In woke era, I’m happy to be cool kid’s dad
Nurse Vivian, my mother, was not groovy. In the 1960s, when flower children embraced the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, she remained firmly rooted in the dusk of the Age of Pisces. Oldfashioned, she never once uttered the fword. Until the day she retired, she wore a starched white uniform, with cap and matching hosiery.
Growing up, Nurse Vivian’s rare forays into trendiness came out awkwardly. She couldn’t get the lingo down, like one day when she met me at Archbishop Molloy High School and tried talking to my friends while wearing a white polyester leisure suit with red sequined roses.
What she meant to say to my fellow sophomores was, “Let me treat you to an ice cream at Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor,” but what she actually said was, “I’ll blow any one of you.”
Brother Not X, my oldest brother, was the cool one. The first one not to get a crew cut, the first one to eschew bell bottoms, a clarinet player for the only rock band in South Ozone Park. Any knowledge I have of illicit drugs came from him.
Half a century later, he’s the coolest septuagenarian in Lancaster, Pa., 72 years young Wednesday, he writes a blog and plays saxophone concerts on his porch.
Thursday morning, as I drove away from Pier 30 and my first COVID19 test, I sneezed away the memory of the swab but felt holierthanthou. It’s the latest rage: wear a mask, get tested and keep your social distance, America’s newest oxymoron.
This is my satisfaction in life. Unlike Brother Not X, I don’t get to feel hipperthanthou. But as much as I would like to be hep, I’m so uncool that it’s retro.
My husband, Brian, describes me as not just not au courant (inside the current) but downright
hors de courant (out of the current).
Crazy Mike says the term nowadays is “woke,” but if I used it, the word would turn passe.
It first appeared in 1942, when J. Saunders Redding, writing for the Negro Digest (later known as Black World), used the term in an article about labor unions. It took on more relevance on June 14, 1965, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.”
Woke means more than fashionable. It means being awake and aware to social injustice: racism, misogyny, transphobia. And it also means willingness to be a part of the change.
My son, Zane, is woke, although paradoxically, he is not selfaware. Perhaps it is the very lack of consciousness that allows him to be so in the moment, so downtown.
Aidan not so much. Nurture trumped nature in his case. Truly Nurse Vivian’s grandchild, he’s as nerdy about wolves as I ever was about Captain America.
It’s enough that Zane is woke. I suspect being woke is a moving target, the cool part of it eluding me. But as the gay father in a multiracial family, it’s my job to make myself aware of injustice. And to teach my sons kindness
Zane has walked with us in the Pride March since his very first steps, and to this day the straightest teenager walks around in his rainbow cowboy hat like he’s Harvey Milk’s bestie. Whereas, when Zane took me to a Black Lives Matter protest, I felt like the cool kids were rolling their eyes at me from the
other minority who was not quite woke, but no longer drowsy.
I don’t get to be woke by association. Brian and I remain the old fogeys in the land of the foggy.
But I get to be father of the coolest kid in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior. It’s excruciating for both boys when I put on my New Religion Tshirt and make up rap lyrics to Kendrick Lamar, but at least I’ve promised never to show up at Archbishop Riordan wearing a white polyester leisure suit with sequined red roses.
Woke means more than fashionable. It means being awake and aware to social injustice: racism, misogyny, transphobia. And it also means willingness to be a part of the change.