“Are you me?” Number 2 asks Number 1. They both laugh as if it’s an inside joke. Number 1 repeats Number 2’s question. Giggles spills over, water boils.
My nephews are children. At an age where it’s neither embarrassing nor irresponsible to be naive. Their questions are hopeful, considerate, curious. At five and three they consider. Who is me and what is you and how are we one or many and where is me and you if you and me are here with one another but not one another or are we?
The ease at which they ask this question is not the ease with which this question visits me, at night, lying alone in pitch black silence, considering with myself, “are you me?”
Adolescent development is a bag of greens I’ve yet to wash and chop up. The most I can grasp is the truth that I was there, a youth growing swiftly and clumsily into the centaur of adulthood– half tax-abiding; half thumb-sucking. Then, there are the examples from my life. As a high school school teacher. The boys roaming in packs, scribbling on the board or balloons phallic symbols and phrases; the girls, their edges laid with wax, their wanting to know if, “Miss Harris will you get a nipple piercing with me?” Some of it is for shock, some of it is for release. Some of it is because I am young, and I look within the belief that we can relate. Because all they want is to relate. Then, there are examples from the reading, in the class I’m taking this semester at CCBC, PSYC 219, “adolescent psychology.” Developing children need emotional attunement, developing children require attention and support, developing children are forming an identity. Yet, living development, witnessing development, and reading about development hasn’t helped me answer Number 2’s question.
If you ask me, I’ll tell you I know who I am. First born’s last born. Woodlawn raised. The youngest of three. The early writer, earlier reader. The teacher. The book designer. The panAfricanist. The bird feeder. The mushroom grower. The spiritualist suspicious of spiritualism. The lover of big and little flavors. The chronic thinker, chronic worrier, chronic hider. But there’s more. There are questions. Where do I belong? Where do I go? What choices have I made? Are my choices making me? What am I not seeing? How should I make my money? How much do I value wealth? Partnership? Am I strong enough? Can I forgive? Why do I feel disconnected? Can I ask for help? How do I ask? Act? Account? Made of questions, I slink through the day, confident and sure and also lost and knowing nothing.
A few years ago, I made one decision that’s shaped the course of everything after: I decided to live alone. I felt crowded. Surrounded. Insulated in a way I was convinced was no longer serving me. So I got a studio between Druid Hill and Mondawmin. And that first year was like summer. I was under employed. Sleeping late into the day. Walking daily. Cooking new recipes. Taking music as medicine. Inviting friends over, going over to friends’. The space was a gift. Until my bestie neighbors moved away, I got dumped. Then, my best friend from childhood moved away, then my grandaddy died. Then, after the rent embezzlement scandal, I moved to the East side. And now when I come home– the light winking out above Lake Montebello, Cricket meowing as welcome or need, the absence feels crowded; insulating in a way that I’m not sure is serving me anymore.
I open Time Passages. It reads:
“Pluto in the fourth house gives you an intense desire for emotional security. Your security needs may manifest as a fixation for a place to reside which can be completely safe, or controlled. You have a strong survival urge, and are likely to go through many changes in your relationship to your home environment as you go through life. As a defense, you may be obsessively attached to making a home environment for yourself that is exactly the way you want it. There could be a tendency for dictatorial behavior on the home front, or other compulsive behavior in search of safety and security such as seeking isolation rather than sharing.”
Before I read this I thought my desire for a home of my own was about creating structure and an introverted need for managing socialization. But I didn’t notice how quickly it just became about control and belonging.
In the “Control” music video, Janet Jackson’s parents don’t want her to move out. She’s about to leave the house for a gig, but both of her parents weigh into her. She resists. She’s smothered, she must get out on her own. She’s done with other people’s rules, plans, provisions. She needs to make her own. She gets in her jeep about to pull off. But her band pulls up behind her. They tell her to get in, they’re driving her to the gig. Janet Jackson gets on stage and sings, “I’m in control, never gonna stop/ Control, to get what I want/ Control, I like to have a lot/ Control, now I’m all grown up.” Perhaps control is a cousin to growing up. Perhaps my obsession with making a home is because I can’t shake the parent in my head. Perhaps I need to explore it all to truly know who I am.
Number 2 is very concerned with who is and isn’t. He is matter of fact, pragmatic. He builds mini structures out of blocks, Legos, puzzle pieces. He wants the parts to take shape, to make a complete picture.
“Gigi,” he asks my mom, pointing to an old photograph. “Is she dead?”
Or, playing in the yard he’ll come to the phone and say, “Dad is in the shed. Mom is in the kitchen. Both Gigi’s parents are dead.”
Being concerned with place, consciousness, and cohesion send me into an existential spiral. But Number 2 takes it in stride. He observes and asks. He states his findings, confidently. When I was young, I was nothing like him. I didn’t believe the adults could answer my questions. I gravitated towards books. Here, I thought, It’s all here and more. Ironically, a book asks that same question, Are you me? The answers are as deep and varied as the characters; the narratives themselves.
For many years, I thought who I was was my family or the stuff that I did. Then, it became how I kept and made home. How naive? But maybe that’s the point. To discover the layers of your own naivety. To turn to the adults or the text. To ask questions about the journey and see that the answers, rarely resolute, mostly in flux, all depend on the journey within your narrative.
When, too sore from existential questions, and I needed to be reminded of who I am, I used to call my grandad. But now I call my mom. She’s lying down watching T.V with Number 3 crawling over her chest. Number 1 in the background reading the next book in the series. Number 2 facing the screen squeaking my name. “Are you me?” I ask him. He pouts or he smiles and always says no. I like his answer.
