Isn't that a little loud? Lessons from my grandma’s closet.
“Only human beings are praxis—the praxis which, as the reflection and action which truly transform reality, is the source of knowledge and creation.”
I have a vivid memory from when I was maybe six years old (1990 ish). I was upstairs in my grandmother’s closet. She pulled out a hanger wrapped in a plastic bag. She said,
“LOOK at what I got today.”
I gazed up at her as she revealed an acid washed denim jacket with swaths of faux snow leopard fabric over the padded shoulders. She swung it around her triumphantly and looked at me expectantly.
Me: ...
Her: “Well, what do you think?”
Me: Um…. grandma? isn’t that a little LOUD?
Her: “Well, I’m a little LOUD!”
Well, one might not consider this story capital L “Literature,” but it was for me, what Kenneth Burke called, Equipment for Living. I reflect on it now and think how much she gave me in that moment: the joy of loving a garment, the openness to display it, the invitation to share my opinion, the cheerful acceptance of my judgment, and the jovial affirmation of her creative choices and personality. Without these lessons how would I make it being a nonbinary, mom/dad artist raising a blue middle finger smack-dab in the middle of trump country? I’d rather not find out, but teach them she did.
The first tattoo I ever got, the one on the back of my head, is in her honor. It is an anchor created out of her initials “J.E.” with the word praxis below. I was in grad school when I got it and at the time and my grandmother (my heart) was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This woman who taught me so much about how to live, was fighting death and chemo way before her time. My mom called me when her hair started falling out. She said something like,
“Just so you know, mom’s hair is almost gone, and she’s a little self conscious about it.”
You must understand that my grandmother was an artist, and it showed. She was always dressed if not in fashionable attire, there was definitely something specific happening. The colors matched, the patterns were curated, she handmade her jewelry, and her short platinum hair was always perfectly coiffed in a pixie that framed her face and bright smile perfectly. The thought of her feeling embarrassed about her bald head was gut wrenching. I decided that if she was going to have to be bald, she shouldn’t have to do it alone. So I shaved my head and showed up at her door.
Around the same time, I had read Paulo Friere’s books Pedagogy of Freedom and Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In these books, he talks at length about what was soon to be the basis for my philosophy of life/art/and teaching. In these texts he discusses the notion of being a student/teacher and a teacher/student. Acknowledging that we all have learning to do and a sense of unfinishedness about us. Though perhaps the most lasting lesson was the idea of praxis. Action with reflection on the world in order to change it. Perhaps a mark of his Christian faith, this idea harkens back to the idea of not just “talking the talk” but “walking the walk.”
The moment I heard about my grandmas suffering, I took the clippers in my hand. I wasn’t just feeling bad for her in theory. I was willing to put my body on the line. I wanted to be bald with her because it was the outward expression of my love and affection toward her. It was theory in practice. Action with reflection on my hair in order to transform my grandmother’s reality.
As I look back on it now, I ache. It was five years last month that she’s been gone and there is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t think of her. What I wouldn’t give to show her my work, the cool lines cut into the base of my hair, or the Pink Lady Gaga Chromatica Sweatshirt that I shrieked to open. The fact that I walk around town in a crop top even though I’m not Hollywood thin! I want her to meet my kids and laugh at the way they judge me so harshly (at times) for the wacky fashions I put together. I can just imagine one of them gazing up at me and saying…
“A.B. Isn’t that a little loud?”
And if it is a good day, and I have enough presence of mind, I will reach my hand back and rub the mark on my neck, laugh and tell them, have I got a story for you… it might not be literature, but you will need it to live.
For more about Paulo Freire and other teachers within this line of thought, search “Critical Pedagogy.” Other useful authors include bell hooks, Ira Shor, Parker Palmer.
