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“Don’t let your passion project bankrupt you.” These were the words spoken to me by Malcolm White, head of the Mississippi Arts Commission when I first bought the 100 Men Hall. I tried to heed the warning during the first year of resurrecting the nonprofit but found myself caught up in the momentum of potential.

Then a pandemic halted my momentum. The Hall’s St Joseph’s Altar was cancelled, Chapel Hart was cancelled, Alvin Youngblood Hart was cancelled, Cedric Burnside was cancelled. At the same time, the little bit of my 401k I was funding this momentum with was decimated. And my passion project was shelved to wait out COVID-19’s trajectory.

In the halt of it all, a small amount of wonder opened up as well as my old work – investigative reporting – where I have plowed my trade for the past decades. I tried to leave it behind, but the work clings to me me like ivy and I accept its tendrils because it pays my bills.

Lamenting its return, I spoke with a friend yesterday who was also in a state of pandemic inquiry about her own work. She asked, “Didn’t you like it at one time?” Yes, I said, I have a talent and skill for getting folks to speak to me and I was rewarded handsomely for it in its heyday.

Sadly, the work now pays mere shekels of what it did ten years earlier as journalism has been eclipsed by the culture of free the Internet created. And since we all need money to survive, I must gladly accept its scraps.

But I have been wondering what is it about money and work that come together to make a good life?

Yesterday, I was interviewing an elderly widower for a project. We were finishing up, and the man said, “I have a story I want to share with you.” He told me of his wife’s decline, and how the week she passed, she sat upright and began speaking clearly and told him, ‘I’m okay. Don’t worry about me.” Then the day she was gone, a pink rose bloomed outside his window, its petals were larger and a deeper hue than the roses that surrounded it, and he knew it was sign she was okay.

He said, “Roger took a photograph of the unusually large rose and put it beside my chair with ‘I’m okay’ written at the bottom. I’m looking at it right now.” So I told him about a similar event in my life. My mother had lay dying in her hospital bed, and I asked her how I would know her from beyond. She said, “Dog.”

I wrote about it a long time ago in an essay titled My Mother The Dog:

Right after Tin turned one year old, he needed to have surgery to open his tear ducts because his eyes watered all the time. I had grown up with a doctor for a father and a nurse for a mother, so I had always entered the medical world with a knowledgeable person by my side. Now with both parents gone, in the post-operating room, as the nurses strapped my son’s little body down, and inserted into his thin arm an IV drip, I started panicking without my parent’s support. When the nurse wheeled the gurney away, I was ushered into the waiting room where I went to the window and began sobbing. “Mom, please, if you’re out there, please show yourself,” I whispered. 

The window looked out to fenced backyards in a nearby subdivision. The yards had gas grills, patio furniture, soccer balls, and bicycles. I felt sure I would spot a family’s dog, but there were no dogs to be seen. I sat down in the dull orange fiberglass chairs and stared vacantly at the television screen turned to a daytime talk show. One after another commercial came on, and not one had a dog in it. I kept repeating under my breath, “Mom, where are you? Please take care of him. Please be with him.” 

I went around to each table and thumbed through magazines. I grew a little alarmed because there was not one image of a dog on any page. How could this be? I was starting to think that no dog was the sign. By the time the nurse came through the doors to tell me Tin was fine and now in recovery I was tied up in a knot of worry.

When we arrived home, Margarete, his nanny, was waiting for us. Together we put Tin into his crib. She put her hand on my shoulder, and I almost started crying again from relief that this whole operation was behind us.

I stood by the video monitor outside Tin’s room watching him as he lay quietly in his crib.  

“He’ll probably sleep for a few hours,” I told Margarete. 

I went upstairs to my desk. I let out a few deep breaths that I had been holding onto since before dawn when I had gotten up to take him to the hospital. I set about my work, turning on my computer, opening emails, and then began my phone interviews. 

An hour passed quickly, and I hadn’t heard anything, so I went downstairs to check on Tin. Margarete was sitting at the dining room table with her sketchbook open. 

I walked over to the video monitor. Tin was sleeping peacefully on his stomach.

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

“He’s fine,” she said.  

“Good,” I said. “Whew! I feel like I need a nap after that ordeal.” 

Margarete smiled and continued sketching in her book. 

I refilled my water bottle, and started to head back upstairs. 

 “It’s funny,” Margarete said as I opened the door. “After you left, Tin barked like a dog for about 20 minutes before he fell asleep.” 

I told the widower about how I had been trying to adopt a child and my mother was dying in ICU, and she died on a Monday and the following Monday I met my son. He said he and his wife had adopted a son too – Roger, the one who took the photograph of the rose.

When I hung up the phone, my eyes glassy with tears, I realized this work I have dismissed has always paid me handsomely in stories. If you listen to stories, you could piece together what makes a good life. And then you too could suss out a life that even the rich aspire to live.

• 

Yesterday, the casinos opened back up in Hancock County. Half the information I hear is that we are moving too fast into more trouble ahead. Half the messages I read is that we are returning to normal.

I keep my guard up for normal’s arrival. It’s only now in the long morning walks and evening bikes rides that I have come to realize why normal is elusive. I grew up out of step, out of time.

My father moved us around as if we were military. Packing us up and flying us off to Managua, San Salvador, Panama, Puerto Rico, and driving us through all hours of the night towards Manhattan, the Bronx, Atlanta, Pensacola, and back and forth and in and out of New Orleans too many times to count.

He did this because he could earn a living anywhere as a doctor – with my mother as his nurse if it was his own practice. I lived in hotel rooms, my aunt’s rooms, my Maw Maw’s rooms, and many apartments, rooms and houses that we occupied as a family.

I never once experienced a life like my friends, where their father, mother or both went off to work at a certain time, and came home at a certain time, and they vacationed at a certain time, in a certain place. Our time and places dwelled in uncertainty.

I stumbled into a career as an investigative reporter, helping to build a company, with a regular paycheck, benefits, and a certainty and one day it imploded. I’ve spent nine years trying to claw back to that steady paycheck, the knowing what my days and months and years would be, the certainty that what I produce would be rewarded.

I spend a lot of time trying to make money out of my gifts and talents, trying to assuage the fear of not being able to pay my bills. And just when I thought I might master this puzzle, a pandemic hit, and whooshed away any thoughts of actually making money and instead offered me a sea of time.

Time to meditate, walk, take bike rides by the waterfront, not think about the mastery of money or schedules or work but instead time to contemplate a whole world reduced to a collective breath and uncertainty. It feels like home to me. And I realized I have been chasing the wrong currency all along.

• 

When the quarantine began, I was at a crossroads with work. Not the 100 Men Hall, which I had managed to get on a monthly music schedule and had been pushing towards self sufficiency, but rather work that pays my bills.

On March 15, everyone and everything stopped and it’s as if the world stepped back to where I had been standing all along. I’m not going to lie, it felt good to not be the only one struggling financially.

Then because I could not be productive, it opened up space to just be. During this time I did not plan, strategize, or produce I just began walking longer distances. Hadn’t I moved to Bay Saint Louis to walk by the water?

I heard some people lament the quarantine. I read many social media posts about how people were grieving because of it. Not people who had lost a loved one to the virus, but people who couldn’t work, socialize, attend an event, and travel.

My thoughts were elsewhere. Yes, the momentum I had gained at the Hall had stopped. No, I didn’t know what my next move would be. But I was no longer swimming through jello, instead I felt vast space opening up all around me.

Now we are returning to what most people hope is “normal” and I’m not feeling it. Normal for me was not ideal. Trying to earn a living, operating a nonprofit with limited resources, no time to walk, bike, write and be. I’m not feeling inclined to re-enter that world, yet I spent none of this time re-imagining it either. What I have done is pry open even more space to receive suggestions or directions and hope that takes me where I need to go.

This morning I walked along the Gulf of Mexico watching the dolphins race by, feeding and then thrashing around the water, and then zooming to the next thing. I longed to find a rhythm similar to theirs, one where I could follow my spirit and not my plans.

• 

When Tin was six years old, his school had a Poem in your Pocket day. I was two years into having lost my job, hair and then moved out of my dream house. So the poem I picked for Tin that day was Mother to Son by Langston Hughes.

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Just yesterday morning, I was thinking about what Ahmaud Arbery’s mother is feeling now. How would I feel? I wouldn’t be feeling – I’d be thinking – about the hours spent at swim team practice, the nights spent reading to him in bed, the mornings trying to get him up and ready for school, the minutes spent either putting him or me in time out, and the moments spent searching for the right piece of wisdom I could drop on my son to make sure he stayed safe.

I’d think about how my biggest fear would have come true – my son was killed because he is Black. I would be a hashtag mother. Wanda Cooper-Jones is a hashtag mother. If mothers of white children knew how this fear consumes mothers like me, they might take to the streets, start an organization, put up yard signs, sell merchandise – tee shirts that read:

THEY MATTER.

Happy #BHM! Langston Hughes never goes out of style! #Repost @i_americafilm
New Orleans poet #KellyHarris with Cuban-born percussionist reimagining “Mother to Son” https://t.co/YO0LXlXdZN pic.twitter.com/zqa68kdjxk

— Tayari Jones (@tayari) February 20, 2020

A while ago I got embroiled in a situation with an ex that caused me to ask repeatedly, ad nauseam, beating a dead horse style, “Why Me?” It took many meditations, consultations, therapies, and a come to Jesus to get me to a place where I realized I was asking the wrong question (read: assholes happens).

So instead of Why Me? I began asking how do I handle this situation? I learned through meditation, perambulation, and disapparation I am capable of withstanding all of it and even more (read: pandemic).

But there is another why, as in why am I so lucky. I have an anthem for this why by Kris Kristofferson – Why Me Lord? I embraced this song when I couldn’t understand why so many beautiful things were happening in my life. Like Kristofferson, I had a profound religious experience where I felt so inordinately blessed by my life and I kept asking why? Why me Lord? Why are these people being good to me, why am I so lucky, why am I so fortunate?

Until I realized why is not the question.

I was married for many years to a man I finally had to ask to give me flowers because he kept telling me he wasn’t going to do what was expected of him and I said, well I would like them. Towards the end of our time together, he began buying elaborate bouquets. But it was too late.

I realized though I could give myself flowers.

Opening myself up to my own love invited others to love me. Just this past week, I’ve received many gifts of flowers and now my house feels cheery and bright.

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Why was never the question. We deserve love in its many forms, the presence of a friend, the gift of flowers, the moments that bring us to our knees because we are so grateful. We do not deserve haters, broken sewers pipes, and spider bites that make you itch and burn at the same time.

Life doles out both – lovers and haters – and ours is not to ask why but to discern the difference between gifts we deserve and those we don’t and to make room for the lover while we quietly dismiss the haters.

From my mid twenties to thirties, I thought to myself, I’m not really going to be a writer until I have a child. Where this idea came from I have no idea, but I had asked my grandmother and my mother on separate occasions what had made them happy and they both told me it was their children. I was not surprised by my grandmother’s response, but my mother’s answer shocked me.

I grew up believing my mother should have been somewhere else. She should have been a movie star or married a rich tycoon and traveled the world on a yacht. Her regal appearance helped my imaginings, and also my mother’s drinking made it seem as if she was somewhere else for as long as I could remember.

Not to be deterred, I wanted a child. More importantly, I wanted to be a mother. I thought I’d have a knack for it and that I had a lot to offer a child. So began my quest to get pregnant with a reluctant husband, and after we split, my relentless adoption journey that brought me to my son.

I remember the first time I saw him, I knew beyond doubt that I was born to be his mother. I’ve had that clarity over and over again. Yet, mothering Tin is like trying to stop a house that has a fire started in every room from burning to the ground.

Mothering Tin has pulled me to people and places that are akin to be tethered to a band of liars and thieves.

Mothering Tin has opened up a deep knowing inside of me that is forever tied to all mothers around the world.

Every year, that has passed since I began mothering Tin has been about me trying to keep him safe from a world I am pushing him to be in.

From the get-go, I saw a society that disposes of Black boys like yesterday’s hashtags and schools that try to elevate their own grades by hijacking my child’s joy – and I knew these were never going to help Tin grow into his potential, his light.

It seems every day I move ahead with my plan for parenting Tin while Tin races beside me with his own plan that either stands in the way, alters or annihilates my plan. I think I am gaining ground but when I look at the collateral damage from any single day, I’m running in place, exhausted, and my foresight is cloudy with a chance of a hurricane.

If you asked me should you become a mother, I’d most likely yell a resounding no on many of these days. I’d tell you mothering is a mother fucker and stay the hell away from it!

On a bike ride two days ago, Tin asked me about one of his friends who is always showing off about how smart he is. Tin asked, “Is he smarter than me?” I said to Tin: some people seek validation for being smart. Some people seek validation for being physically fit. But Tin doesn’t need to seek validation for being anything other than being Tin, because he knows he is valued and loved.

Tin turned and said, “Thank you,” then stood up on his pedals and raced ahead of me.

To all you mothers out there, I salute you!

• 

Around Bay Saint Louis, there are signs everywhere of people and businesses returning to normal. I walked into Claiborne Hills yesterday and didn’t see anyone wearing a mask. As much as grocery shopping used to be meditative to me, I have only gone a handful of times in the past two months and each time was stressful.

I’m on a Facebook thread of merchants here and over the past two weeks, each post about reopening ranged from the gleeful to the cautiously optimistic. People are wanting to return to normal.

Each city, county, and state is posting new rules, new criteria, new ways to return to normal. Restaurants can open but only with pick up, casinos still cannot open open despite the large one down the street’s blinking “Opening Very Soon” marquis.

On Instagram, there is a BBC ad for a contact tracing app and how it works. The post said, “You might be asked to download a contact tracing app” to monitor movements and alert you if someone has been in close proximity to a person who has Covid-19.

This year – 2020 – was supposed to be a BIG year for me and many of my artist friends, who could feel in their bones that finally our day had come – recognition, revenue, respect – for the work we have been doing. Instead, on March 13th, the day I kept Tin home from school before the quarantine had officially begun, 2020 seemed disguised as a giant pause button.

PAUSE what you are doing, and then we will resume.

Only now that the quarantine is easing, and the masses are biting through their invisible bits, I look around for normal, and think it has left the house.

The nonprofit I was building – a place to gather, commune, and heal – must be reimagined. My BIG year must be reimagined. I would have told you two months ago I was putting in place many intertwined expressions of my life’s work.

2020 at 100 Men Hall would yield a mix of fantastic music, beautiful cultural celebrations, and a roof to commemorate all life events. For me personally, 2020 would push my writing and my community further along.

Now I see the button doesn’t read PAUSE but instead STOP!

STOP what you are doing, it needs to be reimagined, it needs to yield different results, it needs to bring out something else in you – not what was readily available. There is something else waiting to be born.

As people begin hanging their OPEN signs on their doors, mine is staying closed. However I am supposed to be in the world is unclear once again, and until the mist clears, I’m not coming out. I see normal has changed, why don’t they?

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