I was born between 7:04-7:10pm on August 30th, in Washington D.C., at Howard University Hospital. My father helped deliver me, tying my umbilical cord. He was still a medical student at the time, and this was unauthorized; but he refused to leave the delivery room and his professor/dr on duty finally granted permission. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ My mother was the Assistant Director at Washington Adventist University. She would pull out the bottom draw of her wooden desk and line it with bedding, and I would sleep there during class. “I never needed a babysitter with you” she would tell me. “Students would come and volunteer to watch you between their classes, and sometimes it would get to where I would have to come looking for you! But you were always in good hands.”
My earliest memory is my family living in New York: a three story home with a swing in the attic. I remember a snowy day, walking on a sidewalk with high snow, white moon boots on my feet, and barely able to reach my fathers fingers. I was wearing mittens, and so was I unsure of the security of which he was gripping my hand. I raised my knees high in attempts to waddle trough the snow.
I loved flowers as a toddler. I loved them so much that on our daily walks, my mother would stop so I could touch them as we passed, and in efforts to not have me destroy them, my mother would softly coax “gentle, gentle” as I reached for them. I soon came to believe that all flowers were called “gentle”.
My parents waited 5 years into their marriage to have me. Much later, I would learn why: less than a year into their marriage a Black man in the south was dragged and lynched: Michael Donald, just 19 years old, was beaten and hung from a tree by the KKK.
Often, and certainly in specific neighborhoods, my parents would walk on opposite sides of the street to avoid negative confrontations and/or being followed. In one particular incident, a situation had become violent: “It was a suburban neighborhood, and we had just moved to the area. A car pulled up, and two men jumped out with baseball bats. It was right outside my bosses home, who helped chase them off. It was terrifying. But we weren’t going to stop being who we were.”
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This series originated on my Instagram; to see the series please visit the app. The posts will be cross promoted here, for those who don’t have an Instagram account, or for those who still prefer to read in the blog format. Due to the character limitations of Instagram some of the posts shared here may be longer, or more detailed.
