Corona Diaries: When the Ancestors Whisper

A true story.

They always seem to come without warning out of the clear blue with some deep truth that's eluded me for most of my adult life.

This was one of those times.

I was feeling all high and mighty for encouraging my kiddo's discipline throughout the stay at home order (like that's not part of the parenting gig, but whatever).

Well...what was I supposed to say?

Seriously, what is it like to be a teen right now, nonetheless a teen who's busting her butt academically, much less one whose school year was shut down in the blink of an eye?

But to hear her articulate MOM. I'M BLACK. THIS IS WHAT WE DO.

And yes, she's white and black, but she's realized in her whole short seventeen years, she is perceived as black, so she embraces it. But still...

THIS IS WHAT WE DO.

I've always taken the THIS IS WHAT WE DO as a given. She's well aware of my family being at the center of a triple lynching and then starting a new life here in Milwaukee.

She knows about me being pulled over for driving while black. She knows about the brick wall I faced as a nine-year-old ballerina.

The weird thing is that she's picked up on the embedded thread within all of that knowledge: that we just keep going: a generation starts a new life; we keep on driving despite the threat of being stopped by authorities; that we continue doing what we do in spite of.

It's what black folks have done since 1619, but it's such a reflexive thing, it didn't dawn on me until she said it.

Every day I head into my basement office/bar/rec room as she plants herself at her office in our den.

Her organization amazes me. Like, is this really MY kid?

I pop upstairs to check in every 90 minutes (or less, depending on my own attention span) to see how she's handling the juggling required of a high school junior. We talk about self-care strategies.

Then there's the day she admits that the week was hard. I'm not sure people are getting this. Summer won't be summer...you know?

That day we went for a ride just to get out of the house and get out of our heads.

She had a lot to say, which is good because I didn't have any answers, so just I listened and drove. When we got home, she said she planned on taking a break to make cards for our church's sick & shut-in, and for the new neighbor who just moved in...and for her friends who are graduating this year...and then starting schoolwork again.

All the while, I remembered that yeah: this is just what we do.