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Showing posts with the label family

It Started with a Christmas Album

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  used with permission ( link 1 ) ( link 2 ) I ain’t e’em WANT to sell my house…      Four weeks before this was all in motion, we took the girls to the Tanglewood Festival of Lights.   If you don’t know, going there usually means you will be in your car for 3-5 hours, and this time was more on the five side of things.   With children in the car, my phone was not to be the one that sourced the music for the ride.   Instead, we listened to a Christmas album. I HATE Christmas albums, but this one was jazzy and the singer had--… this VOICE.   I asked the wife person “who is this?” at least 621 times.   She explained who and then how she knew/knew of her each time I asked, since we were in traffic with the car in park.   The jazzy sounds and buttery voice had me hooked.      In November, my last previous neighbors had moved and after prepping the house, the company that owned it opted to SELL instead of seeking a new tenant.   To the surprise of ALL involved parties, the house snared

Life Comes at You

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     People from where I am from aren’t supposed to do the shit I am   doing right now. … stick with me here.      A child of a single mother, we grew up in the hood.   Beyond the normal shit of football in the street and ding dong ditch at 2am, time was spent running from racist-ass cops before they became emboldened enough to shoot people that looked like us in the back.   We always had what we needed , but had to learn to grind hard for wants that often never quite panned out for even that, as we all had to grow up fast.   Extra money from cutting yards and handiwork was often remitted back into the household and became food and necessities.      Rarely did we have the luxury of travel.   I had never left North Carolina until right around my 12 th birthday and that trip was to Atlanta to visit an uncle who had been living there my entire life already.   Any and all travel in my childhood involved visiting family and never included a hotel unless my grandfather was aroun

Old Beginnings...

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     Life is a weird thing… It is this dance of things that will inevitably happen to us, fought against how we will react to them. [Phlip note: isn’t it weird how we often use the word “inevitable,” but I have never heard the word “evitable” used in my 38years?] In 2015, I had some defeatable health issues that I spent the necessary time, money and medical attention addressing.  It took until the end of the yea to be cleared of it all.  2016, I rediscovered my pen--… err, keyboard and ran with it (more on that Friday).  I also got the clearance from my doctors from the above situation to resume vigorous physical activity. 2017 was my year.  Cleared for action and newly motivated to eat right and attempt to live forever, I started walking/running and eventually bought a bicycle to get my physique under control. And I threw off 40 pounds in 9 months. October, we consolidated households and life became easier still.  No back-and-forth, no maintaining two sets of bills and

It's Christmas Night...

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     See-through Sunday…  On a Monday. 8:20pm is when my fingers hit the keys on this one.  I have been awake since 6, and even that was on only about 6 hours of sleep, with reasoning for which I can only blame myself.  I have no work tomorrow and could crash out RIGHT now, but I also don’t want to wake up at 3am, so I am pushing through it.      I moved into this house in August 2009 and closed on it 12 weeks later.  This is my 9 th Christmas under this roof, my 6 th one as a father.  Somehow this one feels different.  I spent it with both my existing and incoming families.  I woke up and had to wait on the babies – one of whom is actually 19 – to wake up so we can start opening gifts.  We made said babies breakfast, a tradition in my family.  I am at the age where it is not about what is in the boxes, but for the reaction of everyone else in the room when they open theirs.  The magic of that littler one’s face when she woke up next after me and sees what Santa left her,

Granddad...

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(I'm the one in the diaper with the beard) When he worked third shift, he would get home from work right about the time we’d be waking up.  We were often in the house – even outside of the few months we lived there – so we were there when he came in on Saturday morning.  We’d wake up and take us to this tiny greasy-spoon diner around the corner.  They always knew what he wanted before he asked. The place closed sometime before I was old enough to take HIM to breakfast there.  I hate I never had the chance. It is a fish place now, but I still have warm flashbacks every time I am in the building. Often in my school years, especially in 4 th and 5 th grades, we would be in class about to go to lunch.  “Phillip, your granddad is here.”  He would sit and eat with us and our friends and generally be the coolest old man in the building.  Furthermore, he would bring us all happy meals.  Never once do I recall TELLING him how many people I normally sat with at lunch, I am guess

Hotep Proposals

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     We’ve gone on about the need for the strong Black family unit capitalizing on the fact that potential queens outnumber available kings by a wide margin.  No need to present any figures on that one, just believe it. Or research it yourself and come back here when you’re ready.      Heck, we even wrote a beautiful  poem  about it one time. But the question seems to remain for some reason, “how?” We’ve decided that today will be the day we focus on the answer to that question.      First thing’s first… You have to find the first one and work from there.  Meet her wherever you meet women.  The mall,  Wal Mart  Target, HBCU Homecomings, churches, WHEREVER. That’s the easy part.  The hard part, now is getting her on board with your vision.  You’re going to have to sell her some dreams.  “Dreams,” as things so happen to be, are pretty much standard.  The house and kids things are a good place to start. Once she is in the fold, the task of getting more qu

A (real) Celebration of Life

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Wait until a random Thursday and call your next of kin… “[next of kin], I died in my sleep last night.  It is on you to plan this funeral.” Hold on a minute, I know that seems morose as fuck, but I am going somewhere with this.      When we’re at funerals, they tell us not to be sad because it is over, but to smile because it happened.  To celebrate the life of the loved one that you now have to bury and not to lament overt the loss.  What better way to celebrate a life than to do it while the person is still around and sentient to the love they’re receiving?      Lady and gentleman, I present to you…  The living funeral.  It is not a concept I came up with, it is one I kind of read about daydreaming for this post. The takeaway, though is let me have my flowers while I can still smell ‘em. In my family, the day of a death, the phone calls are made post-haste with mind on getting the body into the ground as quickly as possible.  So if you make that call on Thursd

Phlip - 1, Black Friday - 0

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            So it’s 4:30pm on Black Friday.  I had successfully managed to not have to leave my house to do anything other than pay a couple of bills as I might do on any payday Friday I should so happen to not have to work.  Hell, it is what I would do if I HAD to work.  Stops also include also payday standards Food Lion and ABC (grocery and liquor for those who don’t live here) for the items I would normally acquire to get me through a weekend.             As my child is still only one year and four months old, she does not yet have the tastes that even MIGHT require that I stand out in the ball-chillingly 25º morning before a store opened to buy her anything.  Responsible adulthood has unlearned me the habit of really wanting many things for myself that aren’t directly tied to the experiences of holding down my house for Ava and my wife.  About noon, coming in from taking my mother with me to the grocery store for a second time and returning back after dropping her off and