K.E. Garland's Blog, page 57
August 29, 2018
August 27, 2018
Monday Notes: Projecting
When I was twenty-two years old, my Grannie called me fat. We were discussing clothes, maybe my bra size or upcoming wedding dress size or something like that. And that’s when she said it.
“You’re supposed to wait until you’re married and have kids to get fat. You’re not supposed to be fat before you even get married.”
I was 125 pounds and a size six.
I probably met her criticisms and judgments with silence as usual. But let’s be clear. I cared about what she said. She was my Grannie and as far as I knew, she’d experienced more than I had about how women were supposed to look and act.
[image error]After that day I obsessed about my weight. I read up on how to lose pounds.
One popular way in the 90s was to count calories. So, I counted. I ate no more than 1200 calories per day. That meant I usually had a baked potato or salad for lunch.
Five times a week, I popped in a Donna Richardson tape and sweated to old Motown hits in Dwight’s apartment. By the time, our wedding date rolled around, I was an abnormal 100 pounds and wore a size one. Even in my youth, I’d never been so small.
On our honeymoon, I ate all the tacos and drank all the Margaritas. Subconsciously, I was married, and according to Grannie had a license to get fat. I returned to a size considered normal for me.
***
Years later, both of our daughters visited Dwight’s parents, whom they affectionately call nana and papa.
Although I’d already been briefed about the trip’s happenings, I asked the obligatory question anyway, “How was your visit?”
Desi spoke up. “It was okay, but Nana just kept calling Kesi fat.”
It was true. She’d ridiculed Kesi’s nine-year-old frame the entire two weeks and actually used the word, fat. Though she never said a word about the incident, weeks after Kesi returned home, she ate less. I could tell she was affected.
Consequently, I sprung into “save my daughter” mode and insisted on having a conversation with Nana. But as I reflect, I’m not entirely sure if I was protecting my daughter, or if I was just triggered. Was my twenty-two year-old self projecting my own past hurts onto the situation? Was I speaking to Kesi’s Nana or saying what I wished I could have to my own grandmother a decade prior?
My point for sharing this is twofold. First of all, I think we ought to do better about how we speak to and about our daughters, sisters, nieces, cousins, and goddaughters. Whether they admit it or not, they look up to us as ways to be in the world. Because of that situation, I rarely comment on others’ weight gain, especially not my own daughters’.
Secondly, the more I try to be conscious about how I interact in the world, the harder I believe it is. While I do subscribe to everyone being him or herself, it also seems to be worthwhile to try as much as possible to first be aware of our insecurities and pasts, and then try as much as possible not to project those onto someone else.
I’d love to hear what you think.
August 22, 2018
Inspiring Image #91: Just Salad
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August 21, 2018
22 Years and Counting
[image error]Today I begin my twenty-second year as somebody’s teacher/professor.
Twenty-two years of convincing someone that what he or she is doing is just temporary and that anything can be done short term in order to achieve a long-term goal
Twenty-two years of being at least one student’s first African-American teacher/professor…still
Twenty-two years of helping people shift their thinking as they step out of the boxes in which others have placed them and sometimes shed or re-shape the boxes they’ve created for themselves
Twenty-two years of building and re-building the delicate teacher-student relationship because each student is unique, no matter the institution
Twenty-two years of counseling someone through the process of what it means to gain more knowledge because they didn’t realize critical thinking was an integral part of the experience
Twenty-two years of reminding students that they really can do it because sometimes we all need a nudge and reminder of our strengths
Today I begin my 22nd year in a profession that I pursued on purpose. Today I’ll influence someone’s future life…on purpose.
August 20, 2018
The Greatest Thing About My Father-in-Law…
…is the way he communicates.
A few months before I married Dwight, my father-in-law, Dwight Garland Sr. and I were sitting at his kitchen table. He was about to cut a bell pepper.
“Do you know how to cut one of these?” he asked.
Still new to this family and environment, I shook my head no.
“Well, let me show you.”
He carefully held the green pepper in his hand and showed me the top.
“See what you do is cut right around the top here. All the way around.”
He took the knife and cut a circle away from but around the stem. I looked on as if it were a major operation.
[image error]“Now, you pull this,” he said as he removed the stem from the bulbous part of the pepper. “See,” he turned the insides so I could see them. “All the seeds are right here.”
You would’ve thought he was David Blaine and I’d just seen him put a knife through his hand. I was amazed. To this day, that’s how I cut all peppers, and every time I do, I think about my father-in-law and this lesson.
It’s true that you’ll never forget how people made you feel. I’ll always remember that moment because he didn’t say, let me show you the right way to cut a pepper. He didn’t make me feel like some wayward child whose parents had neglected to teach her how to cut vegetables.
He simply asked me if I’d ever cut one, and then lovingly showed me how.
August 15, 2018
August 8, 2018
Inspiring Image #89: Times Square
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August 6, 2018
Monday Notes: Rambling/Stream of Consciousness
Stream of Consciousness is the name applied specifically to a mode of narration that undertakes to reproduce, without a narrator’s intervention, the full spectrum and continuous flow of a character’s mental process” (Abrams 299).
I’m leery to call what follows as stream of consciousness. But this is what my internal dialogue looks like. It’s innate for me to add periods and press the return key, even if it is in my Notes section. Does that mean it’s not stream of consciousness? Here it is. You be the judge.
***
I write about the little things because it’s the little things that keep us up at night. We wonder why we didn’t get the party invite, some of us even at 40+ still wonder. We worry about how our voices sound and how we look in video. You know who you are.
I write about the little things because they turn into big things. Little indiscretions turn into major experiences that we wonder how tf we got into. Small slides of behavior turn into whole acts of disrespect.
I write about the little hints because that’s what’s relatable. I save the big things for books: abuse, drugs, flaws of Christianity. Yes. The little things are daily. It’s where annoying coworker meets zen philosophy. It’s where wrong job choice meets law of attraction. I want to have discussions in the middle of those spaces. I want to know why you haven’t talked to your dad in 12 years and I’ll tell you what happened with mine. Hmmm…is that little or big? I guess it depends on the size of the hole in our heart.
***
[image error]After re-writing this as-is, I’ve decided it is stream of consciousness for me. You see if I were writing a final, public version, I wouldn’t use wonder twice. I would revise hints to things and probably not use things so much. I would capitalize Zen and Law of Attraction. I would have used the phrase “Christianity’s flaws,” not “flaw of Christianity” because one rolls off the tongue and the other doesn’t.
I would’ve titled this “The Little Things” or “Why I Write.” And I would’ve given more examples. For instance, I write about why people have a fifth drink when they should’ve stopped at two; three more drinks can turn a small decision into a fiasco or a lifetime regret. I would keep the rhetorical question in the end and add this: what I’ve learned is they’re all little things. What we choose to hold on to and how we decide to respond makes them seem larger than life.
Also, if I were being all formulaic and precise, I would end with an MLA citation for that beginning quote 
July 30, 2018
*The Greatest Thing About…
On this blog, I spend a lot of time reflecting on my observations about people and society in general. No matter how hard I try, some of these posts might come off a bit negative.
And that’s not fair, really.
People are multidimensional and I certainly wouldn’t like it if I read a blog about all the horrible things someone perceived about me, with little balance.
Because of this, I’m beginning a new category called: The Greatest Thing About… Each month, I’ll blog about someone or something positively…on purpose.
Hope you enjoy!
*Also shared for Debbie’s Forgiving Fridays 
