The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

 It is cold. It has been for days, weeks, even. Up here in New England, the cold can be bone chilling and not even a weighted blanket is enough. The same is true for the upper midwest. I spent part of my time growing up in Michigan and went to grad school in Michigan, lived in Illinois, Chicagoland, specifically. The Hawk is brutal in February. So, on the first full week of Black History Month 2022, in the midst of all the other antiBlack vitriol happening from book banning to hand wringing about a Black woman on the Supreme Court, Minnesota decides to show it's racist self once again. A young Black man, in his own home, trying to stay warm, chilling, watching TV, is slaughtered. He was probably doing like my kids when it is their chill time, half awake, half asleep. Two of my sons are licensed gun owners. So was this young man. He probably had it nearby for protection, he did not live in the area where one can just leave their doors unlocked. Like Breona Taylor in Kentucky, Minnes...

 On yet another day of yet another news report, the Karens and the Todd's are wiggling around, most of them are younger GenXers afraid of their shadow, casting their discomfort upon the rest of the world. These, the ones who were Latchkey, envious of the awareness and freedom of their Boomer older siblings.  They became the parents of the Millennials, that self-absorbed generation of Tiffany's and Joey's who only understand what is flashed on that tiny screen they hold, never considering the impact of their actions as they appropriate what is not theirs to become TikTok Influencers with contracts while the ones they stole from created the content. Oh for the comfort of the Karens. We have watched over the pandemic how it has been the screeching screaming shrill voice of their discomfort that has made this deadly time even deadlier. No one ever told them no. Certainly not their parents. I've seen it. Whatever they want, they get, and if they are from the elite elite, the...

 The first Monday of the semester begins today for my college daughter. As fate, cold, and Covid would have it, we had to change her flights from leaving on Friday to leaving in the too-dark-for-anyone hours from our home to drive up to the airport. She flew out this morning, it is still cold, still covid but the winter storm of last week has emerged to just bitter cold and sunshine this morning.  She lugged her two trunk cases down the stairs, filled with all she thought she would need, from Connecticut-to-Mississippi, for her second semester sophomore year.  She did it all herself and I just marveled at how she maneuvered it all. After a quick breakfast while her father prepared himself to do the drive, I made myself a cup of Rooibos tea at 3:30am. It was too early to be awake, even without acknowledging daylight savings time, and honestly, I was beginning to feel the exhaustion. Once they were pulling out of the driveway, I turned off the lights, climbed the stairs, le...

 They never yell at White women. 

 I am an early riser. It is quiet, it is serene, it is beautiful, it is hopeful to begin a new day while the rest of my house sleeps, most especially when everyone is on holiday and no one has to bustle anywhere. It is even sweeter when it is a weekday, when the calls of schedules and meetings, classes and assignments, bottom lines and budget projects, are not what takes up all the waking energy. So I sit and absorb the stillness. Contemplate and wonder about what will unfold. Today, it is the Kwanzaa Principle of Kuumba, Creativity, that hopeful optimism of ones art being welcomed into the world just for the sake of its beauty, to celebrate a beautiful people who this year saw products beyond the IG and Etsy shops but in Target's Black Makerspace, in HBCU t-shirts being sold at mall department stores, at Black becoming mainstream. It is beautiful to behold, after the year,  years we've had with protest for our Black American humanity and the pandemic that hit Black and Brown ...

 I think a lot in the early morning. I woke up to the house still and a yearning to just muse. I picked up my copy of The Strong Black Women: How a Myth Endangers the Physical and Mental Health of Black Women by Marita Golden and read the imagined thoughts of the late Fannie Lou Hamer. In it, she wrote about her body broken by the systems of hatred, racism, and sexism that sadly haven't gone away since her days organizing with SNCC. Women have had a tough year. Black women and women of the Global Majority have had a near impossible year. So, I woke up thinking about them, us, me, this morning. A bit of me is exhausted. Perhaps it is because I am an early riser and daylight savings time means nothing to me. Maybe it is because my youngest son is bringing his girlfriend home for Christmas because Covid cancelled family plans back home for her, and my house is a wreck. Ok, maybe wreck is too strong a word, but it is different when company comes. Tired because I haven't wrapped a...

 I woke up this morning to snow. Not the major snow my new state gave me last year, I'm still waiting for that sink-to-my-knees snow that blanketed the three acres around my house.  What we have is just beautiful sun streaming down on just enough white fluffy stuff to make the trees glisten and the drive to my daughter's school this morning feel like a winter wonderland. I wanted to just slow down, get out and take pictures. She wanted to get to school. So I made her roll down the window to capture some images, we were in a long car line, after all, what else was she going to do. And I marveled. It is a bright, crisp, clear day that is begging for us to notice her. To see her. Acknowledge her presence. Mother Nature gives us moments like this. The change of seasons looms ahead, it is still technically fall, and while the calendar has turned to December and upcoming thoughts of holiday gifts fill our to-do lists, it is still fall and a being. Being present with how I am feeling...