WE LOVE YOU!
We Love You!
This is the theme of the 30th Anniversary of the 2024 Essence Festival which fits perfectly with my mission as a writer for the last 30 years. For me, One Night in LA, my first feature film, being picked as an official selection of the 2024 Essence Film Festival is a convergence of a perfect storm, a Quiet Storm: Me 30 years after beginning the writers’ journey making peace in an upside down world!
I started writing in 1993 because I needed a place to express the love I had for America, my birth country, that was a bit of a mess back then, as it is now, but that I thought I would always love. I wanted to express my admiration and love for African Americans. We were so strong to pursue our best lives in the wake of so many obstacles. I was in aww of our light and success. Our rhythm and the love notes we sang in the midst of the trials and tribulations we faced. My love would always be peppered with contradiction; a little anger about this or that. Forgiveness for missing the mark, and finally ladled with acceptance of it all because “It is what it is.”
We can only just be!
I needed to allow the emotions swirling in my head to land on a soft surface. And so I prayed, and I was guided to write. Although I had no idea where God was taking me, I knew He knew I was a sensitive soul. I needed soft landings, like I used to fold into my Bigmama’s arms while my Mom pursued worldly things. The first thing I wrote was a novel, On Edge. I called it a ”Coming-to-Sense” novel, a novel about urban professionals, figuring out how to be true to their inner selves while cultivating self-love no matter what. By the time it got to book store shelves, it was 1997, but, still, some weren’t ready for my main character's husband being in the closet, a dedication to my high school BFF Dennis Billups.
Dennis was a 6'9, handsome Moorehouse graduate, a Kappa, who passed from an AIDS-related illness. He was my wing man, my encourager. He was the first person I said “I want to write” out loud to. We’d talk on the phone all night long while my husband worked the night shift and my three boys slept nearby. Some times we’d hurry off the phone as my husband’s key was turning in the lock. We talked about his life as a professional gay man in Los Angeles. Dennis had been openly gay in high school and hated that many didn't dare to come out. Now that we had lived a little. Gone to college — I’d graduated from UCLA, he’d graduated from Moorehouse — we were coming to grips with the realities of life.
I loved having three little boys but was , in the words of my favorite poet Langston Huges, finally realizing that,
“Life Ain't No Crystal Stairs. It has tacks in it!”
But, still, We Love Us, could have easily been our themes of life. We met our Junior year at El-Cerrito High School, which is a picturesque Bay Area town, settled between Richmond and Berkeley; in its hilly parts, there are 360-degree views of the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, set beneath blue skies. When I moved there in the 70s, the people were friendly and open-hearted. It was diverse. Although the Blacks were bused in, all the students were one big happy family with Dennis leading the charge as our class president. As such, he was the organizer of decorating our class float, and we would party and have fun in the sessions decorating it. Dennis had long arms and they were always flying in all directions, as he emphasized this or that. The first time, I drank so much that the room was spinning, I was with Dennis. He kept assuring me that I’d be okay.
The moment I swung open the doors of El-Cerrito High School, walked its corridors with my Detroit swagger — Detroit, the land of cool Black people, who had migrated from the South — I was a big hit. I had a “sitting on the corner blowing Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson tunes vibe.” LOL. My favorite album that year was Smokey Robinson's Quiet Storm. I was an old soul, a jazz note, a girl who would grow to be a Quiet Storm.
I was instantly popular as Dennis Billup's sidekick. It also helped that I moved down the street from the vice president of El-Cerrito, and she and I became car poolers and instant best friends. It helped that my Mother was a big wig, literally and figuratively. She and her cohort were some of the first Black women to wear weaves, drive Cadillacs and Mercedes, and dress in St. John. She was a Rockafeller Fellow and studying under Dr. Ruth Love, the first Black woman Superintendent of Schools in Chicago and Oakland, and Laval Wilson, the first Black male Superintendent in Berkeley and Boston. We were in good times.
It was the 70s and “We Love Us” was the theme of America,
We loved America for changing. Changing its laws that made my Bigmama, Daddy Floyd, and Mama sit on the back of the bus. That wouldn't allow Black folks to go to school.
We Love Us metamorphosed into a country where everyone could move on up, to get degrees, move into a house overlooking the bay, drive fancy cars, leaning to the side, adorn in St. John. Even while some relatives lived in garages, we had hope that Change Was Gonna Come!
We Love Essence for putting us on every cover with our brown skin glistening and making us feel proud of our brown skin!
We Love Us, Black People, for persevering with love in our hearts, for going through horrific injustices, while being a Natural Woman as Aretha sang and a Quiet Storm as I will be, loving on America with words, just like the lyrics below do,
Soft and warm, a quiet storm
Quiet as when flowers stalk at break of dawn, break of dawn
A power source of tender force
Generatin', radiatin', turnin' me on, turnin' me on
Oh, you short circuit all my nerves
Promising electric pains
You touch me and
Suddenly there's rainbow rings
Quiet storm blowin'
Through my life, oh...
Quiet storm blowin'
Through my life, oh... blow, baby
Check back tomorrow for another cup of tea from me. I’ll explain where the Cup of Tea Theme comes from.