The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

How fast can a nervous heart beat? I am waiting to have my first mammogram and ultrasound. The ladies in the lobby were very nice and gentle. They spoke with patience and everyone had pink breast cancer blankets on their chairs. I felt as if I walked into a cocoon of my favorite color. I am waiting with other ladies, also glamorously clothed in these blue gowns, an array of pants peaking underneath. All of us seem to be lost in thought about what will happen behind the closed doors. How fast can a nervous heart beat?

The things that change you come at a time when you least expect it. This is one such moment in my life. I was blissfully, albeit tiredly, planning the final week of the summer program that I have the honor to direct. I have fallen in love with these 60 kids under my watch. This is part of what I was put on earth to do, it has all come naturally to me and while this is the hardest job I ever had, it is also the most rewarding. Well, I was lying in bed on Sunday night and grazed my right breast as I was trying to find a more comfortable resting position, that is when I felt it. There was a hard little pebble on my right breast. I said to myself, "what is this?" and immediately did a breast self-exam. Then I tried to not think about it, but what could I do the rest of that night. Monday morning when I took my shower, I did a more thorough exam and found the pebble again and the mass. A million different things raced through my mind as I waited for the doctor's office...

There have been many things that have happened over the last month that have given me pause. And a lot of it deals with race. I wrote a while back about my coffee and birds incident at the local coffee shop. What I didn't write about is that rarely do the black people in my suburb venture downtown to the local restaurants or coffee shops. Even with a black President, the message sent to black people is that we still don't belong. Then Michael Jackson passed away on the very day we returned from my Godsister-in-law's funeral. That shock resonated to everyone I knew - it didn't matter if they were Black or White. He was a cultural icon and even with his changing appearance, race mattered. It said to me that even in this country with a predominately white media focus,someone who has given so much to the musical genre as theatre would be reduced to a caricature in death. I began to hate the scrutiny of him and his family and speculation of his children. That is until l...