I had a ritual once, it was that I had to write in this blog. I had to write in a journal. I had to record. Capture. Then I had a child and I had to write about that experience on another blog. And then life got really interesting, so layered there was no way to sit down and write a paragraph or a line to describe it, so I crawled inside this cluttered mind…
Tin tells his friends not to mess with me, he says, “My mom’s the nine-tailed fox.” The nine-tailed fox is a shape shifting fox, beautiful woman, spirit in Naruto, Tin’s favorite Japanese anime. I tell him I am part my mother and part my father and that dad part is undiluted Latin and Sephardic fire blood. So don’t mistake my good (mom) nature for timid, because the nine-tailed fox will come out and then it…
The universe is apt to send me messages when I need them most, and it’s to these message that I listen. About my son – yesterday while practicing with the Amazons for our inaugural parade, a woman approached me the NOMA cafe and said, “I know you. I have read your writing. And we were at an event together when my son fell through the bleachers and your son was the first one there to help…
https://medium.com/@racheldangermond_49279/i-did-not-know-how-to-be-the-mother-of-a-black-son-bc76471cb3aa View at Medium.com
How fragile we are, between the few good moments. ~Jane Hirshfield On November 30, 2009, my mother became an ancestor. Exactly one week later, on December 7, 2009, I met my son. These major life changes did not happen in a vacuum, they came when there were bills to pay, a friend’s daughter to grieve for, the aftermath of a tragic flood, a marriage ended, a love lost, a brother in prison, ongoing family mental…
Eulogy for Little Harry A Super Nova Kitty Cat Our love bug, big blue-eyed Little Harry, left us tonight. He was four months old when he came to us. We named him Little Harry after my brother’s Siamese cat “Little” and also since he was Tin’s Hanukkah Harry gift. We hoped he was a Hanukkah miracle. And he was. He used up three of his nine lives but didn’t make it through the 4th. He…
I started this blog in 2004 and then I started writing another blog about raising my son. Then I spent three years writing a book called The Elephant in the Playground. Then fellow published writers suggested I write instead a different book, a book that was more my story, so I began writing essays towards a memoir. And in the meantime, I wrote another book, Meditations on Race and Parenting. This year one of my…