Beginnings and Being

 

Today is the Activities Fair at my husband's college, Housatonic Community College.

It is my daughter's second day of senior year and when we register her for her UConn dual-enrollment.

My daughter at Thee Jackson State University is still sheltering-in-place for the aftereffects of Hurricane Ida that traveled north and is headed to the Atlantic states. 

All of us are in this season of shift, of change, of beginning.

When I was younger, many moons ago, my late father convinced me to go to technical school (think trade school with academic rigor but not the English classes of a community college). I told him, "Dad, I don't want to be anyone's secretary." I said it with all the arrogance and indignity that my teenage self could muster. I had avoided all the Gregg Shorthand classes and secretarial classes at my high school with the entire trade school in the building. I wanted more. I was a product of the dreams of second wave feminism, before womanism was uttered, and the hopes of IBM dancing in my head, even though that is not what I wanted either.

I went though, my father paid for it. 

And I excelled. I graduated with a 4.0GPA. I decided not to take Gregg, It looked too complicated, I went with the speed writing new shorthand that ended up serving me in college. I learned to type on the IBM Selectric, took advertising, marketing, accounting, and business to round out my studies so I could graduate with a diploma and be mailed a certificate.

Daddy was right, though.

"Daughter, it will serve you well in life to have a skill, a trade, something you can do with your hands."

I graduated with a job offer at one of the major state offices, so at the ripe young/old age of twenty, I had a diploma, an apartment, and a full-time job working for the state. I also started at the local HBCU, not where I wanted to go, but where I could be a part of their new offerings of full-time college at night. 

It was the early 80s and George Orwell's prediction hadn't come true so in that election year, we thought we had all the possibilities in front of us. We were college protesting Apartheid and chanting Run, Jesse, Run. We felt so modern and possible and imaginative, and well, adult-ish.

Looking back, I realize how very young I was to have so much on my shoulders. 

I grew up when it was not unusual for guys to graduate with a full-time job and girls to graduate into marriage and mommy hood before the next homecoming parade. I knew I wanted more for myself than that, but before the Internet, before Google could give me the answers, I didn't know where in the world I would want to go or could go, so safe it was.

We often talk to high school students about their "safety" school as if that is a bad thing. What they can be assured of getting into and having a good start, their just-in-case the dreams did not pan out to Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Brown or to Spelman, Morehouse, Howard, or Hampton.

Fast forward through years of living and watching my children emerge as adults, watching the generations after generations of students my husband had guided through five universities to his now sixth institution of higher learning, I'm considering the practicality of what one can do with their hands.

The hands, head, and heart can all come together for meaning and purpose.

This emerging generation is teaching us a bit of that with them seizing the opportunities presented to them, the totally first Digital Generation. They are influencers, making extra change through their "what if we do this" personalities. In the vernacular, "I ain't mad at 'em."

They have watched their grandparents silo and decided they could honor their multiple ways of being, of creating, of becoming something.

So, on this week of students going back to school, colleges navigating to their first day of classes in person with masks, some kind of hybrid, or totally virtual, they are all showing up their parents with their sense of living - anyway.

My daughter will be twenty on Sunday. She and her classmates at her college have all found ways to make it happen. They are stylists picking up side gigs that bring real world learning to their classrooms; they are writers with freelance gigs while they study journalism in the twenty-first century; they are musicians playing virtual weddings; they are innovating.

That is what we want them to do, right?

To question, to learn, to emerge, to be.

My youngest started crocheting hats and sells them on her IG store. My oldest just opened his new store that does custom cleaning of those high end athletic shoes of the last thirty years. He collaborated with his business partner and the other side is a studio where emerging voices can rent space. Innovating.

It brought me back to what my father told me almost forty years ago. He was right. Having something I can do with my hands, to create, would serve me well. What was supposed to be my just-in-case became my doorway. I was able to move to a big city and work for two major financial institutions in the C-suite. It helped me freelance while I was finishing my degree, expanding it to include some marketing, consumer behavior, and creative projects. 

What Daddy told me is what I also share now.

You can be and do all sorts of things and don't have to be just one. Gone are the days of a job from high school that gets the house, car, and family. This generation has taught us that there is freedom in choosing and in being able to use many parts of oneself to fulfill one's purpose. They have also shared with us the woes of being a solopreneur, an independent scholar, or simply trying to get through college in a pandemic and a hurricane. 

I am in a transition. 

Maybe we all are, entering the third school year in a pandemic, completing a full year in the northeast, still working virtually and realizing that that can take me to the world, we are all transitioning to what we can be and do in this new season. Our country finally ended a twenty-year-war, albeit with some having lots of questions and concerns, I'm glad it is over, we have some saving on these shores to do. We are reconsidering that one or two or even three hour commute when we sit in front of a computer all day anyway, What about the world could be possible that the pandemic forced us to consider?

For my children and the college students my husband works with, the possible included a community college with people of the global majority celebrating so many cultures it is like the United Nations on campus. They are highlighting the gems right in front of them that can launch them into a viable career if they don't want to be like their classmates and think that Harvard or Hampton are their only choice after high school.

New school years always intrigue me, give me that sense of awe and wonder. It is a signal of seasons changing and the winds literally shifting. None of us really know what our tomorrow will bring, the events of the last week are enough to remind us of how fragile this life is, but what we do know is that we can keep evolving, we can be present with those we love and care about, we can learn new things, and we can be ...anything.

At my 

Choose Forward

 This morning, I got up early and instead of my usual muse, I began the preparations.

It is the first day of my last child's last year of high school.

Back-to-school pancakes are a tradition, so I gathered ingredients while she and my husband grabbed a few extra snoozes.  This one, my second daughter, last child, is very precise about when she wanted to leave - 7:00am.

I whisked together the butter and sugar and vanilla, added the milk and eggs, then the flour mixture, each turn of. my wrist, thinking of it being the last. Blueberries and strawberries were washed and put in a glass bowl, her favorite turkey bacon in the griller, water boiling for coffee, eggs seasoned and whipped for scrambling, Monday light streaming in the window, life beginning.

Life, every day, beginning.

As I poured batter on the hot griddle, those perfect little rounds keeping company with each other, I could hear her upstairs, stirring and gathering. What was she thinking? I flipped pancakes, set the table, poured orange juice, watching the clock so they would have time to eat. We never really get inside the beings of these beings we raised to their emerging.

When the final pancake was in the warmer and the table was set, I called them in. We celebrated the moment, blessed the day, and from first bite to the last, tasted love.

In savoring what is, I looked forward to what could become.

I know the world is raging around us, crisis looming, just seeing news of another variant forming, hearing of the hurricane aftermath, worrying about my older daughter in the after-storm-path, thinking about what is waiting for me on the other side of Wednesday, a lot can swirl around in the air that can free us or freeze us.

Watching my youngest daughter embrace this year, not where she wanted to be, having a moment during summer break when she lamented what the virus stole, what being several states away from her friends took away, and what she expected her senior year to be to accepting what beauty awaits her, I realized how it is a choice.

Every day is a gift and choosing how we enter it is a promise we make to ourselves.

Forward, motion forward, embracing what could be like the notes waiting to be written in those brand new notebooks with the as-yet-unsharpened pencils, what we write can transform us, if we let it.

My oldest son and youngest daughter are the bookends of my last almost thirty five years. Years of making every decision for what is best for five individuals I've been privileged to nurture to their becoming. I chose their possible. 

A few years from now, we will look back to these days, the pandemic days of virtual school and masks, vaccines and distancing, and consider our decisions. For me, I chose life and ways to make it joyous. I choose pause and I choose what can be.

The pancakes were finished and the pictures were taken to commemorate, then out-the-door they went. My husband has his first in-person class day for his campus and my daughter has her first in-person day at her new school. They wrapped up their hopes in the checked list of all the preparations - vaccines, masks, Covid card - and decided on being present.

I watched them drive down the street, thinking about all the others in this world who are waking up to a day of - day of whatever comes, day of anyway, anyhow, anywhere, still choosing this life, moving - forward. Because we dream.

Time

 I've been thinking a lot about time.

It is that thing that is not renewal, even if Auntie Maxine says it, we can not always reclaim lost time.

My late father told me once, "Daughter, I have more years behind me than in front of me." He was only in his mid-sixties. I smiled at him, the way adult children sometimes do. Little did I know that Daddy would be gone from this earth at only sixty-nine years, six-months. Far too young.

Time, not the way our capitalistic society, Androcentric, production driven culture of America, is not something that can be controlled, maximized, or even sold.

But it can be taken.

Wasted.

Gone.

It is a funny thought, to look back through the lens of years and years to contemplate what you have and haven't accomplished with your presence on this earth.

Perhaps it is Covid and the Delta variant, maybe thinking about so many gone, or it is just that my youngest child, second daughter, is starting her senior year of high school. How did she suddenly become a young woman who drives and has flown several states away by herself. When did all that happen?

Parents understand how fleeting it is.

Maybe not when expecting that little bundle of joy or even through the hard toddler years until they reach an age when they can somewhat express themselves, but we know.

Eighteen and out is what I said to my two older sons when I was a divorced mother in Chicago just trying to make it. Little did I think then how fast that would go by, long before the Internet and social media sped it up, young people were considered adult after graduating high school and a parent's primary job is completed.

How wrong I was.

Maybe that is also contemplation, when we realize we are never finished with that job, even when my Daddy was in his final hours, he was parenting, assuring that I was going to be ok in this world without parents.

So we know a little bit about those passages, those moments when we want to hold it still and try to etch in our brains the touch of a chubby soft hand, the smell of one untainted by the world, the toothless grin from a voiceless baby whose whole world is you, those moments.

Time.

We can't buy it, not really, even if employers think they can put a worth to it, management and manufacturing calculating how much of something can be done in fifteen-minute-increments.

It is like water, like air, it is always there and yet, it is always fleeting.

I am looking back forty years and pondering what I have done. Not the wandering-in-the-wilderness and hoping our story is redeemed, I'm looking back through generations and thinking about legacy. My oldest grandson is six and started kindergarten. I'm a grandmother, can you believe it? I still hear myself as if I were sixteen or seventeen trying to claim a place in the world, discovering who I wanted to be.

The other thing I was pondering about time is how if feels agonizingly slow when the activity taking it up is not feeding one's soul purpose or how fast it zooms by when the smart phone is turned off, the notifications turned off, and the experience engulfing everything. It is suddenly night time and the day is over.

Driving lets me think about time.

Especially when I am not in a hurry to get to point B from point A to punch some clock that measures the worth of my day. When I am just up and down the coast, looking out over the sound, and letting myself be present with what is, time seems like all there is.

It was the other day when I decided to drive down to Greenwich from Woodbridge, to test out if that would be a worthwhile commute. Technically it takes 53 minutes to drive. Going down took an hour-and-a-half, coming back during rush hour took two hours. Is something wonderful worth three-to-four hours every day? 

I wondered about all of this at different moments in the past almost two years.

We are coming up on the twentieth anniversary of 9-11, next week, my fifth born, first daughter will turn twenty. How did two decades whiz by? What have we done since then? What of the next twenty years? Will I be here, will they be here?

Covid, like I said, has also had me thinking about it.

So many gone long before they were finished with their natural purpose. Some leaving in rapid numbers now because they think there wasn't enough time to test this vaccine so they refused it. It is like a huge vacuum and then a wondering.

How long until natural immunity sets in?

How long will there be debates about putting something over your nose and mouth?

How long until we feel like we can really breathe again without war and conflict and hurricanes and fire and all the other things happening in our time that seems accelerated because of human actions?

Maybe it makes no sense, this wondering, after all, I can't add to it or take away from it, it just is.

Like that old soap opera, The Days of Our Lives, like sand in an hourglass, it can't simply be turned over at the top of another hour.

I want to stop it for some things, like my last child entering senior year. I want her to be that bubbly one who never crawled on all fours and my days were filled with caring for a couple toddlers. 

Yet, it truly waits for no one, the decision then, is how we choose to be present with it.

The other thought about it is when someone takes it.

Like nonsensical meetings at work via Zoom and you have to be there. Or taking advantage of it and not paying for it, or waiting, like for an artist to show up three hours after the concert was supposed to start.

That can make one think long and hard about what else could have been happening in your life.

I am looking forward forty years and praying to not have any of it wasted.

There are still places I want to go, words I want to etch on paper or type on a screen. I'm not finished yet. My TBR pile is filled with amazing authors, so much to experience.

And that is the thing about time, it is not finished yet.

As much as the doomsayers try to scare folks, time marches on. Generations after generations exist in their world and look back to ponder what we did all day. 

We will never know what tomorrow will bring. 

We can only hope to be in it.

And celebrate every moment, for it is history within seconds.

It is That Hard...And That's Ok

 Some days it really is hard.

The past eighteen months have been like this.

Almost as if breathing has been impossible, through a stack of bricks on the chest, wondering about the next move and if it will cost life, livelihood, living.

Covid has been much.

Adjusting to what it means in the middle of it and on the other side of it has been like swirling through a hurricane without preparation, a tornado, and being without any protection.

Some days are really hard.

Just naming that.

Going back to normal, whatever that is, wondering if the comradarie felt during parts of the pandemic has warned when folks feel their power and control no longer needs to be under wraps on this side of emerging from what never should have been.

How do we breathe?

I have been counting breaths, trying to inhale deeply, feeling this big ball of holding it all in, my stomach filled with what has not been uttered.

I'm not alone in this.

Do we name our concern?

If we do, does it even matter? Does it empower or not?

It has been something I've wondered since I went to a training at the end of June that prompted us to take a needed action, professionally, in early July, that feels like it has been like a Category 5 hurricane with so much debris flying around.

Was the foundation not strong enough to really look for structural damage that needed to have the cracks repaired? Could it not hold up under the pressure of constant motion and the fear of missing it if it wasn't always in go-go-go?

When one is working in social justice, in the non-profit sector impacting people's lives, nothing is cut-and-dry like creating a new product to put on a shelf. Everything is personal. Everything is personal. Everything is personal.

And that poses some concerns.

Once-upon-a-time, long before social media, one was able to keep work and church and home and school separate. There was a chance to evaluate and decompress from one to the other, to give some space to think about the encounters.

The world began to shrink.

In the presence of no space, it can become suffocating, engulfing, consuming, that there is no place of just being able to think, exist, be to oneself.

I found myself in that.

Observing what needed to change, following through on the training assignment, and then being on the outside of a strong foundation with life-threatening debris flying around. It felt like bricks-upon-bricks stacked on my chest.

Why did I even bother? Or even care? Does the professional have to be personal? Do we not have spaces that belong to just us and not have to have every single moment of our lives connected? Do we have to accept "friend" or "follow" requests from people we work with? Are we taking risks by saying no? Do we have parts of our lives that belong to just us?

These are questions I've pondered and through lots of reading through the pandemic, know I am not the only one considering how much of our lives have been on display for the keyboard courageous or the voyeristic.

I wanted to breathe.

To ponder.

Part of it is that I am different. Well, we are all different.

I am really different. My personality is in that rare air of the not-many-like-us, no one really understands how we tick. On the Myers-Briggs, I'm an INFJ. In the 16 Personalities, they describe it as the Advocate, I go hard to better circumstances for others, sometimes to my own detriment. I'm a True Blue in the Colors Test or a Golden Retriever in the L I O N test. all of it sums up the same thing, I'm different.

As an empath, I an aware of when people are in situations of pain and wonder how to help through that. When that pain is from lack of vision or structure, I think of ways to mitigate it. Not everyone likes INFJ-Advocate-Empath types.

Maybe because we want to make a difference

We are not chasing power, control, and influence.

We see the big picture, often with the end in mind, and think of ways to achieve what we see as possible and give space for the people around us to work their magic, to be brilliant. We stand back and smile at them being all wonderful, smile, and move on, satisfied that our work here has meant something.

But when it is twisted around, when it is like a vice grip threatening, intimidating, and tangling one in a spiders' web, empaths feel it in deep ways, personally feel it even if it is not personally directed. We want better for others and feel a deep sense of ethics, right and wrong, and not playing games with peoples' lives.

This year has felt like a lot of jockeying for position, of using people like pawns, or taking them for granted, that they will always just be in the space to give more of themselves.

Teachers have been in this position.

Nurses.

Advocates for others to live and breathe free, activists, even ministers.

It is that hard, sometimes.

To deeply care about someone, something.

It means we care.

And that is ok.

We don't have to be on all the time.

We can step back and observe the world. Be in it. Notice. Without the noise of the world consuming us, so we can breathe.

It has been a hard year, a hard eighteen months. None of us have all the right answers, we aren't even sure of the person next to us in the grocery story line.

So it is ok to wonder, to contemplate, shift, change course.

Sometimes, it is that hard, and that is ok. There will be a new day.

Preparaing...Anyway

 "This Hurricane was not giving," lamenting my teen daughter as she was snuggling in her bed this Sunday morning

"Are you sure?" I asked

"yep."

"Well, better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, " I replied

So began our discussion after I emerged from Zoom/phone church where I worship at First and Summerfield United Methodist Church.  

I forecast.

I anticipate.

I warn.

I prepare.

I wait.

It is superpower, it is maybe annoying.

Every big pot is filled with water. I live in the woods and we have a well and if we lose electricity, we won't be able to have drinking water or flush the toilets or even bathe. I take two showers a day, that is such a first world privilege, but it is my thing, not being able to clean myself is one of the things I prepared for.

We have enough snacks for if all five kids were at home for the holidays and merging in and out of the kitchen. We have bottled water, sparking water, and I have lots of carafes on my dining table.

Ready.

We have non-perishable-foods and with a gas stove, could still cook. I Put four pots on the stove just for cooking, I have a bucket of water for doing dishes. My husband bought paper plates.

I did laundry.

I ironed all my clothes for the upcoming week, it is supposed to be one of my last vacations from the organization I still am affiliated with in Missouri. It is my daughter's last week before school. I wanted to get to Rhode Island and up to Vermont. 

My clothes are all ironed, it reminded me of when I was a young professional living in Chicago and had to be up at 5 o'clock in the morning to make my 6 o'clock bus to another bus to take my sons to their daycare and do the same thing in reverse to make it to the Loop by my 8:30am time at work. It became a habit for me on Sunday.

So, my clothes are all ironed, everything possible has been cleaned and washed so if we lose power, at least the bathrooms are cleaned.

Anticipate.

I tried to think ahead of what my family would need. We have the cars gased up. We have batteries. Ready.

Then, my daughter told us, "this hurricane was.not.giving."

I am smiling a bit.

It is raining this afternoon. The trees are swaying. It is windy and in parts of my state, 25,000 people are without power and trees have come down. There is flooding. In my neighborhood, so far no one has lost power. It is still on my street. In Rhode Island, there are 75,000 without power. 

So, Henri gave something.

Being in America, we are able to prepare, unlike my ancestral homeland in Haiti that has been hit with the earthquake and the aftereffects. There are care organizations going to help, some centering the voices of Haitians.

There are people fleeing or attempting to flee Afghanistan, understandably fearful of ignorant religious extremest terrorists who have taken over the country. Flashes of what could have happened here had January 6 delivered to them what they wanted.

I anticipate.

Much like the political climate we experienced after 2007.

But that is not what anyone wanted to hear. They couldn't feel the change in the breeze the same way I do.

Perhaps it is being rare, an INFJ - one deeply intuitive and watching the signs. One of my favorite Biblical prophets - Jeremiah - was probably the same. We have a group on IG, comparing our experiences and feeling like we are not so alone after all, even if we are only 3% of the entire world.

So, I prepare.

For what will come or what may come.

And in the end, it benefits those around me who I love, even if they look at me like I've lost a bit of my mind as I fill up buckets with water and calculate how many almonds can keep one full for a day.

It did give.

Reminding.

Renewing.

Reviewing.

What is important, what we focus on in a time of crisis, what matters most for us,

Even as we prepare for what we anticipate.

If it happens, we were ready.

Better yet if it doesn't, and we perfect our readiness for what will come for surely, it will come again.

Because that is also life.

Storming

 There is a phase to preparing for a hurricane.

The meteorologist watches the clouds, the way the wind twists and turns over the ocean, the trajectory of it on it's way to land, prepares.  Then, he or she gets on the news and begins to send out the warning.

I hadn't had the news on for the past few weeks, honestly, with so much going on in other parts of my life, I was always exhausted at the end of the day. The news I gathered was online and even then, was limited, so I had no clue.

Until I tuned in one day this week.

Hurricane Henri.

Sounded so exotic. Even the way the pronounced the name with the proper French accent.

Then I began to get alerts, especially on Thursday and Friday.

Prepare.

The National Weather Service was already reporting on the tropical storm that went through Connecticut and left some parts north of me with flooded streets. Floods, being from Missouri, I knew how to ride out. A hurricane, not so much.

By Thursday afternoon, I was taking an inventory of what we had because the Category of it kept changing. I told my husband. We had plans with colleagues on Friday, meeting new people here. Would it still happen?

The news started reporting on the timeline.

Then my phone started with the emergency shrill loud warning with a text of what we needed to do - gas, money, medicine, food, water, go-bag if we were ordered to evacuate.

My heart started to beat.

I've never been in a hurricane before.

We live in the woods, not directly on the sound, so we wondered what would actually happen to us.

So we prepared.

I went to the store on Friday to pick up non-perishable food items, things we could cook because the gas would not go out if the electricity did. I calculated how much water we had. We have a well that is powered by electricity.

Fill up every empty carafe with water and put it on the dining table, buy bath-in-a-bag or baby wipes in case the power goes out and we can't shower. Line up jugs of water to flush the toilet, triple check the amount of peroxide and alcohol to sanitize it. Are there enough blankets. Pack a bag.

Go to cheer practice or not? Senior photos at 12:30, do we still do that? Calculating Saturday morning and how many hours really is 36 until the eye is set to hit.

Another alert, start breathing, it will e fin, ok, ok.

Storms can unrattle us.

They come, all the time, in life and we know they come.

They are also unpredictable, like when they come and how intense they will be and if we are prepared enough.

Life those that come in life.

We may have the warning signs, the alerts that it is coming.

We prepare as best we can.

But, we never really know until it hits, how we heavy the impact, if there will be resulting damage, how long until clean up.

I've never been in a hurricane before, but have experienced storms in life, that feeling of watching the clouds cover over the moon, the sudden gust of wind, the sway of an atmospheric shift, these are part of it like in life or encounters.

It is sometimes like that forming, storming, and norming that happens when a new team is trying to sync into a rhythm to work. 

The clouds are out over the ocean, the sun is actually shining, it ws humid, then, close to the ocean, the slight sound could be heard.

Storms. 

Some, just gather and hang out, think there is nothing they can do about it so they might as well ride it out with other folks who don't really care. Well, maybe they care but it is not top-of-mind, they have seen it before, been through it before, and just ride it out.

Others, are organized and prepare. Want to have it and not need it, rather than need it and not have it.

It comes.

Even knowing the storm is almost here, induces some anxiety, have we prepared enough? do we have enough? are we ready enough?

In the moments before it, when the waters are still, when the world seems like all is ok, when the sun shines...

All we can do, ultimately is get ourselves ready and then...

wait

for 

the

first

hit

that

will

be

the

deadliest 

impact.

That also happens in life.

It is unexpected expected and devastating.

The scariest moments are in the eye of it, the fury, like the fury of someone who is resisting change or responsibility or authority or accountability at work, in life, in society.

Fear.

Fight.

Flight.

All the emotions, clinging to what we do know is true, who we know is true, what we know is true, disoriented, making sense of what feels like it makes no sense.

The hurricane.

Then, the aftermath.

The devastation, the destruction, the debris.

Happens in life, also.

What is there to salvage? Where do we begin clean-up? What is worth keeping ?

Like life.

We pause to evaluate what is most important, our emotional and physical go-bag. Gathering those items that are most crucial for rebuilding.

Rebuilding can and will happen.

Perhaps better, with a stronger foundation with beams able to hold up the house of life.

Maybe it adds on other parts, a safe space for more storms that will inevitably come, but experiencing it, know better how it will operate in this place.

Each place, each storm is different and familiar.

So with it being know, like the sun rising every day, offers a moment to pause, to reflect, to not rush, and to consider how to live. Better. 

When the storm is passing over.

The Words of My Life

 Shift.

Reclaim.

Become

I love these words.

They were my anchor, my center, my guiding thoughts in each of 2019, 2020, and 2021.

Leading up to January 2019, I knew some things were changing in me and my life but the word change was not enough to describe it.  

I meditated upon that time of my life, entering my final semester of seminary, in the middle of an important stage of denominational ministry, in the second year of a public theology and racial justice cohort, and in a vocational wondering.

Shift.

to move or transfer from one person, place, or position to another. - Webster's New Word College Dictionary, fourth edition, 2012.

That aptly described that year. 

Little did I know how much life would change from January 2019 to January 2020.

In 2019, my husband was President of a University in Missouri, my daughter was doing college searches, my youngest son was preparing his vocal Master's thesis, and we thought the world would move with the movements we understood to be so. Missouri was going to be our center.

Then, 2020 happened.

That is a story of itself, for everyone.

January 2020, it was my sorority's centennial and I opted not to go to DC for the epic celebration, choosing instead to wait until July 2020, so I could go with the soror who took this journey of sisterhood with me. We had plans. It was to be my daughter's trip with us, we were waiting.

Reclaim.

That was my 2020 word. 

Renewal and re-envisioning my life after an intense three years of study, in my husband's role at the university and his announcement that he was a candidate for several other presidencies. We were going to be changing something and in doing that, also reclaiming parts of dreams.

It was the year my oldest daughter was in her writing prime, participating in the St. Louis presidential rally as a news reporter in March, just after I returned from a February trip to Las Vegas to engage in faith and political thought for the 2020 election. We heard rumors about a ship, but nothing close to us.

Then it all seemed to come crashing down.

Yet, my word was still reclaim.

To demand the return of, to try to get back. - Webster's New Word College Dictionary, fourth edition, 2012.

We lost some precious moments in 2020, indeed, yet we also gained.

For me, my eldest sister was a deep loss in March 2020 to this virus we were barely hearing about. 

My daughter lost her senior year plans from cotillion to college visits where she was accepted to prom to graduation to life as she thought it would be hanging out with her friends.

The world stopped. 

My oldest son almost lost his life on St. Patrick's Day 2020 just before his city and my city shut everything down. I barely saw him and once he was out-of-death's-door, the hospital shut down, no more visitors. He was there alone.

What was being reclaimed, I wondered?

2020 and two of my children had very different graduations - the youngest son's was virtual for his second master's, the oldest daughter's was first a drive through car parade on what was supposed to be her graduation day that eventually became a very masked, very distance, very hot, graduation ceremony on the football field in July.

By then, we had reclaimed family dinners, family games, movie nights, pajamas all day, the joy of remote work that I had already been doing for years, and simply being present with each other.

Life was the precious thing.

We also moved.

My husband took one of those executive education positions he was offered and we spent April and May flying to our new state to house hunt. He started on July 1 and by mid-August, the family was calling New England our new home.

My daughter went to college, without the HBCU fanfare that is the usual freshman welcoming, but she went and we knew, somehow, that we were reclaiming parts of ourselves.

yes, 2020 was a crazy year with the elections and all the shenanigans, yet, it was also a year we became to see some things.

So, 2021, my word is Become.

That seems like an odd word.

Wasn't I already who I was?

Yes, and yet.

I was in a new state. My husband told me before we moved, "what if you are in New York writing?"

We are an hour away and have spent many day-trips either there or to Boston or Rhode Island.

The lines began to be less blurry.

Become

To come to be

To grow to be; change or develop into by growth - Webster's New Word College Dictionary, fourth edition, 2012.

Wow.

I've been enamored by that all year. How must changes when you develop or grow, how you see things differently or clearly, how you alter plans.

My oldest daughter is preparing to return to college, she worked all summer as an art teacher. My youngest is preparing for her senior year of college and they are both amazing young women.

My children are all in great places in their lives and with their families.

We are vaccinated and while we still mask when we go out, we were able to breathe a bit that we took a step to save our lives.

I moved my company from Missouri to Connecticut, changed it's designation, scored some unsolicited press, twice, and while still virtual with the teens we read with, still celebrated being virtual for two years. We have an unnamed benefactor who "as a man of my means, this is the least I can do" who believes in the power of literature.

Growing can be painful. 

I remember when my middle son was in a growth spurt. He is very tall, 6'6" and when he was a preteen, it seemed like his legs and feet would not stop stretching. The doctor told me it was painful what he was experiencing.

Becoming you, becoming new, becoming can be a bit like that.

I've heard it described like the caterpillar shifting to the butterfly. That cocoon period, maybe that was parts of 2020-2021 when we were at home, not going out, being reminded of self.

It can't be seen, that thing called growth. Not until it is done, or significant enough to be noticed.

That is where I am as I am seeing change.

Becoming who I will be when. my youngest daughter and last child will be in her senior year.

I am seeing what is possible in new places and new stages of life.

The thing about Shifting, Reclaiming, and Becoming is it is a process. A noticing, an understanding and a gaining.

We may not know what lies ahead, we may not know what the Delta Variant is going to alter in our 2021-2022 year, we may not know if vocation will be the same or if the pen will find a home, but what we do know is that living fully and completely is amazing.

For myself.

Remembering My Center

 It was an especially difficult week to be Black+woman.

In one week, I learned of a dear elder family member who contracted the Covid virus, during the rise of the Delta variant. She was one of the ones who hadn't been vaccinated, part of the generation of Black people who remembered American's deathly experiments on our bodies. She was in ICU fighting for her life. Thankfully, she is recovering now, miraculous.

Then, we learned of the death of two prominent figures in our former town, one was the mother of a dear family friend who was a trailblazer for women in elected office. Then, the other, was a trailblazer in Black education, but a challenged leader for those who worked day-to-day with him, navigating that terrain was a journey of souls.

I had a visit to my pulmonologist who said "if I didn't know your history, I would think you had COPD." I am a lifelong severe acute asthmatic, one of the reasons why I have been extra vigilant and careful about being around people since the pandemic. I am fully vaccinated and continue to wear a mask when I am indoors around people I do not know.  Being in a new state and getting care established is a long process. My young doctor was lauding the advances in asthma treatment and said, "this is a great time to be working with this disease." I haven't been hospitalized since 1999 and am thankful for bright young scientists who continue to study the lungs and their function. He put me on new medicines.

A lot can happen from Monday-Thursday, my normal workweek when I am challenging systems of thinking through ways be be liberative for people. I had a meeting for one of the national trainings I attended that invited us to consider those problems that take a longer fix, some strategic some tactical. It was on the heels of another weeklong training that centered messaging and meaning. 

So, to have my week end in the way it did was almost more than I could take. It was targeted, triangulated, gaslighting by someone I once held in high esteem. This professional attempted in all ways to destroy my heart, to slice and dice me with words that cut, calling my presence a courtesy and demeaning my education, my contributions, essentially everything I had contributed over the past few years. It was everything in me to not become the raging bull of my zodiac sign. I don't do verbal fisticuffs well, that was never my nature as an empath and INFJ. It did leave me stunned and stung.

I did the only thing I could do, embark on a path of self-help and healing, something often denied Black women. 

We are often told to just be resilient, to deny pain or acknowledge that someone professionally caused us pain, to feel the fire of flight or fight, especially when your livelihood is at stake. Those are parts of the things Sha'Carri Richardson, Naomi Osaka, and Simone Biles experienced. Everyone weighing in on how they should have reacted to feeling within their bodies the intense mental and emotional toll of performing at peak during challenging times. We are not often afforded the space to be comforted.

The water was my only rescue.

I drove up to New London to walk along the pier and gaze at the Coast Guard ships
that are there to seek-and-rescue. 

I looked out over the Thames River and thought of the hundreds of others who possibly did the same thing, looking over at the other side. A couple of Black women were walking back along the pier and told me I was beautiful. It warmed me and comforted me. 

Being in New London also reminded me there are good people. I met a family from my hometown. Turns out, we sorta knew each other, my daughter and her great-niece were classmates. I smiled at the encounter and thanked God for "it started with the shoes" conversation that gave me joy. 

It was still hard to feel my heart not beating at hyper speed over what occurred in the previous week, most especially on Thursday, but being outside, seeing people, feeling the sun, seeing the water helped. 

August 1st began on a Sunday with our family making an impromptu decision to drive up to Newport, Rhode Island before our college daughter flys back on the 11th.

 We walked along the ground of The Breakers, we are members of the Newport Mansions Preservation Society and so enjoyed a relaxing moment giving our daughter the tour she missed last year while beginning her college journey in the middle of a pandemic. We didn't attend the Jazz Festival, too many people, but were reminded of the beauty of art that surrounded us in that lovely place. Being in New England has given us a different perspective on life, one I had to remind myself of.

We walked a bit along the edge of the waters view from there and after dinner, drove along Ocean View Drive to feel the chilling evening breeze. The serenity of the drive back allowed for moments to just be present with the beating heart and remembering my center. My family, my joy, my life.