#my top 3 are for sure his three daughters dinner in America and past lives !!

[dykefever]

in no particular order my top 9 films I watched for the first time this year <3

ty for the tag @steelycunt + @boydykepdf

tagging @gaewaren @serethereal @pancakehouse @suspendedinbush

[marvel-lous-things]

Promises

AN: reposting because tungle.hell is a little bitch that messed up the read more link on this and doesn’t deserve rights.

Words: 

Relationships: Family fluff, Pepperony, mentions of Peter’s crush on Harley

Prompt: “Every month everyone has a get together at the pepperony cabin and they have dinner together. Happy grills cheeseburgers for the kids (Morgan, Clint’s boys, Peter, Lila, Cassie, Harley) and they play outside until it gets dark, the older kids giving the younger ones piggy back rides and everyone eating juice pops. Steve is inside, bantering with Bucky and Sam, like the old times. Pepper wishes Tony would be here to see it all.”

—-

It was tradition, at this point, for everyone to meet up in Pepper’s old cabin (she had since moved to New York) on the first Sunday of each month. 

It had begun with a miscommunication. Steve had texted Bruce that he’d be visiting Pepper to check on her and Morgan, on that fateful day a little over a year ago. Somehow, Bruce had interpreted that as “Gather the whole gang, we’re gonna collectively show up at Pepper’s cabin with 35 assorted presents.”

It was a little odd the first time round, what with Bruce apologizing profusely for goofing up, and the cabin being too small to hold everyone while also allowing them some personal space. But she’d decided she liked having them all around. Might as well do it again.

14 months and 14 barbecue meet ups later, everyone looked forward to driving out there for a nice evening of grilled food and banter. And the occasional explosion. To be fair, when you throw two brilliant, reckless, science-loving teenagers and an equally brilliant, reckless, science-loving little girl together, explosions can (and will) occur.

Which is why Happy was very loudly arguing with Harley over using his “new and improved” grill rather than the usual one from Happy’s garage, which was decidedly safer and less daunting to use. To top it off, the damn thing was shaped like a nuke.

Elsewhere, the younger kids were having their own argument, except theirs had a little less to do with barbecue grills.

“Morgan,” Pepper called out, noticing the commotion, “it’s Cooper’s turn now, sweetheart.”

 “But mom-”

“Give it to him.”

“Just a minute!”

“Morgan.”

The 6 year old turned around, gave her mom the most heart-achingly adorable pout, and begrudgingly handed her brand new nerf gun to the older boy (a very well received gift from May). They’d been going at it all evening, shooting empty soda cans off rocks, tree branches, and at one point, Peter’s head.

Steve smiled, watching Barton’s kid shoot a can off Harley’s bike from 10 meters away. And then immediately panicking after realizing the can was actually full. And probably belonged to Harley.

“Kid’s good with a gun, Clint,” Steve noted.

“Scared he won’t take after his dad?”

The glare he received from the arrow enthusiast was borderline terrifying.

“We’ve just got killer aim, Rogers, it ain’t about the weapon. Hand me a gun, stand across the lake, and I’ll show you.”

Pepper laughed, throwing Clint a grape flavored juice pop (his favorite kind). 

“Nobody’s murdering anybody in my house, alright?”

Just before Clint could catch his dessert, though, a web shot out from behind the couch and snatched the sugar infused stick of ice right out of mid air. The web then proceeded to disappear as quickly as it came.

“Well, actually, Pepper,” said a youthful voice, no doubt belonging to the pop thief, 

“the murder would happen outside the house, so technically-”

“Peter Benjamin Parker, you give that back right now or you’re grounded for a month.”

Peter winced. Busted.

“He can get himself another one, May!” He tried (in vain).

“There’s a whole freezer full of em right outside-”

“Peter.” 

May raised her eyebrow at him. Ah, there it was. The look of devastating disapproval. A look nobody could stand to receive, let alone Peter “I cried watching Big Hero 6″ Parker.

“Alright, alright.” He sighed, back flipping over the armrest; a completely extravagant and unnecessary move that was only carried out in case Harley was watching. Peter had been trying his absolute best to get Harley’s attention off late. He told May that it was because he wanted to prove that “he’s the alpha” (May thought her disaster of a son simply wanted to impress his crush. She was right).

20 lazy footsteps and an annoyed huff later, the juice pop was slid across the kitchen counter, right into Clint’s open hand. 

When it was, regrettably, immediately snatched away by Lila.

Clint blinked. “Can’t catch a damn break, can I?”

Laura laughed, planting a reassuring kiss on her husband’s cheek. She’d learned over the past year that Clint had turned to vigilante justice to deal with his feelings of anger and helplessness. She couldn’t have him hunting down members of the Ukrainian mafia over popsicles.

“Calm down, drama queen, I’m sure there’s more in the ice box-”

“WHO TOOK ALL THE DAMN GRAPE JUICE POPS?” Captain America yelled from outside. A sound that was immediately followed by a very ungraceful pterodactyl-like screech, and Clint putting his head in his hands.

“…or maybe not.” She winced.

That was the exact moment Bucky took to walk down the stairs. a sticky purple mess gracing his face. He stopped abruptly when he noticed everyone’s eyes were on him, and just this once, he was sure it wasn’t because they were admiring his beauty. 

His eyes darted around the room, making note of Clint’s deep resignation, Pepper’s terrible poker face, May’s grimace, and Steve nearly falling off his chair in sheer amusement.

He wasn’t fully sure how to proceed.

“Uh…”

He looked around the room again, hoping it would give him answers. 

It didn’t.

“…what’s up?”

Steve actually did fall over at this point, prompting Peter to scream something about senior citizen needing help, followed by Cassie dialing 911 on Morgan’s old toy telephone. Neither of which helped him make sense of what was going on. Although, he had to admit, it was a little funny.

Bucky’s question, however, was answered when Sam entered the kitchen with the force of a very disgruntled wildebeest. He looked around wildly, until his eyes fell on Bucky and his incredibly purple grin.

“You,” Sam glowered.

“Me,” Bucky replied sweetly, slowly wiping the purple dye off his mouth with his sleeve. Which, of course, only served to drive Sam further up the wall.

“YOU DON’T EVEN LIKE GRAPE!”

“True, true.” Bucky shrugged.

“I do love pissing you off, though.”

What followed after was Sam chasing Bucky out into the woods, brandishing his shield and yelling something about how “this shield ain’t only for defending, I’ll star spangle whoop your ass you dick, come back here.”

Clint followed a minute later, on a quest to avenge his stolen popsicle

(This was after they were pointedly told by Pepper to take their battle outside, they’d lost enough vases over the year to the kids’ antics as it were).

Steve eventually found the strength to get back on his chair, and throw an apple in Harley’s general direction. Which was warranted, because the kid kept yelling “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” in this ridiculous (and frankly, offensive) “old man voice” while Steve did, in fact, struggle to get up.

He briefly wondered how pleased Tony would be to see Captain Perfect struggling with real, human issues, like achy joints and a sore back. Almost as if she’d read his mind, Pepper voiced his thoughts. 

“Tony would’ve loved to see you dealing with elderly-man problems, you know.” She laughed. “The number of times he’d complain that ‘Steve goddamn Rogers’ doesn’t suffer from a single grey hair even at the age of 100, while he did even though he was only 50.” 

She made air quotes around the “only.”

“Took a lot of convincing for him to let it grow out, you know, instead of hiding it behind dye after dye,” she rolled her eyes, “he looked at me like I’d told him to give Morgan up for adoption.”

Steve laughed softly. “A herculean effort, I’m sure.”

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it.”

Pepper remembered that conversation clear as day, like it had happened just days ago. Partly because she’d never had to convince someone who was once labelled “Sexiest Man Alive” by Times magazine that he would still be attractive with grey hair, until that strange, strange day, and partly because the method of convincing she’d opted for was… unusual, a little unexpected. But not unwelcome, for sure 

(He’d told her as much the next morning, wearing a stupidly lopsided grin, but no shirt)

Washing the dye off her fingers had been a pain in the ass though. She couldn’t believe he’d actually agreed to letting her color his hair grey. Morgan had shrieked seeing her daddy with “weird hair” (her words), which was not good for the case Pepper was making. But she had eventually warmed up to the new look. She even told Tony he looked nice, of her own accord. After which Pepper had walked in on Tony hugging his daughter and her struggling to get out of the death grip he had on her.

Pepper was snapped out of her reverie when Steve spoke up again.

“Who’s to say he isn’t seeing it, though?” 

Pepper blinked. She wasn’t one to space out often, but when she did, she was disturbingly thorough. 

“Sorry?”

“Tony, watching us,” Steve took a deep breath, “laughing at me struggling with weak hipbones, watching over you, Morgan, Peter…” He looked down at his mug of coffee, that had long since gone empty

“You never know.”

Pepper couldn’t quite place the look on his face just then. Somewhere between sad and hopeful, she supposed.

“You never know,” she repeated under her breath, more to herself than to him.

Steve heard it anyway, and smiled softly at her, before turning to look at the picture Pepper had framed on the living room wall. A picture of her, Tony, and Morgan, taken at the beach. Morgan was on his shoulders, maybe 3, 4 years old then. His right arm was wrapped around Pepper’s shoulder, her left arm around his waist. All three wore contented smiles, Tony’s and Morgan’s achingly similar.

No Iron Man, no arc reactor, no intense, murderous stare, like the hundreds of pictures that had graced every magazine in existence, for a month after his death.

Just plain, good old Tony Stark. The part of him he kept hidden from the world, reserved only for the people he loved.

It was the only picture that did him justice, Steve thought.

“I wish he could see you now, Pepper,” he turned back to her, half his mouth upturned in a small smile, “see how well his two favorite girls are doing.”

Pepper chuckled, gently placing her hand on Steve’s. 

“Oh, he knows,” she nodded, twirling the ring that still adorned her finger.

“I promised him we’d be fine.”

xxxxx

my adhd ass jumping from prompt to prompt: parkour

anyway, thanks for reading

[ascottywrites]

Overwatch -- The Felicity Smoak List

In light of Emily Bett Rickards’ departure from Arrow here we are with a few of my favorite things. Happy Reading!! 

The Phoenix by SuperSillyAndDorky06 (Complete: 27/27| 126,939) --Bratva Oliver 

Felicity Smoak fell in love with the broody, intense Oliver Queen, Captain of the Russian Bratva, ages ago but he broke her heart. So, when the sudden marriage between them is arranged, she does not understand it and she does not want it. Except Oliver Queen is not only a harder man to live with than she realized, he also has no intention of letting her go. Mature content. Mild swearing. A lot of sexual tension. And you will want to punch Oliver at times. Kiss him at times ;)

A Code of Silence by OliversMuse (Complete: 34/34| 55,265) --Bratva Oliver  Oliver Queen is a boss of the Star City mafia when he meets and and falls in love with Star City socialite Felicity Smoak. While on their honeymoon their yacht goes down and they are presumed dead. Five years later they unexpectantly show back up alive and Oliver is now also a Captain in the Russian Bratva. As he fights to keep his territory he faces a resistance that will force him to show everyone just how far he will go to protect those he loves and Felicity to show what she will do to protect her family.

I Will Protect Her by beggsyboo (Complete: 22/22| 33,678) --Bratva Oliver  She required protection.

He needed a wife.

                                                  *** 

   So I’ve just got three Olicity stories and they’re all Bratva!Oliver meh. It’s probably because in fanfiction I ship Felicity with literally anyone other than Oliver (sorry Olicity die-hards). It could be because after a hint of it was introduced, the Arrow-verse canon made it a central piece of the storytelling. Or it could be a multitude of other reasons...let’s not look too deep into it. INSTEAD here are some alternate pair Felicity fics. Enjoy! 

+Batlicity 

Wait. What happened in Vegas?  by Ellabee15 (Complete: 30/30| 47,651)  Bruce and Felicity accidentally get married in Vegas.

A Bat Reaches for the Light by tdgal1 (wip: 13/?| 35,053) 

Oliver sleeps with Isabel and tells Felicity that nonsense. Felicity meets Bruce Wayne, Felicity decides that if Oliver wants no relationship that is what he will get. The first chapter is a summary but things will improve. This is for my good friend Vanessa.

Between a Bat and a Sharp Place by Ellabee15 (Complete: 28/28| 19,849) 

Beginning sometime after Oliver makes Felicity his EA this takes a different view of how season 2 might have gone. What if Felicity's family secrets were revealed? How will Oliver react to her being the daughter of a business rival. More importantly how does Tony Stark feel about the way the Arrow treats his daughter. Also Felicity has a history with...Batman?

Batlicity oneshots by  Ellabee15 (Complete: 20/20| 20,250) 

Felicity/Bruce Wayne one shots.

How Did We End Up Like This? by Wally_Birb (Complete: 15/15| 46,404) 

For half of a decade, Felicity's best friend was a billionaire vigilante with a dark past. No, not that one. What started out as what Felicity insists was a mistake resulted in one of the longest friendship Felicity had ever had. Long distance, of course, because Bruce Wayne wasn't exactly keen on Star City and Felicity wasn't a fan of smog.

When Felicity and Oliver break up, Felicity doesn't want to give up on making a difference. So, she turns to her best friend, looking for comfort (which he fails at giving spectacularly) and understanding (which he wouldn't be able to stop even if he wanted to). She quickly finds herself fitting in with the Batman and his little army of children.

+Clark Kent 

The Measure of a Hero by Ellabee15 (Complete: 22/22| 36,873) 

After the Glades fall strange things begin happening in Starling.

Man of Smoak, Man of Steel by Ellabee15 (Complete: 24/24| 24,604) 

After Felicity graduated from MIT she went to work for a while in Metropolis to set up the Daily Planet's new computer system...and got a little more than she bargained for. AU (Obviously) will feature Arrow story line later.

+Clint Barton 

Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune by Ellabee15 (Complete: 29/29| 44,465) 

Clint Barton gets tired of being compared to the Arrow and decides to set the record straight once and for all. The last thing he wanted was to get involved in the Arrow's mess. Felicity's struggling with Oliver's willingness to overlook Malcolm's past in order to defeat the League of Assassins. The last thing she needs is another stubborn archer in her life.

**This is followed by  Where We Stand 

Not Her Only Archer by Nartie327 (wip: 11/?| 11,844) 

What If Oliver wasn't the only archer Felicity knows? What if she had a whole secret life before she joined Team Arrow that no one knew about?

(Timeline: Arrow season 2 & The Avengers: Age of Ultron)

Maybe Next Time I can Buy You That Drink? by lailah (one-shot| 2,868)

“When the shirt was gone her eyes widened in surprise. His body was -- well amazing, it was all rock hard muscle and skin, so much glistening skin. Felicity couldn’t help but reach out and press her hands against him, feel what she was seeing to make sure it was real.”

**This is followed by  The Softer Side

Marry Me (buy me dinner first) by Wally_Birb (one-shot| 7,718) 

The one where Clint and Felicity sorta dive headfirst into this whole 'partners' thing and Clint realizes what the initials of Strike Team Delta spell out.

+Thorlicity 

When Lightning Strikes by Ellabee15 (Complete: 20/20| 48,473) 

After being banished from Asgard, Thor crash lands outside of Starling.

Smoak or Stark? by laxit21 (wip: 58/?| 76,002) 

Howard Stark was a known adulterer. Roughly a week after he and his wife are killed in a car accident, their son Tony becomes aware of his younger sister, Felicity Smoak. How will events for both the Arrow and the Avengers change as a result of their sibling relationship?

(Canon divergence for both Arrow and the MCU)

Always Be My Thunder by Ellabee15 (Complete: 27/27| 62,582) 

Felicity is recruited by SHIELD to help with an impending disaster. A life altering accident forces her to make an extremely important decision which will forever change the dynamics of Team Arrow and those of the Asgardian court.

Lightning in her blood by Millie 1985 (Complete: 3/3| 3,848) 

Felicity is not what she seems, sure she is a sweet, quirky, genius who can always be relied upon to help save the day but she is also more than that. She has lightning in her blood and more than one mighty protector in her corner. Takes place after both Heir to the Demon and the second avenger film. Now a collection of one shots.

 +Steve Rogers 

I'll be your Soldier by Ellabee15 (Complete: 31/31| 54,121) 

 Felicity Smoak is kidnapped by the league of Assassins. Over the next 2 years a new Winter Soldier comes to the attention of Captain America. (This story begins at the beginning of season 3 in the Arrow timeline and after Captain America: The winter soldier in the Marvel universe.)

Rising Above The Ashes by Wally_Birb (wip: 9/?| 20,494) 

When Felicity Smoak was 19, SHIELD forced her to join their ranks to work off the crimes that the people closest to her committed with her super virus. Also when she was 19, a kill order went out that forced three of SHIELD's top agents to defect so that she could escape with her life. No one knows why exactly the order went out, but years later the answer comes while Felicity is hacking investigating SHIELD.

Of course, knowing why it happened? Well that just puts more of a bounty on her head.

Some Good In This World (Worth Fighting For) by Wally_Birb (one-shot| 10,960) 

Felicity blames Cisco, honestly. It's always Cisco's fault, so she figured that when she woke up in the 1940's after interrupting one of his experiments, it was a safe bet to think that it was all Cisco's fault.

His Best Girl by iluvaqt (Complete: 22/22| 100,696) 

Felicity moves to New York after the Glades collapse. A chance run-in at the Buy More with Steve Rogers, changes her world and sets her on a path of discovery that has been kept secret since before she was born.

Because I'm Worth It by lateVMlover (Complete: 10/10| 34,455) 

This is a crossover story that is set after season 2's Arrow finale. Felicity is Pepper's cousin and decides to go to New York to get away from her heartbreak from Oliver. This is NOT an Olicity story. It focuses on her meeting and falling for Captain America.

**This is followed by a few more installations  Black Meets Green  Protecting the Family  The Wedding ...Ya know, just in case you’re in need of a deeper look. 

+Johnny Storm 

Where there's Smoak there's Fire by Ellabee15 (Complete: 11/11| 14,043)

In the wake of Oliver's death Felicity is sent by Palmer Tech to oversee a deal with the Fantastic Four.

+Aquaman 

Above | Beneath by Vixx2pointOh (Complete: 6/6|23,990)

He was from the lost world beneath.

She was from the dry land above.

Or at least that's what they thought...

Expectations by NellyHarrison (one-shot| 6,562) 

The first time Felicity Smoak meets Arthur Curry does not go well, but as they continue to work together, and she continues to believe in his potential, their relationship evolves into something neither of them had expected.

[devilsmagic]

more than just a game for two | chapter 3

The girls bond with their not-parents.

AO3 Link

Lucy placed a loaded plate of bacon, eggs and toast in front of Iris with a flourish.

"Breakfast is served."

Iris looked up at with a smile before picking up her fork and pushing a piece of bacon around the plate. Lucy sat opposite the young girl, peering at her as she sipped at her coffee.

“Are you feeling okay?” She asked, leaning over to press the back of her hand flat against Iris’ forehead.

“I’m fine, Mum.”

“Are you sure? You hardly ate your dinner last night and now you’re not eating breakfast.”

“I’m just tired, I promise,” Iris gave her a bright smile before shovelling a forkful of egg white into her mouth. When in doubt, fill your mouth with food, she remembered Amy telling her.

“Well, I’d be tired too if I were making mysterious phone calls in the middle of the night. Do I want to know what that’s about?”

“Oh that!” Iris stammered, shocked at being caught. “I was calling a friend from camp. Denise. She lives in New York.”

“Ahh, I see. And you wanted to call Denise at a time that was convenient for her, because of the time difference,” Lucy carefully chewed on a piece of bacon.

“Exactly! The time difference.”

“Right. So you waited until it was three o’clock in the morning for her? Makes perfect sense.”

“Actually, it was eight in the morning. You see, she lives in New York but she was on vacation with her family in Europe.”

Lucy stared at her. “Please tell me you did not make an international call from our house phone last night.”

Iris exaggerated a wince and shrugged, making Lucy to groan in response. “Amy,” she chastised.

“Come on,” Iris took a final sip of her orange juice. “Day’s a-wasting. Let’s go!”

"Day’s a-wasting?" Lucy whispered to herself as Iris ran out of the room.

It wasn’t until later as they were walking down the beach, sandals in hand and licking their ice cream cones, that Iris brought the subject back up.

“We should do that, too, you know?”

“Hmmm?” Lucy licked at the trail of peanut butter ice cream melting down her cone. “Do what?”

“Go on vacation. Like my friend, Denise.”

Lucy laughed. “I don’t think you quite understand how much a university professor earns, Amy.”

“It doesn’t have to be to Europe. It can be anywhere. Just you and me. And maybe Jiya."

“Is Mason invited?” Lucy asked dryly.

“Sure!” Iris agreed, not catching on to Lucy’s sarcasm. “I just think it would be fun for us to get away for a few days as a family. I missed you when I was gone, Mum.”

Lucy sighed, guilt tickling in her chest. “I’ll think about it.”

Iris grinned, wrapping an arm around Lucy’s waist and squeezing tight. Lucy smiled fondly at Iris, slinging her own arm across the girl’s shoulders.

**

“Are you ready for our daddy-daughter day?” Garcia asked as he popped his head into Iris’ room.

Amy was lying on the bed, stomach down and legs kicking in the air as she tried to read one of Iris’ many books. She honestly could not understand why Iris enjoyed reading so much. Her brain kept losing track of the words and before she knew it, her eyes had reached the end of the page but she had no idea what she’d read.

“God yes! Let me just put my shoes on,” she literally rolled off the bed and shoved her feet into Iris’ single pairs of sneakers.

They caught a ferry at Dubrovnik Old Town. As they boarded, Amy grabbed hold of Garcia’s hand and pulled him to the front of the boat, smiling as the spray of the ocean hit her cheeks. The wind whipped her hair into her face and her grin only grew as she brushed it back.

Garcia reached deep into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a hair tie. He used his fingers to brush Amy’s hair back and secured it into a high ponytail. It looked a little worse for wear but he figured it would hold for the rest of the 15 minute ride to Lokrum Island – one of Iris’ favourite places.

“Can you take a photo of me?” Amy asked and Garcia chuckled before complying.

Pulling out his phone, he took a few quick shots of a grinning Amy, red cheeks and lumpy ponytail. The sea glistened in the background, the same shade of blue as the summer sky. She leaned over his arm to see the photos and laughed at the expression on her face.

“Thanks, tata.” She kissed him on the cheek.

When they arrived at the island, Garcia led the way to the Botanical Gardens. Amy had no real interest in examining a smorgasbord of flowers, but it was the kind of thing Iris loved to do and so she was stuck, fake ohhing and ahhing over the flowering cacti and other unidentifiable plants. She could feel the strap of her bathing suit dig into her shoulders and couldn’t wait to jump into the crystal water.

After an hour of roaming around the gardens, the duo sat on a large patch of grass. Amy was sufficiently bored out of her mind, the only remotely fascinating thing to happen was when a peacock had crossed her path, tail open and majestic as it stalked past like it was walking down a runway.

“Walk, walk, fashion baby,” she whispered as the peacock disappeared from view.

She tried to hide her boredom, throwing all of herself into faking enthusiasm. Her twin sister really needed to get out more if this was her idea of a good time.

Garcia reached into the backpack he was carrying and pulled out a couple of sandwiches and large bottle of water. She flung herself onto her back, eating her sausage and tomato sandwich with one hand as she brushed the other through strands of grass. Garcia followed her lead, lowering his large frame until his head was next to Amy’s. He pointing out interestingly shaped clouds as they ate with Amy chiming in at irregular intervals.

She grew groggy and tired, the warmth of the sun and her filling stomach mingled until her eyelids drooped and she fought against sleep. Garcia laughed to himself as he watched her struggle. Just as she was about to slip into a nap, he shook her out of her stupor with two words.

“So, swimming?”

Her eyes immediately sprung open as she sat up. “Definitely.”

They walked over to the other side of the island. The sun was bearing down on them from its spot in the middle of the sky as they found an unoccupied swimming hole.

Ripping off her t-shirt and denim shorts in a single swoop, Garcia caught her around the waist before she could dive from the rocks and into the water. He laughed as she struggled.

“Dad!” she groaned.

“Sunscreen first, draga.”

Amy huffed but stood still as Garcia slathered the cream onto her back. She squeezed a large dollop onto her own hand and covered the rest of her exposed skin. Taking pity on the large man, she smothered his back in a patchy layer of sunscreen before climbing over the rocks and to the nearby ladder. She descended down to the lowest rung and dipped a foot into the warm, cool water. Groaning, she hurled herself off the ladder and into the deep blue.

Iris’ dad was content to sit on a smooth rock, reading from a thick book that he’d pulled from his backpack. Every now and then we would look over to check on Amy before falling back into the pages.

The waves were calm as Amy floated on her back. Iris’ words from the day before crept into her mind. The idea that Lucy was dating someone was hilarious. For the past 10 years of her life, it had been just Amy and her mum. She couldn’t imagine that a simple 7 weeks away was enough time for her mother to meet a man and decide to give dating another shot. It was impossible. And so with the water gently lapping at her skin, she pushed the conversation aside and let her mind go blank.

She never wanted to leave.

**

Reality hit her hard and fast when she arrived her with a friend request from a Denise Christopher. Amy squinted at the profile picture of a generic Indian girl. She hovered the cursor over the “Delete Request” button, having seen enough Catfish and America’s Most Wanted reruns to be wary about adding unknown people on Facebook, especially when their profile was blank. She clicked on “Accept” curiosity piqued. She figured she could always delete them if they turned out to be shady.

Denise Christopher: Amy! It's Iris. Accept my friend request.

Denise Christopher: Where are you?

Denise Christopher: This is serious! They’re going on a double date tonight. I don’t know what to do.

Denise Christopher: AMYYYYYY!!!

Denise Christopher: Nemoj me jebat.

Iris Flynn: y do i get the feelin that uve just insulted me?

Denise Christopher: FINALLY! Amy, what do I do???????

Iris Flynn: k hold up

Iris Flynn: break it down for me

Iris Flynn: wats happening?

Denise Christopher: Your mother is currently in the bathroom putting make up on! There’s a really pretty red lace dress lying on her bed and Jiya’s mum is coming over to babysit me.

Denise Christopher: …Are you still there Amy?

Iris Flynn: ye im thinkin hold on

Iris Flynn: ok so heres wat u do

**

“I’m sorry I ruined your date,” Iris moaned pitifully from where she was burritoed in her comforter.

“That’s okay, sweetheart,” Lucy replied, running her fingers through Iris’ “sweaty” hair and placing a kiss on the top of her head. “It wasn’t a date anyway.”

Iris wrinkled her brows. “Are you sure?”

“Am I sure about what?”

“That it wasn’t a date.” Iris moved her head from its position on Lucy’s chest, turning her neck until she could see the older woman’s face. Lucy’s eyebrows were crinkled in confusion.

“I promise you that if I ever go on a date, I’ll tell you.”

Iris bit her lower lip before smiling up at Lucy. Then she lowered her head back onto Lucy’s chest and fell asleep with the woman’s fingers gently brushing through her hair.

**

Denise Christopher: It worked! Crisis averted…for now. But honestly Amy, we have to switch back. I’m not prepared to deal with this!

Iris Flynn: look i know ok? im sorry

Iris Flynn: any ideas?

Denise Christopher: I have one, but you’ll have to be very convincing.

Denise Christopher: And you may need some help.

[newstfionline]

An Orphanage That Doesn’t Seem Like An Orphanage

Jason Beaubien, NPR, August 9, 2018

Orphanages are falling out of favor.

Ever since the horrific conditions in Romanian orphanages were widely publicized in the 1990s--naked children tied to cribs in overcrowded wards--there’s been a movement in the international aid world to shut down orphanages completely.

But according to UNICEF, there are still 2.7 million children living in orphanages worldwide.

So what if someone tried to set up a good orphanage--a place where parentless kids could thrive? What would it look like? And what could it tell us about the basics of child rearing?

It might look like this: A dozen kids piled on a couch watching a soccer match on TV while kids from neighboring houses drop by to chat. Other kids are preparing dinner in the kitchen. The kids call the employees of the institution “mom” and “auntie” while the staff call them “mi amor”--my love.

The kids and the adults at the SOS Children’s Village, an orphanage in Tela, Honduras, interact like a big extended family. It’s a place where dozens of kids who’ve been separated from their biological parents for a variety of reasons now live. Some of the kids’ parents are dead. Some have left the country. Some lost custody of their children because they couldn’t afford to feed them. All the kids have been placed at the institution by court order.

The director of the facility, Carolina Maria Matute, says what these kids need most is love. “A lot of love,” she says. “A lot of affection.”

The resident social worker, Jenny Zelaya, also puts love at the top of her list. But it’s also important that the children feel that the staff have their backs, she says. “It’s not just a job,” she says about working at this institution. “We take a real interest in them [the kids] succeeding and being able to achieve their goals.”

SOS Children’s Villages is a nonprofit aid group founded at the end of World War II in Austria. The organization is remarkable now for the sheer number of children it has in its care. It’s one of the largest providers of residential care to orphaned, abandoned and neglected kids worldwide, with more than 80,000 youngsters living in nearly 600 orphanages. SOS operates in 135 countries, primarily low- and middle-income nations. But it also runs three villages in the United States.

There are six SOS Children’s Village in Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Americas. On a per capita basis only people in Haiti earn less each year than Hondurans.

At the SOS Children’s Village in Tela, the “mom” in house #9 is 45-year-old Sandra Hernandez.

Hernandez describes herself as a sports fanatic. The house is known among the kids in the village as the place to go to watch soccer. Hernandez a die-hard supporter of the Spanish Futbol Club Barcelona. A blue and maroon Barca FC shield is pasted on the wall in the living room. But because Barcelona was eliminated from the Champions League tournament, Hernandez is rooting against Barcelona’s archrival Real Madrid.

The four teenagers in her house--three boys and a girl--refer to each other as brother and sister. Hernandez lives in the house full-time. When she takes her annual vacation an “SOS aunt” comes to stay with the kids for a week or two.

“It’s a family model,” Hernandez says. “It’s like a natural family.”

This SOS “village” is inside a large, fenced compound on the outskirts of the Caribbean coastal city of Tela. The 12 separate houses are connected by a footpath shaded by several giant mango trees. There’s an open field where the kids often play soccer. Chickens scurry amid the bushes.

Unlike some other orphanages, SOS doesn’t offer these kids for adoption to families in wealthier countries in North America or Europe. The goal is to make this village their home and to raise these kids in their own culture. Some kids do leave before reaching adulthood--but only to be placed with biological relatives or, if conditions have improved, to return to their parents.

The houses themselves are not fancy. They’re identical two-story, cinder block buildings with a kitchen and a living room on the ground floor and four bedrooms upstairs. Built in the mid-1970s they resemble bland public housing from that era.

The beige and brown paint outside many of them is peeling. The furniture inside is spartan and worn but Hernandez’s 15-year-old “daughter,” Naomi says her friends from school like coming over because she has such a nice house. (We’re calling her Naomi to shield her privacy and because she is a ward of the state.)

Naomi was placed at the SOS Children’s Village when she was 2 years old and has been living with Hernandez for the last eight years.

The SOS model, Hernandez says, provides a structure that gives the children natural social connections.

“It helps them a lot because they’re not isolated,” she says.

Hernandez says this not just because she’s worked here for ten years. She was placed at an SOS Village in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa when she was 3 and grew up there.

“I lived the same situation as them,” she says of the kids in the orphanage.

At Sandra Hernandez’s house the day starts early.

At 5:30 a.m. the youngest boy in the house who’s 15 is sweeping the back yard. Hernandez and Naomi are making breakfast. The two older boys stumble into the kitchen around 6:30. Hernandez is patting egg-size balls of dough into thick, traditional Honduran tortillas called baleadas.

Soon the children will go off to school--not in the children’s village but in the town. That’s part of the SOS strategy: to integrate the kids into the community so they can develop social connections that will help them find jobs and homes and spouses later in life.

One of the 16-year-old boys was just elected president of the student council, which is remarkable in part because he only returned to Tela a few months ago. He spent last year in a drug rehab program.

“They choose one student to represent the school in various activities,” Hernandez says. “And he’ll represent his school when they have meetings of all the schools in the city.”

She is extremely proud of him.

The daily routine at Hernandez’s house is a bit complicated because Naomi goes to the morning school session and the boys attend in the afternoon. On this day, the school, Instituto Triunfo de la Cruz, is celebrating its founding 69 years ago.

Naomi is one of a dozen contestants in what’s essentially a beauty pageant to see who will be crowned “Señorita Aniversario,” the queen of the anniversary festival.

As she walks confidently onto the stage the announcer declares that her hobby is studying and she hopes to become a medical doctor.

Naomi is one of three finalists--but doesn’t win the top prize.

Her 9th-grade math teacher, Jennifer Gamez, says Naomi is one of the best students in the school.

“You explain something once and she gets it,” Gamez says. “If she has a question or a doubt, she asks me about it. And her behavior is excellent.”

Gamez says many of her students live in poverty. Jobs are hard to come by in Honduras, but Gamez tells them that their situation in life doesn’t determine their future.

And Gamez says she’s been extremely impressed with students who’ve come from the SOS orphanage.

“I know a lot of them who’ve become professionals, they’re good people who come from this village,” she says. “I know a lot of people like that.”

There are also kids from the SOS Children’s Village who struggle. The youngest member of Hernandez’s household is one of them. One of his teachers says the 15-year-old doesn’t pay attention. He talks too much in class, doesn’t turn in his assignments. With a stern glare the teacher adds that he prefers to run around with his friends rather than do his work.

Hernandez says she’s aware of these problems and is trying to get him more focused.

The big question is: Would he fare any better if he were living with his biological parents?

Duke University professor Kathryn Whetten isn’t so sure. Whetten has researched residential care for kids who’ve been separated from their parents for various reasons and says that orphanages aren’t inherently bad.

“We see the same continuum of bad and good care in the group homes as we see in the family settings,” says Whetten.

For the last 12 years Whetten has been following 3,000 kids who were orphaned, abandoned or for some other reason separated from their biological parents. The professor of public policy and global health at Duke is conducting the study in five low- and middle-income countries. Half the kids are in institutions of some kind--government-run orphanages, private group homes. The other half have been placed with extended family members.

“What the kids really seem to need is a home-like environment,” Whetten says.

Regardless of whether they’re placed with extended family members or in institutions, the researchers found that the one thing the children need is a stable living situation. They don’t do well if they’re bounced from one place to another. Having consistent long-term caregivers and steady sibling-like connections to other kids is also important.

“So creating a family-like environment is what is really important,” Whetten says. “And that can happen in a family setting in a small home or it can happen in an orphanage slash institution slash group home like SOS.”

None of the SOS Children’s Villages are part of Whetten’s long-term study but she says the group has the right model of placing kids in small, stable units.

The worst residential care facilities for orphans, she says, tend to be government-run institutions where employees look after the children in shifts.

“They often come in in white coats as if they’re providing treatment. Usually there’s three [caregivers] per day who rotate in and out. By the very nature of what they’re doing they’re not as committed to each child,” Whetten says.

“And of course restraining the smaller kids, restraining them physically, is bad for them. We’ve seen very few of those [orphanages] that are really, really on the bad end and those are usually ones run by governments.”

Also places where shift workers care for the kids tend to have the wrong organizational structure.

For the SOS moms like Sandra Hernandez, there are no shifts. Hers is a 24-hour-a day job.

When Naomi gets home after the Señorita Aniversario pageant, Hernandez is waiting anxiously for her on the porch. She wants to hear all the details.

Naomi tells how she made it through the first three rounds and how the crowd was cheering as she walked out on stage. All her friends were sure she was going to win.

Hernandez beams with pride.

Later that evening Hernandez organizes kids from all 12 of the houses to help clean up an overgrown section of the village next to the soccer field.

As the sun fades the kids rake up piles of cut grass and leaves. They haul bushes and small tree limbs off to a pile by the outer fence. The kids also chase each other around. One teenage boy is keen to show that he can carry a bigger bag of leaves and dirt than anyone else.

Some of the younger girls practice a song. A young boy from a neighboring house keeps running over to hug Hernandez--for no particular reason. Eventually the work party turns into a soccer game.

Hernandez scores three goals but the kids insist she was offside. And what could be more fun than arguing about whether or not someone is cheating at backyard sports?

It feels a lot like a big family picnic.

[blasianangrymom]

What do white people dream about: the struggle for representation

What do rich white people dream about?

Putting overtime in the unconscious to fight the battle to be considered human, as I am.

I like to imagine that out there is some person who is spending their precious time asleep dreaming relaxing, fanciful dreams.

This morning I dreamt of a brown person (sometimes he was South Asian but then sometimes he was Black, as dream characters can shape-shift without any reason or problem within the dream) with a mustache who was wrongfully imprisoned for about twenty-three years according to NPR.

I remember wondering what crime he was accused of. It turned out that I knew somehow that his mother was killed and he was wrongfully imprisoned; his father had his life upturned because he was under suspicion as well. The Wrongfully Imprisoned Brown Person went into the slammer when there was no internet or ATMs. He was seventeen, and he came out a middle-aged man.

In the dream, I meet him again and pour him some special whisky I got from Canada. We sit down together with friends in my living roothis My tall Nordic friend Stacey is here. I have a tiny glass cup from Hokkaido with lilies etched on it that I usually serve my daughter water or milk in. There’s some leftover whiskey in it. There are several glasses of whiskey, enough for the whole crowd of a few close, yet, for now, faceless white friends standing in my dining room, and we drink to the Wrongfully Imprisoned Brown Person. Right now, he presents as a striking South Asian, maybe  E. Indian, jet-black hair with a part and a barely-there wave to it, rather long. He has an intense set of eyes that stare deep and is mustachioed with an almost-comically bushy (it’s shaped hipster- or 19th century person-like, but not quite handlebar as the ends don’t curl up) ’stache.  I offer Stacey my baby’s water cup with the little bit of golden whiskey to drink to the Wrongfully Imprisoned Brown Person. She shrugs when I give her the leftover baby whiskey and plops it in her drink. Now, the whiskey in the cup has magically turned into milk. She makes a face (we all do). I’m sure her milk/whiskey-Jaeger-bomb (did she plop it in a beer? I’ll never know.) was nasty as hell. The white woman on NPR interviewing Wrongfully Imprisoned Brown Person says, “How do you deal with anger?” He begins to answer, a vague, polite, canned response, I cynically think. The dream ends.

When I was fed a steady diet of U.S. media growing up, I used to dream in racist. After all, it was what was around me and being ingested by me at least three to four hours a day and upwards of thirty or more hours a week. I remember in one instance, there was a tiny leathery-skinned Mexican mini-man who was about to shoot me with a revolver bigger than he was as I hung crucified on a cross between two other crosses at the edge of a cliff. He was obviously a pseudo-person modelled off of America’s favorite Mexican, the mouse Speedy Gonzales. I did not question the strange Mexican at the time; it was about 1993 and I was under ten years old. I just remember feeling terror at the prospect of being shot.

Now that I deal in anti-racist work as a full-time, compulsory position, balancing that with writing and working full time as contributor to the economy+mom+wife+daughter+friend and erstwhile art-scenester, I put in overtime during my dreams.

I had the Stay at Home Mom-privilege  of attending white anti-racist notable Robin DiAngelo’s daytime workshop on Understanding Structural and Institutional Racism about a year ago. Though it was heartening to have my perspectives and feelings validated as a person of color, i.e. “you’re not crazy in thinking that white people as a social order do not acknowledge or care that you exist, because the current wave of racism is that of white isolation,” it was also re-triggering to re-live all the ways in which our society, government, business, and media are racist. She provided AV slides of the ways in which even the Donkey (its black afro-puff, brown fur, and Black male voice Eddie Murphy) from Shrek supports White Supremacy in that he dreams of his best self being a white horse with a straight, flowing white mane. Ah, Racial Purity.

After attending the workshop, that night my dreams were again colonized by racism. I dreamt that my great-grandfather had a soymilk factory in the 1800s. I was transported to a seaside ghost resort town with little commerce other than a giant gymnasium that was the former site of a world’s fair. I walked around in the giant gymnasium and upon stepping into my great-grandfather’s circular novelty soymilk wave machine (it used to contain a shit ton of soymilk and could fit probably 3-4 people at a time), I suddenly had a vision of the past. The black-and-white relics--neon signs and old machines, etc. all around me suddenly turned to a burnt sepia, with a scratchy phonographic soundtrack to match. I saw that the one Asian and possibly the only person of color (though, what would They have called us back then? Mongol-savage-oriento-afroloids?) exhibiting at the fair was my great-grandfather. He might have even had on a bowler hat or top hat and suit and tie with coattails. Although nothing major actually happened in this within-a-dream flashback, I witnessed my great-grandfather, a proud soymilk-factory-owning man and successful entrepreneur, walking along the boardwalk by himself. The other business stands, white people, sniggered, jeered, and/or glared at him as he walked by them. I saw his pride melt away as they reduced his self-image to that of a buck-toothed, queue-having yellow Oriental with slanted eyes. He had to go back to his particular corner--which it turns out wasn’t with the entrepreneurs selling their wares and promoting industry--it was the circus area alongside the naked Filipinos who were supposed cannibals or dog-eaters or whatever “savage” act the fair organizers had them on display for. As in the dream, I woke up crying.

--

the TICKING TIME BOMB to infinity

So much of my short (or long) 31 years has been spent unlearning self-hate. So, much of my motherhood (13 months) is seeking the tools to prevent self-hate from being inculcated in my daughter. I’ve tried the following tactics in the past few years:

1. Educating white folks about racism by explaining how POC are affected (failed; work in progress).

2. Encouraging white folks to think about their own racism by explaining how they enact the white Gaze of Normalcy (meh, like pulling teeth; work in progress)

And my new tactic is?

1. Expressing among people of color groups how we can unite together and work on our own inter-ethnic and internalized racism (total fucking failure; work in progress), without white people around.

I pore over the internet looking for baby books featuring children of color so Ruby can see that her absence does not mean she is deficient in some way. There are books out there, but few with characters that look like her Blasian, beautiful self. The best we can shoot for is Latina in terms of a skin color similarity. What well-intentioned folks saying “just read a book with animals in it” don’t understand is the negation of the self through absence.

I can’t say for men of color, specifically Asian-American males, what it means to be constantly invisible, but in a society where women and girls are judged and valued for their beauty--their image--I assume that there is an extra urgency for little girls to see themselves reflected back at them in a sea of images of white girls as the ideal--blonde thin pretty ones.

ways the struggle exacerbates the time confetti experience of ladiez

*community

*education to self affirm

*carving space

*fighting self-hate

*getting hated on

The multilayer cake to eat and have (not). I. The Need.

Fake it til you make it?

Picture perfect? Minivans and soccer?

Clean House? Therapy? (Do you KNOW how many choices of therapists there are that are people of color let alone women of color?)

Happy Marriage?

Adjusted baby?

When your early childhood experiences have the sting of you being the butt end of some racial shit--white people hating on your special i.e. otherness, you spend a lot of time trying to prevent that for your own child. When you are the sole actor of color in an ensemble of whites only, burnout is inevitable.

*CARVING SPACE

*COMMUNITY *EDUCATION *ACTIVISM *ART?

The cycle of hate, anger and release

The Asian mom way of parenting based upon fear and trepidation -- probably has some merit to it. Considering the way that parents of color have a different set of concerns than white parents - i.e. will my child be racially targeted, racially objectified, along with the worry of some kind of sexual violence. Who has time to be in the struggle, be a picturesque lady (whatever the fuck that entails), a loving partner and co-parent, be a feminist revolutionary? And have dinner, a clean house, and a put-together sense of calm?

In the same way la French Madame Louise Bourgeois carves things--makes sculptures from raw materials--because she’s not happy with the way things are---I will be

CARVING A FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE.

Carving a fortress of solitude involves twisting time’s masculinist arm to your will. A feminist has to block out messages of inferiority due to X unfinished business (manicure-less hands? Messy hair? Messy kitchen? No food hot, ready, and lovingly made from scratch?).

Here’s the thing though. A mother of color has to strategically choose from which stone to carve her time for RELAXATION and DECOMPRESSION and it is unlikely she will ever have a truly freed space without the use of heavy intoxicants.

Should she take time away from her precious family to soothe herself? Well she’s been has taught her to self-sacrifice as a woman, and likely culturally as well. My mom ate leftovers and she ate last if at all with the family, leaving the best for everyone else. She worked so hard to scrimp and save and to this day gives me a mountain of um, “useful” items like the 1980s “Can Crusher” or the acne-reduction face wash from circa 1995, In order if just to save the environment from waste and to save me a little money. Squeezing fractions of pennies from thrift shop finds like squeezing blood from a stone.

The thing about carving time is it feels like the easiest option is not to do it. Should I carve from that sparkly gem, the sleep stone? Be extra-productive by not sleeping? Okay, my (insert task) can be accomplished but then I feel like shit all day.

In the hyper-connected social media activist age where we SAHMs (stay at home moms) are underemployed if at all by the current economic system, Angry POC groups or blogs can serve as a therapeutic source of community. If I have time after deigning to attempt to keep all the beings of the house fed, watered, and diapered , I can then put on my volunteer/do gooder/activist/get knowledge hat.

My Baby broke my glasses while I was riveted by an interethnic race relations article. I assume this means something.

Is the question of either a Do I need to choose between a productive life OR a peaceful life OR an activist life OR a wife and Mom life?

The Madonna-Whore complex and Momcat Can you be a sexy, mom, activist, feminist, aesthete professional wife-partner? Do you have the energy to do so?

The Bechdel test for moms

STEREOTYPE THREAT.

Carving space from: -sleep -baby -relationship -self -idealism -volunteering -achieving professional goals -writing -art -house -eating

Every mom becomes a pragmatist. Ideals? What are/were those? Moments to breathe not filled with the drudgery of daily tasks? I can no longer fathom without much ___

SPACE TO BREATHE

giving yourself permission to be okay, say that you’re okay, in a space where clearly you are not okay. A suspension of the social order. A brief moment in time. Upsetting the social order. And not feeling bad about it. Women are in the caring industry. Do we become callous to the needs of others in order to care for ourselves? Is our pain and suffering and struggle REQUISITE to the order of society and is the corollary of this true?

CARVING SPACE for healing. In the fortress of solitude -- we set aside and get away from the din of the roar of inferiority, the voices in our own heads, hearts, that we’ve absorbed from around us. There are frequent breaks that create more fissures to patch up -- getting hated on (WHEN YOUR OWN PEOPLE hate on your daughter or your dude for being non-anglo-featured or non-light-skinned--it is a non-revolutionary betrayal and yet another fissure in the romantic idea that all POC want the same thing--equality, empowerment, self-acceptance + reminds me how much the struggle is of liberating our own colonized hearts and minds.)--

FIGHTING SELF HATE -- This society thrives on our invisibility and availability as willing participants + Free/low wage/slave labor, as women, as mothers. Our pursuits and perspectives are not valued monetarily because they are assumed. The feminine is not productive - yet our wombs (apologies to those for whom this is not true) and the work of our hands are fertile fecund as fuck. Recognizing our own power and strength is only one piece of empowerment.

I wasn’t a feminist until now; good job ma.

The struggle to accept femininity was due to my hatred of all the weakness associated with said concept. Now that I’ve birthed a human I can truly see the sheer strength and invisible struggle of women, the policing of our bodies, and the insurmountable tasks set before us to be considered normal, let alone good, members of society. It’s crippling and I cannot believe my immigrant mom with my dad's assistance did this raising kids business for so long with three kids and yet instilled a keen sense of identity and ethnic pride (along with the unhealthy self-hate and self-sacrifice to a fault).

What will it take for us to be integrated human beings? Not just a vagina and tits but a whole human person who has those parts (if they identify with those parts)? Good!!

The Momcat and Imperfection revolution

The White woman

It's been said that theis white woman is a good example of feminism or this one or that one in the u.s. white man heavy media. But so often the trope is a trope of utter perfection in looks, business, relationship, skills, sexiness, and/or motherhood, meaning all women fall short of the glory of Motherhood.

What does it mean to have an equitable society where men pick up some of the slack? Letting go of perfection. You're never going to be the whitest thinnest blondest mommiest superfreak with the hottest wife or husband and best kids. It's not going to happen.

If l stopped chasing a strangely pervasive ideal of a singular form of femininity and motherhood (overwhelmingly white middle class and upholding the Madonna/whore complex), that of perfection in self spouse house and children would I…

Write an opera?

Learn an instrument?

Take up diving?

Perhaps it is for this reason the acknowledgment that children take time and housekeeping takes time that I have thought “when my husband and I retire we can go to theology school together.” “when I retire I'll play surf rock, nirvana covers, and fix 1960s cars.”

I'm no fool. Kids take time, energy, and stress. They also create a crushing environment of sacrificial love and pure elation. Does driving perfectionism for child rearing necessitate death of self or putting your dreams on hold? Does it for men? Is having professional or creative goals impossible with children?

It's taken time to unlearn my regular mode of constant guilt or shame around failures of any kind. I went from working barely five hours a week to five jobs and forty hours, so that I could have my own earned income, stay on top of debt, but most importantly, designated non-working time (i.e. leisure). In motherhood at home, there is no such thing. Life is a constant hum of things to be done, unless you want someone to drown in poopy diapers or starve. I still wonder whether women or people of color really have ever had such a thing as leisure time…is sabbath for all or only the elite? Who was God talking to when God commanded rest?

After over a year of waking up every single night to feed Ruby, I thought since I'm working now I get some relief from that duty. I was wrong.

It's not enough that I stayed with Ruby for a year, because apparently I was lazily lounging around then (I was not); and now that I'm taking her to daycare as a daycare teacher, plus the other jobs, now I'm doing too much. It's never enough. I'm never enough. Our ideal woman does everything without complaint, effort, or any consternation whatsoever.

Why do we set ourselves up for failure?

Is there an alternative to this impossible, idealized vision of motherhood?trope to these ideas of sahmomming?

-Madonna whore complex

-ugly clothes

-your vagina is over!!!

All are middle class upper white woman?

Very unhealthy view of sex

Feel tired

Give up and be asexual or spend massive amounts of time on beauty

Double standard

What colors do mixed babies dream of?

I'd like to imagine my daughter, Ruby dreams of herself reposed and in power, served by variously hued men and breasts flowing with milk. There are so few portraits in u.s. pop culture of ANY women of color, let alone powerful ones, that it is hard at this point to imagine she will continue to dream in such grandeur without grand interludes of racism and whiteness.

Contrast that with the treatment every male but most especially cis het able bodied middle class white ones, gets on every front: divine worship, centrality, agency, prominence, the expectation of service, excellence, exceptionalism, normalcy, individuality, the benefit of the doubt, the assumption of ability and strength, AND no need to:

-be empathetic

-f with poc esp female trans lgbtq differently abled poor Black ones

-disprove any number of stereotypes about belonging or competence

What a difference a brother makes

In my private life I've wavered from being an egotistical fashionista to complete iconoclast-ascetic. I'd always admired those with swag. I never knew whether I had the “right” to have or own any swagger as the nerdy Asian model minority, so I erred on the side of caution.

However, as time wore on in my beautiful interracial marriage to a young black man, I got my “(married to a) n* wake up call.”

If we weren't being hated upon or micro-aggressed by my classist and racist family, there was always the young white male yelling “FUCKING NIGGER!!!!!” from a pickup truck, or the passing over for promotions coupled with Obama-ing (“there's something about him. I just don't trust him!”) and other beautiful stereotype quoting (“lazy, white woman stealer, crack seller, sketchy, deserving to be shot by police,” etc.) by the ridiculous white racists at work.

What do you call a patient kind loving Black dad in argyle sweaters who is a Early childhood educator and critical race theorist preschool teacher and so church worker, for christ sake? I'll give you a hint: it means Black and is a racial epithet. It doesn't matter how much white posturing this good man does because ultimately the problem is white people and their psychotic issues around identity, sexuality, racism, and fear of a Black planet. Their issues get projected onto people of color especially Black folks, and we’re blamed for them.

Every time some shit goes down and we have a n wake up call, I want to shave my head, put on expressive eyeliner, don bright colors--turn mourning into dancing. The thing white people complimenting such boldness don't understand is where the swag comes from and the fact that they can't have or take it from us (But this is a great line!). Speaking only from my personal experience, I think when a white woman who is literally oppressing me with her good intentions to be color blind and preserve the status quo of white power compliments my manicure, “yeah well it's not FOR you even though it is in response to you. You don't get this and you don't get to and you don't own me.”

The power that comes from self-expression through fashion has never been more potent when at a time women are unvalued unsexy and made to feel like “you had a baby your life is over and you're not useful as a sexual being anymore” and yet the fashion available for breastfeeding is: all made for white Christian soccer moms. Have you ever seen a couture nursing shirt or dress that doesn't make you gag with its complete lack of spirit, thrill, or pizzazz?

I haven't, unless it's out of my price range. So I've spent the last year or two wearing the ugliest clothes ever and making do with bright pink lipstick and bold blue eyeliner. White women don't have the additional burden of proving that they are sexual beings (unless they're moms), because they y'all are portrayed as the standard and ideal (although it is tough to speak for all white women). So when I'm putting on my anti oppression armor makeup and you go to PCC in your jammies sans any effort I am thinking, ok, well I look good, but it's from a place of pain, and you look schloopy but it's from a place of resignation, defeat to misogyny, or ignorant white privilege, I suppose.

The white upper to middle class woman soccer mom ideal is so pervasive and monopolizing a view of the feminine ideal that I've often distanced myself from it. As. Far. As. Possible. This is the genius of Kool AD (of “Bitch I'm Madonna” obscurity) and his parenting column in Vice (add link). Not only is he spinning an alternately gendered narrative of parenthood, it is antithetical to every white woman ideal in diction (hip-hop) and philosophy (Young Jeezy). Perhaps the closer one is to white woman idealism the more you try to be a perfectionist. The opposite is true. (Why is the opposite true?)

It's not that I think being a good mom is a terrible ideal, I think a gendered raced and patently inequitable and unachievable narrative is destructive to all, white people included. Or especially?

I can't help but think that “proper” “appropriate” parenting involves whiteness, and everything else, especially Blackness, is patently inappropriate, shameful, or harmful. If I want Ruby to be ready for her future n word wake up call, which is a horrible constituency to plan for, she's going to experiment  with  different modes of expression, which do not inherently have Shame around body, sex, and movement and propriety. It's like all white women were taught to look Victorian with their hands obediently crossed or in a cross stitch and stayed in that seated position with a high necked ridiculous turtleneck, but the white men went out of their way historically to rape and pillage women of color.

An old white man at the racist church my husband worked at once told me and my husband: “you are children. Children should be seen and not heard.” Ooh, was I pissed about the racial connotations. At least he didn't call Jasen boy or Negro, or me oriental hooker whore…

In response to that comment is the end note here.

No. I'm not a child for challenging your racist bullshit.

No. I will be seen.

No. I will be heard.

And Ruby the beautiful child my progeny will be too. First in her power trippin’ dreams of men serving her and mama’s flowing titty milk, then in her swaggy response to some white sexist racist bullshit. And, we will design some better pregnancy and maternity clothes for our people in the next twenty years. We can share the look but not the swag with poor tired and resigned white mommies too.

Love,

Concerned Mother of Color

[sapaluxurytravel]

Heading to Sapa as the sun roseAnyone that is thinking about going to Sapa but isn't sure if it's worth it, let me tell you, it is! One of the many beautiful things about it is, it's location. Of course yes, it's stunning but more so, it's 'hard' to get to. Being an 'out of the way' location means that tourists are often caught trying to figure out if they should go or not which I've come to realise is a good thing. What I mean by 'hard' and 'out of the way' is that you need to head there, stay however long you can and then, head back to crazytown (Hanoi). In my case I decided to train up, stay one night and then bus back the following afternoon. That gave me one and a half days to explore this mountain town and see what all the fuss was about. I took the overnight train from Hanoi to Lao Cai which was booked by my hostel and shared a 4 sleeper cabin with 3 Americans. Sleeper train tip – ALWAYS get a soft berth cabin and try to get the bottom bunk. It's always a little scary walking into your sleeping quarters to Mama Do and I find three males sitting and chatting away not really caring about who you are or where you're from. I sat on my bed and listened to them talk about home and Netflix and who had seen the last episode of Black Mirror. I was so angry that they didn't even acknowledge me even when I said hi. This anger took over me a bit before I realised that I am the solo traveller, not them. If I wanted them to talk to me, I had to talk to them first. That was my lesson – As the solo traveller, I need to make the first move. Once I asked them where they were from, the conversation was away for at least an hour. They were all from different parts of America but went to the same college – one now lives and works in Deli. We talked about the states, India, New Zealand and how they find it weird that we don't refrigerate our eggs. It was a very successful moment for me. The train itself was great except I didn't realise how much trains sway! It's like a land boat when you need to go to the The beginning of our hike into the mountainbathroom – hands on each wall and a great chance to practice that stabilising squat because you don't want to sit on a seat covered in urine. My Second Motto on this trip is: DON'T ALWAYS ACCEPT THE FIRST OFFER. Let me explain: Once we arrived in Lao Cai I needed to get to Sapa. This was easy enough as there was a lady walking down the platform as we exited the train asking people if they needed a bus to Sapa. After finding out it was only $5USD, I gladly accepted and gave her the money. Easy! Only thing was, as we were walking through the train terminal, I saw a sign quoting $3USD to Sapa. I know it's only $2 but it's the thought of being scammed that gets me. The shuttle bus to Sapa was amazing. It was early and the sun was rising up through the clouds. We were heading up this winding road that reminded me of roads back home. Only difference was the overtaking. In NZ we have a rule that you can overtake if you can clearly see no oncoming traffic within 100 meters. That is not the case here. It's loveShe made me this while we were walking! So much talent. Funny thing is, I am totally okay with their driving style. Somehow, I don't know how, but somehow, it works. My homestay was 2km up the hill from the main center of town. We actually drove right past in on the way in but I was too polite to ask them to stop. Fate was helping me out with that one because otherwise I wouldn't of met Mama Do. Mama Do is from a small village Hau Thao and approached me as I was trying to walk confidently to my homestay. I was very hesitant at first but after some small chat and a bit of haggling, we agreed on $20USD for half a day trekking and that included lunch. She even walked with me to my homestay but I think that was to make sure I wouldn't run away. I was able to check into my room super early and even managed to have some tasty tomato and pork Pho, before heading out with Mama Do. During our time together, I learnt a lot about her and the villages around Sapa. She was 40 years old and had three children all of which no longer Sapa wildlifelive at home except her youngest who is 11. It sounded like her other two daughters were married off to men at a neighboring village and so she has nobody to cook for her. Her English was way better than my Vietnamese so it didn't bother me when I couldn't understand her. She loved that I was married and gave me a couple of bracelets to keep and told me one was for Harrison. The views in Sapa are amazing of course. I think I was very lucky to have a day where it was sunny and not too foggy. After hiking for 4 hours though, that fog was welcomed by both myself and Mama Do. The thing I liked the most about this day was the peacefulness. We saw other tourists as we walked but a lot of the time it was just her and I. Once we got to her village, I was ready to sleep. Luckily we organised her husband to drive me back to my homestay on his motorbike – that was exhilarating! I knew from the ride back that I wanted to hire a scooter the next day and explore this place on View from the topmy own. When I got back home, I asked to attend the family dinner which guests can do if they want. The family who lived there were so kind. We sat round a big pot of broth and lots of bowls of different vegetables. The mom controlled the cooking of the fish while the siblings laughed at each other while they dared to eat wasabi soy sauce and sashmi. The meal was amazing and I haven't had anything like it since. The following day I packed all my stuff and headed into town to hire a bike. Things like this are surprising easy and really cheap. Having experience on a scooter before I was really confident despite the quality of the roads and the craziness of other drivers. I headed back to my homestay to check out and grab the rest of my things but when it came time to turn the scooter on, nothing happened. Another thing to remember – Scooters in Vietnam are not the same as in NZ. Sure the principal is the same but I needed a guest from the homestay to help me get it started and show me the tricks. I was Struggle is realvery lucky to be where I was when that happened because I would of been really stuck if it was anywhere else. Back on track I used google maps to guide me to Fansipan, the tallest mountain in Indochina. Google is great, sometimes. If it cant pronounce the street name, it doesn't even try. "In two hundred meters, turn left. Turn left." Meanwhile, I'm driving at a reasonable speed about to turn left up some stairs that clearly aren't for vehicles. It took a few stops but eventually I found the base of Fansipan and the new cable car system to take me up – What? You thought I was going to hike up 3,143m to the top?! Don't be silly I only had 3 hours until my bus back to Hanoi. The cable car is it's own attraction which currently holds two Guinness World Records – 1. The longest non-stop three-rope cable car: 6292,5m 2. The greatest elevation difference by a non-stop three-roped cable car: 1410m I was able to leave my bags at the bottom and although I entered a cart with a group of chatty tourists, I had enough time to quickly move The ride back to my homestayto the next cart, which I had all to myself. Something I learnt – When you are sitting somewhere and you aren't happy, just move! Up at the top it was COLD and that temperature drained my phone battery so by the time I hauled ass up the 600+ steps to the summit, I was able to snap a few pictures before it died. Something that I still can't get my head around is how much passion there is for religion and culture. Apart from making this amazing cable car system, they had huge statues of religious figures and temples. It just amazes me that they go through all that effort but for what? Money? Recognition? Acceptance? Maybe one day I'll figure it out. Once I got back down and to my bags I realised that I hadn't really eaten since breakfast. I found some crackers in my bag from the train ride and let me tell you – they were the tastiest crackers I have ever had. That might of only been because I was starving though… Before I found my bus back to Hanoi I met two lovely tourists from somewhere near Russia. I'm only In Sapa Centerassuming that as the first thing the man offered me was a drink from his glad-wrapped plastic drink bottle full of clear hard liquor – I politely declined. Sometimes you just have to say no people. The bus back was an easy 5 hours and I was able to sleep a bit and watch the scenery change from endless rice paddies to farmland to crazytown. I'll end this blog with three things; 1. I lost my make shift wedding ring that Harrison bought for me before we left NZ. I quickly bought another ring off a village lady in Sapa center for $3 but it gives me the green ring of doom so I had to take it off. 2. I met my first kiwi! He moved from Christchurch to Ho Chi Minh so technically an ex pat but I still count it. 3. Sapa remains on my top three places so far that I've visited thanks to my amazing homestay, the inspiring Mama Do and of course, the incredible views.

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