American Dream

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I live in a dream world, the American Dream, like many middle class Americans.

If I’m too hot, I turn on the air conditioning. If I’m too cold, I turn on the heat.

If I get sick, I go to the doctor and my insurance company eventually pays the bill, occasionally after letters to them, the doctor, and my state and national congressmen. And Michael Moore. The point is not that I have to fight about so many bills, but that eventually insurance pays them (Thank you Representative George Scully for intervening twice now!).

I walk my dogs on a daily basis and take them to the Indiana Dunes State park once a week or so if I want to. Usually we go to the local dog park where most pets and their owners behave reasonably well. They run and play and bark, the dogs that is, and I walk around and around the track, picking up after them with blue plastic (scented!) poop bags that were a gift when we got the dogs. It’s not really “green” to use the bags, but certainly more appropriate than leaving piles all over the dog park. I do have a vision of archeologists several hundred years from now digging into a land fill and finding perfectly preserved plastic bags filled with doggie caca. At least they’ll know what our society values.

We have enough to eat, perhaps too much. When we are hungry we go to the grocery store or out to eat. Our garden is productive enough that I can give away tomatoes and eggplants to the local food pantry.

Last night, as part of the American Dream that we live, we went to Flavor, the restaurant in Flossmoor owned by my putative cousin, Rochelle, and her husband James. Yesterday was Jazz night, with Detour Da Funk providing wonderful, live music. Friends joined us after they got off work late, and we enjoyed being with them. Flavor feels like a wonderful family. People know each other, chat from table to table, joke, laugh, and return again and again. We certainly do. Despite the fact that we are white and the other clientele is often predominantly black.

We believe in chosen family, and years ago Rochelle introduced us as her third cousins on the mother’s side to a group of tentative white folks. I don’t know whether they felt more comfortable or not. I certainly did.

When I think about growing up in Minneapolis, where I never saw a black person, let alone had a chance to talk with one; when I think about going to high school in Decatur, IL, which was paradoxically integrated and segregated; when I think about those times, I realize how far we have come. Last night the music overtook me (as it often does), and Rochelle and I danced, the only two people on the floor, while the rest of the patrons watched. I “fired” her after a while and danced with my wife. All the while, Brandon, one of the servers watched us with the biggest, most amazing and amazed grin I have ever seen. When I mentioned his giant smile, he said, “I just didn’t know. I didn’t know you could step.”

That’s what we do when we go to Flavor, we go steppin’. My wife and I both love to dance, and we even have a small dance floor installed in our sun room. We don’t use it very often, but it’s there when we want it.

We live in an amazing suburb of Chicago, sometimes called the most segregated city in America. I don’t believe that slur. Our suburban street is two blocks long and is exceptionally stable, as far as race is concerned. Maples, elms, and oaks form a canopy over the street. We have a sorehead or two, but that’s normal and has nothing to do with race. African Americans own about half the houses. Those of us of the European persuasion own the other half. We bought our house from a black woman. Whites buy from blacks, blacks buy from whites, and no one seems to mind because residents care for their own property and keep an eye out for each other. When tree roots send the sidewalks askew, the village replaces them. If we’re out of town and a paper is delivered in error, someone puts it discretely on the front stoop. We get each others’ mail, and take each others’ garbage cans in if it’s windy. We had a block party last summer, and a collective garage sale. Everyone contributed their five bucks and participated.

We live the American Dream in large part because of a lucky accident of birth. We were born to the right parents, in the right place on this planet, at the right time in history, with the right talents, and opportunities for the snatching. Thank God.

Amen. Amen.