Picture it…1972, the Jackson 5 come to Jamaica and my sister, their greatest fan, goes to their concert. I am too young to go but I ride in the backseat of my father’s Ford Cortina to the national stadium to drop her off and witness the euphoria in the parking lot for my four year old self. My big sister, my idol, brings home a signed poster of the Jackson five that adorns the wall of our shared room until she leaves for college in the United States and I, thinking I’m big, take down the poster to make the room mine, after years of waiting. The poster is lost but my journey with Michael begins.
Summer of 1983, I’m not sure whose party on Norbrook Drive in Kingston, Jamaica. I don’t remember whether I was invited or if I was along with an invited friend who carried me in but all my gate crasher friends were there. I can still remember the electric blue halter top dress I was wearing and the smell in the air of chicken being barbequed wafting up into the sky in blue plumes that clear, beautiful, summer night.
We were all dancing en group when a change in the pace of the music had signaled that single folks like me needed to depart the dance floor, while those with boyfriends snuggled in close. So I sat on the driveway of some person’s yard trying to save my hair from being too much of a sweaty frizz, when the DJ put on “Human Nature” and the boy I had a crush on asked me to dance. I still remember being led by the hand through the crowd to the dance floor and my heart beating so loud it almost drowned out Michael’s singing while my sistrens gave me the thumbs up signal as we moved closer. That was teenage bliss.
Fast forward a couple of years; my sister, her baby and I are leaving the hospital after a long sad visit with a loved one. The drive home was draining and sad, no one is speaking, our hearts were grey and the flow of our tears had just stemmed, momentarily. Michael Jackson’s “Leave Me Alone” comes on the radio and out of nowhere this little one year old in her car seat starts to sing “Neave me ano ow ow ow; Neave me ano ow ow ow; Just stop dogging me around.” We burst into laughter as our adult eyes made four in the front seat, amazed. She could not even talk that well, much less to remember the chorus of a song plus, when did she learn to sing? Just like that the mirth was back in our lives. Good memories from my twenties.
Next, that baby turns nineteen and suddenly, excruciatingly, her spirit is called home. Her funeral is being planned and I am to eulogize her. One my sistrens calls me from yard and says ‘what can I do?’ I say send Chissy to sing “Gone Too Soon,” she says “done.” Her daughter comes to Florida with a professional arrangement of “Gone Too Soon” on CD, belts out an unforgettable rendition of that Michael Jackson classic, stuns the gathering at the emotion and beauty in the voice of a then thirteen year old. We send that singing baby home in fine style. I say goodbye to my thirties.
Then Michael Jackson dies on my sister's birthday, she is the one who calls me to let me know.
So, today during MJ’s memorial I insist my girls watch, telling them that this is history in the making. They are not impressed! But then Brooke Shields comes on and wait a minute, that’s Hannah Montana’s Mom! They are enthralled and somehow a five year old and an eight year can relate, his multi-generational appeal has touched the youngest amongst us. Remarkable!
Goodbye MJ, I did not realize I was such a forty-one year old fan until you were gone. But as I am now just beginning to comprehend, your songs were there at every metamorphic interval in my life. I heard on TV that your career spanned thirty eight years, I know, I was there. God Speed. Selah.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Dancing Between the Raindrops
I decided that I had to carry out the garbage in a deluge tonight. Why I thought it could not wait until my husband came home or till when there was less water, I don’t know but I knew I had to carry it out so I did. I had been as mean and as stern with my children as I could have been as I ordered everyone to go to bed so as to rush out on my ridiculous task ignoring the hints their worried bedtime prayers spoke out loud, I was too focused on my mission.
When I opened the front door, the downpour roared right up to my face daring me to step out flashing its promise of deceptive luminance in brilliant waves of forbidding sheet lightening. So ignoring my inner alarm of the marauding elements, I ducked my head down and made a run for it. But then a funny thing happened.
I glided outside almost as if I was moving between tears. At first while I dropped my recycling tins in the bin I thought… for real the reflection of these cans shall surely cause me to get stuck by lightening… but it didn’t. Then I became energized. I ran with the first bin to the gate not feeling the rain and the cold as it emptied down from the skies on my head, I felt curiously free and almost as if I danced. By the time I got to the second bin I had hit a rhythm, I grabbed it from the side of the house, hoisted it over the car as if dancing with the stars bound, launching my partner to the sidewalk with pure unfettered athleticism even pausing to check that it and all its contents remained intact as any good waltz partner would. For my final flourish, I jumped in full out split mode, toes pointed on my rubber boot clad feet, spread eagle to back to the front door and safety. The dance was done, mission completed.
Back inside, I walked happily back up the stairs to the quiet of a sleeping household proud of my accomplishment. Then two little voices called out “Mummy are you safe, we were praying for you.” I was struck right then. The lightening came to me in the form of the insight that:- as I looked down on my jeans in awe at the fact that all but the hem of the pants remained dry as a bone:- what kept me safe outside was not my own courage but two children’s innocent forgiving hearts and a loving God who allowed a mother who had misplaced her priorities in urgency, the chance to come back and hug her children, again. Awesome!
Dance then wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance said he,
and I’ll lead you all wherever you may be,
and I’ll lead you all in the dance said he.
Selah.
When I opened the front door, the downpour roared right up to my face daring me to step out flashing its promise of deceptive luminance in brilliant waves of forbidding sheet lightening. So ignoring my inner alarm of the marauding elements, I ducked my head down and made a run for it. But then a funny thing happened.
I glided outside almost as if I was moving between tears. At first while I dropped my recycling tins in the bin I thought… for real the reflection of these cans shall surely cause me to get stuck by lightening… but it didn’t. Then I became energized. I ran with the first bin to the gate not feeling the rain and the cold as it emptied down from the skies on my head, I felt curiously free and almost as if I danced. By the time I got to the second bin I had hit a rhythm, I grabbed it from the side of the house, hoisted it over the car as if dancing with the stars bound, launching my partner to the sidewalk with pure unfettered athleticism even pausing to check that it and all its contents remained intact as any good waltz partner would. For my final flourish, I jumped in full out split mode, toes pointed on my rubber boot clad feet, spread eagle to back to the front door and safety. The dance was done, mission completed.
Back inside, I walked happily back up the stairs to the quiet of a sleeping household proud of my accomplishment. Then two little voices called out “Mummy are you safe, we were praying for you.” I was struck right then. The lightening came to me in the form of the insight that:- as I looked down on my jeans in awe at the fact that all but the hem of the pants remained dry as a bone:- what kept me safe outside was not my own courage but two children’s innocent forgiving hearts and a loving God who allowed a mother who had misplaced her priorities in urgency, the chance to come back and hug her children, again. Awesome!
Dance then wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance said he,
and I’ll lead you all wherever you may be,
and I’ll lead you all in the dance said he.
Selah.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
At Last!!
How appropriate was it that President Obama and his wife danced to the Etta James classic, “At Last,” on inauguration night? I alone can think of so many at lasts that culminated in that dance, on that hour, for so many, on so many levels, that so very historic night.
At last Mr. Obama was no longer President in waiting! At last Mr. Bush was out! At last there was a new direction, with the world watching, feeling inspired in this at last’s wake! At last the attempt to heal a nation broken by years of divisive policies could begin! At last Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream had been realized, he had been to the mountaintop and knew this day would come! At last African Americans, no, make that persons of African descent worldwide, could hold our heads high, our young people could respectfully pull their pants up, realizing that we are no longer a minority, one of us is the leader of the free world…At last!! At last the inescapable contribution of the slaves on whose backs the new world was built, had not toiled in vain; the tears of mothers whose children had been lynched had been vindicated; at last the indignities of the Jim Crow era were satiated and we could ride anywhere in the bus, design the bus, fix the bus or drive the bus, BMWs or walk, if we pleased (shout out to AKH)…At last, At last, AT LAST.
At last in this symbolic act, children who once saw themselves limited in the reach of their potential realized that they actually could be exactly what they wanted to be, at last their potential was really limitless. So here we sit ushering the dawn of a new era of inclusiveness awestruck. For those of us who thought we would never see it our lifetime, pinch yourselves, you are not dreaming; that night, the spirits of our predecessors (TMWR) danced right up there with the first couple. AT LAST, AL FIN, ENFIN… Jesus Wept. John 11:35. Selah.
At last Mr. Obama was no longer President in waiting! At last Mr. Bush was out! At last there was a new direction, with the world watching, feeling inspired in this at last’s wake! At last the attempt to heal a nation broken by years of divisive policies could begin! At last Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream had been realized, he had been to the mountaintop and knew this day would come! At last African Americans, no, make that persons of African descent worldwide, could hold our heads high, our young people could respectfully pull their pants up, realizing that we are no longer a minority, one of us is the leader of the free world…At last!! At last the inescapable contribution of the slaves on whose backs the new world was built, had not toiled in vain; the tears of mothers whose children had been lynched had been vindicated; at last the indignities of the Jim Crow era were satiated and we could ride anywhere in the bus, design the bus, fix the bus or drive the bus, BMWs or walk, if we pleased (shout out to AKH)…At last, At last, AT LAST.
At last in this symbolic act, children who once saw themselves limited in the reach of their potential realized that they actually could be exactly what they wanted to be, at last their potential was really limitless. So here we sit ushering the dawn of a new era of inclusiveness awestruck. For those of us who thought we would never see it our lifetime, pinch yourselves, you are not dreaming; that night, the spirits of our predecessors (TMWR) danced right up there with the first couple. AT LAST, AL FIN, ENFIN… Jesus Wept. John 11:35. Selah.
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