I always find being inside the terminal at the gate to be this kind of time out out of time. Stephen King wrote an entire story essentially on this concept. I'm in Denver right now but all my time pieces are back on west coast time. I've already been up for hours but here, it could be any time. It could be afternoon or yesterday or tomorrow. Until I get on that plane and land at my final destination, I'm nowhere and no-when. Anyway...here's what I'm thinking about right now...
You need only be in my grandmother’s presence for a moment to know that she loves her some Jesse Saunders. Through all his years running in these Midland streets – drinking, gambling, womanizing – and through all 20 years of being his caretaker since his heart began failing him in the late 80s, she’s loved this man.
They divorced in the late 70s but he never left the house. He has a son 8 months younger than me, her lone grandson, with another woman. But after nearly 60 years of being together, the hole his passing has left in her world is enormous.
His spirit fills this house. His legend fills her stories. She is still walking with him. What you come to understand now that she alone is here to tell their tale is that they were partners and that for all his shortcomings, she loved him and he loved her like they’ve loved no others. Not even their children can understand that.
My grandmother is a strong and powerful woman. She continues to live her life. She’s a church elder. She takes care of my high school age cousin on a daily basis. She’s improving on her home. She hasn’t given up.
But in her quiet moments, there’s sadness. She mentions that she has to learn how to cook for just herself. She notes that she struggles with having to go through all of “Jesse’s things.” She says often that she needs people to come around and to keep busy because when she’s not, when she’s alone, she’s left with her thoughts.
But when she talks about him, the sadness disappears, a smile beams across her face.
Their love is alive.
]]>There are few things more thrilling than having a new house or an empty room to decorate. Our imaginations soar as we consider the many possibilities. In the same way, our lives offer us the opportunity to express ourselves within various contexts, to ask ourselves questions about what we want to see as we move through our days and how we want things to flow. Some people do this instinctively, moving through the various environments they inhabit and shifting the energy with their presence. These people have a knack for decorating life. This can be as simple as the way they dress, the way they speak, or the fact that they always bring a bouquet of wildflowers when they come for a visit.
As we move through the world, we make a statement, whether we intend to or not. We shift the energy one way when we enter a room dressed elegantly and simply, and another when we show up in bright, cheerful colors and a floppy hat. One is not better than the other. It is simply a question of the mood we wish to create. What we wear is just one choice we can focus on. The way we speak to people, or touch them, shifts the energy more profoundly than almost anything else. The words we speak and the tone in which we say them are the music we choose to play in the world that is our home. Some of us fill the space with passionate arias, others with healing hymns. Again, one is not better than the other. We are all called to contribute.
Just as we consciously create an environment within our homes, we can consciously choose to decorate life itself with our particular energy. Ideally, in doing so, we express our deeper selves, so that the adornments we add to the world make it more meaningful, more beautiful, and as welcoming as a beloved home.
- Decorating Life: Viewing the World as Our Home by Phyllis S. Toney via email, 03.07.07
Book: Show us one of your favorite works of fiction.
How many versions of the same question can we have?
What family member do you most aspire to be like? Why?
Submitted by MalieKai.
My Uncle Mike. Because he inspired thoughts like these (originally published on the negro please blog, 01.06.03):
]]>There were times when my Uncle Mike, my mother and I would walk together in the mall or down the street together. They each would grab one of my hands and we'd move along laughing and talking. They'd swing me, I'd fly forward giggling, the round puff of hair on my head lightly shaking with each move. People would stop us and tell my mother and her brother that they had a beautiful son, that in fact, we were a beautiful family. My Uncle would yell out to them, "This is my sister! How Dare you! Dang, ya'll nasty!" As the people, usually old ladies, shuffled away flustered and embarrassed we would laugh and laugh.
You can see where I get it from.
my grandfather's tears...
When Michael started looking for an apartment, I asked him, I said, "Mike, you don't have to leave here." He looked back at me and said, "Daddy, I'm 36 years old. It's time for me to get back out on my own. I can't be here forever." That was April 1995. December of that year, he had the accident and never left this house again...
One day, he called me and I went over to his apartment to fix something on his car. I walked in and it was filthy. It was shocking because it was so unlike him, he was so clean. I asked him why everything was such a mess and he said, "Whenever I pay a bill, I just toss it on the kitchen floor so that I know it's paid and I don't send it in twice." I told Pauline and she went over to clean up for him but I knew something wasn't right...
He called me and asked me to bring his spare set of keys to his office because he'd lost his keys. He stood at the door and said, "Daddy, I don't know what happened, they're just gone." I asked him what he'd done in the building and he said, "I'd just gone inside and come right out. I didn't go anywhere." So, I went in and talked to the receptionist and she said, "yeah, he just came in and didn't really go anywhere." Then she thought for a moment and said, "You know, he did go to the bathroom." I walked in the bathroom and there were his keys right there on the bathroom counter. He looked at me and said, "I don't remember going to the bathroom." We started up his car and it made a funny sound. I told him we should fix whatever it was and he said, "Oh, we don't need to fix that thing, I'm thinking about selling it." And then I knew something was really wrong. He loved that car...
a conversation and a revelation...
"I like your tattoo," I said.
"You know, I used to see him all the time," she said and didn't need to clarify who "him" was. "I always feel like he's watching over me. I wanted to do something to honor that, honor him, but I didn't want a man's name on my body. It's too hard to explain to people. So I thought this was the right thing to do."
"It's beautiful," I said, admiring the ink at the base of her lower back. It reads: Angel.
a niece's words...
You know that old house that burned down and all that was left were the steps? Well, one day, Mike was driving me and my sister back from somewhere and we passed that house. He stopped the car and got out and ran up the stairs and just started carrying on, "My house! My house! Oh lord, what we goan do?!" It was raining too and he was getting soaked. We were cracking up in the car. He then turned and ran back down the stairs and got back in the car and looked at us and said, "Oops, that's not our house. My Bad!"
We laughed all the way home.
a father's words...
One day not too long after the funeral, Pauline went out of the house. I was sitting right here in the kitchen doing the puzzle. She yelled she was leaving, I heard her keys and heard the car start and drive away. Some time later, the latch of the door unlocked and I heard keys rattle. I can still hear it now. I didn't even look up. I just assumed she had forgotten something and came back. After awhile, I realized that she wasn't in the house. I figured I must not have heard her leave again. So, she comes back awhile later and I say to her, "What did you have to come back to the house for." She looked at me and said, "I didn't come back, I was gone this whole time." Then I started thinking about the sounds. It was the latch unlocking and then a rattle of the keys. Now, when you enter the house, you don't hear the rattle of the keys because you're holding them in your hand a certain way, you've got to grip them to turn the lock. But Mike, when he would leave the house, he would unlock the door and rattle his keys for me to let me know he was going.
I guess he was the one who'd forgotten something.
He's the only person that I have ever truly idolized in my life. He could make you laugh with the turn of a word, a wry smile, or withjust the matter-of-factness of who he was. He was brilliant and vibrant and alive until he wasn't.
I miss him.
Michael Saunders died in October of 1996.
After a morning of present opening, discussions of The Godfather of Soul, breakfast and dinner cooking, bread making and game playing with my sister, I left my parents' home in the afternoon with them using the opera browser on the internet channel of the Wii via their wireless connection watching James Brown videos via youtube.
We'd just finished making their Miis. They'd already cracked up at my sister and I playing tennis like fools and my sister's kick boxing style of Wii boxing. My mom had provided tips on how to better cast my fishing rod on The Legend of Zelda but at 1:30 in the afternoon, we were mesmerized. James Brown was performing Sex Machine (a late 70s James Brown) in full screen on their large screen television.
We had a discussion about Youtube and why they aren't the new Napster. We talked about how this relates directly to what I do at work every day in practical terms that they actually got. It was one of the few times that I actually got to have a conversation that was really about what I do and not just what my company does.
Merry Christmas, Nintendo. I *heart* you.
I invited my family to check out Vox.
Uhhhh...
Quick, everybody hide the hookers & blow.
It's just the teaser site, we'll have a full launch in a couple weeks but you can get a feel for the show - the grittiest show abc family has ever run and it features a predominantly black cast.
In another case of "it's a small world, after all" - this is the show my sister very nearly got cast in (as Cassie) the summer before her freshman year at NYU and just about a year before I started producing the site.
The Toney family is nothing if not synergistic.