The Late Arrival

My husband posted a pic collage on social media a few days back to commemorate Loving Day. Admittedly, I was less than enthusiastic considering, uh I don’t know…EVERYTHING. Yay. Loving Day. That’s when Aunt Mag and Uncle John popped up in my memory.  I grew up seeing their portrait on the family’s upright Mason & Hamlin piano; and, in passing at least once, my mom explained: Who Woulda Thought? That's your Aunt Mag and Uncle John. People said he was an old white man, but no one ever really talked about it. I was young enough to remember that and young enough to be puzzled. IT? What was IT, and why was IT a secret? I moved on from my confusion and, I guess innocence, until about FIVE YEARS AGO when I was introduced to Loving Day , and out of nowhere, the light broke like a two-by-four splintering on my head: OMG, nobody talked about Uncle John being white because his marriage to Aunt Mag was ILLEGAL. Aunt Mag was my grandmother’s aunt. Her family – m y family – survived a triple...

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 M...

We don't deserve dogs.   I need this tee-shirt. This simple meme really says more about us than it does about Man's Best Friend. Just read the daily news, scan Facebook or Twitter timelines or watch the nightly news, it's clear: we can be awful to each other, to the environment, to animals. Given time and opportunity, we can be pretty much awful to anything. Rather than leave it at people are awful beings, I think its time to go further than saying we don't deserve dogs to  What we need to learn from dogs . 1.     Savor the awkward and the smelly, and roll around in it.   I'm pretty sure Mister Charley has no idea when he and/or his breath is stinky. Beauty thing is that he does not care a whit. He's here, he's stinky, he's sleepy and he ain't going anywhere. And guess what? His comfort in all of the above makes me forget about all of the above, and before you know it, this happens. It was a smelly time, my f...

Even though my ears couldn't pick up the buzz, I assume in Bug World the panicked hornet's buzzing thundered like a storm as he hovered at a window trying to escape. I, on the other hand, was soaking in the sun while waiting for my friend to arrive for a an all-too rare lunch. She arrived and we hugged. It'd been way too long since we had gotten together. She settled in and soon noticed the panicky hornet buzzing at our floor length window. I saw a look in her eye. Leave him alone and he'll leave us alone  I advised. I can now confess this was an untruth, as a beekeeper friend once said honeybees will only sting if provoked. Yellow-jackets and hornets, on the other hand... We continued chatting unbothered. Until our frustrated hornet friend hovered and lit upon my index finger, and then flitted over to my friend's shoulder. She jumped up and I was like Oooooh...you done messed with the wrong person. Next thing, the hornet's on the gro...

The endless countryside is dotted with hay bales in random, yet organized rows. Then more hay bales, then meadows grasping on to the last greens of summers, then signs for rest stops, lodging and gas. Maybe a few cows and horses. Then more random hay bales. We're probably at mile 175 of a 600 mile road trip to Pierce City, Missouri. As rest/gas signs become fewer and fewer, my mind does what it always does: What would happen if we needed gas before the next exit? I imagine my daughter and I waiting roadside as my husband grows tinier in the distance, a lone figure walking into the sunrise with a telltale red gas container toward the next truck stop exit.  In this imagined reality, I will myself into not complaining or being passive-aggressive (my specialty) even in the face of being stranded gas-less on some abandoned stretch of beat-up road in Wisconsin...even though my husband could've just stopped for gas when we were at a half tank, and he does have  I am Capt...

Given the choice, I'd take singing a solo to millions over speaking to a crowd of fifty. With songs, there's a verse, a chorus, another verse and a chorus, maybe a coda and then I'm done. Speaking on the other hand, especially without notes, leaves the verse, chorus and coda to me and vulnerable to top-of-mind tangents liable to spur other tangents that could possibly last for hours. With that in mind, I told a story at tonight's event: nervous, shaking and determined to tell lost stories -- like those of the Fair Housing Marches held in our city a mere fifty years ago. Up until 1968, there was no forceful organized push-back against nefariously embedded red tape designed to keep brown folks in one corner of the city and white folks in the other. The march, the people who marched and the related untold histories were the centerpiece of this event that was held at Wisconsin's Black Historical Society . Oddly, and sadly enough, I really didn't know much...

Let's just stop at that market on the way home. I'm starving. The gray day was spitting down in fits and starts, undecided whether to drench the whole day or drape the day over with a long, playful tease. My husband was hungry, and frankly I didn't feel up to post-church Sunday lunch duty. "that market" we'd pass on the way home was the kind where samples lured in shoppers down each aisle -- from the produce section, to the deli's gourmet sausages and cheeses to the snack section, replete with gluten-free tortilla chips and freshly made salsa. Sure. Let's do it . I said, knowing samples would be enough to stave off my husband's Hangries while I could shop for something more substantial for a proper lunch. We pulled into the lot as spitting rain continued. I'll drop you guys off and meet you inside, so you don't get wet. What a gentleman. We tumbled out and landed in the produce section. Fresh cantaloupe and papaya were the bait, ...

Dig if you will the picture: On a ordinary Saturday, kids show up at high school detention to pay penance for any number of infractions. They're all there: the Jocks, the Stoners, the Brains, the Perpetual Outsider and even the embittered detention monitor. A poisonous explosion blankets the town or the world, and our kids are now on lock down. The explosion didn't cause deaths, but it left multitudes of Undead ravenously hungry for the living. It's The Walking Dead meets Breakfast Club. Actually, it's  Freakish , a series on which my daughter was binge-watching over Christmas Break. Because I wanted to be the cool mom, I watched it with her. " A group of high schoolers struggles against predatory mutants who have taken over their town after a chemical plant meltdown. " It was a predictable, corny plot: Undead people crazily run in stopmotion and feast on the living -- of course, in between the survivors' teen romance, angst and anxiety. Just ...

Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple. - Barry Switzer Whether that quote evokes thoughts of privileged heirs claiming they worked for every penny they've earned, or if it calls to mind superior attitudes of a people or nation that have forgotten rough-edged forebears who laid their foundation, it smacks of an embarrassing truth. No one is immune to adopting this selective remembrance or air of superiority. Including me. Fifteen years ago, God saw I needed a life partner and in His time, He gave me one -- a guy who happens to be white. Together we made the most beautiful, talented, kind-hearted baby who is now a teen. While color wasn't an issue between us, or in my or my husband's family, the world outside our familial bubble did have issues here and there, but we handled it. We'd talk about our collective history and reconcile the past against the present. We'd talk about how even though our daughter's A...

Remember when she found the tallest inflatable slide at the festival? She crawled to the top with a trail of fifty kids lined up behind her waiting their turn. You panicked while I beamed with pride at our daughter’s fearlessness. She decided the top was too top and refused to slide down, damned the kids behind her. But you were her Prince Charming that day, scaling up along the side and coaxing her down to the ground. She felt safe, was unapologetic and I saw you relish your role as her protector. My heart melted at the scene, and I took her stubbornness as an early sign of an independent attitude, nearly immune from herd mentality. It’s been ten years since that day. She’s now a teen who is fearless about standing out, and you – you still see yourself as Prince Charming. And that’s sweet. But, honey, there are some things from which Prince Charming can’t rescue her. She’s part you and part me. She’s our biracial daughter, and though we know and she knows she's...

“... and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Acts 2:17 Did you get the blood transfusion? I ask. He incredulously responds. WHAT? The blood. Did you get it? My husband condescendingly laughs and says Um…yeah. Frustrated by his condescension, I roll over, resume sleeping and dreaming the blood transfusion dream. It’s 4:30am. I’m not an old man, but...

Sometimes I think about it. Sometimes it's a fleeting thought in the seconds before I drift off to sleep and glance at his arm around my middle and my brown hand resting on his not so brown arm. It always looks like a painting to me. Simple and beautiful. Sometimes it's the rare occasion when all three of us are captured in a candid picture. Our daughter between the two of us, making the picture look as if we're posing in graduating skin colors, from lightest (his), to medium (hers), to darkest (mine). Her face, her skin a blend of both his and mine. Sometimes he thinks about it when I'm oblivious. Like when I give him a little extra room at a checkout counter, but am still within his personal space, and the clerk helping him asks if she can help me. He lets her know that "uh...that's my wife " in a stern, sharp voice before I can answer. He's my protector, a sensitive set of second eyes. But most of the time, I don't t...

Percy . I only called him “Dad” selectively, usually when I needed something. My friends marveled that I had the balls to call my dad by his first name. But it wasn’t an act of rebellion, my mom called him Percy and we just parroted what she said. He never seemed to mind. It’s taken years to piece together who Percy really was – and how that same Percy intersected with Dad -- a title I instinctively started using only after the picture of who he was as a man, as a father, became clearer as I grew older. *** “Shell- LEE !” I hear the smile in his voice as he bellows his pet name for me up the stairs on my birthday morning. I race from my bedroom to the top of the stairs.  He’s standing at the base, a shadow pitched against sunlight behind him and balancing a faded blue Huffy 3-speed that was my ninth birthday present – a surprise. It’s easy to hear his smile and see his broad white grin, a sharp contrast to his dark chocolate skin because Percy didn’t smile a lot. ...