Halloween

We had a nice Halloween party at the Sal were we had some candy, games and food for the kids. Some of them dressed up. Little Brandon, who is two, was wearing a puffy dinosaur costume and fell asleep in my arms. I'm pretty sure it would have made a great Anne Geddes print. I thought about getting candy a few times, but i figured i wouldn't be home from work til 8 or 8:30 so i could just hide in darkness at my house pretending not to be there b/c i sure didn't dare go to the door without candy. Right now we pretty much just have some kidney beans and an Aldi's cake mix and barely anything else b/c we really need to go grocery shopping pronto.

I thought i had fooled all the kids when my doorbell rang at 10 or so and i stealthy snuck to the door to see Q standing there sans any apparent Halloween costume. He was out of breath and told me to hurry to his house b/c his grandmother drank too much and passed out and she wasn't responding. As I got there, the ambulance was ariving and Q wanted me to go to the hospital with them. The paramedics were getting her stuff together and Q grabbed a portion of his abbreviated Halloween haul to tide us over at the hospital. Ambulances give me the creeps and so do hospitals right now, especially since i don't have health insurance currently, but his grandmother seemed like she would be ok, so that was good.

That kid has to be an adult and do so many things for his family and there's a lot of junk that goes on in his house, he doesn't have much time to be a kid at all, and not surprisingly because of all of this, he's failing a few of his classes. We had a good time at the hospital and he was really eager to share his candy with all the people in the waiting room. For some unknown reason he thought that the Peanut Butter M&M's weren't any different than the plain ones, which i found completely preposterous, but gladly benefitted from his ambivalence. The nurses and cleric staff had a bunch of candy to give out and so Q and i profited from being there at the tail end of Halloween and were supplied with our own continuous stream of Reese's and KitKat's while his grandma was given boring plain fluids and stuff.

My friend actually teaches Q's social studies class, where he's failing miserably and he said he doesn't want to be a social studies teacher ever and doesn't see a need to learn about social studies. While I was sitting in the waiting room i tried to say some stuff like the need to have perspective and understanding, but we were able to talk about it when we got back to my house after Holly picked us up. I made some food for us and we were watching a PBS special on slavery and he said that he didn't want to see any of it and we talked about it for a while and talked about guys like Nat Turner, John Brown, David Walker and why it's important to look at slavery, slave revolts, abolition movements and revolutions. Kinda intense talking about that as a white adult to a 12 year old black male, but I think it's extremely important for both of us.

Needless to say, as usual, things aren't normal here in West Philly, but I wouldn't have wanted to spend my Halloween any other way, and won't forget about it any time soon. My picture of community is always growing, often with lots of frustrations and great sadness, but at the same time there is hope and glimmers of incredible community and resurrection and that is where I want and need to be.