Walk With Me

Chadwick Boseman said that there would have not been a Black Panther if not for Denzel Washington. His life serendipitously intersected with Washington’s two decades ago when he was still a college student at Howard University. Boseman had been accepted to a summer acting program at Oxford, but he couldn’t afford the tuition to attend. Determined to help the talented student, Boseman’s teacher implored an actor she knew to help with paying the way for the future Panther and eight of his classmates to be able to pursue that incredible opportunity. Only upon returning home from the summer program did Boseman discover that his inspiration, Denzel Washington, had been his secret benefactor. After keeping this secret from the public for 20 years,  Boseman paid tribute to his idol at the American Film Institute in 2018, sharing that “there would never have been a Black Panther if not for Denzel Washington”, but Boseman wasn’t talking exclusively of his Oxford sponsorship; he was speaking...

       For the past ten years, the term “adulting” has become increasingly popular and even become part of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, as many millennials seem to struggle with the difficult tasks of being a grown up. While I have my own struggles with life for health reasons, I was taught the basics of being an adult at home and in school. In fact, for most of us who became adults before Justin Bieber even existed, we took adulting classes in middle school, which they called “vocational education”. For 12 weeks each, we took Home Economics, Agriculture, and Business. The entire student population cycled through the courses during the year, and in these classes we learned some of the basics, with a little sugar on top.      I went to George C. Miller Middle School in Crescent City, Florida. The campus overlooks beautiful Crescent Lake, and it was always a treat to catch a glimpse of the glistening water in between classes. ...

  When I was a toddler, my great-grandmother Merle Crone, my father’s maternal grandmother,  was a widow who managed a bar and restaurant in the tiny town of Pomona Park, Florida.The business was the namesake of both her and my deceased great-grandfather George, aptly named, “Crones.” My grandfather built the business with her, and managed it, until one night in 1970, which altered the course of my family forever. Grandma Crone passed away when I was thirteen. She always seemed classy to me, but a little disconnected, like something was always on her mind.  I remember her clothes being very fashionable for the time and she drove a cream-colored Cadillac, her hair always perfect, a beautiful silver bob. My grandmother was a very put together woman most of her life, so it was difficult to watch when her bones and her mind both began to fail her. In her elderly years, she became very frail and small. On one occasion, Grandma Crone needed a bath and my father asked me to help...

In the we e hours of the morning because a thought was nagging me, I decided to get out of bed, Google my childhood rental home, map the route to my elementary school, and walk it virtually using “street view”. I had no idea the memories that would come flooding to me from doing this exercise, especially through squinted sleepy eyes in the dim hours of darkness before the dawn. I started with the street name, South Sixteenth Street, and realizing I lived in the second house on the street, I zoomed in to where I thought I lived, noticing the house number come into sight, 319. “That sounds like it has a ring to it,” I thought, like maybe I had to memorize it in case I got lost so I would be able to tell a helpful adult “Hi, my name is Brandy, and I live at 319 South 16th Street.” When I looked at the street view, a 360 degree virtual view from the street on Google Maps, the home didn’t look as familiar. The paint was different, the moss overgrown. I wasn’t even sure that this was the rig...

  My early years aren’t anything to brag about. I was born a bastard, although my parents did reunite and ultimately wed. Those four years were extremely volatile. My father was an alcoholic, and a violent one when he drank. My mother was a gorgeous, but complicated woman who enjoyed the drink as well.  Dad was a handsome tall blond who went to Catholic school in elementary school, military school in high school, and served a couple of years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He got out as soon as his contract was up. That life just wasn’t for him. Born in 1951, he was more of a hippie type, interested in poetry and music, and the occasional herbage.  Mom was absolutely gorgeous, olive complexion and raven haired with high cheekbones, doe eyes, and a killer smile. Four years his junior, she had dabbled in hairdressing, but since my father managed the family’s bar and lounge with his grandmother, she ended up bartending there. In our early years as a family, we were for all intents...

       There are two things all women need to do in order to survive: always be aware of your surroundings and for the love of all that is holy, TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS. I know that sounds histrionic and paranoid, but most women have at least one experience in their life in which they have to implement these tools, perhaps not ever knowing if the danger they felt was real or imagined. Unfortunately for me, the danger was very real. Thinking of him now, even though I never saw his face, a shudder comes over me, every follicle on my body standing at attention, the same feeling I got that night, the same instinct I listened to, and it just might have saved my life.      My aunt and uncle, also my legal guardians for my teen years, bought me my very first vehicle when I was seventeen years old. It was an old beat up tan Chevrolet Cavalier station wagon with a generous helping of bondo. Uncle Keith was a body man and had been for two decade...