Look Mama. . . .We MADE IT!

Well, not exactly. See what happened was…

Okay, we went wine tasting and had a wonderful time. I have literally started stories off with that statement a million times. I have not shared anything about me that you didn’t already know. Also, I need new hobbies.

So, this wine tasting event happened with my favorite couple. You know, the one I babysit for because I AM IN LOVE with their children. Because… Did Pete cry? … Goodness, no! This couple happens to be a pair of different upbringing, geography, and color. But the people they created are so beautiful, you just can’t imagine why they wouldn’t mash up their genetics.

When you go wine tasting with them, sometimes the beautiful babies they deduct on their taxes need to sit outside and play because, hello – they’re kids. And, it just so happens these kids aren’t of legal drinking age so they totes can’t be in some of the tasting rooms. (I hate rules. Rules are suggestions I rarely take.)

On this particular trip, mother sat outside with the kids and her glass of bubbly while her husband *my homey from UCLA/I knew him first #MargaritaMondays* and I enjoyed the tasting menu and my bougie olives oils. He and I look like we could have made those babies, but well, we didn’t. It’s just that when we’re together and hanging out, it could be absolutely natural for someone to think we’re together because of the way we together – especially when spirits are involved.

Anyway, the woman on the other side of the counter says to us, Your Nanny is so good with the kids. They just love her.

Uh, duh. Also, wait. WTF did you just say? My what?

I was instantly offended. Her husband on the other hand? Loved it. Not the offense that comes with calling a child’s whole mother the nanny, but look at the situation. Two college educated black professionals with a white nanny wine tasting in the Santa Clara Valley. Look Mama. WE. MADE. IT.

Unfortunately, in this moment where I should have basked in the privilege of well, making it, I was instantly offended. I said to her, after clearly correcting her, You should stop talking right now.

I mean, refer back to the post, yall. I love the babies and got kids of my own, but MY VAGINA AND/OR ABDOMEN HAS NOT BEEN RIPPED AS FAR EAST AS THERE IS WEST. And, for those who birth their babies in love, THE ONLY TIME I’M UP AT 3AM IS WHEN I WANNA BE UP AT 3AM!  Also, for the mothers who carry angles inside that bless us in their very beginnings but aren’t able to take this journey with us, THE ONLY THING I GROW INSIDE ME IS MONTHLY CRAMPS AND MY  HANGRY ATTITUDE. This is not a game. The only social security number on my tax return is my own. The way I live my life, a few of yall could probably legally claim me on your taxes. These are not my kids. She is not the nanny.

As a matter of fact, eff this, I’m out. *after we finish our wine tasting, bougie olive oils, and pay for all of this because we’re two black professionals drinking wine in the santa clara valley – we made it…but we ain’t MADE IT just yet*

I literally googled "Black People Drinking Wine" and got this. I can't even.

After having some time to think of the situation, I find her husband to be righter than I’m wrong (that hurt – he’s likely screenshotting this right now). The problem is, she’s the sweetest person and a dear sister-friend. We are so close that the one time I was supposed to bask in her privilege, I couldn’t do it. I think I was more offended than she was. I mean, I was 2.5 bowl-sized mimosas in, with a full wine tasting, so that also helped me BE super dramatic and emotional, but even writing this, I just can’t. She gives me pj’s when it’s clear I’m sleeping over, and there is always a bottle of water next to me when I wake up. She has sent me sunflowers on my birthday every year she’s known me. And if there was an izze in the house – as bad as our history has been with those – she’d save it for me. Sure, Jesus died on the cross for me to have some privilege out here, but not hers.

Why am I all up in my feelings about this? Maybe it’s because of the person she is.

When I moved back to California, she was one of my direct reports. Really, she kept me in line, on task, and ever reminded about the things I needed to do to support her work via post-it notes. In my first week there she told me about someone who worked on campus that I needed to meet. Not just anyone, but my first black-colleague-friend. And she said it just like that, no chaser. She has never experienced life from my side of the color spectrum, and didn’t once pretend to understand it. She just did as much as she could with what she had to give me a chance to make it. But more than that, I didn’t have to supervise her privilege *scholarly work in progress*. She never asserted her privilege as a cis-gendered, God fearing, white woman on me. She trusted that I was competent and capable at every point in our time together. She accepted my wisdom and guidance. She trusted my judgement. And, when I told her to do something BECAUSE I WAS HER SUPERVISOR AND I SAID SO…Church family, she went and did it. Maybe she complained about it, but she complained from the completed side of the task. Can I get an Amen, saints?

She gets it in ways may people positioned like her don’t. It didn’t take her seeing me be micro or macro-aggressed for her to be an ally. She just accepts white people -ish and does what she can to stand in the gap. God, I love that about her. Her ability to acknowledge (much like Keraun’s shock) that, yeah, that’s my people or ask, that’s a ‘my people’ thing, hunh? is wonderful. Perhaps she gets it that in all the ways she is privileged and walks through the world, her children may not be, and her husband definitely doesn’t – and there is nothing she can do to change that. Her privilege doesn’t allow her to break down these institutionalized structures all by herself – though I imagine she’d take a sledgehammer to it first chance she gets. And maybe you’re thinking that I think too much of her. You could be right. But the point is, whenever her privilege affords her an opportunity to think too little of me, she never does. I’m absolutely certain of that.

When I went to her daughter’s birthday party and her grandmother assumed I was her husband’s sister, I let it ride. When she found out? Checked. I mean, she was nice about it, but she made sure that grandma knew that not only was I not her husband’s sister, I was her supervisor and we don’t assume all black people are related.

Yall, in all my black years, I ain’t never had that happen. I can’t even describe that feeling.

So no, she’s not absolved from the history or legacy of her people, or anything like that. We are both equally yoked with the legacies of our ancestors, come what may. Really, she hasn’t asked for any absolution and I’m not offering it. And no, I’m not asking her to make collard greens and/or potato salad – ever. But *finger raised* anybody willing to check their grandma for my sake, has earned, multiple times over, the attitude I gave ole girl at the winery – easily. I can’t imagine it was an easy thing to do, on such a day that was, but she did it. And while it may have been small, or necessary, or her navigating some embarrassment about inviting her black supervisor to a house that could have been the setting in Get Out, the meaning it had for me was beyond measure. Somebody else said it, when they didn’t have to. I didn’t have to assert myself in that space. I was covered and protected.

Better believe she’s gonna get some of this coverage, too.