"She promised all the sweetest gifts
That only the heavens could bestow
You bring your light and shine like morning
And as you so gracefully give
Her light as long as you live
I'll always remember this moment..."
— Sade, The Sweetest Gift

President Barack Obama.

Amazing grace, how sweet that sound.

The day universally acknowledged by us brown folk as the one we never thought we'd live to see, the one my mother told me was a pipe dream a mere two summers ago, the one which served as a pilgrimage to our nation's capital whether you were from Brooklyn or Birmingham, the one that compelled me to brave the frigid cold and daunting crowds to be an eyewitness to history.

I was born twenty-nine years ago today. My first born day ushered in the era of greed, irresponsibility and neglect to our working class which I pray has come to an overdue end with the changing of the guard.

My parents emigrated to the United States from the West Indies during the 60's in search of a better life. My father inspired by his countryman Stokely Carmichael and the civil rights movement stressed the importance of political activism. I remember coloring homemade signs and counting out buttons as a hyperactive eight-year old in a cramped church basement, nagging him as why he was working so hard to elect Jesse Jackson during the chilly winter months of 1988. As a child, I couldn't fully grasp what the big deal about a Black president was. After all, I learned about Eric Williams and Michael Manley alongside Abraham Lincoln and John Adams from early on. He had lived through prime ministers and heads of state who looked just like him before becoming a freshwater Yankee. So, what difference did it make?

He tilted my chin upwards to his serious eyes and said, "Because our hearts and minds need to match our Constitution if all people really are created equal. We're not there yet."

In my experiences traveling abroad, I've always been struck by how nationalism by people of color in other countries differed so much from what I came to live and learn here at home. Even if their skin was darker than mine, their pride of country was never a question. If you're from the Dominican Republic, you name it. If you're from Trinidad, you claim it. But in America, it boiled down to "I'm Black." Period. It was the only place where regardless if you were born and raised here, somehow we were made to feel apart from our own country. Look no further than in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when our own citizens were labeled "refugees" repeatedly by the mainstream media for days on end. Carrying on the complicated but necessary exercise of critical patriotism, to hold a mirror to America's conscience, forcing the nation to live up to the guiding principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence can leave one feeling like a stranger in a native land.

But as I watched the son of an African economist and an anthropologist from Kansas raise his hand and repeat "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear...," the tears flooded my eyes as a cleansing release. The anger and xenophobia whipped up in the witching hours of the general election became dead weight. The romanticized immigrant story of Ellis Island became threaded into the story of my mother and father. The stars and stripes became a symbol of not what was perpetually wrong, but what could be made right.

And it felt like that the hope of a cocoa colored girl with a funny last name can finally believe America has a place for her too.

Labels: birthday, family, Inauguration Day, politics, President Obama, reflection

Who knows how to push your buttons as well as your relatives do? The airtight bubble of tranquility that comforted me since late November was sufficiently punctured this Christmas. If you haven't guessed already, I'm not big on family gatherings or being around them for longer than an hour at a time, so the news that we were still going to have a full house threw me in a tailspin of epic proportions. My great-aunt from Baltimore was supposed to come and spend the latter portion of this week up here, but with the MTA/TWU tug-of-war that was at the time, still brewing, she opted out of making the trip on Amtrak. Inwardly, my disappointment lasted for oh, about 2 minutes. But the rug was pulled out from under me when I was told cousins from my mom's side of the clan along with assorted family friends would be making their guest star appearance in a very special episode of Hell for the Holidays.

Initial promises that our dinner would be small and tasteful went in one ear and out the other as the proposed menu tripled in a span of minutes with the last minute additions. Making the situation an even bigger comedy of errors was the fact is my kitchen is the size of a shoe closet, so struggling to keep the oven door open as my mom and I shoveled endless baking pans of meats, casseroles and pies in and out and over to the table in rapid succession like a madwoman. See why I keep my culinary forays limited to recipes for one?

Complicating matters was the fact that not only were our lives scheduled around CP time, so was our cooking. And even though our guests were still 20 minutes late, our Iron Chef tandem was running a full 45 minutes behind. It was only after hearing the first car pull up to the house that I had to pull myself from the stove to sprint into the shower to freshen up and get out of a football tee and boxers to appear "presentable" as the designated singleton mascot.

A few body splash spritzes and an ensemble change later, we finally rearranged silverware and the centerpiece to make room from a full spread. Turkey, a smaller roasted chicken, pelau (which is translated as rice & peas for the Yankee crew), callaloo, macaroni pie, pastelles, cornbread stuffing, green bean casserole, scalloped potatoes, candied yams, glazed ham along with two jugs of ponche á creme (think egg nog with a stronger kick) on a dining table that was swollen and overstuffed.

In walked the assortment of tanties, uncles and people I just didn't know from a can of paint but apparently remembered me "from small." Why do old folks think that jabbing you in the belly a la the Pillsbury dough boy while sizing up the pounds you've put on since they've seen you last is an acceptable practice? And of course when I shoot the death glance instead of the uncomfortable giggle they were expecting, I'm called rude. Whatever.

Trying to smooth things over from my obvious distance from the ladies making chit chat about distant relatives back home whom I'd never met, much less were familiar with was Mommy Dearest, and I couldn't decide whether I was proud or embarrassed that she still felt the need to brag about my minor triumphs, however few and far between they were now outside the confines of a classroom. The maternal instinct never wavers, does it?

And just when I'd resigned myself to slapping on the rubber gloves and Dawn ready to bat cleanup at the sink after the dessert dishes came back empty with just crumbs of black cake left, the doorbell rang and at the door was my mother's "cousin's" nephew summoned over to drop them home and also as an ulterior motive I sniffed a mile away — fraternizing with moi. One look at his LED lit belt and Akademiks jeans slipping off his ass guaranteed that I wasn't interested in small talk.

Next year, I'm booking a reservation out of town.

Labels: celebration, Christmas, family, holiday, rants