“Respect for respect”
From Cecil B. to Lehigh, posted April 3.
In a previous post, I mentioned that Michelle is fond of saying “respect for respect.” I thought it was a refreshing take on authority. In my own experience, I’ve always chafed at people who demand respect be bestowed upon them. It’s like insisting someone tell you you’re a lady, in a way. You can make someone pay you lip service, but it doesn’t make you a lady, or respected.
The more I talk to Michelle, though, her mantra makes more sense.
She grew up in Puerto Rico. As a girl, she moved to Philadelphia. It was not the best move for her, it seems. She fell into the wrong crowds, and had trouble adjusting to such a different life. She ended up getting pregnant.
Life as a Puerto Rican native in a rough section of a rough city couldn’t have been easier. Add in that she seems more comfortable speaking in Spanish and that she is a single mother, and you have a life that requires quite a bit of perseverance and confidence in yourself.
Michelle told me she never did well in school. Talking to her, you get the feeling that perhaps she had too many teachers demand respect, and not earn it. She probably knows that you can’t force respect out of someone. She knows that her children will not respect her because she yells and screams and threatens hell and high water if they don’t. That tactic never worked with her.
“Respect for respect” is what makes sense to her. It isn’t hard to believe that a Puerto Rican immigrant with a penchant for trouble in her youth doesn’t always get the respect more squeaky clean people do. And not being respected didn’t get her to shape up, to follow the straight and narrow, as a girl, so she knows it won’t get her far with her own children, facing a world that isn’t ready to celebrate them.
That doesn’t mean Michelle isn’t willing to lay down the law. When her young boy once started a trend of kicking and screaming that he didn’t want to go to school in the morning, she took care of it quickly. She grabbed all his shoes and toys and put them into a trash bag. She set the bag on the front step. Along with him.
“If you’re not going to school, you can’t live here,” Michelle said, she told me.
He quickly changed his mind about school, she said.
