OLD PEOPLE...WHAT DO THEY KNOW?

I’ve always liked being around old people. There was something about them that I knew only came with age. Perhaps it was their wisdom metered out in coded messages. Old ladies loved to say things like, "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Those words made no sense as a kid, but as a married woman, I can testify to the truth behind those sayings. Perhaps the words made no sense because there was no context surrounding them. When I was a child, children were not allowed to be around grown-ups when company was visiting. We were ushered outside to play, so the snatches of conversations I overheard always felt like something forbidden.

As a teenager, I would quietly hang out along the periphery of adult gatherings and overhear conversations that exposed how difficult it was to be a woman, to retain one’s dignity, and how much a woman sacrificed for her family.

As a young adult, I was fully immersed in the adult gatherings. I was free to laugh aloud, ask questions, or sit quietly as I witnessed pain move through the teller’s body at the retelling of an event. Most of the stories shared were funny, but there were times when the person telling one story inadvertently transitioned into a tragic one.

Now, as an elder myself, I wish I had written down some of the stories I heard because my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents are dead. A treasure trove of information, wisdom, and understanding died with them. That’s why I love history and reading about how we, as a people, have survived the hardships thrown at us. Old people, the ones that some look at and think don’t know anything or didn’t make anything of their life, are vessels of wisdom. At the very least, old people have survived the consequences of their choices and what life has thrown at them. In my soon-to-be-published book, Rolling In The Deep, an old woman is comforting someone as they grieve the loss of a loved one. Here is an excerpt from that conversation:

“When you get to be my age, you lose a lot of people that you loved.

It doesn’t get easier. I always say that getting old ain’t for the faint of heart.

You got to be strong to be as old as me because life gets real hard. There’s a

piece of scripture that helps me when I get to feeling bad. I can’t tell where

it is in the bible, but it’s here.” Lottie thumped her chest twice and continued.

“It’s here…Count it all joy. Even though we don’t have him with us

now, wasn’t it a blessing to have him at all? Count it all joy, the good times,

and the bad times. We’ll get through this because we know he would want us to keep on living. One day, you’ll be able to talk about him and be surprised that you’re laughing instead of crying. Then you’ll be able to Count it all joy.”

When she finally stopped speaking, he didn’t respond because there was nothing he could say. He tried to make sense of what she was saying, but grief wouldn’t allow him to find joy in the passing of a loved one.

Lottie is a minor character in the story. She is an old lady who sits on her porch and watches her neighbors. Most people would think she is a nosy old woman whose life is over. Perhaps some would say that she didn’t make anything of her life because she lives in a neighborhood that most people would want to move out of. But they would be wrong. Lottie has lived a full life, owns her home, raised her children, and has fallen in love again, even though she knows time is not on her side.

So, if you have an older person in your life, talk to them and learn their story. Learn about their struggles, how they survived, and what they achieved. Perhaps you will understand yourself more by learning more about them. Knowing what they have overcome may give you the strength you need to keep going, and by all means, share that knowledge with the young people in your life.

ROLLING IN THE DEEP

Rolling In The Deep is a book about love and its various manifestations: romantic, enduring, unconditional, familial, friendship, and self-love, which are woven throughout the book. What is required of love? That was the question that Dinah asked on the third night of the Rodney King riots in 1992. Action was her answer and response. While Ambrose, in contrast, would decide that night that the cost of loving Dinah was, Too damn high.

Delray and his wife Dinah migrated from Louisiana like many other Southern African Americans in the 1960s, looking for a place where they could stand up straight and pursue a dream they thought was promised to all. Although the promised land didn’t afford them the luxury of dreams, they found a special place in Los Angeles called the Florence-Graham or Florence-Firestone area. Later, it would be lumped into the general geography of South Central Los Angeles and often erroneously referred to as Watts. Within its 3.580 square miles, the story of Dinah, Ambrose, Indigo, and Onyx unfolds. Miss Lottie and her dog Roscoe come along for the ride. The story touches on how the neighborhood’s changing demographics and shared history affect the place they call home. The book begins in 2010 with two devastating events happening on the same day. Indigo is sexually assaulted by her live-in boyfriend on the very day that her grandmother, Dinah, dies. These events begin the unraveling of love, trust, and a long-buried secret. When Indigo moved back to the old neighborhood and the home that her grandmother raised her in, strange things began to happen. She questions her role in the assault, her judgment, and her friendships, all while grieving and wondering if there’s something evil in the house.

Ambrose was the group's sole survivor who came to Los Angeles in the 1960s. His wife Lucinda, his friend Delray, and now Dinah are all dead. Dinah, a woman he had loved longer than he had been married to his wife has just died. Her death made the promise he made in 1992 to keep her secret even more troubling. So, Ambrose solicits the help of his grandson Onyx to determine what Dinah’s granddaughter intends to do with her house. As Onyx and Indigo become reacquainted, he keeps his grandfather apprised of her movements in hopes that no further action will be necessary. But when Indigo’s dreams feel more like memories, and she is not the only one feeling a malevolent presence, Ambrose can no longer keep Dinah’s secret. Indigo grapples with who she is and who her mother and grandmother were after adjusting the lens through which she saw them and herself. In the end, she asks herself what she wouldn’t do for love and is shaken by her answer.

Rolling In The Deep is finally in the publisher's hands. I'm excited to have this book available to the public and, hopefully, in your hands soon! Thank you for supporting an independent African American author.

THE SELLING OF OUR SOULS: MY TAKE ON DIDDY AND HIP-HOP

They say opinions are like a-holes; everybody has one. So, here’s mine. I don’t celebrate anyone's downfall. I’m old enough to remember when hip-hop came onto the music scene. A nephew of mine was very excited about it, but I didn’t get it because those guys weren’t singing. They were talking. It wasn’t until I began to really listen to what they were saying that I understood the enormity of hip-hop. Young African American men had innately tapped into what their souls had been created to do. They were doing what their ancestors before them perhaps would have done if it had not been for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. These modern-day griots were telling the stories of their villages on vinyl in lyrical poetry form. That is, until they sold their souls for a record contract. Looking back at the early days of hip-hop, especially when it was still underground and spoke of social injustice, hip-hop was a cultural expression of what it meant to be Black in America. However, the thing that they call hip-hop today is not,” The Culture” as the Recording Industry, BET, or Essence would have you believe. Hip-hop, like everything good and beautiful that African Americans have created from their shared experiences has been stolen and broken into distorted pieces. Instead of spotlighting inequities and calling for social justice in this country, rappers put out diss tracks verbally attacking each other. But even before the personal diss tracks got to the present-day level, we had the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that, I’m sure, led to the unnecessary deaths of an unknown number of young people caught in the crosshair of gang rivalry hyped up by a lyric of a song. The commercialization of this art form, which was effectively the selling of the artist's soul when the artist chose to say the Black women were big booty bitches and hoes; and Black men were drug dealing, pimps, and players who couldn’t commit to anything or anyone was when hip-hop was no longer, “The Culture.”

We have got to stop selling ourselves. We don’t need to denigrate our women, our men, or ourselves to sell a record. Female artists, keep your clothes on when you go onstage, and let your voices and the lyrics move your audience. Male artists, we don’t need you to tear down another Black man or lie about your drug or gang-banging background. Just tell us what you have learned in your life’s journey, how you came to be a man in this foreign land, and how you love without too much detail.

If this Diddy thing is true, he was not alone in it. He was not allowed to operate for years without people in the record industry knowing what was going on. I say, let him and anyone else who participated or allowed him and others to rape children and other adults be revealed and punished. Let the industry burn down to the ground, and then maybe Hip-Hop can start over again and become what it was meant to be.