The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

 It was really quiet this rainy Black Friday morning. No one in my home was awake when I was frothing milk for my rosemary brown sugar vanilla latte.  Comforted by the soft whir of their sleep, I sipped my creamy latte and watched daylight dawn on our second Thanksgiving weekend in our new state.  It feel right. Like home. No one wanted to leave. From dinner last night with everyone's favorites to annual games of Uno and Spades to movies until everyone fell asleep, no one wanted to stir. That was the gift. The joy and laughter of the youngest daughter with the youngest son, their banter as only siblings can have. When the first ones started to stir a few hours later, awakens to the smells of my husband flipping bacon and adding cheese to the eggs, it was the moment when joy just enveloped me. Home has been their destination. This year, my older daughter is visiting her college boyfriends' family and my youngest son came home with his girlfriend. The youngest daughter was ...

 I was in Target this afternoon, grabbing a few pre-Turkey Day items for my daughter. We didn't do the cart-full of a normal run and thought we'd just run in and out. All was well until my daughter pointed to the aisle that was open. I moved my cart to the aisle and the young woman, Asian-American, said, "Oh, ma'am, I'm closed, sorry." I looked up and her light was out. I replied, "oh, wow, I didn't even look, thanks." I moved over to the open aisle next to this one and was just waiting, the lady in front of me in my new one and the one I was just at both had long purchases. My daughter was off on her make-up or whatever second-look in the cosmetic aisle so I wasn't in a hurry. I was just looking through my phone when I noticed something that annoyed me. Here comes a lady, about my age, I'm Black, she was White, and she goes to the aisle I just left. This was about five minutes later, mind you, both ladies in front of us were still engagi...

 I was at the store picking up some things for the upcoming holidays.  Perusing the aisles, I noticed there was plenty of everything anyone would want for a gathering. Where were the shortages? Maybe I was in a different place, but everywhere I went over the weekend from the local orchard for fresh vegetables to the discount home store to the favorite big box, nothing was missing. But it gave me pause for something else. The high cost of one's voice. See, I think while I am alone in the store, especially my daughters' favorite place to get running gear and. makeup, without them to distract me with sudden carts full of sports bras and socks, I had time to really ponder the price we are paying. A few days ago, a verdict came that many expected, none were surprised, yet, the sting was still felt while others are awaiting a verdict with Black pastors like me being advised that our presence was costly to there other side, the currency of presence was too much to bear. Thankfully, t...

 Live, anyhow. Laugh, anyhow. Love, anyhow. Those are the messages I sent to my children yesterday after a Friday of elevating my leg and binge watching the happily-ever-after Christmas stories on the Hallmark Channel. It was after I got one of those "dings" on my iPhone about the breaking news that was not all that breaking to us. We knew they would absolve the monsters raised by mothers feigning fear of those blessed with color and culture. Even if those they slaughter with sticks of blazing fire, are those that share their hue but not their depravity. So I refused to stay glued to the news channels with pundit after pundit analyzing what has been in this soil for centuries. Genocide and slaughter is in the heart and soul of pimplyfacedchubbymilkmarshmallows who only feel like men when they drive across state lines to avenge what never belonged to them. I sipped jasmine tea and snuggled under my covers. I sent notices to my children to enjoy their weekend, my youngest daugh...

I'm reading this book by a Persian writer, set in the aftermath of 9/11. It is about a teenage Muslim girl in yet another high school trying to find her way, to be invisible in the midst of the vitriol of this country against anyone with any visible sign of Middle Eastern heritage - even if they weren't Afghani.   In the book, written in her voice, she replays this scene in her Global Studies class. The teacher forces her and a white boy to stand in front of the room and as part of that teacher's methods, wanted them to tell each other what they see when they look at them. He has the blond haired, blue eyed white boy go first. Cliche the American idealistic phenotype.  The boy gets all flustered and red because the one thing about them, back before Facebook and Instagram made them Internet Warriors, they hid their coded language in innuendos to each other or the random reporter who asked them. This was set in California, far far away from Ground Zero that is about an hour s...

 It has been forty years. That is a lifetime. The children of Israel wandered in the desert for forty years. Forty is supposed to be that time when one gets really serious about what one is going to do, that moment when being the grown up in the room really hits. Forty. That is a very long time. Lifetimes. Many lives. When did the calendar pages turn that quickly?  I watched my last child, my youngest daughter, the one that the universe smiled at me and gave me literally at thirty-nine years and six months because I said, "God, I refused to be pregnant at forty." Right under the wire!  She is living her fullest and best life at almost eighteen.   Filled with so many possibilities that she has no time to even consider them all. As a scholar, a cellist, an athlete, her days are so full, and then there are are friends and the business of living. Last night, it was senior night at the football game and they honored the senior dancers, cheerleaders, and football players. ...

Black Girls Must Die Exhausted is not only the title of Jayne Allen's 2018 debut novel in a trilogy, it is a phrase that we, Black women have heard for generations.  The "mules of the world."  As coined by my  Triumphant Soror, the prolific anthropologist and writer, Zora Neale Hurston, in her book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, opens up an entire body of work (just Google it) about the colonizing racist sexist trope placed on Black women, echoing still Sojourner Truth's question, "Ain't I a Woman?" We carry so much. When do we get to just lay our burdens down? To be more than a stereotype, a syndrome, or a symbol?  There is an entire body of work and study about either the strong Black woman or the Black women who is just tired. People getting PhDs on us, Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes, psychologist, professor, minister,  wrote about the impact of it in her 2014 book, Too Heavy A Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength. The last chosen and never wante...