Yes, That's My Family - Attending Church




This is inside the building of the church that I used to attend - it is a different denomination now.

  As I said before, I started attending my friend Shirley's church in Virginia in August. I attended services for a few months until my daughter was born at the end of October. Buzz was on deployment, so he did not get to know those folks until November, when Callista was two weeks old.

We were not trying to be cagey or anything, but it seemed impossible at first to find a church in Norfolk where we felt comfortable. Martin Luther King, Jr. said "It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is 11 o'clock on Sunday morning…," and things have not changed that much in America. I went to an Ice Cream Social with Shirley and really liked the people, so I decided to attend services at the almost-all-white church. It was 100% white because two elderly black women moved into a retirement building down the street and it was too far for them to attend their old church across town. I was a young, white, pregnant Navy wife who was enfolded into the flock.

When Buzz and I attended after the birth of our daughter, people were nice enough, though I could tell some people were surprised to discover that my husband was black. I met some wonderful people from that church that are still my friends. We were members there for seven years until we got stationed in Puerto Rico.

Two incidents bothered me. One was after Buzz and I became members of the Diaconate. It used to be that the Diaconate was made up of all men. This church had communion every Sunday morning, served by the Diaconate members as the people sat in their pews. Some of the older people would not accept communion unless it was offered to them by a Deacon. It was ironic that some of the Elders who blessed the communion and passed it to the Diaconate were women, but those people didn't seem to care about that. A lot of the Diaconate were offended that those members would not take communion from a woman, and they started saying, "What if they won't take communion from Buzz?" It was not going to be the last time that the issue of color would be dragged into a discussion about people not liking other types of people. In the end, the minister said that we (the Diaconate) needed to love and accept people who did  not love and accept others.

The second incident was when we had been church members for over six years. When we went to get our family photo taken for the church directory, there were some people that my friend Laura pointed out. Later, when I asked her why she was pointing out that couple, she said that they had left the church when Buzz and I became members. I did not know what to think when Laura told me that. I felt guilty at first, because the couple gave the church a lot of money and he was an Elder and she was a Deaconess. When they stood up at a church board meeting and announced their intent, the rest of the board members told them that they were welcoming this interracial couple into their church, and if they did not like it, they could leave.

That people stood up and did the right thing at that church made me feel such a wave of love and gratitude for them and what they did for us. After all, it is the kind and wonderful things that people have done for me in my life and not so much the crappy stuff that lingers and makes me a better person.

Yes, That's My Husband ~ Cross Country

It is summer and I have been lazy - but I am writing another chapter in my ongoing story of being part of an interracial couple. This time, I am going to talk about driving across country, from San Diego to Philadelphia.

For the first two years of our marriage, I drove everywhere because my husband, Buzz, did not know how to drive. I could see how difficult it would be to learn in New York City, and San Diego, amid heavy traffic. However, after a while, I got tired of getting up in the middle of the night when Buzz was the agent cashier, and driving him to his office on the base, so he could pay sailors who arrived and did not have any money for a motel or anything. I was determined that he would learn to drive!

For his birthday, I paid for driving lessons and he was not impressed with the way the school was teaching him - no classroom instruction, but putting him behind the wheel of the car and teaching him as he was driving. We bought a Plymouth Horizon that was an automatic, went out practicing, and a week after Buzz got his license, we started driving across the United States.

Before we left, a black friend of ours said to stick to the highways, and not to drive on back roads, especially through the Deep South. We took his advice, because he was from Alabama, and being Northerners, we knew little about the South. We pretty much went along Interstate 40 for most of our trip.

Having lived in California, I was used to wearing bright colors, which I love. The first night, when we stopped in Kingman, Arizona, I thought people were staring because I was wearing a brightly colored shirt. As our trip went along and we stopped to eat (love those Stuckey's Restaurants!), get gas, or stop at a motel, people stared at us.

It was the second day, when we were in New Mexico and went to a restaurant for brunch, that people really stared. At first, I thought it was my hot pink pants and top, with my teal big shirt over them that was the cause, but I suddenly realized that people were staring at us because we were an interracial couple. Depending on the place, the waiter/cashier/reservation desk clerk would either acknowledge only one of us or not look at us at all when we were talking to them.

It began to get to us, because we planned on taking our time and  the trip starting feeling like it was going on forever. Every time we stopped, it was the same story. Finally, we made our way to the naval base in Memphis, Tennessee. When we stopped at the front gate and asked directions to the Navy Lodge, the guard was the first person in days that did not bat an eye. Of course1 Interracial relationships are very common in the military.

We stayed overnight at the base and it was like a vacation - we felt like we blended right in, bright clothes and all. After that, as we made our way up to Philadelphia, people did not stare that often and the trip started to feel like fun.

I left Buzz at the airport in his dress blue uniform, his clothes tightly packed into a duffel bag. He flew to his new assignment, a ship called the Raleigh, which was somewhere in the Mediterranean. Alone, I drove up to Maine, where I stayed until February, when I drove to Virginia and found an apartment for us. For my next chapter, I will talk about starting our life in Norfolk, where we lived for seven years.

Yes, That's My Husband ~ My Lost Job

I forgot that I went to Fashion college in Fashion Valley - how fitting! The neat thing about the college is that local stores contacted the director all of the time, so it was easy to find a job. I got to do inventory at Saks Fifth Avenue in La Jolla - it was so much fun and the employee lounge was larger and nicer than my apartment!

I had worked in retail in Maine, and even did some visual merchandising. When a women's clothing store near my home was hiring, I applied there and got a job immediately. It was the beginning of December, and the store was really busy because of Christmas coming up. The manager trained me for a few hours one day and was pleased that I caught on so quickly. She thought that I was a great salesperson and customers liked my cheerful attitude. After I had worked there for about a week, I was assigned to work until closing with two other employees. Before that, I had left around 7 pm or 8 pm, but that night I was staying until 10 pm.

There was a couple of chairs by the front door, where husbands of female shoppers sat. When my co-worker's husbands arrived to take them home, they sat in the chairs. It had been busy, so the men talked to us after we closed the shop, locked the front door, and put merchandise away.

After a bit, one of my co-workers said, " I am going to call the police. There is a black guy out there casing the store, and I think he might try to rob the place or attack us." The husbands got up and we all peered out of the windows.

"That is my husband - he must be here to pick me up," I said, after seeing that it was Buzz, standing calmly in the parking lot. He did not look threatening. He is 5'6", is always clean, and dresses neatly in conservative clothes. At the time, he weighed around 130 pounds and both of the husbands waiting in the store were much taller and outweighed him by at least 30 pounds.

Even after they knew that, my co-workers would not let Buzz come inside the shop. They would not unlock the front door and let me tell him that we were still putting things away. I could not believe their behavior, but I did not say anything and quickly finished what I was doing.

They let me out of the shop and Buzz walked me to the bus stop, because we did not own a car at that point. "I was worried about you getting out late, so I came down to pick you up," he explained. "Who were those guys in the store?"

"Those were my co-workers' husbands, and I can't believe that they did not let you come inside and wait!" I declared hotly. I was angry and decided to go by the shop the next day when the manager was there and ask her if it was all right for Buzz to come inside and wait until I was done with closing.

However, the next morning, the phone started ringing around 8 am. It was the manager of the store. She told me that she had changed her mind and she could not use me after all because there wasn't enough work to do. When I politely protested that the store had lots of customers and everyone on her staff had been very busy that past week, she hung up on me.

I was upset, because I strongly suspected that the manager was told about my interracial marrige. I went to my classes at the fashion college, but before I left for the day, I dropped by the director's office and told her what had happened. She came to the same conclusion as to why I was let go. She got out her rolladex (this was the 80's after all) and took out the card for not only that shop, but all five of the stores in the chain. "They will never get another reccomendation from me," the director said as she ripped the cards up. I felt much better.

It has changed the way my husband and I let people know about our marriage. Whenever we have moved to a new place and started a new job, we did not say anything about our interracial marriage until we felt comfortable and accepted by our co-workers. There are a few places that we worked where either my husband or I did not let anyone know about our marriage.

I think back now on what a tough time we had finding an apartment in San Diego. Since then, I went apartment hunting by myself and my easygoing husband decided that if I liked it, he would, too. Even when we bought our house, we worried that the neighbors would not accept us, but they have. It has gotten easier over the years because we have lived in the same place for 12 years and people get to know us - we do stand out, I suppose.

Yes, That's My Husband ~ Heading West

After Buzz and I got married in June, we headed to San Diego at the end of October. I had the romantic notion that it would be wonderful to go across country on a train, rather than fly. The Navy made the travel arrangements, for us to leave from Boston. We would be traveling by train day and night, so we would be sleeping in a sleeping car and everything.

It started out as a nice ride. We sat in wide seats which had huge windows and we were told that our train would connect up to sleeper cars later on. It was late when we connected with the sleeper cars, and we had been up early that day. I was getting motion sickness and I hoped that if I could only lie down on a bed, the train's motion would lull me to sleep.

We went to the right car and found the right berth, except there was a man there, who said that we were mistaken. Buzz hunted down a conductor, who made the man move out of our space. It was tiny! I had visions of a comfortable sleeping car with relatively roomy spaces like in the movie Silver Streak. Our room was nothing like that. I had to get changed and washed up in the teeny sink in the room while Buzz waited out in the hall. (The bathrooms were at the end of the hall, shared by everyone on that sleeping car.) After I was done, I put on my bathrobe and we switched places. When Buzz was done, he pulled down his top bunk and climbed in. I scooted in the berth and pulled down the lower bunk. The compartment was so small that we only had a small place to stand when the beds were pulled down.

The windows did not open. Somehow, I thought that I would feel better if I could have some air blowing on my face. It was not until we had a layover in Chicago and got off the train to walk around that I finally was able to stop feeling horribly nauseous. Buzz stopped and bought a hamburger, but I still felt queasy enough that I did not eat. The food I was eating at the start of our journey was white chocolate covered pretzels, but soon stopped when motion sickness kicked in. You could not pay me to ever eat another white chocolate covered pretzel again! If you have a food that you are trying to give up, I suggest this method - you would never be tempted to eat it anymore!

We finally arrived in San Diego and figured that the trip was a good test for newly married people, or to test how patient a husband could be with a nauseous wife. After we arrived in California, we rented a car. At the time, my New York City Native husband did not drive, so I got to experience the thrill of the superhighways of California. But I will save that story for next time.

I must add that since then, I have ridden Amtrak's DownEaster train to Boston from Portland, Maine. It is a wonderful, stress free way to travel if we want to travel to Beantown and I have never had motion sickness again while riding on it. Of course, I did not eat any white chocolate covered pretzels.

Yes, That's My Husband ~ Getting Married

To continue my story - I went to my apartment so that I could get ready for my wedding. I was too nervous to eat, which was a rare occurance for me. When I went to take a shower, I found that there was no hot water. (I found out later that the hot water heater had died, and the landlord replaced the unit.) I bathed quickly in cold water, fixed my hair, put on my makeup, and got dressed. I was ready in plenty of time, but I could not pin my corsage on my dress and make it stay in the proper place. Somehow, not being able to do that unravelled me. I fiddled with it until I had to leave or I would have been late, and I hate to be late.

Now I was living in my hometown of Brunswick, Maine, a place where I lived my whole life up to that point. The church was located on a one way street. There was so much on my mind, that I could not figure out at first how to go the right way down that street! It may sound crazy but I was not sure that my family or friends would talk to me after I married Buzz. What if they ostrasized me? What if they ostrasized me and my marriage did not work out? I would be moving to California when Buzz got his orders in October and I would be so far away from everyone.

I finally started driving the right way down the street and the church was located near the end of it. When Buzz and his best man crossed the street (they were Jaywalking) I almost hit them with my car! I was really shook up.

I parked my car and my friend Keith came over. His wife, Yvonne, was going to be my witness but Keith told me that she had car trouble and was stuck in Boston. Oh no! I asked him if he could be my witness and he agreed. He was very calm and managed to pin my corsage on so it stayed in place. I was ready.

The church was beautiful, with soft light coming in from stained glass windows and candles, which made it look romantic. My husband's best man, Keith, the minister, and his wife were there when we got married. I did not think about how I had originally envisioned our wedding because I was so concious of holding Buzz's hand.

We could only afford to stay one night at an inn, and the next day we went to the beach and back to the apartment. We stopped by and got Buzz's belongings from the barracks and it did not take long to move him in. Then, we put off the task that we were dreading. We called our families.

I called my family and they were angry about it, but did not say anything about not talking to me again. I felt sad and weary when I was done with the conversation. "Let's call my family now," Buzz said. He called them, and they were happy for us and asking when they were going to meet me. The only bad thing was that they kept asking why they were not invited to the wedding, a quesiton that they kept asking me for years, though I had never met them when I married Buzz.

We did not have any furniture with the apartment except for a beat up wardrobe. Buzz and I had gone out the weekend before and bought an old hide-a-bed sofa and a card table and chairs at a used furniture place. I was trying to get comfortable on the thin mattress for the hide-a-bed when Buzz turned on the light. "There are misquitoes in here!" he exclaimed. Of course there were - there were no screens on the windows and it was June. The misquitoes and I had gotten along okay the week before, but Buzz, despite his nickname, was not going to put up with them. He ended up closing all of the windows and swatting misquitoes with a fly swatter. Even after we turned off the light and tried to go to sleep, he would hear another one, so he would pop out of bed, turn on the light, and chase it around the apartment. So when I say that I did not get much sleep, it was because of misquitoes and not what you would think.

Eventually, we did get to sleep and I went out and bought screens for the windows the next day. We went on to have new adventures, which I shall blog about next.

Yes, That's My Husband ~ Before the Wedding

When I met my husband, Buzz, 27 years ago, my family disapproved of me marrying outside my race. It was a huge decision for me, but I decided to go ahead and marry him anyway. We started planning an October wedding - nothing fancy, we planned to get married at our church and have a reception downstairs afterward. I started planning decorations and the logistics of everything when my sisters told me that no one from our side of the family was going to the wedding.

What? I had been to a lot of weddings in my family and never thought that they would not come to mine. This was the first time that Buzz and I had ever been married. I wanted a wedding dress, a church filled with people, a wedding cake, and to be able to dance with my husband at the reception. What was I going to do?

I told Buzz and he did not know what to do, either. It was shocking to think that my family and friends of the family I had known most of  my life would not attend. We decided to talk to the minister about it at our next pre-marital class.

When my department manager found out the news, she told me frankly that if it were she, she would go ahead and get married anyway. She would either have the wedding and see who showed up, or she would elope.

Elope? We could do that except I always wanted to be married in my church. Could we elope and have the minster marry us there? I asked Buzz and he thought it was a great idea. Our last class with the minister was on Friday, June 15 at 7:30 pm. We asked the reverend if he could meet us at the church and marry us there, and he agreed. You see, we had been going to pre-marital classes and he saw how compatable we were. He also knew us from attending church.

On June 15, I worked all day until 4 pm. Only my department manager knew that I was getting married that night. I left work, picked up the flowers, and went home to the new apartment where I was staying.

In my next blog, I will talk about the things that started going wrong, which Buzz and I find hilarious to recount.

No Standing On the Fence

On June 12, it will be 44 years since the laws criminalizing interracial marriage were removed, allowing people of different races to marry. It seems like a long enough time for people to move forward and recognise the 6.1 million Americans who have more than one race. My own brown kids are labeled as black, though they have more in common with their white side, having spent most of their lives in Maine. I don't understand why people feel that they have to pick a race.

When my daughter was born, they listed her race as 'white' on her birth certificate. It was explained to me that they list the same race as the mother. I realized that I don't think of her as any race at all, or my son, either. They like to call themselves brown, which is a good word, much more appealing to me than mulatto or something like that. They have the benefits of both sides of the fence - being part of two races. I read celebrity interviews where the brown person talks about struggling to be two races. Who says that they have to choose? My kids had a few problems, but no big struggles. It has taught them a lot about judging other people by outside appearances and having compassion for anyone who is different.

Biracial is beautiful.