I walked passed a field of clovers today and saw a four leaf clover, no wait, I saw five four leaf clovers, and so I picked them. Stared at them in the sunlight to make sure what I was seeing was correct – compared them to the three leaf clovers that were the clear majority in the field. I saw a friend getting his child out of the car for school and gave him one,…
I went to see Ellen today and told her that my faith has been rocked. She asked me, from a philosophical standpoint, what is faith? My faith is not my religion, my faith has been my confidence in myself, that I had walked through the valley of various hells and could withstand anything that life threw at me no matter what presented itself. That’s what was shaken. That faith. If my life was put on…
A colleague of mine sent me this a few months ago: The time for healing of the wounds has come. The time to build is upon us… We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination… There is no easy road to freedom… None of us acting alone can achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for reconciliation, for nation…
Life Doesn’t Frighten Me At All ~ Maya Angelou Shadows on the wall Noises down the hall Life doesn’t frighten me at all Bad dogs barking loud Big ghosts in a cloud Life doesn’t frighten me at all Mean old Mother Goose Lions on the loose They don’t frighten me at all Dragons breathing flame On my counterpane That doesn’t frighten me at all. I go boo Make them shoo I make fun Way they…
I do miss living on the bayou and waking every morning to the lovely light that only water seems to do justice to no matter if it is dawn or the gloaming or even pitch black out. My world the past week is loaded with advice by well meaning friends, do this, do that, but a friend kept insisting that we needed to be in water. So when Tin got out of school yesterday I…
Tin had a playdate with some friends at the pool and so I had a couple of hours to shake off my heaviness. A friend took me to the French Quarter to amble around. We stopped in Exodus Goods, a shop owned by Solange, which is tucked inconspicuously on Conti street a few feet from Decatur. There on the counter sat these spiral earrings calling my name. The artist calls them “entering the cosmos” and…
Today is one week that my life turned upside down after my son was assaulted by someone we knew. Every night the dreams come, every morning the reality returns. Last night, I dreamed that my voice was a spirit outside of me and it was a bright yellow light that filled all space around it and it was yelling STOP throughout the house while my body remained paralyzed in bed. Mama Sula came to the…
I keep waking up from the same dream nightmare – I walk into my son’s room, he’s in distress and I save him. This dream has woken me several times during the past few nights and I lay in bed and try to not let my mind destroy me. I think about my friend who held her child as she transitioned away at two years old – how could my friend ever sleep again? I…
I do not know if any of you could imagine being six years old again, but it’s been an interesting trip to watch Tin move into being a young boy while he retains a strong grip on level two. From questions such as “Do dead people live again?” “Why did my mother have to give me up?” “Why is my skin black?” in all their profundity, comes also complete and utterly juvenile questions such as…
In and around New Orleans there has been a frenzy that begins with the first of the year countdown to the overlapping, overwhelming festivals and events in this city. If you have a young child, then the season coincides with end of school activities as well as the end of extracurricular this and that. You get to this day – Memorial Day – and you are just shagged out. Recently, summer stomped in leaving wet…