing around.

But those gowns!

And Bing Crosby somehow croons “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep” after chugging a throat-gagging quart of buttermilk and Danny Kaye sings a COMPLETELY random song called "Choreography" even though he dances like an ostrich going through a middle-school gangly-boy phase and that mercilessly repetitive "Mandy" song has about eleven words that are all stupid and WHAT THE HELL IS THAT “MR. BONES” SONG? (It's a horribly racist throwback to minstrel shows, that's what it is.)

But those gowns!

From the Department Of Lies About Cute Boyfriends I Would Totally Date: Rosemary Clooney's and Vera-Ellen's "ugly" brother Benny (the one Bing Crosby unimaginatively calls "freckle-faced Haynes, the dog-faced boy" when they show him Benny's photo) is actually super-cute Carl Switzer, who had played Alfalfa in the Our Gang/Little Rascals films. So calling him ugly is nothing but CHRISTMAS LIES AND HOLIDAY PROPAGANDA.

But those gowns!

Did I mention Rosemary Clooney's ridiculously slouchy white-sequined oven mitts that turn "Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me" into a very fancy Easy-Bake Oven infomercial? I think I did, though they can never be overmocked. You should definitely call the police every time you see them.

But those gowns!

Special mention also goes to that fingernails-on-chalkboards “Snow” number where Vera-Ellen sings in clearly not her own voice about washing her hair with snow—which, I’m sorry, would be completely ineffective and unhygienic—and then they all make some grade-school-art-class mountains-and-pine-trees diorama that they shake some kind of readily-available-on-their-cramped-club-car-table fake snow on and every time they do it my mind goes right to the scene in The Breakfast Club where Ally Sheedy shakes her own dandruff on a drawing to make it look like it’s snowing.

But those gowns!

And then Vera-Ellen—who does the entire movie in funnel-collared outfits tailored to hide whatever the hell is wrong with her neck—descends from the sky in her tearaway Ostrich Barbie outfit and executes some wicked nerve taps WITHOUT EVEN WEARING TAPS, A FACT THAT SHE DISPLAYS REPEATEDLY AND UNAMBIGUOUSLY TO THE CAMERA.

But those gowns!

And the general is clearly on a laudanum binge in the attic of his hotel-theater as every U.S. war soldier past, present and future swarms all over the entire property and fills every hotel room not already taken by the swarm of singers, dancers, directors, and costume and tech crew members, and when they all finally—and purportedly GENUINELY—surprise him with their heretofore apparently invisible presence they seat him at the table of honor behind a three-foot-tall cake that completely blocks his view of the show that they put together ESPECIALLY FOR HIM TO SEE.

But those gowns!

Juneteenth

Afro-American Literature (as it was called at the time) had, quite frankly, a killer reading list. In one semester we covered the major works of Amiri Baraka, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin … and those were just the writers I’d heard of. I was a junior in college, I’d just declared my English major and I had only three semesters to complete it … preferably in classes with great reading lists like this one that I could enthusiastically devour.

It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be the only white person in the class. And when I walked in that first day, I was. Until two white girls walked in a couple minutes later. I’d never been the racial minority before—no less the racial minority who paradoxically represented the oppressor to the people around me—and the experience made the class and everything we read and discussed and learned all the more profound.

The professor was brilliant. He peppered his lectures with names and dates and fascinating contextual histories without ever using notes. He got his students to participate with enthusiasm—even the shy ones. His influence literally transformed the way I thought and wrote, and I hear his voice in my writing to this day.

He and his reading list taught me way more than I could even hope to expect about the Black experience in America. I found myself spellbound in incredulity as I began to understand the ubiquity—the enormity—of black suffering in the name of white American “freedom” and “liberty.” I literally wept as I read the stories and absorbed the sociopolitical implications of the literature in our curriculum. And I vowed that I would always strive to be aware and understanding of racial perspectives and how they shape the lives and personal contexts of the people of color in my life and my larger orbit.

The class was truly a transforming milestone in the way I defined myself and the way I related to my surroundings. It blew open the doors of my relatively sheltered world and it energized me as a global citizen.

But it wasn't until a year later, when I ran into the professor at a beautifully minimalist staging of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and he not only remembered my name but also offered to drive me home, that for some reason I suddenly realized—to my absolute, gut-dropping horror—that those two white girls and I had slowly, gradually drifted toward each other and had eventually spent the semester sitting—rudely, arrogantly, cluelessly, cruelly—front and center in his classroom … while our Black classmates had sat behind us. In the back of the learning bus.

The professor died within a year after that ride in his car. Before I had the guts and the decency to find him and somehow apologize. I have never kept in touch with anyone—black or white—from that class. Thirty-three years later, I still feel sick to my stomach when I think about it.

As we are currently fully aware, there is racism everywhere—deliberate racism, violent racism, habitual racism, institutionalized racism, self-unaware racism. "I'm not a racist, but …" conversations happen in hushed tones where white people gather and look around furtively before they speak everywhere, every day.

 
Depending on the circumstances when I encounter these conversations, I either walk away or stand there awkwardly until the moment has passed. I've called a few people out on their racist comments a couple of times, sometimes angrily, sometimes in a spirit of hopefully changing a mind or a heart. But regrettably all just a couple of times.

 
I'm—we're all—far from perfect. Despite my best intentions, I'm not racism-free. I admit I fleetingly embraced the overgeneralized idea of "all lives matter" before it hit me like a hail of bricks how that undermined—more accurately, destroyed—the core message of and desperate need for Black Lives Matter. And while I feel a slight level of relief unloading this story on social media, it doesn't exonerate me or excuse me or even atone for my unwitting behavior 33 years ago.

 
I realize that living in my largely privileged white bubble with my white family and my overwhelmingly white friend base both in life and on social media that it keeps me safe from awkward conversations and maybe even confrontations. But I hope that maybe this admission sparks a dialogue somewhere. That it inspires other people to reach out and just talk to each other. And get to know each other. And start to care about each other. Because it's harder to hate—and harder to even realize that you're hating—when people stop being abstractions and start being, well, people.

I don’t even know how to begin to apologize to the Black people I insulted and the white people I enabled in that classroom over three decades ago. And I hope if you know me or eventually get to know me that I'm living my life in a way that you can accept as an apology … and believe that it’s a genuine, productive path to my own improvement.

As I hope everyone is fully aware, today is Juneteenth—also known as Freedom Day—the anniversary of the 1865 emancipation of the last remaining enslaved African-Americans in the Confederacy. I first learned about Juneteenth in a high-school history class, and I’d often wondered since then why it’s never really been a massive national holiday. And now—despite the devastating circumstances that have finally brought it to the country’s attention—I’m thrilled it’s officially become a national holiday … and an integral part of our larger dialogue about race.

The national-holiday designation came quickly and largely unexpectedly last week—especially given what little awareness Juneteenth had even a year ago—so federal agencies and even private companies didn't have a lot of time to plan and coordinate procedures for proper celebrations and shut-downs.

But many found a way, and they've closed their doors and encouraged their employees to take the day off to celebrate the milestone … the freedoms … the progress … and the hope for continued communion in the march toward equality in our country’s minds, our hearts and our shared American culture.