Their New Normal

By Kathleen Vaughan, Guest Blogger

I want to share beautiful sentiments around the election and what it could mean for my children. I feel all this love, pride, and energy. I feel the hashtag #myvplookslikeme. It’s a pretty great moment in history. It rivals Obama 08’ in many ways. It has that similar feeling, that, “Yepppppp.” Yet, everytime I try to tell the story, I end up dropping this glorious moment inside of a more stoney narrative. I’ll do my best to get there but I don’t see a way I can share one moment without describing the frame of my tapestry.

My mom prides herself on her heritage, except that she also deeply rejects the cultural norms that come with her whiteness. What she sees as cultural norms, I understand as her privilege. Mom knows that she is beautifully Irish, but identifies as an ally and a mother of biracial children. She kept us safe from her racist family members, and yet she questioned when any of her children dated a white person. Most recently, Mom congratulated me on stepping up and speaking out post-George Floyd and doing “the work” she’s been doing for so long. I know, the intersectionality is perplexing. But this is the line my siblings and I toed for our entire lives. Where in the tapestry are we to weave? Not white enough, not black enough, but too white to be black and too black to be white. 

Identity, in many ways, has always been my thing. I studied ballet and several modern dance techniques, but I never quite fit in the classical world. I was a scholarship kid, the one that makes the inclusive picture on the brochure look good. My parents were great at finding those opportunities for us. We were poor, biracial and hard workers. We thrived in the world of scholarships because in the 80s and 90s, scholarships demonstrated diversity. I found a couple of beautiful dance companies and a theater company that really grew my strength in identity. I knew who I was and what I could offer and now had my own tapestry—fuck the narrative. 

Then my tapestry changed, because my tools changed. My father died, I needed to retire from performing, and I met my husband. My identity was changing and I was moving out of my ever-so-safe black arts community. I transitioned into education full time and suddenly my identity was less about me and more about the actions of others. Staff yellin’ at black and brown kids jacks up my identity. Staff sharing they used to say “Nigga” and feel bad about it really fucks up my identity. It started to get easy for me to say, “Nope, THAT’s not okay.” 

But my husband could not. He’s biracial too but not in our American eyes. He identifies as a Black man, and he is the most powerful, eloquent, kind, dope man I have ever met. It’s absolutely crazy that this powerful, eloquent, kind, dope man can’t say, “Nope, THAT’s not okay,” and the first time I witnessed this, it just about broke me. Then it happened again and again. How is he so strong? How does he just keep going? This shit sucks. So now I’m unweaving the tapestry.

When we got pregnant with our first born, my mind went to all the ways I wanted to raise her. I never do my hair, it’s always in some sort of ball on the top of my head, so I would make sure her hair was always done (and I would do it). My clothes weren’t always clean, I didn’t have access to mental health services, talking about the issues was either taboo or harmful to other people so we didn’t- She would know none of that. 10 weeks into the pregnancy Trump was elected. We knew it was going to be bad. We lived in Texas at the time; we could see how bad it was. There is no need to rehash all the ways that man and his supporters exposed... nevermind. I think of it like the outside and inside of a human body, any way you look at it, a picture of the outside looks way better than a picture of the inside. Under our skin, there is blood, guts and a highly functioning system of organs that keeps the machine running; it’s ugly but it works. We are just in the gallery watching surgery at this point, or even worse, we are being operated on.

Three months after we had our first, we got pregnant with our second. Yep! Now we have two beautiful multiracial daughters. We live in a suburb where neighbors, whom I’ve hugged, have enormous Trump banners. I remember over the summer I took my children for a walk and one of the girls started choking on a rice cake. She was fine but it shook me. I called my husband—we weren’t far from the house—and he said he would come walk us home. I saw him up the street, in his sweats and hoodie and my first thought was, “Don’t run baby, please don’t run.” 

Within a couple of weeks Biden chose Kamala. Auntie. Why do I call him by his last name and her by her first? Don’t get me wrong, calling her Madam Vice President- Elect is bomb! It gives me all the feels. But I think I call her by her first name because she is mine, because I want to say her beautiful name perfectly, because she is everything I want my children to feel connected to. Because she is Kamala, Esquire, Senator, Vice President- Elect, Indian, Jamaican, Brown, Black, American, Chucks, Silk, Boss, Partner, Bonus Mom, Woman and Human. Very human. 

I think of my girls and I think this is their new normal but also they’re the new normal.  On Saturday, November 7th, We had family pictures scheduled, so I got the girls up, touched up their hair then headed to Old Navy. While in the pandemic checkout line—standing six feet apart and wrapping around what seemed like the entire store—I got on Twitter. I saw that Macomb County, AZ was going to release their count at 11am so I texted my Husband to watch. While sending that message, I got a message that my vote had [finally] been counted. I considered posting it to Facebook but I got distracted with refreshing AP News on Twitter. I checked out and drove the 10 minutes home. I remember there was a light out at a major intersection, I thought, “How lucky am I to be on the opposite side of traffic?” Not important, but I will remember forever. I walked in the house and heard, “Babycakes, is that you?” 

“Hey!” 

“It’s over, we won.”

“What?!”

“Biden won.”

This piece is all over the place. But that’s okay. This is how I feel and where I am. This is how my mind is remembering this moment. My daughters won’t remember the pandemic, the protests, the disenfranchisement, the hate. They will have their own pain and disdain to remember. They won’t have the stain of Reaganomics, though it’s a part of their lineage. By the hopeful time Harris leaves office, they will be 10 and 11. This is their new normal, this is no longer out of reach. This is a small sample of the breadth of possibilities. This dismantles the tapestry for them and allows them to build whatever the fuck they want. They are new normal.