Belonging to a human is big. It is crack.
In a memory, there is Rigdon Road Elementary in Columbus, Georgia. In 1963, we are studying rubber. There is the Goodyear Company and a picture of a rubber tree plant in South America. Somebody foreign is tapping it.
My father was the agronomist at Fort Benning, adjacent to Columbus. He purchased a great many plants and landscaping services as part of his job on base. He purchased from Mr. Cargill, the owner of Cargill Nursery. There I am, there my parents are -- we're looking up rubber in the World Book Encyclopedia. My father said he could get Mr. Cargill to give my class a rubber tree plant. I instantly knew such an event would put me at the head of the belonging food chain in my class. I wanted it to happen something fierce.
I belonged in a family. I belonged in a class. I was hoping to belong to the teacher, like a pet.
“A sense of belonging,” writes Dr. Kenneth Pelletier of the Stanford Center for Research and Disease Prevention, “appears to be a basic human need – as basic as food and shelter. In fact, social support may be one of the critical elements distinguishing those who remain healthy from those who become ill.”
This pronouncement rings true to me. It has red plastic hearts floating above.
The Goodyear Company and rubber = one and the same. In second grade, all I knew about manufacturing was the local cotton factory that transformed tufts of billowy white cotton into towels and sheets for the world. I imagined manufactured rubber as flat white sheets that flowed out of trees in South America like paper from the school's mimeograph machine. I imagined rubber manufacturing smelled like the sulfated castor oil that wafted through my school on the day the lunch menus were printed.
My second grade self didn't know there was a rubber boom in early twentieth century that had a significant negative effect on the indigenous population across Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia. Labor shortages led to rubber barons rounding up indigenous people to tap rubber out of the trees -- just like in the picture. Ninety percent of indigenous poplulations were wiped out. The World Book Encyclopedia of the 1960's made no mention of this.
Un-belonging someone is serious business. It's an ancient form of the death penalty. It's called banishment.
In modern times, when two teenagers robbed and beat a pizza delivery man with a baseball bat in the state of Washington, the Tlingit nation banished them to separate islands. In 1994, the Council of Chiefs of the Onondaga Nation in New York formally banished three members for gross violations of tribal laws. The men were formally stripped of their citizenship in the Onondaga Nation; were severed from their community and families; and had their rights, property, and protection under the ancient Iroquois Law of Onondaga territory extinguished. A tribal government near Fairbanks, Alaska, punishes offenders who are caught drinking alcohol with a $50 fine. Repeat offenders are subject to banishment from the village.
Not all who are banished survive.
I remember looking through the panes of glass that gave view to the school parking lot. There strode my tall, strong and handsome father with his yellow Banlon shirt and khaki pants, toting a rubber tree plant in a five gallon tub. I nearly vomited with excitement. Mrs. McWhirter didn't know he was coming to my class with a bone fide rubber tree plant he got from Mr. Cargill's nursery. But I did. Sometimes knowing a secret tightens the hold of belonging.
Today I am voting, and it occurs to me that there are two views of belonging on the ballot. On one side, we have the locking off of the borders around our belonging, and the banishment of many already here. On the other side, we have the vague notion that all who are here and some who want to be here belong, and somehow we are going to figure out how to feed everyone and stay safe. So where do you belong, the ballot asks. Make your mark.
I read in Psychology Today that some seek belonging through excluding others. That reflects the idea that there must be those who don't belong in order for there to be those who do. Groucho Marx said that he wouldn't want to be in a club that would have him as a member.
My humanity craves belonging. On the other hand, I couldn't wait to move out of second and into third grade. As soon as I could, I voluntarily left Georgia. I had little to do with my family of origin after I began raising my own family. When Ted died, I gave away most of my belongings and left my community. I didn't feel I belonged anymore in the place where he and I had belonged together. A few months ago, I bought a teardrop camper to escape from where I belong. I am discovering that my present day belonging is either so small or so big that I tow it around with me, wherever I go.
I banish myself. I have executed belonging to find belonging. I am in a club that is asking me to choose where I belong. My childhood view of rubber trees is wider, sadder, sweeter, residing in Georgia, ensconced in my heart. Rubber tires have carried me everywhere I have been thus far. Rubber trees, belonging, banishment, voting. A rubber tree can be a thing in a pot that exalts a child and casts her father in a temporary glow.
I sing of love to rubber trees with both red plastic hearts and question marks, floating.
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