Chance

Serendipity – Apr 12 09

I needed to talk today. Not about anything deep, involved or painful, but about the mundane, the everyday, the frayed edges of life that scratch irritably at the skin of my existence. I had in mind, someone that I wanted to share this with, but as I am continuously reminded, events barely follow the plans of any one person. Rather, circumstances mix in a state of seemingly chance-filled delirium to create a situation, a glance, a chance meeting.

I was at a filling station when one such a meeting occurred. The car in front of me backed into my bumper. The lightest tap, barely worth notice, although I firmly pressed my horn to make sure it stayed that way. The occupant of the vehicle in front stepped out slowly… but it was more like unfolding as the car was smallish and he was not.

I tapped lightly on the horn again. Waved. He glanced; squinting into my car, then came closer.

It was nice to see a friend. His deep baritone was soothing to my ears, reminding me of smiling uncles and days passed as a child listening to all the old men around the neighborhood laugh and talk and crack open peanuts as we rode our bikes round and round the block. His voice has a familiarity to it, a comforting timbre as old as tradition, like a worn-in armchair, a resting place. We caught up over chicken fried rice and cold spring rolls.

Although we did fall victim to a rather brusque and pushy, pot-bellied waiter who insisted I “must order a sauce, or else the plain fried rice will NOT be enjoyed.”

I blinked at him, “But I don’t want a sauce, just the rice please” He sighed heavily. The kind of sigh breathed when your store of patience is completely exhausted and the frantic search for internal reserves is almost as tiring as the object depleting it.

“But there is chicken. Don’t you like fish!?? Shredded Beef?” he squeaked, barely able to contain his displeasure. I am sure I saw his lip try to snarl of its own accord.

“No. No, I’d rather not, please, just the rice.” I insisted, plead.

My dining companion became visibly uncomfortable with the food-pushing waiter and even went so far as to wrest the menu from my grasp and quickly scan it himself. “Maybe he’s right.” He said as his eyes searched. “Maybe you could order some chicken?”

BENEDICT ARNOLD, TRAITOR, TURNCOAT! “No, no, it’s alright. The rice please. And a coke. Thank you.”

At that point, I supposed they both noticed the murderous glint in my eye, completely belying my calm responses. They wisely both raised their white flags and went back to their respective business.

Needless to say, I didn’t know just how much I wanted, needed to talk and just decompress until that conversation. It was a truly serendipitous meeting and one that proved beyond a doubt that God provides. For that, I am thankful.

The other side of serendipity…

I believe in Serendipity. I believe that what looks to us like happenstance, fate or luck is actually a situation engineered by God for a purpose. I think I used to believe in luck for luck’s sake, but there were too many coincidences. Too many times when I needed something and sent up a small prayer, only to have that thing materialize in the nick of time. Too many times I received something or someone I didn’t even know I needed.

I have always said that my friends are my friends because of one simple thing. Something in my soul recognizes something in theirs. There is, when you meet someone who is meant to be woven into the tapestry of your life, recognition, a spiritual embrace, a burst of joy at having found something so akin to oneself. There is a resonance, a call and the response echoing in time to the beat of a heart.

I have felt this. My spirit has called to another and received an answer many times and I am blessed to know the feeling so well that it is immediately recognizable to me. The best parts of my friends, the family I built for myself, are also the best parts of me. Because, really, they are me, and I am them. It gets philosophical, yes, but it’s something I’ve always understood to be elemental, as natural as breathing.

It’s Easter. There is so much to celebrate. So much to be thankful for. Here, is the cornerstone of Christianity, the closing act of the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate act of love from God to his children, the newness of being clean, the miracle of being forgiven. It is my favorite time of year after Christmas, but it actually means more to me than Christmas does.

It is at this time that I most want to be with those people I have built into my family. The time I most want to feel the resonance of dancing kindred souls around me, singing happily in every direction. Since I am here, on one side of the Atlantic, and they are on the other, I do not have the comfort of that and it’s terribly lonely.

I have family here, actual blood relations, but unfortunately, I do not feel at home in their presence.

So, I have decided to remind myself of those people, those souls who God has placed in my path. I thank Him every day for the gift of knowing you all.

Mom – I miss your love, jokes, the smallest violin in the world and your ability to see in me what I cannot see in myself, But I wish you could see in Yourself what I see in you.

Dad – I miss your quiet understanding, your encouragement, belief in me and the way your eyes narrow as you laugh loudly.

Suki-Babe – I miss talking to you because you inspire me to be a better me, you have the best heart of anyone I have ever, EVER known.

Peanut – I miss the dimple in your cheek when you laugh and your determination and your sarcasm.

So Brown – I miss your laughter, silliness and acceptance, whole and complete. I can be my WHOLE self with you, Sisterlou.

Pat (I mean GENE) – I miss my twin, BFBF!

Ronx – Your conversations, comments, wittiness, sage wisdom and understanding, the way we see eye to eye on so many things.. the sharing of our origins.

Fallback Crew of Fall 02 – Duah – “Duah, Duah, Doo-doo, Duah!” and the Ghanaian eye and the “Yeah, I could eat.”
Jaz- Your volcano of giggles, your humor and your enormous talent,
Keenster – oh, master of the deadest eye, but owner of the biggest heart,
Krys – The most contagious laughter, the most beautyful (T, 2008), the most courageous.

Blair – doses of Assholery abound, yours is second to none.

Lil Sis – You needed to belong to someone, and you do! You belong to me, for always and I will be here for you. I also miss you because… you just GET it.

HBPA – your caring, commiseration and realness. (and of course, your GREAT hair)

Dupe – I don’t have to miss you cuz you’re here… I really don’t know who is crazier, you or me (and that’s saying something) but the way you dare to FIND your dreams is remarkable.

There are so many people that now; I’m still getting to know. I don’t know if they will be a sentence, a punctuation mark, or chapters in the book; Acts and scenes in the script. I’m excited to see how events unfold. I’m scared sometimes that things won’t work out as I plan them, but there’s always serendipity.



Happy Easter to All!!!

Wednesday Musings

I wish it was Thursday:
I am having what I like to tell my staff is a tea break… during which I sit and stare glassy-eyed at my system and look as though I am knee-deep in concentration when in fact, I am doing no work at all. Nor have I done all day.

I have exhibited a willful lack of responsibility today. The insidious nature of laziness and lethargy has crept in and the simple fact is... I don’t WANT to do this anymore.

Chicken Parts:
I was at Barcelos this weekend (yes, Funmi, the burger is still bangin’). A woman who ordered about 5 bags of chicken began to unwrap each one to check and see if it was the part she specified. (Wing/Breast only).

To her utter dismay, as she cleared the overpowering weave out of her face (so disarrayed from being swung angrily from side to side as she shook her head woefully), she discovered that most of the chicken was thigh/leg parts.

With her eyes full of what I can only call an unappealing mixture of disgust and despair, she looked at her friend (who was anxiously rewrapping the chicken as though the mere sight of all those thighs was offensive) and said in her very affected British accent, “I haaaaaaaaaaaaaate chicken legs and thigh. This has RUINED my day!”

As I struggled to keep a straight face and avoid pointing, doubling over in laughter and slapping my knee, I thought to myself, ‘someone keep the neckbone away from this woman before it unravels her entire existence.’ Chick PLEASE, get you a day job and an air bubble and save the rest of us from catching the vacuous-ness.

The real post:
Written sometime in 2006? Or was it 2007? <>

Hey Peanut

“Hey Peanut! How’s life?”

This is usually the way conversations between me and him begin. Peanut. Despite the fact that he’s well over 6 feet and has about 60 lbs on me…pure muscle, he’s still Peanut. He’s got the long limbs of a man and the chubby facial innocence of a little kid. He hasn’t started to grow a beard or mustache yet, but he vigilantly watches for signs. Hope housed in tiny sprouts of hair, renegade and prickly.

He sighs heavily. The sigh of an old man whose seen the world and gets life’s big joke… or the sigh of an overly dramatic kid who’s the butt of that joke at the moment. I can see him rubbing his head, stroking his now close-cut hair forward with a half-smile on his face. Mouth turned up a little tiny bit on the right side, like the after affects of a good long laugh.

“I’m alright” he says. Typical teenage cool. He puts a little bass in there just to make sure I understand that his cheeks are no longer eligible or available for my pinching fingers.

“Really?” I ask, amused. “What’s new?”

“Well...” he begins. I can see him settling back into whatever chair he’s currently perched on, preparing to tell me something good.

“Wait!!” I say… “What’s the question of the day?”

Its this thing we do. We both agreed long ago that some rap lyrics today are entirely too ridiculous for words. So, we make them our question of the day…reveling in our own pension for assholery. And it’s great.

“Can you rock with it? Can you lean with it? Can you rock so damn hard you break your spleen with it?”

We laugh uncontrollably. Despite our many disagreements, this is one thing we’ve got down. Then, one of us has to ask the old standby… it was our question of the day for an entire month one summer…

“Have you ever been to Saint Tropez and seen a brother play a mandolay?” We laugh some more, both of us thinking... . ‘He really can’t be serious about that one.’

Then we talk about everything. Basketball, how hard (or easy) it is to be our Mom, working and coming home and then cooking.

“Shoot, ya’ll lucky she cooked for you as long as she did. I don’t know how she did it. Now that I’m out in the real world, I really understand. She’s amazing!! I develop severe narcolepsy at about 6:00pm everyday. Mom’s the bomb!” my diatribe begins.

“Sometimes, she gets on my nerves” he always disagrees with me there.

He skips around his involvement with the females, I guess he understands that I changed his diapers, and I will beat them off with a broom stick if I have to.

More than anything we laugh. Sometimes it takes everything I’ve got in me not to get all misty-eyed when I think about how tiny and precious he used to be as a baby. How he liked me best, and we would laugh together at ages 8 and 1 respectively. How me and my mom used to swing him between our arms in the park and how he would get a running start and lift his feet off the ground and enjoy the ride.

I could listen to him laugh all day. Even now. Even though we don’t see each other face to face as much as we used to (which is wholly my fault, as he doesn’t drive yet) I know by heart where his dimples show up when he’s laughing, or where his brow furrows when he’s upset and tries not to show it.

I look at him and wish I could protect him from the ills of the world; that rude awakening that slapped me in the face and stole my breath without me ever seeing it coming. Isn’t that what it means to be a big sister? But I know in doing this, he might grow to resent me when he realizes he hasn’t done something just because I told him not to. I know that people must be injured to enjoy other times more. So, against my better sense I urge him on.

“Just do it!” I say. “It’s all about the experience.” Even if experience means terrible pain, exile, ridicule for now. It’s a rite of passage. Sometimes experience will mean love, power, acceptance and joy.

The bottom line I guess is that I love Peanut. Sarcastic and stand-offish though he may be sometimes, he’s quite capable of taking over the world. I wish he saw what I see.