The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

Sometimes there comes a moment in life where you just need to listen. Listen without preparing a reply, listen without being defensive, listen without justification. The process is not easy, it is actually hard, because each of us has an ego, an ID that is waiting for its "see me, hear me" moment.  This is especially true when your voice has been snuffed out through all the isms that plague everyday life. The many controls and manipulations that threaten to snuff out your existence can make the walls go up and the living thwarted. Hearing, truly stepping outside oneself and stepping into the heart of the speaker to hear the words, thoughts, and intents they are sharing requires a sacrifice many are not willing to pay.  It is gutwrenching painful to listen to someone share their story, it is even more painful to learn that part of their story involves some damage that what done to them by someone they trusted.  Hearing is therapeutic and triumphant. Life stories ar...

This morning, the sun was streaming through the balcony, bringing with it the promise of opportunity and the rush of misunderstood spring pollen.  It burst forth with the promise of a new graduate and the hopes of a new mother. Then the morning turned to the afternoon of working and reading and while the sun was shining, it felt less promising as one after another tidbit crossed the threshold of this writer's desk. As a black woman, well into middle age, and a child of the promise after Brown, after Civil Rights, after so many afters, all I could feel today was a bit numb, like being stuck in neutral. Overwhelming the sense was first being informed that a well educated Muslim young woman, married, was being ousted from her position as a college counselor because someone was uncomfortable with her pregnancy.  College educated, non-hijab-wearing Muslim married woman, a year out of her baccalaureate studies from the state's top public institution. Then there was the remin...

Today would have been my late mother's 90th birthday. She has been a figure in my life for all of my 50 years, despite being absent from my life for the 46 years that her breath left body. When I think about her, sometimes I think about her as an image, a shadow, her passing away happened before memory was solid in my mind.  I can not "see" her except through the pictures hanging on my walls and when I look in the mirror. Everyone, my entire life, has told me how much I look like her, have hands like her, write like her, do so much like her.  She was a creative soul who danced, sang, wrote, wanted so much out of life that convention would not allow her to achieve. My mother loved deeply, unconditionally, and wanted so much to breathe life into everything around her. 1924 was a different place, so was 1946 when she married young because that is what "good Catholic girls do," even if her aspirations were to be a designer in New York. When I think about...

I was looking through my posts the other day and noticed a few things. Huffington Post has an entry about childless mothers essentially justifying their decision not to have their body stretched to within an inch of it's limit, not to have a grapefruit sized head come through a normally pin sized hole, not to have their breasts engorged and filled with sustenance that some feel is too sexual and want the feeding to happen in a nasty bathroom. They are justifying their choice to continue with their hopes and dreams and not giving into the women-who-are-sexual-without-producing-children-are-sluts mantra that is all over my news feed. There are the purity balls which scream of pedophilia of the conservative WASP christian type. Then my home state of Missouri just passed a 72-hour-wait for an abortion after a woman visits a doctor to confirm that sperm and egg met in a sexual encounter approximately 2-6 weeks prior. If that isn't enough to make me, a woman, feel robbed, the...