The first conversation occured at church. Most of the people who attend that church are young. Couples just starting out, kids still in college, and few older folks in their forties and beyond. But the crowd is definitively younger then the usual crowd of grey haired grannies and grumbling gramps that are usually found in abundence at protestant churches. I think the praise music played on well-amped guitars and drums has something to do with it.
The point is that while there are lots of little kids there, there are only a very few Isaiah's age. One of the mom's of a couple of those kids is a woman who is probably twenty years older then me. She is on her second marriage, to a second doctor. The conversation centered around education. Her older kids will be home schooled next year because the hoity toity private school was too expensive. The kid Isaiah's age's education was up in the air still. They had applied for him to go to a private school closer to home, it is supposedly very small and difficult to get into. Her words "Keeps the riff raff out".
And those words are were I excused myself to find someone else to talk to. I really can't believe that I heard someone in church say that. We are the church that welcomes unsavory types. We are the church that the tattooed freaks (like me) feel comfortable in. And here is this stay at home wife of a passel of kids with a couple of doctors, talking about keeping the riffraff (low income, hispanic, english language learners, and special needs kids) away from her golden boy of an eight year old.
And I have to be honest. I felt something like hate, certainly sudden, intense dislike toward the woman. I didn't do or say anything to that effect, her kids make up half the mystery kids youth group, of which Isaiah enjoys being a part. But still, it was shocking to hear at church.
But then I prayed about it, and did some thinking about it. And I realized that sometimes the people we meet, even though they are older and more successful, at least outwardly, then we are, are not as mature or as close to being "finished" as I am. Maybe this attitude is something that she needs to work on, from a spiritual point of view. I don't know how I can help her with that, but I do know that deciding Isaiah can't participate in group activities (a lot of which DO happen to be at her home with its big backyard pool) will make me just as bad as she is. So I wont do it. I will be kind and caring and maybe a little of my story can change that heart of hers that is so cold.
And that's the other thing this conversation taught me. I consider myself Riffraff. When I was a kid Isaiah's age, I was the kid with the clothes that came from discount stores and didn't fit well. I was the kid whose parents were always drinking or pilling and not interested in being room mothers or coming to school events. I was the kid who wasn't quite cute enough and never said the right things to adults.
And now I still feel like that as an adult. I know I have a lot of accomplishments to be proud of. I am educated, working on my second master's degree. I have three beautiful boys. I am clear eyed and strong willed and don't mind who knows it.
But I am also the woman who had a child in high school. I am also the woman who is too short, too plain and too fat to be anyone's idea of a beauty, and for some reason that bothers me. I am the person whose extended family is homeless, drug and alcohol addicted, working at walmart and permanently dirt poor. And that is hard, because how do you talk about family and not mention the fact that they are all loosers?
So, her comment about riffraff offended me becase I am the kind of person she wants to keep her kids away from.
Later i talked to dad, and relayed what she said and what I felt. And he was completely clueless about the fact that as kids we were not considered "godo people". And he didn't have much to say about it when we talked. Just one more bit of the past that we have to agree to disagree about.
I don't know if this was all a growing moment, or just another annoyin glip at the tail end of my summer. But I do think that it is interesting.
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