The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

 I desperately miss my father. His wisdom, political analysis, spiritual guidance. How I wish I could talk to him now When I was a girl, I heard all the political, social justice talk he and his friends engaged in. Our family room at 311 Gordon Street, once had these tall, giants of ministry, government, education, all Black except for one White man, who came to gather and imagine a different possibility. It was 1974. I was ten years old. Of course, my world then was playing with dolls that didn't look like me, imagining what my late mother would tell me, riding my bike, and simply trying to breathe as a skinny asthmatic. A few years later, when President Carter became President, there were these same men and a few more. There was this energy buzzing about the place. A hope and possibility for a new, modern era.  Daddy had been offered a job in the Carter Administration. He even went to D.C. for a tour and house hunt. He declined it. His imagination for us was different than 1...

 Like many of the people I know, we were disgusted by the GOP power play during an election. It was not months and months, but barely weeks and weeks. The services for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg hadn't even happened yet when the white-men-who-crave-power were salivating at the change to shove yet another conservative justice down the throats of Americans. Judge Amy Coney Barrett is a poor replacement. I was part of a press conference, joined with there women leaders, in the middle of Yom Kippur, to denounce this pick, again, merely weeks before the November election. In fact, people were already casting a ballot and deserved to have their voices heard. This hearing is a sham. This nomination is a sham, and in the couple weeks since she was announced, we notice it was also a super spreader event, resulting in even the president contracting Covid19. It feels like these folks have been beyond gaslighting the American people. So, regardless of how we got here, here we are and...

  When I was in seminary, one of my dear classmates used to always tell me to"fix my face."  Now, she, like me, was one of a handful of Black people at our Midwest seminary. I honestly didn't even know I was doing it. My kids - all teens and young adults now - said that my "face" meant they were in trouble, needed to stop whatever they were doing, reconsider, or really, just back away. I remember once when my youngest son was away in college and I was shopping with my only daughters and last two children. We were in Target, probably back-to-school. Anyway, I guess "the face" was invoked and they took a picture of me to send to my son.   "Oooooh, what did you do????" was his response to his little sisters. "Fix. your face." It is something we either think about or just let happen. Senator Kamala Harris was every Black woman the other night as she was sitting at a desk, protected by plexiglass, while a mediocre White man gaslit, mansp...