Finding My Tribe

Ever since I heard that my maternal great-grandmother was a full-blooded Creek Indian, I’ve been looking for my Tribe.

You know what I mean, right? We all have one. Your Tribe, your people, your homies. It’s the scattered collection of human beings who love the same things you love, laugh at the same jokes as you, vote for the same liars, or vape the same e-cigarettes you vape. They might read the same books, go to the same superhero conventions, or stalk the same food trucks where you like to eat. Which might actually mean they’re stalking you¸ but that still proves they’re in your Tribe.

I’m intrigued by the idea of finding my Tribe. From everything I hear on podcasts and read in books, all of us need one. They’re the people who “get you.” They’re your cheerleaders, your comforters, accountability partners, and your community. When you’re around them, you feel included. You belong. If you don’t show up, they make it their business to find out why and help you come back to your Tribe. It sounds so . . . claustrophobic.

Okay, here’s the truth. The real reason I’m on the hunt for my Tribe is because I’m a writer, and a writer needs readers. Lots and lots of them—just not all in the same room at the same time. I’m also an introvert which makes membership in a Tribe a little tricky for me. I like you, but I need my space. I need close friends, but not all at once. I’m a good listener, but please take a number. Exhausting, contradictory stuff like that.

It’s not important to me, as a writer, that the members of my potential Tribe reside in the same zip code. Or county. Or even the same country. They could all be scattered across the worldwide web—that works—and read my blog posts or my nearly finished but yet unpublished novels from the privacy of their own homes and then leave comments in cyberspace about what I’ve written and why they sit with baited breath each and every day hoping for one more published article from me, their introverted, invisible, but wildly talented egocentric Tribe member. That’s the same thing as community, right?

So far no one has responded to my offer for membership in a Tribe like that.

So, I’ve been researching how to be a better Tribe-ist. Here’s what I learned.

1.     Your vibe attracts your Tribe. That means that if you are yourself, you will attract others who are like you, no one has to pretend and feel uncomfortable by being in the wrong Tribe, and everybody wins. The obvious problem here for me is the members of my Tribe are probably all introverts who don’t want to be found.

2.     You must engage with your Tribe. Here’s what that means to me. I write a book. They read it. Nobody has to attend conventions or wear funny badges or drink bad coffee. Low expectations will be the hallmark of my Tribe. Introverts unite, separately.

3.     Always be positive – the health of your Tribe depends upon it. That kind of defeats the purpose of having a blog site to throw up on, though. It makes me feel like I can’t be myself. That nobody will accept me for who I really am. If all of that is true, the only way I can be a part of the introvert Tribe I’m searching for is if I’m an extrovert. If you ask me, that little piece of advice isn’t positive at all.

You can see why I’m having such a difficult time with this. That and the fact that my writing hobby is relatively unknown. That’s why I need a Tribe. To bolster my flagging spirits, tell me how much my writing has changed their life, to buy my books and support the lifestyle to which I’d like to become accustomed.

It’s time I faced the facts. You can’t have a Tribe if you’re an introvert. With ulterior motives. And average writing talent. Not only that, you can’t have a Tribe if you’re not Native American. It turns out my great-grandmother wasn’t even a full-blooded Creek Indian. Or a half-blooded one, though she did have the normal nine or ten pints we each have. When I sent in my spit test to Ancestry.com, they wrote back and said there is no evidence anywhere that my freckle-faced, red-headed DNA contains a single drop of Native American blood. I’m not even a blood relative of my blood relatives.

The only hope I have left is that if you made it this far, you recognize sarcasm as my native tongue, that sometimes it physically hurts me to hold in sarcastic comments, and I have sarcasm moments that are so advanced people actually think I’m stupid.

I may have to give up on searching for my Tribe and just be content to be an unknown blogger, wannabee novelist, lover of sarcasm, and collector of memes. There’s no shame in whiling away the hours online laughing at other people’s humor, reading their copycat recipes for food truck fare, and collecting political pundits to pin on my cyber boards. Even if I did borrow some funny phrases here, it’s worth including them in case they help me locate my missing community of introverts.

Ohmigosh. I did it. I think I just found my Tribe. “Pinterest.” Social media at its most social.

I might be an extrovert after all. 










With thanks to Steven Miller for the fun photo included above. The original picture can be viewed on his webpage by following the link below.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aloha75/14586957695/in/photolist-odZYjB-2hQ1d9S-7kgLz4-as5KAo-WCQCDv-H288A-6ywoNb-NFRsVG-is9MLA-qp5dtR-8w5rQN-6MX1zv-62TA2s-vzMWw5-2ecrBsv-BjUr9v-8nQWub-34stk-jwfDf-8w2r1x-nh52DP-NmgXcH-Uand99-4kf3Vd-6Rr4AE-8w5rKW-is9vUg-8w2oE8-62Pkuz-kgHfzS-jwfXq-UkaEdb-yHMAzp-dMXhcc-hBHaEW-6aXsgz-jwfV4-9UwSiu-pAkc7c-jwfmw-62TAaA-62PjBD-8w5rdA-29r8pKP-8QUg7K-2dqjKz6-62PkXa-62TAis-isapKt-NT8Qxh

The Suitcase

It was just a beat-up old suitcase, tucked away in a dusty corner of a second-hand store behind a tower of crates overflowing with discards. The handle, long ago ripped from its top by an overly zealous taxi driver, had been replaced by a stiff arch made of hemp rope, knotted on the inside of the lid. It wasn’t pretty, but neither was the suitcase. Somehow, with its battered leather sides covered over by layers of souvenir travel stickers, the brown luggage and rough rope handle suited each other. They were gnarly, but they were tough. Survivors. Overcomers. Connected by necessity, they seemed stronger together, ready whenever the need arose.

Which seldom happened anymore.

Once upon a time, the classic beauty had been new and luxurious. Fitted with hardware both polished and sturdy, its secure latch inspired confidence. Light blue flowers flooded the pattern of the silken lining inside its roomy compartments. It commanded a high price, in the beginning, and even a few jealous glances from those whose own luggage had seen better days.

Following its first venture into the outside world, it returned home with black scuffs on one side. “No matter,” the owner said, unworried. “We’ll just cover that with this travel sticker from the Grand Canyon.” The case was still strong and mostly undamaged, and everyone thought the addition of the brightly colored decal gave it character. As time went by and the suitcase was called on again and again, it returned home each time with more character, more disguises, more masked evidence of careless luggage handlers and the brutalizing wear and tear marked by years on the road. Soon, the stylish leather exterior was practically unrecognizable, covered from stem to stern with a confusing assortment of labels including “Hotel Havana,” “Virginia Is For Lovers,” “Jamaican My Bacon,” and “Nixon For President.”

“That’s just the price of experience,” the owner said with a sigh, the day the handle first tore loose. “A little duct tape will fix that.” But just in case it didn’t, he bought another suitcase, a newer version with hard plastic siding and spinner wheels while its well-worn predecessor was relegated to second place, packed up with towels and shower shoes and packages of Ramen noodles on its journey to a tiny closet inside a university dormitory.

By the time the hemp repair had replaced the missing handle, the suitcase gapped at the top, allowing moisture from a passing storm to leak in rain. Soon a musty odor infiltrated anything stored inside. The blue flowers long ago lost their bloom and the inner stitching had pulled loose following a tug of war battle with a victorious coat hanger. “Why don’t you get rid of this smelly old thing?” someone suggested, filling its stained interior with other castoffs also destined for retirement.

Late one afternoon, a donation truck drove up that familiar street where the leather bag had once been a proud member of the family, all its souvenir charm fading in the sunlight. Carelessly tossed in the back, it landed in a heap with all the other has-beens that suddenly seemed long past their prime, if not their expiration dates, relegated to the dusty corners of last chance stores where one-eyed dolls and matted teddy bears kept them hidden from the dismissive waves of those who preferred pristine purchases.

Until the day a young woman with an eye for quality reached beyond the chaotic stash of cast offs and retrieved the rejected suitcase. “Perfect,” she announced, tucking the worn, weathered portmanteau under her arm to take home. Alone with her purchase the following afternoon, she studied the collage of identities attached to its exterior over the years. One by one, she pulled them off, discarding them layer by layer, until the original, chestnut-brown leather could be seen again. Beneath the bright light of discovery, she carefully removed every bit of adhesive evidence that suggested anyone had ever attempted to cover the beauty of the suitcase. Oiling the neglected leather, she buffed it until its luster exceeded its original sheen.

Then she turned her attention to the inside where moisture and dust had disintegrated the lining. With an eye to the future, she cleaned away all the years of neglect and replaced the stained fabric with crimson taffeta. Soon, a fresh scent bloomed from the rosy inlay carefully glued in place and trimmed with gold braid.

“Now,” she said, admiring the renovation, “about that handle. This rope will never do for a beauty like yourself.” She tossed the raveled hemp in the trash with the rest of the artificial repairs used to disguise the suitcase and opened a drawer in the mahogany desk she’d once rescued from a hot, humid greenhouse. “Just the thing,” she proclaimed, attaching a sturdy brass grip to the long side of the luggage. She gave a brisk buff to the antique latch and carried her resurrected treasure to the front window of her store where it sat on display for thirty short minutes before another woman with discriminating taste paid top dollar for the vintage case and proudly brought it home to the admiration of her husband.

“You are a shrewd judge of character,” he told her.

True, it had been made new again, but on its worst days it was always more than “just a beat-up old suitcase.” Its underlying beauty had simply been distorted with identities that belonged to someone else, suffocated by ill-fitting fixes. Underappreciated and misunderstood, its significance undermined by carelessness, the original splendor it contained was nearly lost forever. Whether sentenced to a garbage dump or repurposed at a flea market into another portable bar, its worth hung in the balance of whatever price one was willing to pay for its discovery.

None but the Lover of castoffs knew what lay hidden under the layers of judgment the suitcase wore for most of its life. And none but that same Lover knew how to restore it. The gift of unpacking its beauty lay in the hands of the One who rescued it.

It always had great worth. And it was always worthy of greatness.

“Perfect,” she had pronounced, though it lay broken and discarded in a dark, dusty corner.

And it was.

Dinosaurs

“Always be yourself unless you can be a dinosaur, and then always be a dinosaur.”

The sign hangs in a spare bedroom decorated for my grandson whenever he spends the night at our house. Blue dino footprints march up and down all the walls and a stuffed tyranno rests against the pillows every week in between sleepovers, keeping guard and waiting for the seven-year-old who will soon outgrow the ferocious fascination he has for all things extinct and move on to something more realistic, like Star Wars.

It’ll be a sad day when that happens, just like it was a sad day when he told me he was over Thomas the Train. It’s not just that I’d finally gotten the train decorations in that room right. My heart broke because it was a kind of graduation. Grandkids grow up faster than my children did, I’ve discovered, and no matter what I do I can’t slow it down. I guess the real heartbreak behind all of that is the knowledge that every time they get a little older, I do, too.

Nothing brings that into focus more than when I take a hard look at the culture we live in today and realize that I don’t recognize anything anymore. Listen, it’s not that the era of my youth was anything worth being nostalgic about. When I was a kid growing up outside San Francisco, it was the Drug Culture, Make Love Not War, LSD tripping, Vietnam War debacle, throw-everything-that’s-ever-had-value-out-the-window culture. It was the Sixties, not Happy Days. I don’t look back on that period of my life with fondness, let me put it that way.

I realized the world as everyone knew it was a’changin’, and it could go from bad to something more bad. (Even grammar was biting the big one.) But I had roots in something deeper than the shallow culture of the time and I was used to swimming upstream, rowing against the flow. Like a puzzle piece from the wrong jigsaw, I’ve never fit in comfortably. Uncomfortable. That’s generally how I feel when my life is put in a lineup with all the other lookalikes while an unseen judge on the other side of the two-sided mirror determines who the real phony is.

I finally know who I am.

I am the dinosaur.

For example, I believe—and please don’t take offense at this—that the best people to raise children are the parents of the children. Yes. I know. Gray areas abound here. Life is expensive. Homes are headed by single moms. Some homes are horrible environments, not even worthy to be called home. There are plenty of sad scenarios about families on the extreme edge of survival. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about priorities. About the over-swing of the cultural pendulum, from “a woman’s place is in the home” to “I am woman, hear me roar.” We are no longer under the thumb of men, in general. Glass ceilings still apply, I realize.

Women are capable of doing it all. Bring home the bacon, fry it in the pan. Sixties graduate here, remember? I agree, women have been suppressed. I am a woman. Believe me, I know. It takes sacrifice to stay home, make ends meet on one income, and change every poopy diaper a baby--and society--can throw at you. I’ve been hit by a lot of poop. It takes creativity to come up with entertainment on a budget while all around are other young families who provide every cost prohibitive toy the industry can dream up so the family will have fun memories. It also takes a healthy conviction that money doesn’t equal fun. Just look at the fallout of celebrity lives who have more money than God and end up destroying their own lives with it.

Now there’s an out of place puzzle piece.

Last night we watched the Super Bowl and the highly anticipated half-time show, or at least five minutes of it. Maybe it was ten. I don’t know. I was busy trying not to feel nauseous and wondering why there hadn’t been a warning to families that it was R-rated. I know that’s not a popular perspective—lots of people on facebook told me so this morning. I’m too much a dinosaur to have seen it for what it was. An exciting display of feminine power. Extreme athleticism, especially since the stars were both middle-aged. And, above all, it was the first time that two women headlined the entertainment spectacle, particularly two Latino women. Double.Edged.Sword.

Here’s where my creaky bones try to knit together in Ezekiel’s wilderness of scattered skeletons. Just that afternoon, while working on another writing project, I’d read a list of words worthy of use in describing the strength and beauty of women. The internet page also listed words that are often confused with complimentary expressions for females. Guess what word showed up on the List of Oppression? Sexy. The very thing that highlighted the “entertainment” millions of people tuned in to see last night.

The internet article stated that women are not sex objects. The Super Bowl begs to differ. The women who performed last night see things a little differently, too. I agree that they were in superb physical condition. That they are very flexible. That their conditioning puts a lot of twenty-year-olds to shame. Actually, it doesn’t. The shame is when women of power take the opportunity to headline something as big, and supposedly family friendly, as the Super Bowl and use it to teach young girls that seduction is entertaining, modesty is stupid, and talent is only appreciated if it makes men salivate.

I warned you. Dinosaur here.

I know this is pointless. I’m either preaching to the choir or speaking in pig latin. I learned that on facebook this morning, too. Here’s the thing. Something went wrong at the beginning of my generation, about 1960. I know that’s hard to believe when you realize that Barbara Eden was forbidden to show her belly button on I Dream Of Jeannie, and that Ricky and Lucy and even Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore slept in separate beds as married couples on my black and white television set. But don’t be fooled. That was all smoke and mirrors. The evening news and popular music and Haight Ashbury and mini skirts and free love, they all told the truth. That there was no longer truth. Its expiration date had come and gone.

Like the dinosaurs.

I have granddaughters who will inherit the earth we’re leaving to them, and I am afraid for them. I have grandsons who will do the same. I’m afraid for them, too. I know when people stop to analyze whose fault it is that our blue marble has spun out of control on many levels, the finger will point at us, the Baby Boomers. We should have stopped the culture wars. We should have been more tolerant. We should have minded our own business. We should have been more involved.

Don’t worry. I’m not bitter. It’s the same criticism every generation lobs at the previous one. And I’m sure every generation on its way to its eternal reward has worried that those they’re passing the torch to are ill-prepared to run the race. It’s just a pendulum swing. Nobody trusts anybody anymore. We’re all just getting what we can while we can. Until something catastrophic happens and climate change occurs and we bury all the truth we don’t believe in anymore beneath the ground we walk on.

Like the dinosaurs.