Sep 17

SWEARING IS GOOD FOR YOU

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Some forty plus years ago, I was pregnant. At the time, I had two bouts of false labor, during which my husband at the time rushed me to the hospital. We were excited that I was finally having our first child. And the baby was the son he’d wanted for so long. We grabbed the go-bag I’d prepared. My husband drove like a crazy person. He was trying to make sure we made it to medical help before I gave birth in the street, in our apartment, or in my husband’s car. The hospital sent us home, saying it was false labor. They were right. I didn’t deliver then. A few days later, after my husband put his car in the shop, I felt labor pains again. This time, the hospital kept saying I wasn’t dilated enough, but they thought I would be soon. A few long hours later, I was the delivery room and I was miserable. I’d been in labor fourteen hours. My pelvis had locked for some reason and my son couldn’t get through the birth canal. I was screaming so loud and cussing so fiercely, folks in the waiting room told my husband to get a […]
Sep 10

IRONIC ISN’T IT?

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Lately, as I’ve been watching the news, an old song has been running through my mind. Actually, it’s two old-school songs I’ve been hearing in my head. The first one is “Back Stabbers,” which came out in 1972. It was sung the O’Jays and written by Leon Huff, Gene Mcfadden, and John Whitehead. The second one song is newer. “Ironic” came out in 1995. It was written by Glen Ballard and Alanis Morrissette and sung by Alanis Morrissette. Due to copyright laws, I can’t include the lyrics to either song here. I can summarize them. You’ve probably guessed “Back Stabbers” tells a story about a man discovering how much his friends aren’t really his friends. How his friends smile in his face but stab him in the back the first chance they get. His friends want to take his place at work on his job and at home with his woman. His friends do all it by sneaking behind his back. They never confront him. They do sneak attacks and thus he see them as “back stabbers.” Nowadays, his friends would probably use Twitter or Snapchat to demean, belittle, or stab him in the back. The other song, “Ironic,” comments […]
Aug 27

WHY I WROTE: ARMED BUT NOT DANGEROUS TO LOVE

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Have you ever wanted a do-over on your job? Maybe you wanted to undo a major mistake you made when you first began your career. Most of us remember those newbie days. How awkward we felt until we learned the rhyme and rhythm of the work we were hired to do. Maybe we spoke out at staff meetings when we should have shut up and listened. Or we took the boss at his word when he said, “does anybody have any questions?” We think, here’s our chance to show what we know. Of course, it’s greatly overwhelmed by how much we don’t know. We peppered the boss with a series of questions our supervisor wouldn’t answer, for good reason. They were stupid questions that if we did the assigned work, we’d find the answers. At the staff meeting, we just embarrassed our supervisor and our co-workers as well as ourselves. Now everybody besides us and our supervisor knows how incredibly dumb we are. They think: We can’t be trusted. We don’t listen. We don’t obey office norms. And if we don’t cool off, we will be gone before our supervisor can spit on the sidewalk outside. Got that image in […]
Aug 13

WHY ARE APOLOGIES SO DIFFICULT TO MAKE?

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Years ago, I had friend I was always trying to impress. She was in school earning her masters when I first met her. After twenty years of dancing around the edges of higher education, I returned to school for my BA first and then my masters, inspired by her quest for higher education. We grew close. We shared our hopes and dreams of the future. She wanted to be a lawyer, then a civil court judge. I wanted to be school psychologist until I learned how long my journey would be. I calculated I’d be a year or so from retirement before I met my career goal. In a particularly revealing moment, she told me how guilty she felt when her kid sister died in a fire and she couldn’t rescue her. I told her about suffering spousal abuse literally at the hands of my former husband. My tale of woe would come back to haunt me. My friend began to tease me about my domestic abuse. She made offhand, mean jokes about getting hit. The first time she did it, I ignored it, which was my mistake. The next time she said something offhand about spousal abuse, I stopped […]
Aug 06

Should you stick with the devil you know?

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
  Years ago, when my father was still alive, I remember my mother complaining about his activities. She’d discovered he was buying international lottery tickets and sweepstakes tickets. She kept finding stubs from money orders where he’d purchased sweepstakes or lottery tickets. My parents lived across the street from a shopping mall, so while my father no longer drove, it wasn’t impossible for him to walk across the street and find a place to buy money orders. At the time, my mother was venting about wasting money on a foolish expense. “Nobody ever wins these,” she ranted. “How much money was he wasting?” she fussed. “He could use that money for something else. He could put it in the bank and let it draw interest. Or just give it to me and I’ll find a use for it,” my mother promised. As daughters sometimes do, I listened without too much comment. My mother needed to vent. And I let her. While she was complaining, I was busy congratulating myself on my goodness. Although I hung out with folks who did, I never played numbers. I didn’t place bets on the horses or sports teams. I never bought lottery tickets or […]
Jul 22

WHY I WROTE: THE DOCTOR IS IN

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
  I had a dream about a Black female doctor driving through a small all-Black and Brown town, almost from another age when folks didn’t lock their doors. When folks all knew each other. What affected one resident in the town affected the entire town. Folks knew each other’s “business.” Folks knew each other’s children and didn’t need parental permission to discipline them because folks trusted their neighbors’ judgment. I decided I’d write a book about an old-fashioned town. I’d make the town full of Black and Brown folks. Typically, quaint towns as described above are portrayed as all-white or mostly white. I wanted my imaginary town to be folks of color. I wanted the folks to be sexually diverse as well. I wanted most of the main characters to be female. I didn’t want the town to only be filled with women either. My town needed its men too. As I thought about my town, I wondered what it would look like. Who would occupy it? What was the main industry? How would the town be discovered? The more I researched, I decided River’s Bank could be a small farm town with milk cows as the main product. The […]
Jul 15

HISTORY & WHO TELLS IT

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
The picture above was taken in 2015 around Thanksgiving. The shadows you see are my mother and me. We’re watching what’s left of our home being torn down. It’s a complete surprise to us. We both thought when she sold it to a nice young white couple for a great deal less than she imagined, the house … our house would be there forever. It just wouldn’t belong to us any longer. Two other unique houses built by the first Black families to live in this township, just outside of Akron, Ohio, were gone too. My home and my history as well as the homes and histories of the two other Black doctors had been torn down and buried in the in the grassy earth. Permit me to explain by going a bit backwards. My mother sold our home eight years ago in 2010. She’d been trying to sell the ranch-style home for years. She couldn’t get the asking price for it. Since the area my mother lived in had been zoned for commercial as well as residential use, she thought it would be easier to sell her house. Unfortunately for my mother, Ohio was one of those states that […]
Jul 08

THE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
When I was still working for city government, I formed a great friendship with a female co-worker. We used to talk about everything. She knew I was gay and accepted that fact. She also knew years ago that I’d been through a nasty divorce just as she was going through one currently. We exchanged notes about how bad my ex-husband or her soon-to-be former husband were. We spoke about our husbands’ idiocy about misusing our children’s affections or playing games with child support, hoping if things were bad enough for us, we’d come running back to them. We shared the difficulties of raising children as single working mothers. On the job, we also wondered why this unqualified, lazy so and so was promoted or given a raise when we had more qualifications and better service records, but we were not considered promotable. We had typical girl talks. While I liked all the things I had in common with my good friend, what really fascinated me was our weekly discussions about televisions programs we watched, which sometimes led to political discussions. My friend convinced me to watch Sleepy Hollow. I truly loved idea of a young Black as a romantic interest […]
Jun 25

WHY I WROTE: FOREVER WOMEN IN LOVE & LUST

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Have you ever been afraid to live alone? Have you ever been worried that you’ll never find that special one … the person you want to spend the rest of your life with? And you keep thinking positive. You’re in your late teens. You think she’s out there waiting for you to find her. You’re confident as many teenagers are, that you two will bump into each other like in the movies. Time will stop. Birds will sing. Flowers will bloom because you found her. You just know she’s the one for you. But it’s just a dream and you’re alone. Then you’re in your twenties. You notice everyone around you is a couple. You keep looking for her because you don’t want to be the only single one in your group of friends. Time flies. Boom, bam. You’re in your thirties. Friends are married. Friends have kids— and you? Well, you’re still alone. You’re still searching for that special lady. Now you’re starting to worry. Maybe she was that last woman you dated for a couple of months and dumped. Or was she that blind date your friends arranged. You cancelled that one at the last minute. Now you’re […]
Jun 18

LOSS

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
The picture above is a view of the Hudson River during a stormy day. The fog is partly covering the New Jersey shoreline near the Palisades. The road with the cars on it is the West Side Highway. It’s one of the major highways in Manhattan that runs along a body of water called the Hudson. The other roadway that runs alongside a river is the FDR Drive on the eastside, running along the East River. The bridge located over the West Side Highway is one of the entrances to Riverbank State Park. When I look at this picture, I think that’s how I feel. Sometimes, I’m sunless and kind of foggy, as if my brain is on permanent default. I get lost in the fog. There are no lights to help guide me to the light or a better day. My sister died six months ago. She was two years older than I. We didn’t speak daily. I’m not much of a caller. I never have been one to call first. If you call me and I’m in the mood, I will talk your ear off. My sister and I would talk on birthdays and winter holidays like Thanksgiving […]
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