April 13, 2021

With Hung as my translator I suppose I will navigate the field laiden with  landmines to carve out a peace agreement with my  mother.  I really don't know how to do this.  My mother is from Vietnam.  There's a whole entire other culture at play here. I don't know where the cultural landmines are.  Between my mother and me there's also a generational divide.  The thing is you don't know what you don't know, so even with all good intentions of healing a relationship maybe it's just easier said than done.  

Why would my mother want to have a relationship with me when she's always thought of me as less than deserving of anything much less her time?  

I don't know. Maybe she doesn't.

Sometimes I feel that what I think is important to her.  Sometimes I feel that my convictions are important to her but I could be wrong.

For all the crimes that my mother has inflicted upon me at the end of the day there's a scale.

Her deeds amount to more than her misdeeds.

At the end of the day I think she is worth my effort.  Why?  Because I'm grateful to her.  I wouldn't be the person that I am today if she didn't pay for my college education.  That put me on an entirely different trajectory.  

My biggest fear with my mother is just being disrespected.

I just feel helpless when and if she ever chooses to disrespect me.  I don't have any control over her.  And she has a superior ranking.

How can I defend against that?

I don't know how. If I am disrespected by my mother then I think it might be akin to drowning.  I would be just helpless.  There's nothing to do but disengage.  But if I disengage then I'm giving up on my mother.  It's a catch 22.  

I don't know. Maybe we should change the subject.  But before leaving the subject of my mother with eyes on the prize, what my mother has to gain is her grandchildren and the relationship that she can forge with them that is the prize.  

If she gets me she gets them.  If she gets us then we can be a whole family.

I'm at this point you're probably thinking why bother.  Why would I subject myself to a million pin pricks?  At the end of the day it's about being responsible.  My mother is my responsibility.  As much as I belong to her she belongs to me.

And at the end of the year after all of my efforts at attempting to heal our broken  relationship amounts to nothing;  if I am utterly broken by this then I can take responsibility for my bad choices. If this is a mistake then it's a mistake that I'm walking into with open eyes.  

On Saturday I did my very first YouTube interview ever with grandmaster Roger Haines.  

Grandmaster Haynes has been on the police force for 30 years.  I think that my main takeaway from our time together is that we can exert power over our police as common citizens. The way the power structure works is that the chief is in charge of what goes down at the police station.   A mayor is in charge of the chief.  A common citizen can exert power over the mayor.  This is local politics.  This is where an individual's power is at.  We can force our police officers to get more training on how to deescalate situations rather than first reaching for a gun.  If we can do it here in Dayton then it  can spread across the entire country.  

Mike says that the way that the schools are run in the United States have changed.

The focus used to be on teaching and celebrating diversity but now it's on high academic standards and lots of testing and ongoing measures of progress.  Our country lost years of progress with hatred and ignorance during the last presidency.

Mike feels that police brutality is really a response to citizen brutality against the police.

Under President Trump racism has been fueled and of course the police have to exert greater violence because everything is so vamped up now.  People are rioting even the White House.  

Everything is bad: 

the education system 

poor leadership 

a selfish and virtueless nation that is materialistic, dishonest, greedy, hateful and racist.

Having been a special education teacher for 17 years Mike says that the education system is a huge failure for our kids and education equals culture.  Our education system is a mess and that's why our culture is a mess.  

At the end of the day it takes a village.