November 10, 1975
In March 1975 my mother and father made love. They most likely were in the Grad school apartments at UC Irvine. I'm sure the radio was on. The sun was shining, and there was an old familiar steadiness that only 1975 could bring.
Star dust, clay, honey, and milk - me.
Weléla Mar is a name from the Ethiopian people - and it means "pure honey."
History was combined /DNA / immune systems / memory.
My mother was born / raised /wed in Oakland, California.
A dancer /violinist / mathametician.
She finally fell in love with a man
that seemed to love himself enough
to love her.
My father was born in Gary, Indiana.
A bio physicist / self taught photographer /
a sick disco roller skater / and clean - he had style.
He must of have loved her that day in March, in that moment peacefully.
Hoping for a saviour.
They probably wept.
On November 10, sometime before midnite we all chose to meet in California - Artesia to be exact. We all met at Pioneer Hospital. My mother, after leaving the library studying, went to the bathroom, and her water broke.
My body decided to come face up, looking for no one's rules or approval.
Doctors scurried, to find metal objects cold and fixed to somehow turn
my body side ways for a healthier birth pathway.
I laugh at the thouroughness of human intellect. My soul has never followed rules.
The pathway that I chose that day to meet my mother and father
is and has always been the path less travelled.
I remember dancing with my father at four years old, no diaper, only a shirt. Laughing and spinning - feeling the wind against my cheek and my father's warm hand on my back. Forgetting this moment is like swimming in melted crayon color gold.
My first dance.
My mother and father moved somewhere in southern California, had a great dane named Shushambo and a red volkswagon bus named Suzy Q. That van took us all over, the mountains, Los Angleles, and the park. It had a small kitchen with a sink, a small fridge, and a hot plate. The back seat was long, and if you needed a nap there was a bed right behind it. Curtains covered the windows which kept the strange lights out when we slept in Suzy over nights. She always smelled of worn leather, but we kept her clean inside and out
They placed me in trusted space with Shushambo, my favorite dog to call and respond to. Gray and too big for both of us to get through a hallway, I would playfully hit him with newspaper while mispronouncing his name time and time again. Until my tongue could adjust to his African name years later.
Later we learned deep sorrow, what trauma feels like in the body when Shushambo was killed by a car when my father took him for his daily jog. One minute he's there, the next he's a ghost.
Growing strawberries / writing my name / laughing in the back parts of my throat / were forgotten that day. Flying kites seemed trite.
My mother, my father, and me - wept together on our used couch like children.
