Blood in the streets

"Once a guy gets a target on him there's really not anything I can do anymore.  I just tell him get life insurance so at least you can leave your family in a better place. If someone wants to get him, they'll get him."

His words have been haunting me the past few days.  Words shared by a good friend as we talked about yet another young man being killed in our neighborhood.

My dear friend Heather has opened my eyes to the realities of young men in our neighborhood.  Fear and anxiety surround them every moment of everyday.  Simple trips to the corner store could cost them their lives and it does.  Just this week she's lost two of her youth. "He was the hilarious, good-spirited one. And now he's dead." My heart aches for her.  She loves these boys with her whole heart and it crushes her to continue to lose them to the streets.

Every time I talk with Heather I get a renewed sense of urgency to hold my boys near and to pour everything I have into them.  I look at their precious smiles and watch as they are learning to shed their layers of protective walls enough for them to play freely. My heart deeply fears them growing up.

"Ms Samantha I need to leave! I've got four boys! You don't know how hard it is to raise boys here," A mother confides.  I am only now starting to understand her fears.  We live in a place where mothers desperately cling to their sons as the temptation of the streets claw them from their arms.

"Ms Samantha why you never have boys groups?" One of my young boy asks in frustration when they hear I am starting another girls group at the school.
"Cuz I'm not a boy!" I laugh in response.
"So? Doesn't matter!"
"Well I don't know anything about being a boy!"
They are relentless and reply, "It's okay we will teach you and you can like teach us about David or other guys in the Bible."

I couldn't argue with that. They're hungry for attention, to be seen, to be loved, to belong.  The thing with these kids is that they don't really care about what you're doing, they just want to be with you.  I've had boys plead with me to let them come over and clean my car! I'm crazy about these little guys and so it breaks my heart when they're looked at as a nuisance or not worthy of someone's time. They want them pushed out, contained, to sit still, to be seen but not heard. They snap orders at them and scowl with burning eyes and sadly those are often the only words exchanged.  Do you know how many people have made jokes that fall on ears that are not laughing as they tell me they're thankful for me because they'd never want to work with my kids.

I'm not laughing because inside I am crying.

They don't understand.
They must not see what I see.
How could they see my precious, image bearing boys and turn their backs?
They shove them to the side, complain about their behavior and then sit baffled by the young men with cold eyes standing on the corners.
What do you expect?  They've found the ones who will give them their time.

But it may just cost them their lives.

Getting back to my roots

Today I decided to paint.  I decided to paint because some how I felt I lost myself and I needed to get back in touch with who I am. 

Last week I decided to return home for a much needed time of rest away from the city, so I went back to Sheboygan to be with my family.  There was a moment where I was sitting and playing cards with my dad over lunch in a small down cafe when Jackson Browne and Cat Stevens carried me back to my past, life before Chicago.  Suddenly a piece of me, that was missing for so long, was brought back to mind.

It's the joke among my friends that I live under a rock.  They talk about movies and artists of their childhood and they're always baffled that I don't know them. I typically just laugh and shrug not really knowing why I don't know but as I sat in that little cafe with my dad I was reminded.  I don't know movies and artists they knew because I grew up very differently.  I was raised on the music of my parents childhood.  I could sing the lyrics of just about every song by the Beatles, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens...and so on.  While I did watch movies and tv growing up, it wasn't a large part of my childhood.  My days were spent barefoot running around the yard with my brothers.  I was a "country girl" as many here joke. 

So why am I bringing this all up?  Because recently I realized that when I moved here I decided to be completely here.  I didn't want to come in comparing life here to life in Wisconsin.  I wanted to be fully present in my community so West Garfield became my world;  I live here, work here, go to church here, my gym is here, and as I dove into being fully present here I began to really soak in the culture of this place.  As I went deeper and deeper into the culture I started to forget my own roots.  I know this all may seem confusing and weird to someone who has never lived outside of their own culture but something I realized just recently is that embracing the new does not mean you have to let go of the old.  I'm a complex mix of two very different cultures.  I love the hustle and bustle of city life but I feel most at home out in the woods with no one around.  I love going with my friends in the city but I'm also very content to sit alone and paint all afternoon.  One minute I may be listening to Rap and R&B and then the next I may turn on some Bluegrass.  I have had a rich life of so many very diverse experiences and it's ALL of the many pieces that have made me to be who I am today.