You know those thoughts that break you?

We were watching Amistad. He loves that scene where the character yells out "Give me free!" He walks around saying it for days, you know how people spew lines from Reservior Dogs & Arnie movies and all that? That's his movie line, "Give me free!" Sometimes i'm shaken because it's still relevant. That movie has hard scenes for me, like the one where they need to lesson the weight on the ship so they chain a bunch of the humans together and just let them slide over the side to drown.
That movie reminds me that there is no control. No matter how senseless human activity gets, there aren't means of control. The documentary I just watched on aging concentration camp survivors and what this hospital unit in Ontario is learning to aid them in their old age. They call it a cruel twist of fate. When you've been through something so tragic and you're in your later years you may not be able to remember to put your shoes on before you go out but you remember the way the guard smelled when he came to collect you bunk mate for Dr. Mengele.

His grandmother's house in New Orleans has her mother's framed freedom papers on the living room wall. My mother's house has a framed knock off of a ship at sea painting. Wierd. maybe it's the ship that stole his family and brought them to America where years later freedom papers would be framed and hung on the wall. The family's most prized possession. "Give me free!"
You know I still ache that my grandmother died too soon because she grew up in Whitney Pier, home of Canada's largest toxic waste site and I sign all of those petitions to clean up the tar ponds. I don't think pain felt ever leaves a family. I think it gets into the genetics. I wonder what it would feel like to know she had been owned, beaten, shackled, bought, sold, raped, worked to the bone, cold, hungry, scared her whole life?

I wonder sometimes when I look at him. If history hadn't changed and some people hadn't been so brave there are things I know about him. Because he is strong minded and because he is also gentle and protective, if he had to have been a slave he would have had his feet chopped off, he would have been whipped for insolence to the master, probably a lot. He would have suffered all that and still would have been shot in the back at his final attempt to get out. "Give me free!" He would have gone crazy. I wonder sometimes when I look at him how he handles these family memories.
Same way he handles a lot of shit handed to him on a daily basis.
My mother is a humanist. She raised us to be humanists. My mother was the Mom all the kids came out to. Whether they were gay, pregnant, suicidal, addicted, abused, raped, whatever, she was the go to Mom. She raised her kids to be anti-racist, tried to teach us what they weren't teaching us in school. So she did a good job making sure we weren't assholes or ignorant morons, but there's still a lot to know. I wish more people were like my mother.
A few weeks ago he said out of nowhere "You know your kids will be black"
I got a little offended, what am I dumb? I took sciences in university, I know his melatonin is way pushier than mine. I know he'll completely kick me out of the ball field when eye and skin color is getting made. What's he think, I'm stooopid?
Oh wait, I am stupid. There is going to be a completely different experience out there for them. it really is one thing for me to not be racist and it really is another thing to be in the face of it, to be on the receiving end. Do you all hear that? It's the sound of a white woman opening her eyes. I will not be able to stop people from treating them differently or maybe even badly just like he's never been able to stop people from treating him that way. And there are a lot of levels to this. And I have been ignorant. It's not enough to "not be racist".
I wonder about him sometimes. he sees the future so clearly. He's always predicting things that are going to happen to me emotionally. I think when he realized he was going to really be with me he sat down and thought out all of the ramifications from begining to end. I love him for that. I love it that he's like that. I didn't do that at all. I just dove in all in love and colorblind. He has every reason to be so much smarter than me about it. I never had to think about it. I considered it all done just because I wasn't a racist. He's faced it every day since he was born into it.
I really can get so progressive that I'm completely ass backwards.