The Late Arrival

We didn't watch a lot of Good Times in the 1970's because my mom didn't approve of the way it portrayed black families as poor, uneducated and living in substandard housing. But for whatever reason, we did watch the episode when James Evans, the family patriarch, died. His wife Florida, true to the strong black woman trope, unflinchingly carried on with life. No tears, only work and shouldering the burden of children in mourning over the loss of their father. Until...until she broke. She broke not in tears, but in anger. I was too young to understand the many layers of Florida's anger bursting through the screen that night, but I could feel it; and I can still feel it even now, some forty-odd years later. Today, I felt Florida's anger when I heard that Prince died. It came to me as an overheard byline while I was about to scoop up the salad I brought for lunch. Internally, I broke down like Florida: "Damn, Damn, Damn!!" Bu...

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40 The breeze whispers through open windows on a clear summer day. It carries with it the aroma of freshly cut grass and the lawn mower’s steady drone as my husband paces back and forth, following our backyard’s perimeter. The drone abruptly stops. In minutes he appears at the back door. Get out here NOW , he shout-whispers. I race outside following where he leads, praying we’re not looking for detached toe in the grass. There were no toes, just bunnies. We coo and fight back every urge to pick up the baby bunnies because we know their mumma will return for them. And she did. Thirty minutes later, they were gone. ********************* The skies are purplish gray. Scattered spots of orange promise sunshine’s return after the afternoon’s violent windstorm. Sidewalks are littered with snapped branches too weak to cling to the...

...and I was so short, they’d always give me a crate to stand on so everyone in church could see me do my Easter speech. I don’t remember when I learned that story about my mom. It’s like I’ve always known it. I was the youngest kid in our family, and by the time I came along, she wasn’t doing speeches in church anymore. The last time I remembered her speaking was at the annual Women’s Day Celebration. Standing on things, circa 1930 I knew she was preparing a speech for that day and I’d hear her reciting it from time to time, but teenagers don’t think long and hard about anything outside of themselves and their favorite rock group. I honestly didn’t think much of it. After all, she’d direct the choir or sing solos on occasion, so it wasn’t a completely foreign concept to see her up in front of everyone. For Women’s Day Sunday, all women in the congregation would be decked out in white, some wearing what I call Baptist Hats . The big extravagant kind, some tast...

Every Sunday, our Pastor leads us in a variety of prayer petitions for a variety of different things: healing for the sick, comfort to the grieving, the Church’s faithfulness…and leaders of this country and those around the world. We usually respond “Hear our prayer.” The current political campaigns or the Silly Season – whatever you want to call it – has me scared. Really. Not scared of a splintering political party at war with itself; but scared – truly scared of the mentality the campaigning has called forth. In particular, campaigning has called out an ugly, racist, xenophobic, sexist mentality which up until this point in time had been operating on a low-grade level. And I’ve experienced that low-grade ugliness. I’ve been called a nigger; been stopped for Driving While Black; been told as a child ballerina that black bodies weren’t made for classical dance. When I married my husband – a white guy – we experienced ugliness and hostility as a couple. After we had our ...

It’s Black History Month and my daughter, like a lot of kids, will learn about the basics – the very basics: Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Dred Scot – and of course, MLK. I’m grateful for this annual spotlight, but I can’t help but think how that approach narrows Black History to people who lived within slavery an d civil rights demonstrations. Systems are also part of American history, and these systems were the impetus for individuals we laud during Black History Month to play the role we laud them for in the first place. Now I’ve heard that the American Work Ethic is passed down from generation to generation, and I wholeheartedly agree. At the same time, I can’t help but think that maybe systems implemented throughout history have also been passed down generationally in some form as well. And that’s when I start thinking…dreaming: what if Black History Month was used as an opportunity to discuss the systems that made black historical figures instead of discuss...

After leaving my job back in June, my bank account has now gone Ryan Gosling on me. Like any red-blooded American woman, I can't resist Ryan Gosling, so I dove in. Understand, the last time I applied for a job was fifteen years ago. FIFTEEN. It was simple back then. I'd show up with a resume and a starchy blue suit, scribble in forms with a fancy pen, sign the application and leave. There'd either be an interview call a couple days later or a thanks-but-no-thanks letter in the mail. It was simple. But online applications are icy cold as a Wisconsin winter and as frustrating as driving through a snowstorm in rush hour. First, I searched. Then I refined the search by city, then I further refined by miles away from the city that I just refined. Then, I searched by industry and then refined the industry by sub-industry. How refined of me. After an hour, I finally found the position and description. Press Here to Apply! Yay! I thought, Techn...

Despite having every intention of holing up during today's first snowfall, we attended the commissioning ceremony of the USS Milwaukee today like many other "hearty" Wisconsinites. County sheriffs, city police officers and military personnel - active and veteran were well represented. One sailor in particular caught my eye. He couldn't have been that much older than my own teen daughter, I thought, and he definitely couldn't have been a Wisconsin native because Wisconsinites feel the cold, but we don't necessarily look like we feel it. This poor kid, he looked like he was feeling every bit of the minus zero wind chill and snow. In my mind, he was a baby. His ears stuck out from his sailor's hat. They were bright red from the cold and his teeth visibly chattered. My motherly instinct was to grab his shoulders and give them the warm-up-down-rub or at least shield his ears. Before I could do any well-meaning gesture that would get all of us removed fr...

There were no recipes. No measuring spoons. Just a mish-mash of ingredients that went in the stuff. We used our senses: did the veggie pile look like another celery stalk should be added; did the dressing feel too mushy when you stirred it; could the sweet potato pie use a little more vanilla when you tasted it? The heat, the stirring, the tastes of my childhood Thanksgiving followed me into adulthood. And then I got married. Of all the things people tell you about marriage, the thing they don't tell you is about Thanksgiving -- or more specifically -- Pumpkin Pie v Sweet Potato Pie. My husband and I can handle the black/white thing. We can handle the financial thing. We can even handle the division of labor thing. But Pumpkin Pie v Sweet Potato Pie? That's another matter entirely. Our first Thanksgiving, we found ourselves in the midst of an escalating war of the pies. Him: Um...why don't you have pumpkin pie written down on the Thanksgiving menu? We always ...

One the way to school this morning, my daughter asked What's with you wanting stay in pajamas all the time? She had a point. At that very moment, in the car, in public I was in my pajama uniform: standard t-shirt layered with a standard blue sweatshirt, my husband's standard blue sweatpants and baseball cap. Comfort, I told her confidently. I like being comfortable. Besides, who's gonna see me? I'm only dropping you off and heading back home . Thing is, I had heard about insanely low gas prices at a station I always pass on the way home. The car was nearing a quarter of a tank, so I stopped to fill up when I heard... GOOD MORNING! I flipped around to see a TELEVISION REPORTER and CAMERA MAN. They wanted to talk with me ON THE AIR about the cheap gas I was innocently buying while I was in my PAJAMA UNIFORM looking like this: And mind you, it wasn't just a television reporter and camera man but a reporter with whom I had been on television back in t...

Today's NaBloPoMo post also appears in Metroparent Milwaukee . I don’t remember mom enlisting me to help her with Thanksgiving dinner prep, it somehow happened naturally. It was an annual exercise that ultimately helped me absorb family recipes and replicate them now that I have a family of my own. We must have exchanged a thousand stories in between the stirring, chopping and tasting. Now, in the week before Thanksgiving, the stories of social and political unrest and extreme violence frighten us. But startling as they are - they are, unfortunately nothing new. History is a continuum of life-changing, civilization-changing events – many of them frightening. How I feel about it all is heavily shaped by motherhood; and sometimes, I wish I knew how my mom felt of about the social issues going on when my siblings and I were kids through her lens of motherhood. But throughout our years of Thanksgiving cooking and stories, those particular stories were never told because I ne...

Get out and I’ll park. Just find a spot. It’s gray, cold, and clammy. Misting enough to make kinky hair get kinkier, but not enough to merit an umbrella. I’m happy for the favor, especially because we’re running late. My daughter and I tumble out of the car and hightail it to the megachurch’s entrance while my husband parks the car. Exterior door ushers extend a warm welcome, and I hug the usher whose smile is familiar. I still don’t know his name, but I’ll always know his smile. As my daughter and I look out the interior entrance searching for my husband’s tippy-toe trot between the misting drops, ‘Visitor Coffee Aroma’ reminds me that we were running so late I’ve missed my morning caffeine intervention. My husband finally enters and we make our way toward the sanctuary entrance, past ‘Visitor Coffee Aroma,’ through smiling volunteer lobby greeters, past the grand visitor information desk, past the early service’s attendees still milling around the central fireplace, ...

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...