This is the last week of 2023. Our family celebrates Kwanzaa. We cook meals our ancestors ate. We sing songs, light the kinara, and pray.  Time permitting and intentions allowing, I solo hike. While I was hiking, I was flooded with memories and creativity.  It was early morning, very cold, and I was alone on my trail for a long time. There is never a time when I'm alone outdoors that I don't talk to and listen to God. I can dump my thoughts and my heart out as I gasp for breath with each ascending step. I'm sure I am even audibly speaking at times. As I continued to give thanks and hike, I started to sing a song from my childhood, Sign me Up.  🎼Sign me up For the Christian Jubilee Write my name on the roll. I've been changed since the Lord has lifted me. I want to be ready when Jesus comes.🎼 I could hear my mother's alto voice belting out the lead to this song, and how we sang back up.  My life flashed before my eyes. I was reminded. All my roots and memories are...

     I was recently discussing  the angel contributions I made with my Santa. As we both thought of our childhood desires around food and food privilege, we talked of meals we seldom eat, but bring us good memories.  I mentioned neckbones. Later that day, he came home with what he called "then and now" meals. He brought Neckbones and a Duck. My grandmother used to make excellent neckbones. She boiled hers. It made the whole house warm. I decided to cook them on a Sunday, because It would rain and I could take all day. I didn't have stove top space to boil Collards, pintos,and neckbones all at the same time, so I braised them in a Dutch oven. They came out cooked to perfection. As we sat and ate, I felt like my Big Mama was right there. I felt like she was smiling and hugging me. I felt her assurance and acceptance with each bite.  It felt good. As my son tried them for the first time, we spoke of our heritage and tradition. I told him t...

Basic and Boring These words came to me as I was managing a recent crisis.  I feel like my life is exciting, fun, and filled with love.  However, my path to remembering my moments this way is paved with the  simplicity of the ordinary. The older I get, the more I appreciate these words. Life is about mastering,  and preserving  the basic and boring. When I was younger I loved to go ALL THE TIME. Every week I visited a new restaurant and saw a new movie. While I still love a great date night, after COVID I eat out alot less. During this time, I deepened my love for cooking.  I am a foodie and love fine dining experiences, but with escalating cost and poor service, the whole notion of eating out lacks luster. I was talking with my child when I coined this phrase; basic and boring. I explained to him that before we can do all the creative and exciting things life offers, we must master the basic and boring things.  I think we all look for ways to esca...

I was listening to NPR. They were talking about holidays and traditions. They mentioned how people often do away with traditions because they don't feel connected to them. As I listened more, they began to talk about how adults get to chose, relive, repackage and repurpose rituals in our lives. As I listened, I reminisced on my family and friend holiday rituals. There was baking holiday cookies and decorating ginger bread houses. There was always a fancy holiday gathering of colleagues and friends. There was the cruising streets to see the Christmas lights. There was church musicals and Charlie Brown. This year is different. There will be little to none of these things. The NPR segment began to encourage creating new rituals and traditions that fill the emotional gaps for what you desire in your life. It also cautioned about the side effects of replacing voids;grief. Earlier this week, I attended my second holiday gathering of the season. I was surrounded by new faces in a new pl...

  I love the theatre!   The Hamilton play   was excellent, even brilliant, but the soundtrack changed my life. Lin-Manuel Miranda is exo-brilliant. (and yes I just made up that word)   I was not able to see the play performed live until April of 2022.   But it was not for lack of trying.   Seeing it live on Broadway was out of the question.   Hamilton   was all the rage in pop culture, so I had to find out why.   I listened intently as Alexa played the soundtrack.   I was immediately hooked to the story.   I conjured images and scenes in my head.   I replayed the soundtrack until I memorized most of it.   As soon as it traveled, I was on the hunt for reasonable tickets. Disney did America a favor by debuting it in 2020 during the pandemic. I subscribed.   (I still have Disney today because of this.)   I was mesmerized by the images that synchronized with the lyrics that I had already memorized. I was not disapp...