Author: Andria K. Brown

The story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by my 5-year-old son:

“Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. It was that black people and white people would get together. They were apart because there were signs saying that only white people could go in some places. Also, a little boy wanted to play with Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was a little boy and his mother said he couldn’t because Martin Luther King, Jr. was black. That made Martin Luther King, Jr. very very very sad. Also, there was a lady on the bus who had to move seats because she was black.”

I was down by the National Civil Rights museum this past weekend and thought about taking my children — ages 9 and 5 — through, but I thought it pretty unlikely that my youngest would understand the story it told. Turns out, I should have asked him. As a Memphis public school attendee and child of the new millennium, he’s got a grip on the essence of the struggle for civil rights.

The story probably resonates quite strongly with most children, really. After all, they live in a world where they’re constantly having limits put on who they can be, where they can go, and what they can do. It feels unfair to them, as they’ll be quick (and loud) to point out. The only way they have out of this controlled world is to grow up and make their own rules. It must therefore seem terrifying to them to think that those restrictions could last your whole life.

In Monday’s inaugural address, President Obama hailed — and represented — the progress we’ve made toward Dr. King’s dream, but he also pointed out that every dream is not yet reality. We haven’t even reached full equality for the female half of the population, let alone any minority group.

As frustrated and impatient as that makes me, I have to admit that when the president’s speech referenced the Stonewall riots, a watershed moment in the contemporary gay rights movement, I got actual goosebumps. I felt much like I did when Obama expressed his support for gay marriage: cynical enough to know that there was politics behind the message, but excited by the fact that the politics were finally on the side of reason.

Shortly after the historic October 2012 voting season legalized gay marriage in a slew of new states, my son came across me quietly tearing up as I flipped through online slide shows of same-sex couples standing in line for their marriage licenses and civil ceremonies. When I explained what I was doing, he said, “Can boys marry boys?” Yes, I told him, in some places. “And girls can marry girls?” Yes, same deal.

He looked unsure and a little unsettled. I gave him my best liberal mom voice and asked if he had any questions about that. “But … can they both wear dresses?” I pulled him on my lap and we looked through the pictures together, noting the full and diverse collection of wardrobe options. He didn’t bat an eye at the physical affection shown by the couples. I don’t take credit for that, but it lifts my heart nonetheless. He is what’s coming next.

I don’t presume that an inaugural address sets legislation in motion or even makes headway with anyone already in opposition to everything the president believes. Our elected leaders don’t tend to jump out ahead of the trends, however. The wind is at his back.

I don’t think that a speech will magically make things change. But even a child can see that things already have.

The National Warning Service has issued a Severe Overreaction Watch for the following counties: Haywood, Madison, Chester … oh all of them, okay? Everybody is going to freak out. Because it’s going to be below 32 degrees. And also? Precipitation. AAAAIIIEEEEEEE! Go take your children to school for half a day so you can get to the store for some bread and milk without hearing them ask if there’ll be a snow day for the zajillionth time. Go now! Go! You have so much bread pudding to make!

Be careful on your way, though, because visibility is low. Not because of the slushy rain, but because you used a CD case or credit card or the back end of a Desitin tube to scratch an eight-inch-diameter peephole through the ice on your windshield.

Speaking of ice, there may be some on the roads. That happens in the winter sometimes, even in the South. That’s why there are all those signs saying “Bridge May Ice In Cold Weather.” What they really mean to say, however, is “Slam On Your Brakes If Bridge Is Icy!” We just couldn’t get that to fit in the space allotted. So by all means, throw it into a fishtail as soon as you and your fellow drivers are suspended above 240.

It’s disastrous out there, and you need to act accordingly. No one has ever, in the history of meteorology, experienced a winter storm of this magnitude. Well, except for everyone north of St. Louis, who would call this frozen typhoon by its more common name: January. In fact, some residents of Northern climes might even be tempted to mock this warning, just like they mock you for complaining about the cold when you’re not wearing socks.

Additional Ridicule Warning: Those (former) residents might even tell you boring stories about how they went years on end without a snow day during their public education, since the requirement for closing a Minnesota school is that the snow be higher than a kindergartner. They may also brag about how they literally walked a mile uphill both ways in the snow (and sub-zero temperatures) to school, being foolish enough to have attended a university on the frozen banks of Lake Michigan. The only reason you will tolerate these stories is because that defected Yankee is the only person in the parking lot with an actual ice scraper in her car.

Don’t run off too fast, however, since that may be your only source of outside interaction for the next 24-72 hours. (Plus you’re about to get to an overpass. Slow down! Immediately!)

Sure, it will seem nice to be at home at first, all cozy in your soft pants with your loved ones. But then the cookies will be eaten, the hot cocoa will run out, and your Snuggie will start to feel like a giant fleecy straightjacket. Because the reality is, even before a flake hits the ground, you’re trapped. You have nowhere. Else. To go. Your office will be closed. Your yoga class will be canceled. Even your church will be shut down, which sort of seems like a conflict of interest in the Act of God department.

It’s just you, your co-habitants, and the Action News 5 Weather Team, all growing increasingly shrill until the spring thaw. By which we mean Saturday. That doesn’t seem far away now, sure, but just wait until your fifteenth round of Apples to Apples. Suddenly “Reasonable” and “Jack Nicholson in The Shining” will seem like a winning hand.

So seriously. We’re warning you. Not about the weather – which in fact already seems to be improving – but about the surrounding panic. All it takes is a stock photo of a tree branch encased in ice to incite fear, confusion, and spontaneous reminiscences of the ’94 Ice Storm. The NWS has been researching this phenomenon for decades and so far has been unable to prevent it. The good news, however, is that we’ve found a successful treatment based on the genetically coded disaster response of Midsoutherners.

The bad news is, it’s Wonder Bread.

In case you weren’t spending your New Year’s Day morning watching the Gator Bowl on ESPN2, let me sum up: The mighty Wildcats of my alma mater, Northwestern University, swatted down the Mississippi State Bulldogs for their first bowl victory since the 1949 Rose Bowl. Also in 1949? My mom was born. NATO was established. The World Series saw the New York Yankees beat Brooklyn. So, you know, it’s been awhile.

When I began my college career, however, Northwestern hadn’t even been to a bowl since 1949. It was a tough slot, being a selective private school wedged among the huge state universities of the Big Ten. The football stands were sparsely populated of a Saturday, the students taken to entertaining themselves by having marshmallow fights and using our higher test scores as justification to chant derisively at the opposing teams (“That’s alright, that’s okay, you’ll all work for us someday.”) Victories were so rare that a goalpost was uprooted and marched into Lake Michigan pretty much every time we got a win.

But my freshman year, something strange happened: we started to not suck. It wasn’t a winning season or anything, but after three victories, we had to stop tearing up the field every time. The very next year, we went to the Rose Bowl.

I wasn’t good at college. I did fine academically, but I didn’t take advantage of the freedom and foolishness like a normal American teenager. Northwestern’s motto is “Quaecumque sunt vera,” meaning, “Whatsoever things are true,” and I was probably a little too hung up on truth at the time. Even at 17 years old, I knew what was reckless, what was careless, what was probably not a good idea. The mistake I made, however, was thinking that all those things were also pointless. Now more than twice that age again, I can see that some recklessness might have done me some good.

The closest I came was on those Saturday afternoons at Dyche Stadium, bundled up against November lake gusts, cheer-screaming with my classmates for Schnur and D’Wayne and Darnell, dancing along with the marching band to stay warm. As I watched the game in Jacksonville this week and saw today’s students doing all the same things (well, except for freezing their asses off), all those numb-toed, sore-throated hours came spinning back to me. When Coach Fitzgerald choked up in the post-game interview, I was right there with him, because I knew he remembered those Saturdays, too – he was our star linebacker during those shockingly triumphant seasons.

People say “we” in reference to their athletic teams, but for the first and last time in my life, college represented a point where I really felt camaraderie between myself, my team, and other fans. The players weren’t distant celebrity figures. They were the guys I met during visits to my big sister’s dorm, then the guys in my sociology class, then the guys asking my roommate out. They were kids and we were kids and watching them play was exhilarating and a little terrifying because it made us realize how fast it was all going by.

Time has taken that fear, but also some of that excitement. Is there ever another phase in our lives like that? I’ll never be the person who says college days were the best time of my life, but I can see now that it was a time like no other. I know all those students who were at the Gator Bowl – the ones on the field and the ones in the stands – have finals and frat parties and (if they’re not like me) a few hangovers to get through between now and graduation. A lot of it will blur together and someday, 15 years from now, they may have trouble remembering the names of their dorm-mates, let alone their senior thesis topic. But maybe, on one wintry afternoon, the sound of the fight song will bring it all back, and they’ll smile to remember who they once got to be.

This past weekend, I was mobbed in Cooper-Young. Luckily, I was with about a dozen other women, and the mob consisted of eager holiday shoppers looking to buy some stuff we’d made. As part of the Memphis Women’s Creative Collective, I was a beneficiary of the second-ever Memphis Cash Mob, the local outlet of a national effort to ambush small businesses (with their blessing) with a scheduled burst of paying customers. It’s a deeply simple concept, and so far, very successful. I was a mobber the first time and a mobbee the second, and on both occasions, I was surrounded by friendly Memphians with open wallets.

The whole “shop local” movement has gained traction over the last few years, as the community-related effects of Wal-Martization have set in and even large chains like Borders haven’t been able to fight their online counterparts. I have to make a confession, though: I’m terrible at shopping locally. I want to, I try to, but when it comes right down to it, I usually can’t afford to. I shop at my desk or on my couch, during random off-hour pockets of time, and I hold “50-percent-off-retail” as a standard for what I’m willing to pay.

By all appearances, I should be willing and able to make the small and rewarding sacrifices required to shop in my own community, but the reality is, I’m on my own fiscal cliff, and have been teetering on its edge for four years now. That’s when, as a recovering small business owner (oh, the irony), I began a debt consolidation program that has redirected a significant portion of my paycheck toward the mountain of credit card debt I built while trying to keep my store above water. For 50 months now, the equivalent of a mortgage payment, or a week in a 2-bedroom Gulf Shores condo, or semester’s tuition for one course at the University of Memphis, has been automatically withdrawn from my checking account. Poof! Gone! Worst magic ever!

It’s been happening for so long now that I barely think about it, but now that the end is in sight (April, if I’m doing the math right … which clearly may not be the case), I’ve started pondering what life will be like when that sturdy sum stays put each month. No more end-of-the-pay-cycle panic, no more due-date juggling, and, Maude help me, no more credit card balances. Ever.

I’m no economist (I mentioned that I kept a business afloat on personal credit cards, right?), but I start feeling a little like one when all the current budgetary rhetoric flies around because the financial mess we’re in as a country feels a little too familiar. Simply put, we overspent, from the top on down. No matter how noble or frivolous the intent, the money’s gone either way. And it wasn’t just The Administration. We helped. We sent in those no-interest-rate credit card applications and applied for mortgages that seemed a little too good to be true because, well, they were. Welcome to my cliff, everybody. Pull up a chair. And don’t look down.

The problem with the national parallel is that going through a serious buckle-down period as a country may not resolve anything, because we can’t guarantee that everyone will hold to their part of the deal and stop making the mistakes that caused these issues in the first place. I have no problem making major, long-term sacrifices if I know I’m coming out better on the other side.

My neighbors, however, are giving me hope. Seeing hundreds of people forgo the mall – at least for an afternoon – and spend money in their own communities, even though it’s a little less convenient (sorry about the downpour, people who parked two blocks away!) is reassuring. I think it’s safe to say that Memphis doesn’t tend to be at the forefront of many trends, so there’s good reason to believe that this mentality is already catching on in other metro areas. And if a growing number of people are buying into the idea that paying a little more, working a little harder, and supporting our own is worth the trouble, we just may be able to step back from the cliff.

As I sat on a makeshift bench in a temporarily sodded yard adjacent to the Sears Crosstown building and watched a well-dressed couple ambling down the sidewalk toward various nearby destinations, I was suddenly struck. “They got me,” I thought, “it worked.” Because in that moment, I was able to envision what a revitalized Cleveland Street would look like, and that was exactly the point of MemFix, the event that had brought me (and my kids, and seemingly half of midtown) to an empty department store parking lot that day.

Call me unimaginative, but before MemFix, I’d had a hard time picturing how the street I’d avoided taking my parents down during their visits to Memphis was going to become a thriving new part of the community. I must not be alone, though, because this whole if-you-fake-build-it-they-will-come thing is starting to become a powerful new tactic around here. It took an event like A New Face for an Old Broad in 2010 to show the potential of that long-neglected area. In the two years since, artists, restaurants, and other adventurous businesses have taken a chance on the old Broad and, based on steady occupancy of the street and unsteady departees of The Cove, it seems to be working out as planned.

Lack of imagination isn’t something Memphians are often accused of, however. Our default is more akin to skepticism. “Believe Memphis” was a great tagline for our NBA team, but did anyone happen to notice that it didn’t get picked up until the Grizzlies were near the playoffs? Did we believe before we saw the proof?

I don’t fault anyone for this tendency toward doubt; I’m a strong purveyor of it myself. There have been a lot of plans and promises that haven’t come through for Memphis, and it’s fair, I think, to want some evidence before we show enthusiasm, that most vulnerable-making of emotions.

But it’s hard to deny that the evidence is mounting. It’s filling up the empty spaces all around us. In the last ten years, a museum and charter school rose from the rubble of the Stax studio. New homes finally replaced the bare swath cleared for a deflected highway. A beautiful and well-managed trail system overtook abandoned rail routes. Vacant storefronts along South Main became condos and galleries and offices (where, in the interest of full disclosure, I happen to be currently employed by a firm that works with many of these emergent entities). I even hear they might do something with that Pyramid.

The next experiment begins this weekend, when MemShop will fill the unoccupied spaces on Overton Square with temporary businesses, just in time for your holiday shopping. I’ve spent the entirety of my Memphis residency wishing for Overton Square’s comeback, and have been let down numerous times, but it really and truly seems to be happening. For sure. Maybe. Probably? If MemShop can lure retailers back to the square the way Broad Avenue’s efforts did, the corner of Madison and Cooper may skip a revival and go straight on to renaissance.

With the recent addition of Memphis to National Geographic’s “Best of the World 2013” list, the doubt has been temporarily set aside for something dangerously close to giddiness. Had those explorers come to visit a decade ago, they would have found many of the things that made them declare Memphis a must-see destination – the food, the music, the all-around uniquity – but they also would have found an overwhelming sense of defeatism, one which probably would have pushed us somewhere behind Cleveland (or, heaven forbid, Nashville) on their list. Luckily, they came to 2012 Memphis, and that’s a whole different story.

So the positivity is pervasive? And everything’s solved? No. Not at all. Our position between St. Augustine and Kyoto on some travel site makes little change in the daily lives of residents who are more concerned about feeding their kids than updating their feeds. Our issues as a city are deep and serious, and pop-up shops and food truck rodeos aren’t going to make them disappear. They are, however, going to help us have a little more fun while we work the rest out. And what could maybe be dismissed as hipster boosterism (hoopsterism?) will fill in some of the space where our doubt used to be.

We have holes all over the city, from downtown storefronts to suburban foreclosures. But what’s making Memphis a must-see is how we’re planning and working and collaborating to fill them. We don’t have to imagine what’s coming next. We can see it. We, finally, can believe.

“What do you want for Christmas?”

It seemed like a simple question, but neither of my children had an answer.

The interrogations started more than a month in advance. I asked, my mother asked, my sister asked, all three of us eager to get our seasonal shopping over and done with. Each time, however, we were met with blank expressions and shrugged shoulders. Somehow, my kids made it past Thanksgiving without giving any consideration to their Christmas lists.

I don’t credit myself for this phenomenon; I’m as baffled by it as anyone. I did everything I could to avoid it. What’s the point of letting them watch cartoons if they don’t come away knowing which crappy toys they have to have?

Personally, maintaining my online wish list is a year-round hobby. It’s where I put the books and CDs (those are music files that exist in three dimensions, kids) and shoes that never go far enough below retail price for me to buy myself. Lately, I’ve made an effort to pad the list with locally made products that support Memphis artists and wouldn’t require shipping, but I have no illusions that this effort makes it better to keep an ever-expanding list of stuff I want. I don’t expect to get everything on it, of course, but there’s still something comforting about the process. It’s like window-shopping in windows filled specifically for me. Looking at that lily-of-the-valley pendant necklace is, like, 17 percent as nice as actually wearing it.

I’ve tried putting the big toy catalogs that arrives with the Sunday newspaper in front of my kids and letting them get ideas from there, but that ends up being pretty useless. My daughter flips through the pages aimlessly and my son shouts, “I want that!” at everything from Beyblades to rechargeable batteries. At the end of the process, I’m still nowhere closer to practical gift ideas, but I’m a little more bitter about never having owned a Barbie RV.

After a week of cajoling, my son finally came up with something: a toothbrush that plays music. By my math, that’s two small steps above a lump of coal. I’m not sure if that’s his humility or guilt talking, but even on my meanest mommy days, I don’t think I could give my kid a toothbrush for Christmas.

I’m a planner and a deal-hunter, so I’ve been at the brink of aggravation over this whole gift mystery, even with four weeks to go. Then this morning, as we were listening to the radio during my daughter’s commute to school, I heard the WRVR deejays broadcasting from the Porter Leath toy drive. They were reading the wish list of a four-year-old boy. His top items? Socks and underwear. My heart broke, of course, as it was intended to do. But after that, it was filled with gratitude. Not only because my kids and I have so much, but because, at least right now, they seem to understand that.

There’s still plenty of time for the ghost of Christmas Spending to visit my children this season, haunting their dreams with Furbys and gajillion-piece Lego sets. It’s inevitable, really. But it’s a gift to know that, at this moment, they’re happy with what they have.

The WRVR Toy Truck will be parked at Bud Davis Cadillac at 5433 Poplar Ave. to accept new, unwrapped toys from 6am – 7pm through Nov. 30. Cash donations will be matched by their own Secret Santas and can be given in person or at porterleath.org. (I have no affiliation with any of these people, but since this is the organization that made me tear up most recently, it’s the one I’ll point out. Feel free to find your own.)

Dateline: Minnetonka, Minnesota. Home of the eponymous moccasin, Tonka trucks, and the purifying lake waters touted by Prince in Purple Rain.

I’m frequently asked where I’m from and I hem and haw on the answer, citing the half-dozen places I passed through in my first two decades, but this, really, is it. The ancestral homeland. I was born fewer than thirty miles from where I now sit. And where I now sit is the couch in my parents’ house, the house where I lived from my single-digits through high school graduation. My parents were raised 100 miles away. Their parents and siblings and mind-boggling numbers of cousins are interspersed in the prairies to the near west. If any one place is where I’m from, it is here.

And yet, this is the first Thanksgiving I’ve spent up north since the turn of the century. The unpredictable November weather combined with inexcusable airfares had made it pointless to even consider the trip. I made the best of it over the years, spending the day with my Southern family-by-choice when I could, taking my kids for dim sum when I couldn’t. I was actually planning on another Memphis Thanksgiving this year, most likely catered by Wang’s Mandarin House, but thanks to a last-minute influx of frequent flyer miles and the unbearable burden of a gluten-free holiday, the urge to travel became overwhelming.

So here we are. I just dragged two children and three overstuffed carry-on bags through the gates of Helta to spend four days in unfamiliar (to them) places with people they hardly see. Was it worth the trouble? Oh, Maude, yes.

The minute we pulled into the driveway and I heard the garage door open — the sound that meant, throughout my childhood, that somebody was coming home — I could feel a tension release somewhere deep inside my chest. It happens every time I’m here. It’s like when you suddenly realize you’ve been holding your breath. I don’t notice the generalized loss I feel from living so far from my family until that distance is gone.

Being closer to my nuclear unit means getting reacquainted with parts of myself that I then get to introduce to my offspring. My parents occasionally get it in their heads that they’re going to sell this suburban home and move to a hobby farm with their horses and absolutely none of their daughters’ Rubbermaid bins of college notebooks, but so far, it’s been an empty threat. I’m grateful for that, because if they moved, surely the drawers and closets would get cleaned out and I wouldn’t have the pleasure of watching my kids discover a music box that plays “Born Free” or a lost stash of Snork figures. Every time we visit, my children and their cousins unwittingly fish out pieces of my own childhood, one Weeble at a time.

But these trips are also about them making their own memories. On this Thanksgiving day, my kids will share a meal with their great-grandparents. It’s been so long since these pairs last saw each other, it will be as much an introduction as a reunion, and although I expect there to be as much awkwardness as I sometimes felt as a child around my rarely-seen relatives, I’m thrilled that they’ll have that opportunity. It’s a chance I never had, and I hope it’s something they’ll treasure. Or at least not act a total fool for the duration.

Really, Thanksgiving has never been my thing. I’m not big on the food (except for a nice gluten-y gravy and some soft rolls … dammit!) and loud televised sports make me a little twitchy. And for the last thirteen years, I’ve always had the awareness that my family was off celebrating without me, which sort of put a damper on the whole deal. Now that we’re together, though, I can finally see the appeal.

I know there are people all over the country dreading the time they’re contractually obligated to spend with their “loved” ones, but I can’t speak for them. My kids ran full-tilt toward my dad when they saw him in baggage claim. My dad hugged me so hard my feet left the ground. In those first thirty seconds, the entire trip was made worthwhile.

I’ve made a home in Memphis, and it’s a home I love. But this year and always, I’m thankful for the home that taught me what love is.