Boyz II Men II Grandpas

I saw Boyz II Men perform at the MGM in Boston the other night. Somehow I’m not engaged to any of the Boyz and am in fact still single and driving Uber. I’m just as surprised as you are.

Oh but the show was so good for the soul. I expected it would be, but I could not have imagined how restorative, how actually radical an act going to see a live performance of songs that colored all of my middle and high school years would be. At one point, Shawn Stockman told everyone to turn to the person on their left, and to the other on their right, and to tell them WE’RE GONNA HAVE A GREAT TIME TONIGHT. Which is the opposite of what we were all doing when we were swaying awkwardly at a junior high dance in a dusty gym to “On Bended Knee.” Restoration comes, sometimes three decades later.

The crowd looked like me, and by that I mean everyone in the crowd all once made mixtapes without a sense of irony. They all once called their home answering machine to see if their crush left them a message while they were out at the mall, eating Boardwalk Fries in the food court while their mom tried on shoes at Dillard’s. Or while their sister perused the stickers in Spencer’s Gifts. Or while their friend returned some flannel boxers to the Gap. The venue was filled with a diversity of people of every size, shape, color, and no doubt creed but we were all paying homage to the religion that was Motown Philly in the early 90s, when life wasn’t ruled by cellphone ringtones but rather by smoooooove riddems.

Boyz II Men lost its bass along the way, and I don’t mean they lost him to the grave or anything so dramatic. I just understand he no longer performs with the group. Still, the remaining trio were still strong performers. They were all still in great shape, they danced well, they sounded amazing.

Also, they were so unbelievably dorky. And I loved them for it. Because the songs they were singing were largely syrupy ballads, but they all still held up. They were never singing just about young love and fading crushes. They were always musicians with sophisticated vocal abilities. But the trio also weren’t putting out new songs, or doing new things. They were still trotting out “End of the Road” knowing there were no new roads to begin traveling. They had no ego about who they were, and why they mattered to all these Gen Xers gathered together for such a time as this. At the end of the show, the Boyz just lingered on stage. They didn’t need to sprint off to convince us all they were Tokyo-bound tomorrow morning. They just shook hands and slapped skin with the fans who had kept them crooning all these years.

They owned that this musical canon was their bread and butter and it endeared them to people around the world. I think that’s beautiful. They kept making jokes about everyone in the building needing to sit down, or not having the agility to clap, and how they didn’t have anything better to do for the next 33 years so they might as well do this. They all looked foiiiiine, so, trust, I still don’t know why they played up their elderly status. I also still don’t understand how I went home without at least one BoyzIIMan, but there are still a few weeks until Valentine’s. I’ll be accepting any and all mixtapes with a sprinkle of Boyz’ ballads.

Why I Keep Opening Another Woman's Mail

This last holiday season, I received heaps of mail for another woman. Christmas cards, packages, and other fat, cheery envelopes. This woman was clearly loved, you know? I opened all of it.

I kept the spoils.
I went wild spending the gift cards.
I endorsed every last check to myself. 

I waited for US Weekly to tell my story. “She seemed normal,” the neighbors all agreed. “She kept to herself. None of us knew we were living next door to The Postal Pirate.” 

Piracy is so badass. Alas, it is not the driving conflict in my story, nor is it the stuff of tabloid news. It is much more straightforward: There once was a woman who got divorced. Her friends and family assumed she’d drop her married name. They addressed her mail accordingly. She wondered about this. Then she probably got hungry and ate an entire tray of Rice Krispie treats. The end. 

Denise Richards will never play me on a Lifetime movie. Sally Field will never play my mom. But if she did, the film would be called, “Not Without My Full Name.”

A logical beginning for my story is April of last year. I faced a judge in family court who asked me if I would be keeping my married name after my divorce was finalized. I affirmed that I would be. The judge did not ask my reasons. In the months since, no one, in fact, has. This may be due to the fact that when asked direct, personal questions by people I love and respect, I immediately begin fanning myself and soon after faint on a Victorian chaise, only to recover hours later when someone revives me with fake news that Harry Styles has arrived. 

Nevertheless, I had hoped someone would ask me whether I would be keeping my name. Divorce is a deeply private decision made for deeply personal reasons. But a name is public-facing. We can try to avoid calling people by their first names (as I do at all dog parks and children’s sporting events when I have once again forgotten the names of the handlers and coaches even though we have introduced ourselves over nervous laughter 7 times since last Sunday) but eventually we have to use them. Names are not neutral--just ask Barack Hussein Obama--but they are important and necessary and they shape who we are. They can even help to tell our story. 
I came into the world as Kendra Colleen Stanton. I think my parents did a great job authoring my birth certificate. Each part of my name has a lovely balance of two syllables. Clap. That. Beauty. Out. 

When I married in my early twenties, I wanted to retain my maiden name somehow, while adding my husband’s surname. I did not want to hyphenate my new name. I simply wanted to orbit among other triple threat luminaries: Mary Tyler Moore. Florence Griffith Joyner. Doris Kearns Godwin. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The names of the cast of my personal Mt. Rushmore.

Then! Lo! Hark! Social Security minted me a new name. My maiden became my middle name. My last name became my married name. I became Kendra Stanton Lee. I was excited to adopt this new appellation, with hopes of one day sharing a surname with my would-be children. 

Those children materialized. They are my greatest source of joy and financial strain. I am overjoyed that I can share a name and DNA with them. Further, they are half-Asian. I am their Caucasian mother. Their last name is one of the most common in the world, but derives from proud clan origins in South Korea, from whence their paternal ancestry line hails. After forming those children in my womb from a steady diet of Little Debbie Nutty Bars for the length of several senatorial terms, I wanted an outward emblem that we were related. Sharing this last name, even though I am no longer married to their father, means a great deal to me. 

Further, I have published all of my professional work under Kendra Stanton Lee. I own the web domain to my name, and if you think I am giving that up, you have never emptied your whole piggy bank to buy Boardwalk and Park Place in Monopoly, just because you can. This name has been a professional expression, a byline by which my work identifies me. Additionally, as my full-time hustle is as a teacher, this name connects me to hundreds of current and former students, who now send me LinkedIn requests from all over the world. My students have affectionately shortened my name to “Ms. SL” or sometimes just “SL.” When you become an acronym, you garner street cred. Like my Monopoly real estate, I am not giving that up.  

So it is with a certain bristling that I have received mail where the kindest of friends and family lopped off my last name. I trust they had the best of intentions; they wanted to honor the major life change I had just made to my marital status. Still, I wish that they had asked me, even if it felt a touch awkward or invasive. A simple, “Will you be changing your name now that you are divorced? I just want to know how to address this distribution from your trust fund” would have meant the world to me.

Perhaps this is on me. Maybe I should have issued a royal decree or at least an Instagram post to my loyal fandom to announce this intention to keep my name. In the meantime, I’ll keep cashing those checks for that other woman. Keep the lovemail flowing, fam. 

Lights out in Bethlehem and why that matters

I keep thinking about the little town of Bethlehem, the avowed city of Jesus Christ’s birth in Israel’s West Bank, and how they put away their decorations for Christmas, before Christmas.

The majority of Bethlehem’s population is Muslim. As the Israeli-Palestinian war wages on, families are grieving the loss of a staggering number of lives, the largest share of which includes women and children. Accordingly, the local government and churches of Bethlehem conferred and decided to remove the Christmas decore and to scale back any festivities in the town that had been a major tourist destination in the past. 

What does it even mean for one faith tradition to choose to bear witness to another’s? It seems so powerful, and generous, and kind of hard to believe, honestly. I don’t find humans, namely Americans entrenched in a culture of capitalist overconsumption, especially good at holding space for others’ grief even in times of great sorrow.

We are often so hellbent on being human doings than human beings.

I think about Sandy Hook. I think about twenty six families burying children and teachers slain. I think about Christmas and Hannukah presents that would never be opened. I think about parents receiving condolence cards instead of Christmas cards.

And then I think about how school shootings have risen dramatically. How the past two years have seen historically high numbers, practically one per week. It makes me want to hunker down like Bethlehem for awhile.

Following Sandy Hook, Ann Curry had suggested 26 good deeds in response, and a movement of contagious kindness spread. Channeling so much sadness into positive action can feel productive, and even healing. However, sometimes the very act of abiding--that is, to take no action but to merely endure alongside the bereaved and hurting--is the kindest way to show up. 

In C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, a memoir about the loss of his wife, Lewis writes about the impossible limbo of receiving condolences from others, “I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate if they do, and if they don’t.” Similarly, writer Sarah Wildman shares in a recent essay about the loss of her 14 year-old child, that eventually the text messages “slow and stop.” She notes that “holiday markers are as hard as promised” but it is her daughter’s daily absence that is the “cruelest blow.”

I think how I might write an imaginary holiday letter, sent to the masses of people who are kind enough to remember me and my mailbox at this time of year. Hey Y’all. First Divorced Christmas. Totally broke! Trying to meet my healthcare deductible! How ‘bout that monologue in the Barbie Movie, though?! Kids are fine. Funny. Sometimes moody. Me too, honestly. I’m mostly okay-ish. Sending love from Boston! xoxo

We try ever to say the rightest thing, to impart the most appropriate greeting. Then life knocks you sideways and you realize sometimes you’ve got to put your decorations away. There’s just no masking the sads.

Like the city of Bethlehem, no one is asking us to dull our sparkle. Solidarity is not a store looking to hire more seasonal employees, but rather a union that relies on volunteers. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is merely to consider others’ pain. To imagine the space left by the empty chair at the dinner table, or the spot on the mantle where they hoped another stocking might hang. To wonder how great their river of sorrow must extend and into which tributaries of their lives it touches.

If the moment feels right to stand in solidarity with someone in pain this holiday, I hope we can do so. The experience may unite us with generations who have felt left out in the cold at the holidays, with no room left at the inn.