Planting Dandelions

by Kyran Pittman

  My mother’s face was crestfallen. Visiting Central High was a pilgrimage for her. I might as well have told her the moon landing had been faked, and the Vietnam War was still going on.

  “What was it all for, then?” she asked. “What’s changed?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, turning back onto the freeway that slices this city in two, cutting the black urban neighborhoods off, like a necrotic limb, from the affluent white ones. Its construction began shortly after desegregation. “I don’t know.”

  When I was nine years old, I flew with my family to Trinidad. It was my first time in the tropics, and I’ll never forget how it felt to step out of the plane, into equatorial air so choked with humidity that it was viscous. When I first came to the South, the issue of race felt like that to me; pervasive and displacing. But people who lived and breathed it all their lives seemed acclimatized to it, whether they were black or white. Eventually I was, too. I can’t pretend to be above it anymore. I’m immersed, saturated. Racism is embedded in the news media, in our institutions, and in the infrastructure of our communities. My sons are heirs to it. On parents’ day at my youngest child’s private preschool, he announced an ambition to grow up to be a garbageman, and all of us white parents smiled and said that it was a fine thing to be, and felt safe doing so, because of course none of our children will grow up to be a garbageman. Every garbageman they’ve ever seen is black.

  Of course I’m well aware that systemic racism is a problem for all of America, not just the South. In fact, I think it’s the problem for America. White southerners often feel like they are the scapegoat for the sins of a whole nation, and they’ve got a valid point. But it’s been only half a century since doorways and drinking fountains here were labeled “white” or “colored,” not long enough to call it history. Though the signs have come down, segregation persists, in reality if not in policy. For ten years, we lived in a neighborhood that most consider to be the epicenter of liberalism in Little Rock, the kind with bumper stickers in every driveway: yes to a woman’s choice and the environment, no to war and gated communities. And yet that neighborhood is the whitest place I’ve ever lived, even more than the town I grew up in, if that’s possible. There are gates, and then there are gates. At least the ones with guardhouses and no trespassing signs are being honest about it.

  I know there are enclaves like our old neighborhood in every city in America, and I sympathize with those who bristle at the suggestion that the South is stuck in its racist past. But it’s not just northerners, or African-Americans, who can’t let it go. I’m not sure where else in the world you could live and routinely encounter men in uniforms from a war that supposedly ended nearly 150 years ago. A Civil War reenactor was the surprise highlight at last year’s Cub Scout banquet, and it was a good thing there was no question-and-answer period, because I had some pointed ones regarding period costume for slaves of the Confederate States of America.

  The Civil War is a part of my sons’ heritage I’ve struggled with for a long time. Family legend has it that they are related to a celebrated martyr of the Confederacy, David O. Dodd, a seventeen-year-old message boy whose trial and execution are reenacted in Little Rock every year. It’s interesting, and I don’t want them to feel ashamed of it, but is it something I want them to feel proud of? I had no answer for that question until we went to Gettysburg last summer, a side excursion on an epic road trip north. One hundred and forty-six years to the day that the first shots were fired, I watched my sons play in the shadow of an enormous oak that must have grown out of the earth while it was still bloody.

  “Come over here,” I called to them softly, after absorbing the figures and dates on the interpretive marker. I swept my arm out in front of me, and described to them what I saw in my mind’s eye: men and boys, some not much older than my ten-year-old, marching onto the field. It had taken us three days to drive from Arkansas, I reminded them. Imagine if you had to walk. How tired and ragged they must have been. How determined.

  I turned to my boys, so full of passion and persistence, the two traits I value above all others but kindness. They come by it honestly. They are their father’s sons. Sons of the South.

  “People say they were fighting for lots of reasons, but they were defending people who kept other people as slaves. It was wrong, and it was a good thing they lost.”

  I let that sink in, before adding, “The Confederates weren’t all bad people. And the Union soldiers weren’t all good.” I wondered what it was like to be a mother of young children on the path of Sherman’s March.

  “People do terrible things to each other in wars,” I told them, ending the lesson, and letting them get back to climbing on the cannons. I strolled a few paces over to Patrick, hoping he wasn’t baiting any of the other visitors with talk of the “War of Northern Aggression.”

  “I had a talk with the boys about the war,” I reported.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That the North had the just cause, but they were douchebags.”

  He laughed. “That sounds about right.”

  We loaded the kids in the van, and drove off slowly toward another field.

  “Arkansas!” the boys shouted as we came upon a granite memorial.

  We pulled over and got out to read the inscription, the usual stuff about blood, valor, and hallowed ground.

  “Such a fucked-up, stupid thing,” I heard my husband say, in a low, thick voice. I looked over, and saw with surprise that there were tears on his cheeks. It amazes me how deep are the wounds of that war. It makes ghosts of the living, compels them to reenact that mistake, over and over, so no one can move on. Southern men. Always starting something they can’t stop.

  I looked back at the monument to the fallen, thinking that the words Patrick just spoke made a better epitaph for them. Fortune doesn’t always favor the bold.

  “That sounds about right,” I told him. “Let’s move on.”

  12.

  A Pilgrim’s Progress

  Across America, the onset of winter is heralded by a spectacular show of fall color that begins in late October and peaks toward the end of November. This riotous display spills forth from our mailboxes and newspapers, in the form of glossy sales flyers reminding us that Thanksgiving is coming, and that it’s going to take a lot of new stuff to make us properly thankful this year. We’ll need a moving truck of new furniture and appliances, tableware to seat fifty, guest linens and inflatable mattresses to sleep twenty, matching cashmere turtlenecks for the whole family, and—this was in the warehouse club holiday flyer a few years ago—a small jet. Because a good hostess is always prepared.

  It’s hard not to get swept up in it. There is rarely anyone but me, my husband, and our kids around our Thanksgiving table, but that doesn’t keep me from fretting over my mismatched dishes and tragic lack of a guest suite, as I thumb through the flyers and spin a daydream in which I usher a steady stream of guests toward monogrammed hand towels and ingenious place cards. Financial reality delivers me from most temptation, but I am vulnerable in Target, where the dream—or snippets of it—appears to hover more nearly within reach. It’s a dangerous illusion, because shopping at Target is like sawing down the leg of a table. You get one cute, hip thing for your house, and it makes all the things that aren’t cute and hip stand out. One of my friends calls it the “hundred-dollar-an-hour store.” I find this formula to be uncannily accurate, and if she actually came up with the algebra on her own, she ought to be chairing the Federal Reserve.

  I’ll walk in there with a list that reads “Batteries, Velcro,” and walk out ninety minutes later with a receipt for $144. In between coming and going is the spiral descent into the heart of darkness, the vortex of the red bull’s-eye. The unraveling is accompanied by an internal dramatic monologue that swells to operatic heights, an aria from a beggar’s opera:

  It starts in the key of innocent wistfulness.

  O, what pretty dishes! I wish I had pretty dishes!

  Then,
the rationalization begins, andante.

  Someone might stop by for dinner, or dessert. We’ll need more dishes. These are practical. And on clearance.

  Now, the bargaining, allegro.

  I won’t buy the hand towels I saw on sale two aisles back. I’ll cut our budget back somewhere else. I will positively, absolutely, not go overboard with the holiday menu, and I’ll just forget I ever saw that table lamp over there.

  The drama builds, with hostility and wheedling, cadenza.

  For God’s sake, they’re just five dollars a plate. Is it so terrible to want to splurge a little? You think so-and-so would think twice about spending a few dollars on her Thanksgiving table? CAN’T I EVER HAVE ANYTHING NICE FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE?

  To the checkout, fait accompli, pianissimo. The fat lady has sung. Grazie.

  The irony is that Thanksgiving Day itself is singularly uncommercial. There are no gifts or cards to be purchased and exchanged. The focus is simply and sincerely on appreciating what you already have. It is the one pause in the otherwise relentless carousel of consumerism in this country, and we can barely keep it up for twenty-four hours. The release of all that pent-up energy the next morning is awesome to behold—from a safe distance. It’s like the running of the bulls in Spain. Black Friday should be written up in international travel magazines as an American ritual not to be missed.

  All of it was utterly foreign to me when I first came here. I grew up observing something that Canadians call Thanksgiving, but there it is a minor holiday, celebrated in October, with a meal on the scale of a nice Sunday dinner. There are no pilgrims or cornucopias, no particular history or sentiment attached to the occasion. As far as I can tell, it was co-opted for the sake of a long weekend. I had no idea how much was lost in the translation until I pulled up a chair and sat down to the real thing. My first thought was that it was an insane amount of food. I’d had six months of American supersizing by that time, but I was still staggered at the bounty and variety of dishes involved. The turkey, gravy, and pumpkin pie were familiar, but I was out of my depth after that. In addition to pumpkin, there were apple, chocolate, pecan, and various cream pies. There were multiple pans of cornbread dressing, rolls, and biscuits. There were strange fifties-style casseroles: sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows, and green beans swimming in canned mushroom soup. It was all delicious, but it seemed excessive, and redundant. Why the big feast and get-together, only to have to pull off a reprise a mere month later, at Christmas? I didn’t get it. I shook my head and tsk-tsked at the typical lack of restraint.

  It was years before I stopped thinking You’re doing it wrong, and realized that Thanksgiving isn’t a spoiler to the American winter holiday season, but the actual kickoff. As soon as the last turkey leftover is wrapped, the reindeer games are on. The mental adjustment helped me feel less out of sync with the season, but I still lagged. I no longer derided my neighbors for putting their Christmas trees up right after Thanksgiving, but I couldn’t bring myself to trim ours before mid-December. As it’s taking your chances to score a real tree after mid-December, my cultural noncompliance introduced a note of suspense to what otherwise might have been a blandly predictable holiday season for the children. It had to be a real tree. Anytime I reached out to finger the lifelike tip of an artificial, prelit display model, I heard my father’s voice in my head, barking, “Fake tree, fake Christmas!” causing me to jerk my hand back like I had touched fire. I couldn’t turn my back on tradition. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without someone swearing over missing rope, burned-out lights, and teetering tree stands. Far be it from me to break the chain.

  For a while, we bridged the culture gap by driving to a local tree farm on Thanksgiving weekend, tagging a tree and paying for it, then leaving it in the ground until we came back for it, three weeks later. That added up to a whole lot of driving around, and every year I gained a little more appreciation for trees whose synthetic branches would never touch a roof rack. The whole excursion felt contrived, anyway. It wasn’t as if we were trekking through the hushed, snowy woods, Daddy’s axe in hand, like we did when I was a little girl. We were at a U-Pick in the middle of a sodden field, with country music blaring over the PA system. Finally, one December when I was in the throes of a deadline, with no long afternoons to spare for a country drive, I broke down (in Target, naturally) and bought an enormous fake tree. I brought it home and popped it open like a beach umbrella. And do you know what, boys and girls? Christmas CAME. It came without puddles. It came without tipping. Without shedding needles, or sticky sap dripping. It came without rope, or getting stuck in the door.

  “Maybe Christmas,” I thought, “does come from a store.”

  There was no going back, once I’d seen the prelit light. I love everything about our fake Christmas tree, even the jolt of panic when I realize I forgot all day to water it, followed by the realization that I didn’t forget. Gets me every time. It’s a little adrenaline high.

  The kids are somewhat reassured to know that our tree is secured and on standby in the attic, but they still get a little anxious when all the halls in the world but ours seem decked and trimmed. I remember worrying that Christmas preparations in my childhood home weren’t quite up to code either. I was gravely concerned that our house had no fireplace. Even after my parents explained that Santa could just as easily use the front door, I wasn’t entirely convinced there wouldn’t be some sort of penalty imposed; items crossed from my list. I knew it was not the done thing to hang your stocking over a nail in the plywood stereo stand.

  There are a few compensating charms to raising a family on this little raft of ours, stranded as we are from in-laws, grandparents, cousins, and the like. Getting to make up our own traditions is one of them. Who’s to tell us, “That’s not how we do it”? To tide the kids over, we introduced the Saint Nicholas tree, a cheap tabletop tree that lives in the attic and comes out on December 6, the saint’s feast day. It’s their tree, and I keep my mitts off it, no matter how clumped together all the red balls are or how big the hole in the lights is. This is where they get to hang all the ornaments that come from fast-food places, the plastic cartoon characters, the dollar-store nativity figurines with their pasty bisque complexions. It’s where kitsch comes to nest.

  Adopting Saint Nicholas Day was supposed to provide a soft landing for when the kids eventually let go of Santa—giving them a historical figure for a transitional object. The first time we set up their little tree, I explained that it honored the memory of a Turkish bishop who lived—and died—a long time ago. He wasn’t supposed to be magical. But when they found gold-wrapped chocolate coins in their shoes the next morning, they assumed they came from Saint Nicholas, and were so excited by the idea, I had to go along with it. My kids make a believer out of me.

  It’s amazing how many holes in a story can be spackled over with a little willingness to believe. When I was nine years old, my next-door neighbor told me point-blank that she’d seen my parents buying one of my Christmas presents at Kmart. I barely flinched. She might as well have told me that it wasn’t really our dolls talking when we played with them. So it was make-believe. That didn’t mean it wasn’t real. I understood then that my parents were in a game of pretend with me—a really good game. Why would I spoil our fun by not playing along?

  Then I grew up, and forgot how to play. I grappled over the Santa question with all the earnestness a new parent can muster. Would we be perpetuating a hoax? Was it a betrayal of trust? How would we explain everything? And just how far was I willing to run with it? I established complex ethical guidelines to minimize our liability. We’d keep the story simple and vague. We would use the word “Santa” as a euphemism for the spirit of giving. We would neither confirm nor deny reports that Santa Claus is, or is not, a real person. That, and all other inquiries, should be volleyed back to the inquirer, so as not to incriminate ourselves. We’d say things like, “How do you think he gets around to all those houses in a single night?” The distribution of gifts wo
uld not be tied to merit, and above all, we would never, ever invoke Santa Claus as a threat.

  That lasted until the first child could squeak “Santa!” Spirit, my ass. Would a spirit leave cookie crumbs and half-nibbled carrots all over the coffee table? Does a spirit make hoofprints across the floor? Can you track a spirit on the computer using radar? Do letters from spirits get postmarked from the North Pole? Would NASA lie? Would the U.S. Postal Service? I hope Santa didn’t hear you think that, because, oh yeah, he reads minds. You better not shout.

  Threats? Listen, after three kids, you use whatever leverage you can get. As far as mine are concerned, the naughty-or-nice tip line has operators standing by, 24/7.

  How far am I willing to run with it?

  As far as my boys will take me.

  The one bit of Christmas magic I can’t work for them, unfortunately, is snow. Christmas is always green where we live. A couple of times a year, it gets cold enough for the dog’s water bowl to freeze over, an event that my children greet with a level of excitement that is completely out of proportion and, frankly, pathetic. A lump of cloudy ice with a couple of hickory leaves stuck in it is hardly a winter wonderland. But it is to them. “Snow!” they shriek if it should happen to sleet or hail, running outside to frolic in the ice pellets.

  Real snowfall is a phenomenon we only experience every few years, and when it does happen, is fleeting. When a writing assignment took us all to Quebec last year on a ski vacation, the kids ran around gathering armfuls of snow to their chests in a wild panic. “It’s okay, boys,” I assured the hoarders. “It will still be here in the morning. I promise.”

  I like to ski, and it was fun to watch them play, but I don’t miss it much myself. Having spent my first twenty-six years in the northeast, I’m thoroughly over winter. The first time it snowed after I moved to Arkansas, I spent the whole day in bed with all the blinds closed, unmoved by my husband’s whooping and hollering as he rummaged our drawers for winter clothing.