she gets it from me

i try to be a reasonable bear. a grizzly to fewer and fewer as the years pass. i am, in fact, getting too old for so much drama.

so many years ago friends were concerned (and rightfully so), that i was fostering racism in my home. a tribal person who had just come fresh off run-ins with the law that occured for the first time in a life where that was not thought possible. it's not hard for me now, looking back to see, how it was a necessary backlash.

i remember the poem i wrote, am even tempted to share it with my daughter, when she tells me that she is not blonde.

you're not white.

i tell her. emphatically.

you're not supposed to be white. there is no shame in that.

but she's getting shit from godzilla at the farm. a week to torment my kid, and i am told my girl got the shirked duties of godzilla's granddaughter "because you do it every saturday." and this while all the camp kids were eating lunch. my kid is working on the responsibilites of another.

i said to the instructor today, who was not aware of this, and looked stressed and rightfully downcast about it. i said,

it would have been understandable if everyone took one of the duties and they all ate lunch together. but it is not right to have one child doing the chores of two people while everyone else has lunch.

i told my girl in no uncertain terms to refuse unreasonable demands in the future and say, talk to my mom about it.

my girl is a hard worker. but there are limits. she is a paying campgoer like the rest of them, and the lady who gave my kid the duties, her kid was there too. and if it were me, i would have done the duties or had my kid do them. (but i'm a parent, and would have borne most of the burden in conjunction with my kid).

nicole, my girl's instructor, told my girl to talk to her directly if any child or adult gives her problems. she said,

whatever i'm doing, come and get me.

and i thanked her for that. she knows my kid. she has spent the better part of the last year, for an hour a week alone with my kid, and then some. she knows her.

i looked nicole in the eye and said,

i trust you completely with her. whatever you say goes. thank you for standing up for her.

nicole is grieved about the situation. she's never had these troubles before. and she just listened as i said,

my girl is a mature eleven. she is used to being with me all the time. she is not afraid of adults, and she is not afraid to use her words.

the owner can't scare her, that is what gets the owner mad,

nicole said.

good.

i said.

she shouldn't be trying to.

right.

nicole said in agreement.

my mind reeling, i drove away. leaving my baby, my strong, dark, baby, in the hands of one i trust. who is, rightfully so, grieved as i am.

what to do? stop helping nicole because the owner "doesn't like dark people" as my daughter reports.

that would rend my girl from not only nicole, but, perhaps more importantly, from her horses. a wound, perhaps deeper than any percieved racism. though the racism stings.

the issues around this are complex. if the owner will persecute nicole for our participation in the programs (paying or not), then it might behoove (i can't believe i just used that word, i said i never would, therefore it was inevitable, even twenty years later, it had to come), nicole to cut us loose. but we are more than one lesson a week. we help maintain her horses on a day she admittedly cannot. we do it for free.

nicole and her five horses at the farm have nowhere else to go. and she has never had problems with her camps before. they are part of her business. she needs to do them to sustain her livelihood. but now, she questions if the owner will keep interjecting herself into them and causing problems.

i have no answers. being the dark person, mother to the dark child in question, i cannot offer myself up so easily. if it were only my heart, my love of horses, my time and money involved, easy enough. there is a farm down the street from my house. why drive the forty five minutes if it is not necessary?

but it is not just me. it is my dark and beautiful child. my strong, fierce, noble child. who speaks her mind when adults set out to frighten her. as she should.

i don't know what will come of this. i have tried my best to stay clear of the whole camp, but even my not being there, the owner threatened to keep my girl from coming for the last day.

nicole talked to the owner and said she had no right to say that to my girl.

and i don't know what to do, except watch and wait.
trusting my girl will prove stronger through this crucible.
that she will thrive in adversity.

she is, after all, the daughter of a fire lily.