Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody
I went last night to a friend’s fundraiser for girls in Ghana who are unable to go to school. This is part of a long trajectory she has taken in the form of raising money to help women in Ghana. The fundraiser was billed as a Nina Simone evening as Simone worked in clubs to pay for her own classical piano lessons without telling her mother, so with the same fierce determination my friend is helping women who might be the next Nina Simone reach their potential. As she got up to speak, she got choked up as she recalled the challenge of starting this business years ago and she thanked her dad who had flown in from California because he helped her set up the program. Afterwards, we watched a film her husband had put together of the women in Ghana applying for the program.
I left and went to a friend’s 40th birthday party across town. She told me her friends all got together and bought her and her husband a dishwasher because their’s hadn’t worked for seven years and when her friends overheard her talking about it, they decided to put in together and buy her one. Now those are friends with benefits.
photo by Josh Brasted
This morning, I woke at 3AM with my head cold and laryngitis and thought my brain would explode. Tin woke up late, thankfully, but then when I tried to lay down again, I became his human trampoline. Seeing how there was nothing else to do but get this boy some activity, I tried to figure it out – a) couldn’t do a playdate because I couldn’t speak to the mother; b) he didn’t want to go to the zoo or aquarium, c) amusement park!
So C it was – we went over to City Park’s Amusement Park and he rode all the rides and some pretty hairy/scary ones at that! I was impressed by his utter indifference to heights and fear, which was good because I was incapable of going on spinning rides in my condition. I had to ask one guy if he would take Tin on the Ferris Wheel because I was so dizzy I couldn’t go up there. So he was able to ride even the rides that required an adult.
As we were exiting, a petite, older Asian woman with a tiny baby in a stroller asked me what my name was – when I told her, she said her name is Rosa and she would start praying for me if I didn’t mind. “I don’t mind at all.”
Tin and I strolled over to Morning Call and sat outside on this fine, beautiful day, and Tin ate beignets loaded with powdered sugar and I had a cup of delicious cafe au lait. A very tall and large man walked over to our table and said to me with conviction, “It’s all going to be good, you hear.” And he spoke to me as if he knew me and knew what my definition of good might be, so much so, that I just nodded and said thank you.
Everybody needs somebody sometimes, it’s just the way we are designed.
