Manifesting Destiny

Acting As If

After we moved out of my grandmother’s house when I was a pre-teen, we became poor. We went from a middle-class family life to an impoverished life instantly. Or at least it seemed that way to me. My mother chose for us to be poor, I thought. I was ashamed and I was angry. In all fairness, all teenagers are angry though. Mom was in banking and was not making much money. As a single mother of color with two children there was not much money to made in the 70’s. We had a roof over our heads and we had food. In our community that was winning. Mom was not able to sustain payments on our 3-bedroom apartment after awhile, so we moved to a one bedroom apartment that she could afford in a triplex on Coalmont Street in North Braddock. We lived on the 2nd level. It was small and uncomfortable to me. I went from having my own room to not having a room at all. I had no privacy. At thirteen years old, it was devastating for me. I often wore hand-me-down clothing, although mom denied that adamantly whenever I asked her about it later in life. We all did. My mother loved repurposed clothing even later in life. Nothing to be ashamed of in my humble option. My mother was an extremely proud woman. In her mind, she was always moving forward. She wasn’t taking government handouts and she was providing for children. She was no longer living in her parents home as an adult, so she was winning. Mom always presented herself flawlessly, as the queen she believed that she was. She would actually say she was a queen, long before it became rhetoric. She was very good at acting as if. We had a tiny black and white tv with tin foil on the antenna in our tiny living room but mom acted as if we did not. She once answered a client of hers when asked “do you have a colored tv?” She replied, “Why, I wouldn’t have anything else!”. When I asked her why she told the man that? She said, “Well it’s true. If I had a choice I wouldn’t have anything else. Right now, I don’t have a choice.” She drove a second, perhaps third-hand car, but we had plenty of food and we were clean. She was independent. No government programs for her! So she was winning. She never stopped striving during her life. She went back to school a couple of times during her life and eventually got that colored tv. So yes, I knew that we were poor. I never knew just how poor until I went away to boarding school.

I took the SSAT when I was in the 8th grade. I have always performed extremely well on standardized tests for some reason. I won an award for my exceptional performance on the PSAT and knocked my SATs out of the park. Because of my high scores, I was accepted to Foxcroft School in Middleburg, VA on a full ride scholarship. Not only was my tuition paid, but so was my transportation, which was four flights per year, books, room and board, and uniforms, plus three activities of my choosing per trimester. I was able to study abroad as well. (That was not included. My parents scrambled for that cost). I arrived my sophomore year with just a few personal items in a bespoke trunk that I had reimagined with some contact paper and paint and a duffle bag suitcase that mom had bought on layaway from Hills Department Store. Dear Lord, I was impecunious.

The summer that I was accepted to Foxcroft I was sent a reading list of about thirty-five books that I should have read by that point in my education. I think I had read maybe twelve or so on the list. Not because it was required at my current school, but because I was an avid reader and curious. Not a good start looking back. I loved to read so I hit our local library and got started. By the end of the summer I had read all of the list with exception of perhaps eight of the books. I remember when I arrived at Foxcroft, my English teacher made me take a speed reading class after school to be able to keep up with what was going to be required of me. In spite of all of my egghead qualities, I still read too too slow for my new school. That’s public school in an underserved community for you. I was an A-plus student at the school that I left behind with barely any effort. This was going to be a challenge, this new school. I welcomed it excitedly. I was thrilled. After a few months of homesickness, which was cured after my first trip home, I excelled. I thrived. My first trip home showed me just how much I had grown in such a short period of time. It also opened my eyes to just how impoverished that we were. Mom taught me to keep acting as if, though. Mom always acted as if life, our life, was fabulous. I was learning that to be able to move forward, acting as if was necessary. It made this new life possible - this better life.

Foxcroft is a boarding school with many children of privilege. At that age children aren’t paying attention to the financial situations of one another. The educators and the staff never treated us differently either. Acting as if I belonged there was easy to do. As long as I did what I was expected to do, then I did belong there. Acting as if became my way of life. Returning home reinforced my drive to excel even further. I had to keep climbing and not look down. I never compared myself with the wealthier girls. I never felt jealous of them. I squeezed my skinny, low income behind right into the mix! It was wonderful to me that life offered so much. It became a goal not a burden.

I am not going to say that my college years were easy or my early married life and career life were easy. Neither of those things are true. It was always a struggle to keep my head above water at various points in my life. I made questionable decisions and had to learn from my mistakes. What I never forgot was the life lessons that I had learned from my queen of a mom. If you keep acting as if, at some point, it manifests. So here’s the lesson for anyone going through it: act as if! Life is sometimes difficult. We get thrown curveballs that seem to come out of nowhere. Illness, health issues, family, finances, our jobs all seem to act out from time to time. There are beautiful and happy moments too. That’s what makes it all worth it. If the majority of life is calm and drama free with a few hills and valleys, then that’s a very good life. When things get rough with our parents and our partners, we still love them. We act as if through any rough times with them, do we not? Because we know that the amount of love we have for them will carry us across that chasm. We have to do the same with the rest of it too. If money gets tight, keep acting as if. Keep moving forward and find that solution. If your career takes a hit, keep acting as if and push through because there will be a change. Humans are resilient and creative and unbelievably strong. Act as if.

My daughter teases me that I’m out here living my best life. Perhaps that is true. It is definitely a result of me acting as if I deserve the life that I now have. About thirty years ago, I went to Paris for the first time. I said to myself how beautiful it was and that I could live here someday. Eleven years ago, it happened. When I was sixteen, and went to New York for my first time, I said I could live here. It happened. I said someday I will buy a house. It happened. Now we have two homes. I am not rich. Not even close, but I live a full and rich life. Do I still struggle with things? Of course I do. What I won’t do is beat myself up over things I cannot control. What I have learned to do is dig deep into myself and figure out what needs to happen to make the necessary changes to keep moving forward and upward. Introspection is a huge part of acting as if. It’s not selfish to ask for what it is that you need. Suffering is not noble. Being a kind human and self sacrifice are not the same things. Acting as if is the vision board of your mind. We can always do better. We can always