A day with the family at home, sun shining, and there’s Stevie Wonder or Whitney Houston or Mint Condition or John Coltrane on in the background. We already ate breakfast together and are looking forward to lunch. I’m fully present, anxious for nothing, right where I’m supposed to be.
Courage, probably. And kindness, alongside it.
I don’t have many living heroes. In this sense (and others), I agree with Gwendolyn Brooks: some of my best allegiances are to the dead. And those heroic dead are numberless. To name a few: Arturo Schomburg, June Jordan, August Wilson, Harriet Tubman, Lucille Clifton, Charles Henry Turner. My Grandma and Cousin Tanya and Auntie and Uncle Gene. Those many thousands gone, without names recorded in ledgers or textbooks.
I would have spent more time, as a younger man, working on my vertical leap.
Thankful. Looking forward to the future.
