The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

 Monday was a doozie for me. Well, for a lot of folks. First, after spending Sunday practically hacking up a lung, my husband got up Monday morning to take one of those home Covid tests. Yep, he is positive.  Vaccinated, boosted, and all that, but one slip up in the gym and it got him, so he is quarantined in the basement and I sanitized my already clean house and gave him the death stare if he broached the threshold from the man cave to the main level. Yes, I cared for him, fed him, gave him clean sheets for the rooms downstairs, clean towels for the bathroom that now only he can use, made tea, scheduled his cough medicine. He does not have a fever and so far, could still taste the food I made for him yesterday. He may get out of it relatively unscathed for a sixty-one year old man. No, I don't have it. I'm also vaccinated and boosted.  But I am hyper vigilant about wearing a mask, like everywhere. I order them, I get on my family's nerves about it and except for dining,...

There is a thing about pain that no one wants to talk about. It is that it is insistent, insidious, and inconsiderate. It shows up at the most inopportune times and completely alters your life. It causes shifts and seismic shifts in one's outlook. It is a bully. When I think about this season when all three monotheistic faiths are in the middle of the most holy observances - Ramadan, Passover, and The Resurrection(Easter) - I think about the experiences that many have felt and contemplate through their acts of remembrance, meditation, and gathering. I have had a busy few weeks and the time almost crashed into me - and I had to stop and think about some things. The first is the medical gaslighting I've been going through since May trying to get a diagnosis for the mind numbing stabbing heatwave electrifying shocks my body experiences daily. Stemming from a 36 year old car accident and sciatic nerve, damage to the L4 and L5, that resulted in crippling glass shattering moments of ...

 Shattering stories, dashing hopes, smashing dreams, stomping on possibilities. We are living in what feels like this whirlwind of movement that only leaves destruction in its wake, So it is somewhat fitting that this morning, my husband, in his big former linebacker elegance and grace was whizzing through the library to kiss me goodbye on his way to an early meeting, gym bag and briefcase haphazardly on his shoulder, when in less than two seconds, he whirled around and hit the cabinet with my carefully curated mug collection and before either of us could stop the impending disaster, two of them catapulted to the hardwood flood and shattered in several pieces, the force of his gait and the velocity of the wind in that turn made this an impossible-to-safe-situation. "Ohhh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." "I would clean that up." "I don't have time." He hugged me in remorse as he almost ran out the door to our garage, the clock ticking on his day. I sa...

 There is an iconic picture of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his wife, the beautiful Coretta Scott King and all there other now legendary names of the Civil Rights Movement immortalized as they crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama.   It is striking.  Dressed in suits and Sunday best, these clergy and community leaders dared to defy systemic and institutionalized racism in the Jim Crow South. They marched to proclaim on The Lord's Day that all God's children were deserving of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness this country so boldly proclaims as our high tenants. We know the story. They were battered, beaten, and bruised. Not all walked out unscathed. My namesake was there, Sister Mary Antona Ebo, FSM, the only Black nun in that collection of clerics from Missouri who took that trip south because "I had to be here."  Her story has been told over and over by those who never spoke to us, the family, about who she was, or revered. And that is ok, tha...

 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...