The Late Arrival

It came to me in the space between our commode and bathtub, which is about six inches in older, smaller homes like ours. The area rug had been removed to expose the tile floor for its weekly scrubdown. (If you're thinking What type of slovenly person only does this weekly , stop reading here because you're way beyond my pay grade.) After gathering a plethora of multi-colored, pungent toxins, with my right hand bracing the tub's edge and the left bracing the porcelain throne, I took the knee and began scrubbing, rinsing, re-scrubbing and rinsing again over the pop and crackle of patellas, rubellas, nutellas and other assorted bones. Soon my forehead was in this tight spot, around three inches from the floor. Geez, it probably looks like I'm praying down here or something . I   shook off the thought and craned my neck to inspect the underside of the bowl. Wait a minute...really?  Wasn't I just in a board meeting a couple of weeks ago, spouting off a super-import

Sometimes second-guessing is a good thing. Yesterday was one of those times. Jamie read the post in which I borderline ranted about what I perceived as my daughter and her basketball team being racially painted with a broad brush. Even though I don't take back what I said, our conversation was what I needed to self-reflect. I was angry about Street Ball being used to describe how our daughter's team played, and to an extent - the individuals on the team. Now, in my mind, Street Ball is just code for poor and black. What I didn't know, and what Jamie told me, is that the term can also be used to describe a certain type of aggressive play. I don't know Rochelle...maybe she was just using the term just for what it is and not any kind of code. Maybe it's just what she really meant.  I hadn't thought about that. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe she brought her experience with that as a technical term and used it in this particular instance while I, on

Does anger have stages? You know, like the five stages of grief? Maybe there's just two: the Anger itself and Forgiveness. I figure Forgiveness either happens quickly and replaces the anger, or it slowly sidles up to anger and co-exists alongside it. Forgive and Remember. It can happen. Right now, I'm angry. Forgiveness is inching its way to my anger but right now, that emotion is so wide, it's not leaving a sliver of space for forgiveness. Not just yet anyway. Georgia's little school participates in basketball tournaments against other little schools, some suburban and some city-based, like hers.  It's great for these kids to interact with each other, especially since our community is very segregated: whites in one enclave -- many in the suburbs, blacks in another - many in the city and a few sprinkled in the suburbs, then Hispanic/Latinos over there, and Asians over here.  Tonight, they played a suburban school -- mostly white. Georgia's te

It's no secret that I'm no fan of Valentine's Day . Grocery store card aisles bathed in red and pink give me a nervous twitch. Despite that, each year I find myself standing there on Valentine's Day after work skimming through picked-over cards in a panic. Maybe its because they're all picked over, but it seems the only ones I find are the You are the air I breathe and I can't live without you variety. For whom are these cards written anyway? God? And do I really want to tell Jamie via Hallmark that I think of him as little more than a glorified ventilator? Sappy love song lyrics like When we're hungry, love will keep us alive evoke a knee-jerk response of No, when I'm hungry I don't want a big bite of love, I want some food. Then there are lyrics that, in the name of love, write checks that no one's butt can afford to cash like The Fabulous Thunderbirds'   I would walk ten miles on my hands and knees just to come home and kiss y