Yesterday I was so lucky to have breakfast with my college mentor, Dr. Barbara Emerson, who was instrumental in allowing me to have no boundaries in all the things I wanted to do at Eugene Lang at the New School way back in the day. Me and my cohorts were able to put together the first black theater festival there and actually pay our professional friends (like Jessica Care Moore, Jasiri, T’Kalla, Bradley, Shelley Nicole, Nathan Trice to name a few) to come and participate. As a black women in such a progressive academic environment, she was refreshing, strong, unwavering in her support, opinions and wisdom. I remember my father really adoring her at my graduation (especially after the Dean commented that she’d never met a real autoworker before when I introduced him - that got an eyeroll).

So yesterday morning, Dr. Emerson and I caught up and we got on the subject of Sekou Sundiata, the beloved playwright/poet who changed my life through his work and through the simple instruction of connecting headlines to art so I could understand my world in contest and content. Dr. Emerson said she’d missed Sekou’s memorial at The New School because another good friend of hers had passed, Asa Hilliard. She then realized that both of these men were born around her time and that there weren’t that many black men her age because of the Vietnam war. The birth years of black men from 1947 onward had been tricky since not many came back home. It never occurred to me. My dad was one that did come back home but never ever talked about what happened there and I could usually get him to talk about ANYTHING. Vietnam was a closed door.

So incidentally, at the same time this conversation happened, one of my dad’s best friends since the womb, Richard “Scooter” Williams, was making his transition in Detroit, daughter and pastor present. His daughter, Kirsten, was one of my very best friends when I was in 1st - 3rd grade. Her father took us to the mall many times, our first Michael Jackson concert and chaperoned many crazy sleepovers. He taught me that it was okay to ask for what I wanted since, at that time, I had some crazy notion that asking the opposite usually got you what you really wanted. I wasn’t that imaginative obviously.

What a great life my dad, Scooter and my Uncle Mitchell have had. They’ve had adventures that many would envy, they have children who adore them in so many different ways, they’ve left a legacy of loving outside of the usual boundaries since blood is really just blood but love is really family. They gave me tools to be who I am now and I’m eternally grateful (I’m not sure if I can do a funeral yet since my dad’s really left me in a fragile place and has still) but not a day goes by that I don’t remember driving around Highland Park as if that was my world where I could expand and contract with ease and security. Memories are almost like my bible of sorts. I have such loving pure ones that I am thankful everyday when I wake up and am able to love as I do for the people like Scott, Marcella, Jen, my brother, my mom, Ari, Jessica, Kamilah, Inge, Eve, Vasanti, Yvie, Maritri, Amanda, my cousin Renee…the list is pretty long because of that time. How lucky I feel right now because of the untraditional.

Have a great time with dad, Uncle Scooter.

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