If you spend more than 10 minutes with me, you will know that I befriend people. In-person is my favorite way. In my neighborhood or my city or on a trip.
Strangers become friends, even if for a moment.
And sometimes longer.
My neighbors are in the photo album of my mind, even more so since 2020.
Some of those faces lining Clement were the only faces I saw.
They were my solace.
They were hugs before we could hug.
I would walk and get my coffee to see life still existed.
Same with my runs to the beach.
People treat people differently based on what power they perceive they hold. I always thought this was bullshit. And pretty vapid.
It might be because my father taught me, as someone who had a working-class job, how insulting folks would be. Not climbing telephone poles, which he did for almost his 25-plus years at the phone company. But whenever he was digging for a job—underground cable-anything with manual labor—people would treat him differently. One day, a mom told her son while looking down at my father—you gotta go to school, or you will have to turn out like him.
Some elitists demean the barista as if there is no art in coffee making or labor and magic in that cup. And make your own at home, then.
Looking down on those who are working class, in labor, and even trades. I know it's capitalism, racism, classism, and all the isms playing their best game.
They know how to separate us.
But I have never fully reconciled why.
Why minimize something you can't do?
Why minimize someone helping you?
Why pretend we don't all need all the parts to function?
I never wanted degrees and titles to change me. It felt like dishonoring who I am. Where I came from.
The bones that have held up my skin are temporary.
Our history is forever.
My great-grandmother was a maid and nanny when she arrived by boat (due to colonialism and government facilitated famine) with her neighbor. During our last pandemic, before this one (google the survival rates that time around, they were not good)--, she was able to stay pregnant and give birth to my very own grandma.
My grandmother, who raised multiple generations of her kids filling in the gaps for some of us, including myself, of mothering. Her first pregnancy was twins (can you imagine someone under 5 feet pregnant with twins?), and my grandpa learned the names of two babies, a boy, and a girl, by telegram as he was overseas in the military. It is another product of being working class without options, even if packaged differently in the family history book.
One uncle, who died in Vietnam- a few months before the war ended- never saw his 20th birthday. My other uncle was drafted for that same war before he could start this special program at Stanford for computers. Not college because that would have protected him. No one was going to college then and if they were only for brief stints or not graduating. Later, dying from the complications of Agent Orange receiving a check from the government the year he died.
We honor those stories by living in them. We do not play hide-and-seek with the stories based on who we are telling, pretending we did not come from them.
They still matter.
I became very aware it would be easy for me to hide in my whiteness and have folks make assumptions-- the lessons of public-school kid to private universities. I saw classmates of color being asked how they got in and assumptions of where they came from but not me.
My favorite forever will be if I grew up on vineyard (because they were some other Buelers --different spelling- running a winery) in Sonoma County.
Where do you and your family summer?
We don't summer anywhere. We just camp. I am proud of those who came before me.
No degrees, professional titles, or money in their bank accounts could give them more respect in my eyes.
I always told the truth of where I came from.
So, on this last trip, I did what I always do: I befriended the hotel staff. I learned their names, and they learned mine. I got them all tacos when grabbing dinner to thank them for lending me their phone charger when mine broke. I knew they both were working a double.
We chatted and shared about life, and I couldn't help but wonder later what would have been lost if we all got caught up in the make-believe.
Who was the "guest" and the other "worker"?
And race.
And whose family were immigrants or not.
We talked about policing after six police showed up for a welfare call and why it hasn't all been done differently yet. We talked about raising siblings and jobs they have dreamed of and still dream of.
We lose so much in disconnection in the textbook of America. Taught. A world that prioritizes the rich and celebrity and the very sliver of what is considered "successful." The hierarchy of colorism, class, and gender all live in the now.
They say being kind and caring is a losing game.
We all lose when we let the barriers we create around our hearts and minds become permanent.
Probably more than ever.
Some of the best joy and connection I have known.
The unexpected type that flows lives in all these moments.
It is what we have always done.
Living in a community.
The web of humanity has already lived and breathed in this.
Before colonialism washed away, all the practices passed on and on and on. Manufactured like our consent to ensure our gospel was me and our church was money.
As so many of us now are awake—---as all the systems crumble.
Now, more minds finally understand what others have known for a long time: the chants "we are number 1" and the bylines of "being the best country" were all just distractions.
The myths and fables and most of the promises of our country never turned to truth.
The antidote to disconnection and despair is community.
Community we have dreamt of in slumber.
Community we felt but could not name.
They say being kind and caring is a losing game, but it is the only way we will survive. The living in the "I" is dying, and the living in the "we" is the rebirth.
I love this with all of my heart. Thank you, Kate!!
God I love the title of this so much