These Are Ground Breaking Times

Can you feel that?

The air is so still.

The ribbons in the sky don't dance like they used to.

Are we holding in our breath all at once? Anticpating life to happen to us?

To look put together and terrified inside is the most common display of functional suffocation. Do we even know what it's like to breathe fully? Deeply? Seemlessly? Gallantly? I believe we are starting to understand the difference between living with hollow chests, and letting the wind engulf our bodies down to our toes. The world is calling us to know the distinction amongst displaced anger, and passionate rage that ornates change.

Do you hear the calling? This calling that rings in the ears, and trickles down a vibration in our hearts? Are you activated? The suppleness of freedom is knocking on our door. The sweetness of true, naked expression is massaging the soles of our feet. The hot springs of valiancy, are awaiting us to take a dip.

The ground is beginning to crack and open up to soften soil, mud, folding in itself. We must know the materials, broken down to bare minerals. A drought has to come. It must. Of love, belonging, identity of things, and us. How else will the grounds we walk on dry up to solid ground? This breaking, and mending, and drying, and fortifying is the work.

To know what paths we are willing to stand firm on, is to know the dirt, to have seen it in all of its forms, and to say "I know what this and I are made of".

In the Good Times

In the 90's, my sister and I would visit our grandparents in Conway, South Carolina every single summer. Mommy and daddy would send us off on the train with a big bucket of fried chicken, and some zebra cakes to munch on for the fourteen hours we were on the rail. We were the little girls in the very first row next to the train attendants chatting about how we would ration a 12 pc. Yes that was us, three and five years, good girls, not ones to make a fuss because we had each other to make a world of our own. To entertain. To play 'how many can you find?' looking out the window as the train kept on journeying on.

Papa never let us down. We would find him on the other side, wearing his cognac color bomber jacket, jeans, sandals, and a kufi, waiting with a big smile leaning on his beige Oldsmobile, with his stuffed monkey companion named George, in the back seat. Never walking, always running to greet papa. A hug that squeezed our insides and a dewy kiss on the forehead. Those drives were the best ones. Windows down, weaving through the back roads. The smell of pine oak and lingering Black & Mild.

Home away from home. 'Souf Cacky Lacky * !' - An uncle that played entirely too much and tickled us 'til we cried, and another that was kind of like our own cookie-lady, who had all the good cereals and candy in his room and shared only when we paid up. We didn't have any money so we had to pay up the way kids would, like getting the remote across the room, or grabbing a Coca-Cola from the fridge. Lets not forget an aunt that had jewelry climbing up her ears, and a tiger tattoo on her right thigh that came alive with every stride.

Nina's signature was imprinted red lips on our cheeks and blood red nails that caressed our faces. A woman that loved on us by filling our bellies. We weren't allowed in the kitchen because we weren't quiet enough to not be the cause of falling cakes. Our gifts were the "here babies" as she passed us leftover cake batter in a bowl to lick clean. Our servings looked as high as those red ant piles we would dodge in the yard. At least that's what it felt like to little ol' me. We knew better not to line our bellies with a sip of drink before we had eaten all of what was on our plates. We were parched before we were full. Nina called me a GeeChee* because I was sure to ask for more rice and gravy. Man, did I love her rice and gravy.

Butter beans ? Hoppin-John* ?

It was a different language here.

A soul-like interpretation.

A slow-cooking luxury.

Papa and Nina (1975).

I would do anything in the world to get those summers back. To take another trip in the woods and make markers to find our way back home. Home isn't just a place, home is memory. Its memory in the body. Home. Where we reside. Where we rest our heads. Cry, laugh, take a trip down memory lane. Make love. Make real good love. Fill our bellies. Ask for help, or be afraid to. Shed identities. Talk to God. Cry some more.

Home. Home is handmade quilts keeping us warm for seventy-sumthin' winters. It's going in the back rooms with our people and having a swig of Schlitz*, shooing the children to stay out of grown folks business when they've found us having too much fun. Home is figuring it out. It's letting love lead the way, when the way seems so murky. Home is the wise looking us in the eyes and telling us that we were in the good times all along.

Honoring the hands that made this quilt. Rilla Grim (born December 3rd, 1896), Lither Sealy Davis (born unknown), Louise Gladys Davis (born August 25th, 1932), and Ama Jenkins (born unknown). Made with scraps from near by fabric mill in Aynor, SC.

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*Souf Cacky Lacky - Nickname for South Carolina

*GeeChee - The Gullah GeeChee people are the descendants of West and Central Africans who were enslaved and brought to the lower Atlantic states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia to work on the coastal rice, Sea Island cotton and indigo plantations.

*Hoppin John - Carolina's peas and rice dish.

*Schlitz - An alcoholic beverage made in Milwaukee Wisconsin. Founded in 1849, defunct in 1999.

This Chapter of Life

What a weighted title, right? "This Chapter of Life".

Well, everything is weighted for me at this point. Almost, if not everything, feels more deeper in meaning than say if the "five years ago me" were to look at it. One thing I have been obsessing over is the power of connection.

I was getting my nails done, and I always walk away from my appointments with something to think about. My nail artist said, " You ever looked up at the sky and saw the clouds moving and thought, 'wow, I am on a spinning planet where the atmosphere was created in a way that I can survive in.' And we are just so casual about it"? Of course there was seriousness in the way she said it, but we both looked at each other and laughed. I followed up with "damn, that's wild." It's not because I haven't had this realization before. It's the way she said casual that magnified the point. I thought about how the presence of one thing leaves not much room for another. How the presence of casual, leaves no room for significance.

I am currently reading a book called "The Art of Gathering: How We Meet And Why It Matters" by Priya Parker. When I decide to reach for a book, it more often than not, aligns with what my current state of mind is open to or yearning for. Right now, I feel hyper-connected and still have a deep sense of disconnection with others. One page drew me in (there are many), as Priya describes her experience at a tea ceremony in Japan in which the tea master described a phrase Sen no Rikyu (sixteenth-century Japanese tea master) instilled in his students.

Ichi-go ichi-e "one meeting, one moment in your life that will never happen again" .

If I can describe to you this chapter of my life, it looks like dancing in the shower to Hiatus Kaiyote "Get Sun" while getting ready to meet girlfriends for dinner. It looks like scanning my body after having small talk and realizing how much I clam up. It looks like journaling about it and realizing that social anxiety is real when I place myself in rooms I don't want to be in out of politeness. It looks like no more of that, coupled with "no thank you". It looks like eating Tagliatelle Bolognese with my eyes closed. It looks like saying "I love you" when I mean it and as often as I can. It looks like balling in tears while watching season 1, episode 5 of Pachinko when Sunja cries after realizing Kyunghee washed the smell of home out of her clothes. It looks like booking the flight. It looks like co-creating with the Creator while knowing I know nothing at all. It looks like when Spirit says "jump" I'll ask 'how high?'. It looks like breathing on my own accord. Most importantly, it is significant.

Lets come together and make an oath. If we fall victim to these thoughts, these moments when it seems like nothing miraculous or significant is happening in our lives, to remind each other to take a moment to look up at the sky.