The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

Life has many ups and downs, journeys through valleys, climbs through mountains, moments to pause and reflect. Life also has moments of tears and searing pain, moments when stabs and jabs stop everything, when the throbbing nerves demand attention. Pausing to reflect on these things, I noticed, like the stone in my gland, sometimes, an offending thing has to be removed in order for full living to continue. This inoquous gland, simply doing its job of producing saliva to keep the mouth moist and to help digest food, is ignored, hardly known it exists, until it raised an alarm that something was wrong. In 2012, the first alarm was when a stone couldn't make it's way out, so it backed up the duct, causing mind-numbing pain, swelling beyond its normal walnut-size, an emergency surgical procedure and a week in the hospital.  It left me with a scar and several months lost dealing with the painful aftereffects of the medicine.   When I thought it would quietly resume its pu...

Two weeks ago, I had major surgery on my neck. It was something about that removing of the offending thing - my submandibular gland - that released a thought in me that I have marinated on for two weeks. Jubilee is a freedom  year, a chance to breathe, to re-evaluate and to reinvent. My big birthday is less than two months away and pondering that milestone, I pondered what it means to come of age, to be fully realized, to live. Zora Neale Hurston is one of my writing sheroes who did not get her proper respect when she died.  She is buried in an indescript, segregated cemetery with a headstone that Alice Walker had placed there many years later on what is assumed to be the spot.  Zora died penniless and practically alone, childless, except for the volumes she left us and an autobiography that some have wondered if it was embellished.  In all of her authenticity and complexity, Zora still stands as a giant among women. She dared to be herself and embrace all ...