white bubbles and bad judgment

i broke down and signed the kids up for my gym once a week. they love it. the staff open up that little wooden gate and turn up the music and the children swarm like red ants across the carpet and up blue carpeted steps, jump into gigantic tubs of plastic balls (one teacher notes that most kids at my gym get little or no mcdonalds time), roll around inside giant soft rings, swing on hoops and climb all kinds of ladders. there is circle time where we all do an aerobic warm up and my kids are reaching and stretching and stomping feet like little stars and a dance and then free play with special activities such as walking on balance beams, learning new kinds of somersaults, etc. maya likes to make it dangerous by burrowing completely under the balls so that she will be invisible to the four-year-old boys jumping full strength on top of her. miles spices things up a bit by being a crocodile or lemur.
i like to see my kids in this healthy wonderland, learning new skills, smiling, clapping and, at the end, cheering for themselves. so safe and fun.

it is a very very white group of children.

here we are with the potrero hill projects just above us, near bayview, not far from the mission. but every kid here is quite pale. it's not the park. it's not the bus. it certainly isn't the public schools. like most of the classes we have taken, and miles' preschool, it feels a little strange. privileged i guess. like if some mother of color peeked in on us i would feel embarrassed.

still wondering if we should move away to some tranquil town. i would be lonely. it would be a little white bubble, with a nice school for miles and maya. it would be quieter. it would be closer to how i grew up.

maybe where i grew up will be the subject of a post in the near future.

when i was in high school and college i dated (on and off for 5 years) a jealous, angry person. he had his good points, but the jealousy and anger were pretty bad. here's an example--i stay out late at a party and he breaks into my house and rips up a bunch of artwork and finds a photo of us and stabs it into my wall with a big metal file. another--he follows me to oregon after cheating on me, convinces me to take him back and live together, and cheats on me again in our big co-op with a roomate, while i was in the building. umm, finds out i was in a big car wreck and comes to my house to push me around and yell at my wounds and throw a wine bottle at my head he's so mad i almost died. you get the picture. yet i kept getting back together with him. FOR FIVE YEARS. the last time i saw this guy, his literal last words before getting on a plane and disappearing, were "i wish you would come with me and marry me." this is not good closure, and to this day he sneaks into my dreams.

anyway, what i am trying to explain is that i had terrible terrible judgment for a long chunk of time. i thought we should just keep trying, that love would win out, that he would change. maybe this is somehow related to having two very nice but divorced parents and never really understanding why they were not together. there are many posts in here, i guess. but i think this part of my life made me really not trust myself to make good decisions. how could i have stayed in such a crummy situation for so long?? am i doing the same type of thing to the kids by staying in this dirty dangerous city ?

i love being part of this huge wierd community of san francisco, which is really a big mess--full of people from around the world with their languages, art, music, germs, races, different amounts of money, ideas, full of cars and trucks and parks and litter and pit bulls and homeless people and sushi and museums and buses and schools and burritos etc etc. it is a beautiful place, but not so safe and not so predictable. i drove home in the dark a few nights ago from mike and suling's and saw young party people walking to bars and hanging out on mission st and a big applauding crowd at galeria de la raza and the gang selling drugs next to casa sanchez and just wondered if i should take my kids away to a smaller quieter place.

a little island, perhaps. until they are about 25.

there must be a reason why diversity and urban energy are so attractive to me right now. attractive enough to want to raise kids in san francisco. i must trust my judgment or go crazy with questioning.

or just take it one day at a time. we are all doing ok, right? am i taking chances? will going to public school in sfusd really ruin my kids' future? are we really in danger of being hurt in this dense and traffic-filled neighborhood? is there really safety and security anywhere?

again, sorry to be heavy. blogs are supposed to be light and witty with fun descriptions. i'll do better next time i promise.