One of my favorite shows on television is “Black-Ish.” The comedy features a wealthy black family living in Los Angeles and the way they handle life with four children and quirky in-laws.

“The Cosby Show” was the first to break that 1970s “moving-on-up” stereotype with the father as a doctor and his wife as a lawyer. There was humor in the show, but seldom did the writers venture into uncomfortable subject areas like “Black-Ish” does most weeks.

A recent episode was entitled “Hope,” and it caused quite a bit of reaction from viewers. The show opens with Andre and his family watching a riot in Los Angeles after a white policeman is acquitted of shooting a young black man.

The real question the show brings up is “how do we explain bigotry and hate to our children?” In light of the bombing in Brussels this week, the question is one all of us, no matter our skin color, find ourselves asking.

Bigotry isn’t new nor is killing in a deity’s name. In many religions, like the Aztecs and the Mayans, historians have found numerous accounts of human sacrifices to the gods because people believed a human sacrifice and a good crop went hand in hand.

Time hasn’t brought enlightenment because here we are in 2016 with extremists sacrificing innocent women and children to appease some god or to fulfill some expectation of their beliefs. Thousands of us are at a loss as to how to explain these extremists’ motives.

The “Hope” episode of “Black-Ish” took this situation on with the parents coming face to face with having to explain ugly truths to their children.

Sooner or later, all parents face this dilemma, whether it’s explaining why we can’t afford new cars like other families or why a family member’s actions seem odd. The hardest is explaining death to a young child.

It was in that self-examination where I realized perhaps I didn’t believe the same things I believed when I was young, and that time and life experiences changed my naïve view of the world.

I remember taking my middle son to see “A River Runs Through It” because I wanted to see the mountains and rivers of Montana. I didn’t expect to see a story line about a son dealing with the effects his drinking would have on his family.

On the way home, my son and I talked about alcoholism, and I explained what it was like growing up in a home where a father has a problem with alcohol.

Having to explain how my father came to abuse alcohol wasn’t easy, but I found myself understanding why the more my son and I talked.

We went from what it was like to see a father drunk to how proud I was of my dad when he stopped drinking for good.

And I saw my son’s innocence slip away.

But, curiously, not in a bad way. He came to understand that all people have their faults, but they can overcome them if they are willing to walk the hard road. The talk benefitted us both and allowed us to understand human frailty a little more.

And so it was with the writers on “Black-ish” as they crafted a script that did its best to help parents explain to their children why people do bad things to others, just because of the color of their skin.

If only they could write a script explaining why people killed innocent men, women and children, all in the name of religion, then that would truly be hopeful.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

 

My cousin posted a picture on her Facebook page from a family reunion a few years ago. A group of us were on my Cousin Sam’s boat, ready to take a ride around Lake Charles.

The day was beautiful, the waves calm and we were all taking advantage of the reunion to catch up on each other’s’ lives.

Looking at the picture, I saw my youngest son standing in the middle of the boat surrounded by his cousins. I “shared” the picture online, but he wasn’t too happy. When Chris saw the photo, all he noticed was his thinning hair in the back.

“Thanks Mom; I didn’t think my day could get worse,” was his reply.

Truth be told, I never noticed his hair.

When I looked at the picture, I flashed back to that day and that particular boat ride. Our cousin Mike was the designated boat driver, and all afternoon, he’d been pulling a raft along the back of the boat, kids and adults having a grand time in the water.

My eldest granddaughter had fallen in love with riding on the raft and had gone on every boat ride that day, jumping on the raft every chance she got.

After much coaxing, my son convinced his 4-year-old son to ride on the raft, reassuring him he’d be right next to him. Chris rode between his two eldest children, his arms around their waists, holding them securely on the raft.

My granddaughter, who’s a bit of a daredevil just like her father and her great grandfather, tried to stand up and ended up in the water. She came up laughing, begging to go again to which Mike happily obliged.

I’m sorry that my son saw that picture and was critical of himself because that picture was a reminder of how much fun we all had that day. I was reminded of how much I enjoyed sitting next to my aunt from Florida, listening to stories of when she, my dad and my mom were young and starting their lives.

Earlier that day, I visited with my cousins, swapping stories of when we were young and comparing them to the antics of our own children and, for some of us, our grandchildren.

We were no longer the carefree Cajun cousins who spent our summers crawfishing and crabbing in the shallow waters by my uncle’s house.

Nor were we the daredevils who learned to water ski together and dared each other to suck the heads of the crawfish at loud, wonderful get togethers. We were older, some of us a bit more cautious, while some still had that limitless love of life our parents instilled in all of us.

My son’s reaction to how he looked wasn’t that far away from my reaction when I look at photos of myself. My first thought is “I need to start that diet yesterday” and a wistfulness at the older person I see in the photographs because she doesn’t reflect the way I feel on the inside.

Reading his comment and looking at the picture, I realized I need to take my own advice and stop looking at myself so critically. Instead I need to look at pictures and remember the fun we’re having and the memories we’re making, memories that last all our lives.

I hope my son goes back and looks at that photo again and can visualize the picture I have in my mind – that of a father, his strong arms around his two young children, all three basking in unabashed joy and happiness.

That’s what I see in that picture.

And, oh, so much more.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I wore my shirt backwards all day. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon when I looked down and saw the shirt’s tag that should’ve been on my back underneath my neck.

“I’ve had my shirt on backwards all day long and nobody told me,” I said to no one in particular.

“Well none of us noticed,” someone said.

I’m not quite sure how to take that comment.

On the one hand, the baseball-style shirt had printing on the front and the back and had a rounded collar. So it could be easily worn backwards and no one would think twice.

On the other hand, maybe my friends think it would be perfectly natural for me to wear my clothes backwards.

That’s an even scarier thought.

I’ve made embarrassing clothing mistakes in the past, but I usually had my kids to blame the goof on. When the boys were young, I remember walking out of church with a big crowd.

I looked over my shoulder to say “hi” to a friend, and I noticed the seam of my sweater was on the outside instead of on the inside.

“Oh my gosh,” I told my friend. “My shirt was on inside out and nobody told me.”

She looked at me with a sympathetic glance.

“I thought you meant to wear your shirt like that,” she said, the embarrassment of having such a dumb friend evident in her eyes.

“Only crazy people wear their clothes inside out,” I snapped and then ran into the bathroom to turn my sweater right side out.

That incident stands out as much as the time I forgot to take the plastic stick-on tag off the front of a new sweater. I bought an extra-large size because I don’t like tight sweaters and, frankly, that size was the one that fit best.

I bought the sweater for a very special occasion – my eldest son was in the homecoming court for Stephen F. Austin High School, and the court was being presented to the football crowd that evening.

Nick and I walked out to the middle of the field, waiting to see if his name would be called. When they said his name as the homecoming king, I was one proud mother as dozens of cameras took pictures.

Standing on the sidelines after all the celebrating, I looked down and realized I’d never removed the plastic see-through stick-on tag with a big XL down the front of my sweater.

Maybe nobody noticed, I thought. I’d know for sure when I saw the photos our newspaper’s photographer, Russell Autrey, had taken.

I went into the newspaper office early the next morning and pounded on the dark room door, begging Russell to show me those pictures.

He pulled the image up on the screen and there, the lights reflecting on that plastic strip on the front of my sweater, were two big letters – “X” and “L.”

I fell to my knees and begged Russell to help me. Thanks to Russell’s wizardry with Photoshop, he removed the embarrassing faux pas.

I consoled myself with knowing the only ones who might have noticed the tag were my family. And maybe the homecoming court. And maybe the hundreds of people in the stands.

If there’d been a hole nearby, I’d have crawled in it and never come out.

As I turned my shirt around in the ladies room, I had to admit being oblivious to my clothes wasn’t new behavior for me.

So maybe when the guys in the white suits come to take me away, I’ll feel right at home in that straitjacket that buckles in the back.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.