Thoughts on the Day Whitney Houston Died, Tilly Went Missing, and Another Reason Why It’s Bigger Than Too Short

I have other things to write today. To write this week. I got most of them done, but the words that follow won’t go away. I am deeply saddened by the death of Whitney Houston in ways that are surprising to me. I have wept several times this week with deep sorrow for her death. I like Whitney Houston. I know her songs. How could you not? But I was never a deep fan. I have not been to her concerts. Yet, I am still sad.

The day Whitney Houston died was one of the coldest days of one of the warmest winters. My son and I awoke to a broken thermostat. The second time this winter, but it was too was too cold to wait for the repairman. My mind started going through scenarios for our temporary evacuation. Who could we call? Where could we go? I looked out the window and I saw our refuge. My friends Kate and Kathi, now Aunt Kaki and not Aunt Kaki, live directly across the street. With one phone call, we were in front of a fireplace. I had the Sunday New York Times and a cup of hot tea as my son played with trains on the floor. This house has often been a safe haven for us with out the creep of cold from a failed furnace. When I was tired, when James asked, sitting on the porch for pie, just cause I knew Kate was in her garden, I sought shelter at that address.

When we arrived, I could see worry on the face of a friend who reassured us we were welcome even as her eyes shown with concern. Near tears, she said Tilly had not been home in almost two days. Tilly, named for the rototiller where she was found him, is Kate’s barely domesticated cat. He is mostly skiddish with human beings but he is faithful to Kate. I am not a pet person. I am severely allergic to cats. Dogs left my mothers house sharply on my father’s heals. I have learned the love of pets mostly in my interactions with friends as an adult. I now understand the constancy and companionship of an animal who spends their days and nights with you. Already gripped with sadness for this human black woman lost too early, I wasn’t sure I could also deal with loss of Tilly. We—Kate, my boy, and I—moved around each other in her house where I often find myself at home with intermittent conversation, a short nap for baby, and the warmth of the fire.

For some the recounting the death of this famously talented woman alongside a missing cat might seem disrespectful. But sitting their worried for my friend, I began trying to map the path that led me to such strong feelings for this woman I did not know.

Whitney Houston is part of the soundtrack of my life. A soundtrack mostly dominated by hip hop, but the pounding rhythms could not quiet the power of her voice. The breadth and timber of her voice also reflects my path from the nurturing incubator of black religious life to finding our way in the predominantly white world of our professions despite the loving connection our work showed to that first important community. Her voice. Her voice. Her voice was not post-racial nor did it transcend race. Her voice was the gospel and the blues temporarily housed in pop songs. It was a constant companion. It was always available and at times of repeat. Whitney Houston’s voice was also a refuge.

Music for black people has been a place of shelter, resistance, comfort, community, pleasure and pain. A deep love for music is not biological to African Americans. It is nurtured at our mother’s breast. I have tried to pass this defining part of my heritage to my own child. The first song I sang to my baby fresh from my womb was LaDiDadi and the second was Amazing Grace Shall Always Be My Song of Praise. Yes, Jesus Loves Me. Precious Lord. I sing my son the songs of my mothers mothers mothers because late in the midnight hour when I have needed someone or something and neither was to be found I sung myself into the morning. I mingle in some songs of my own times, but what I want him to get is the power of his own tune to cover him when times are bad and elevate the pleasure in times of good. At some point in my life at each of these times, Whitney was with me, like Tilly was with Kate. Tilly came back, but Whitney is still gone.

I have been intentionally seeding my son’s ear with songs of my life because I also am wary that the music he will hear once my arms are no longer a shelter will work against all the right and good I try to teach him. This week has also been a time of contentious debate about the comments of the rapper Too Short in an interview in XXL magazine. My friend Sarafina has said it all on that subject in the previous post, but as I think about the meaning of music and the passing of this woman, I am again reminded that it is indeed bigger than Too Short.

Thoughts on Caste and Hypocrisy in Pointing out Misogyny in Hip Hop (guest blogger, Sarafina Conner)

Thoughts on Caste and Hypocrisy in Pointing out Misogyny in Hip Hop

Over the last week, I have been watching as friends and colleagues have weighed in on the debate on misogyny in hip hop as expressed most recently in an interview of the rapper Too Short in the magazine XXL. When one of my oldest and dearest friends shared her thoughts on this incident, I knew I had to share. These are not new ideas. She—from her multiple perspectives as mother, teacher and friend—routinely rails against the dehumanization of black women in the lyrics and imagery of hip hop and the casual way in which pornography and sex work (i.e. stripping) has crept into mainstream popular culture. She is one of my oldest friends and the first guest writer on my blog. Please read.

It’s Definitely Bigger than Too Short…and Hip Hop

I am not a writer. I don't blog. I am not one who engages in much scholarly or activist discourse. I am not even an activist. But I am a mother. I am a teacher. I am a student. And I am tired. I am tired of having to constantly re-program, re-sensitize, and remind. Cause that's what ya'll keep telling us Parents and Teachers to do, right? Everyday I debrief: he/she doesn't REALLY think women are bitches. he/she doesn't REALLY think people should be poppin bottles, pills, and coochies all day everyday. he/she doesn't REALLY mean that it's a good idea to go in the club and have sex with a stranger every weekend. no lovelies: he/she doesn't REALLY mean that it's cool to .... They ACTUALLY would all tell you to stay in school, go to college, graduate school, join the next generation of leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, and global change agents.

Yeah.

That's the ticket.

Frankly I don't know how 99% of the hip hop industry sleeps at night. Cause I can’t.

At this point there really is nothing new in forms of commentary, analysis, or critique to offer. We've talked about hip hop and it's state for far too long. Way before this Too Short / XXL business. If you honestly think that Too Short is some sort of anomaly you’re in denial. Whatever scathing indictments we offer of Too Short will NOT absolve us of the responsibility. Let’s be honest- Wu-Tang, Biggie, Tupac, Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, Lil Wayne, Common (yes. Common), Odd Future, Snoop, Dre, Eminem, Lil Kim, Nicki Minaj, Ludicrous, 50 Cent, Nas….I could go on and on and on posting lyrics by these and many other artists that are OVERTLY misogynistic and promote the absolute dehumanization of Black girls and women. I could post numerous hip hop videos from the past 15 years (some with cameos by “conscious mc’s”) that perpetuate the most vile images of women this side of the porn industry. So it’s troubling that people are trying to make Too Short the fall guy of hip hop. I repeat: blaming Too Short will not save your soul. Writing essays about his music, signing a petition to get the editor-in-chief fired, or going on Twitter and Facebook rants will not undo the damage of the cultural schizophrenia and bipolar disorder of hip hop.

Too Short does not exist in a vacuum. His critics, many who have long supported the misogyny when delivered by their favorite mc’s act as if he was able to maintain one of the longest careers in hip hop without being aided and abetted by legions of fans, industry folk, and bystanders. Yes bystanders. People who make comments like: “it’s the parents responsibility” or “balance in hip hop is good”. Bystanders like the “conscious” rap critics and artists who constantly disparage the state of mainstream hip hop but sing praises and pour accolades on Odd Future and Tyler the Creator because they’re “creative”. Those same critics are now saying that Too Short crossed the line. Really? So 106 and Park doesn’t cross the line daily? Hmm. In every single episode we see a live studio audience of teenagers- (aka young people) being encouraged to stay in school and make healthy positive decisions juxtaposed with music videos and performances that promote quite the opposite. 106 and Park disseminates it’s advice in the form of media images five days a week, and yet there is no public outcry or movement to get it pulled off the air. No public outcry. I haven’t heard the hosts be accused of “pedophilia” nor have I read where the guests’ performances have been labeled “crossing the line”. Why now is everyone so concerned about young people being ill-advised? Where is the consolidated internet storm over Kanye’s artist Big Sean and his # 5 Billboard classic Dance Ass (featuring the hip hop sensation and soon to be host of the Nickelodeon Kids Choice awards Nicki Minaj). Yes, I said KIDS CHOICE AWARDS.

#5 Dance Ass by Big Sean (featuring Nicki Minaj)

I’m st-stacking my paper my wallet look like a bible

I got girlies half naked that shit look like the grotto

How your waist anorexic and then your a$$ is colossal

Drop that a$$ make it boomerang

Take my belt off b*tch I’m Pootie Tang

Tippy tow tippy tay you gonna get a tip today

F*ck that you gonna get some d*ck today

I walk in with my crew and I’m breaking they necks

I’m looking all good I’m making her wet

They pay me respect they pay me in checks

And if she look good she pay me in sex

Bounce that a$$ it’s the roundest

You the best you deserve a crown b*tch

Right on that,

Nicki’s [Nicki Minaj] verse:

Wobble Dee Wobble wop wop Wobble wobbin'

Ass so phat All these bitches' pussies is throbbing.

Bad bitches, I'm your leader.

Phantom by the meter.

Somebody point me to the best ass eater!

Tell them puss* clean, I tell them puss* squeaky. Bitches give me brain cuz all them *****s geeky!

If he got a mandingo, then I buy him a dashiki and bust this puss* open in the islands of Wakiki

Kiss my ass, kiss my anus cuz its Finally Famous

And its finally soft, yea its finally soft.

I don't know man guess them ass shots wore off...

Stay poppin, google my ass!

Only time you on the net is when you google my ass!

You f*ckin' lil whores f*ckin' up my decors, couldn't get Michael Kors,

if you was f*ckin' Michael Kors!!

Big Sean, boy how big is you? Gimme all yo money and give me all yo residuals... Just slap it on my ass, ass, ass, ass, ass!

I imagine it’s because Too Short has not garnered the level and type of support as some of the other mainstream artists. Perhaps because he doesn’t attempt to cover his lyrics with super slick production and more radio friendly dance club music and r and b like hooks. He keeps it real, raw, and uncut. And for THAT I say he is much more sincere and authentic then so many of these other artists (and fans). He doesn’t perpetrate a fraud- speaking out on political issues and advocating for social change on one hand while undermining both on the other. Nope. No Too Short in Sprite, Best Buy, or fashion commercials. His fans are as genuine as he. They are loud, brazen, and proud to sing his praise. And I can’t be mad at them. My anger is reserved for those who have created and maintained this hegemony in hip hop. The hip hop elite embrace misogyny and materialism when it’s wearing suits, a fro-hawk, on a skateboard, showing up in Paris at high end fashion shows, art galleries, and Fortune 500 companies. Yet when it’s a little more hood, gully, grimy, and going straight to dvd instead of the box office folk are incensed and appalled. Yeah, I’m thinking hip hop is the site of a new caste system ya’ll. Does this all mean I co-sign or approve of Too Short's egregious decision to encourage young boys to sexually harass and abuse young girls? Of course not. So let me be CLEAR- what he said is reprehensible and unacceptable- but it would be a gross mistake if we resign our conversation to Too Short and our action to petitioning for the removal of the editor in chief at XXL. It's bigger than Too Short. And Hip Hop. We got work to do. Real work.

I'm living for a world where children are not sexualized or victimized by those who are supposed to be protecting, guiding, and loving them...

By Sarafina Connor

Thoughts on A New Definition of Kin

A short piece I wrote, What “Next of Kin” Means, was published in the New York Times as part of its series Room for Debate. The forum is titled, Family Ties, Without Tying the Knot. Each of the participants contributed a short piece on the legal implications of relationships based on something other than marriage. My piece explores ways our limited understanding of kin can lead to difficulties and complications for families that don’t fit the traditional heterosexual models.

I am very proud to be in the company of my old friend and colleague Kevin Maillard who organized the discussion, as well as Katherine Franke and Leah Ward Sears, who I have long admired. The other contributors are Robin Fretwell Wilson and Laura Rosenbury.

Thoughts on Buying into the Local

Kentucky is a strange place. I say that not to be negative but as a description of a historical and cultural puzzle I have been trying to piece together for almost six years.

My first few years living here, I mostly felt invisible.

Then I would have these reminders of how visible one is when you are new to a place where class, race and social boundaries are so settled. How my disruption of these old lines made an impression. I am here 6 months and a woman standing in front of me in the line to buy tickets at the movie theater turns around and smiles with recognition. When you are born in a pair and have someone who lives an independent life in tandem with your own, you know that smile within millimeters of lips parting. The woman sees and says, “you don’t know who I am?” I ask if she is a professor on campus. She reminds me she is the new gynecologist I had only seen once months before. I ask if she remembers all her patients clothed and standing up and she, without condescension or hostility states the facts of the new place where I live, says I don’t get a lot of black women law professors in my office. This kind of coming-to-mind because of being out of place in space where place matters continues in large and small ways, especially when I am alone.

But I am mostly not alone… now. The birth of my son has completely changed the way I experience Kentucky and Kentuckians. His birth in this state gives me a lasting connection to this place where I have, at times, felt so disconnected. He is, I think, what my colleague Frank Walker calls an Affrilachian when I am still Texan wherever I go. In truth, he has made me more than connected. He has made me visible.

From the minute I took those first short walks in the cold of January to stave off cabin fever, strangers have stopped us in our path. “How do, baby? How do?” repeated in mountain twang, country talk cleaned up for the city, and the musical rhythms of Kentucky Black English. Men and women would rush ahead to get doors. They guffawed out loud at his sweet baby, now boy, smile and fat dimpled hands. They engaged him in conversation even when he only responded in toddler patois. His adorableness was heralded as we move through grocery stores. Two years of watching this and it has just occurred to me that he has, in some ways, made a new part of Kentucky visible to me.

I once discussed with an old man who sat on the aisle while James and I were in the center seat of a flight from St. Louis to Louisville how much Kentuckians seem to love babies. He said, “When you ain’t got much, your babies is all you have.” He said this in an accent that I now readily identify from the area east of Lexington. I immediately understood what he meant. My mother raised us with little of nothing. Yet, she invested everything she had in us. We are lasting evidence of her hard work and love. There are a lot of poor people in Kentucky particularly in the Eastern part of the state. Coming up on the rough side of the mountain or the hard scrap of the inner city, may only leave you with love to give your babies, but this is something more than love.

It is a pride of love for children. An identity based in a richness of heart when all the world sees is poverty. It reminds me of the sociological writings on poor black women and sexuality I read in grad school that discussed the power that arises from controlling your own body and reproduction when everything else in your life seems beyond your control. You love and make children because you can, they are yours and you are theirs. I don’t want to romanticize the difficulties of parenting under financial stress by making love more than it is. An emotion that fuels but does not feed open mouths. But, I have seen the tenderness that all babies are owed in the eyes of men whose visage might make me nervous under other circumstances.

Tonight when my son and I left the grocery store, there was burly white man whose face had the ruddiness of a lifetime of outdoor work parked in a Chevy Silverado blasting Johnny Cash parked next to our car. I could see him watching us as we approached the car. It was dark, we are not post-racial, and this is Kentucky, which like Texas has a history that puts black women negotiating the night with children on notice. As I lifted my son to put him in the car, the man in the truck turned down his music. He started real slow. “Enjoy every minute.” Once he caught my eye and understood he had my ear, he went on. “I would love to have me another one of them. Mine are old and when they was babies, I was working and living hard. If I could do it over now when I have more time. Oh how good it would be.” This is what babies do to Kentuckians. In that moment, he could have been my father who also missed the growing up of his older children only later to father a young son with all the love he had, but didn’t give, to the dozen or so children born before. He said other sweet things about children and growing up. I am recounting tonight’s event in this writing, but I can’t tell you how many times my own racial constructs have been demolished by such interactions. For a long time I have wondered how different my life would be in this state if I moved through it at all times with a baby on my hip.

Although I know a lot about the sociological descriptions of Eastern Kentucky, I have never been East of I-75. I have not been, in part, because I don’t wonder in rural areas. My urban eye has no landmarks in natural landscapes. Too many trees uninterrupted by strip malls, tall buildings and gas stations make me anxious. But mostly, I haven’t been because I was warned not to go beginning with new faculty orientation. I was not just warned about the landscape but also the people. I was led to believe that I would only encounter parochialism and hostility from the students who ventured out of their hollers and made it to the University. This has not been the case.

In fact, it has been the exact opposite. Some of my best students have been young white people from the mountains. When you teach about exclusion and marginality, they come to class with a ready understanding and ability to articulate what it means to be an outsider and judged for aspects of your identity you were born with. I have been watching one of these students chronicle the arrival of her first child on facebook. I think about her a lot in the way social media makes people you have had limited and/or specific interactions with years ago present in your everyday. When she updates about doctor’s visits there is a little extra joy because I know this child will be how-do-ed to death and loved by a community that believes children are its important resource. Her story takes my evidence beyond my experience. My most vivid memory of this student is made techincolor by the way I have come to see the attitudes about babies in this state. While she was in my class, she from time-to-time had weak moments and used a cane. It was beautiful and artistic and one-of-a-kind. I asked her where she got it. Without a beat, she said, “Oh! This is just some old stick my Daddy whittled up for me.” Then and now, I think about how with something others may have discarded and his love and care he propped her up as she made her way through law school. Now she will carry that love forward.

Babies also make you sentimental. I am not saying that cuddly balls of new humanity remove the biases that lead to skepticism across race and class lines. I’m just saying that Kentuckians love babies and it is nice to see the sweeter side.

Thoughts on Hard Days While Living the Life I Have Asked For (or an unknowing woman’s prayer)

Today has been a hard day in our household. My son has been sick. I have been sick. Just when I thought we were ready to begin 2012 finally in good health, I touched his skin before bath and his little body was on fire. We have been home together all day with intermittent periods of gleeful play and the need to be held in a way that will be gone soon enough. I am tired. He is better. Our world is righted but still, these are hard days.

Recently, I came across a series of writings in my own hand from a workshop I participated in just after my son was conceived. When he was an early formation of desire, a hope. Our life together is all the complications of answered prayers. Grace with all its hard work. I have been coming back to these words I wrote before a lot. Possibly because I am trying to learn the artful balance of mothering and doing other work that is important to me. In two short years, it is frequently hard to remember, refocus, recapture the patterns, thoughts and ideas that consumed my life in the time prior to taking on this new role of mother.

I come back to this also because even in the hard days there is tremendous joy and laughter. With this mixed bag of the good and the tiring, I try to remind myself that this life I live did not just happen to me. I asked for it. I made it happen. I now think of these words as my meditation on the life I now live. A mantra. The articulation of wishful thinking and truth that lingers even as I am becoming more and more my new self. I am sharing it now because of a number of conversations with women who are where I was then in my heart now. Although, these desired are situated in the particular context of their lives.

Sometimes in a new year what is more helpful than creating new soon-to-be abandoned resolutions is a resolve to look back at decisions made and where they have gotten you.

4/21/2009

In the mirror, I see a woman on the brink. On the edge of having something she imagined. I see her strong and fragile, wanting and yet enough. I see light out of darkness—a chiaroscuro life hand crafted by her and the women she has known. She is covered in fingerprints of hope and desire. Fingerprints that once muddled her reflection but are now new skin for a new life…if she is not afraid to seize it. In the mirror, I see a girl at the end and a woman at the beginning.

The Best I Had to Offer or My Favorite Post of 2011

I am reposting the blog entry (originally posted 9/21/11) that I am most proud of and represents what I want for myself, my child, my career and my writing in 2012. Happy New Year to all who have shared with me in this space this year.

There was a time in Texas that execution protocol did not permit anyone outside of the correctional staff to have physical contact with death row inmates. This meant mothers could not hug their sons before executions. I do not know what the rule is in Georgia. I share this short piece in solidarity with the mothers of Troy Davis and Lawrence Brewer and every mother whose son will lose his life at the hand of the state.

Within weeks of finding out I was pregnant, I knew in my heart my child would be a boy.By the time I reached the sonogram in the twenty-fourth week when the sex can be verified, I had already chosen his first name. I named him James for my mother’s third brother and my first substitute father. In the first twenty-three weeks this child and I were forced to have deep conversations that take some parents into adulthood to share with their children. A swirl of troubling genetic tests, faltering hormone levels, cross-country moves, and concerns about the reception of friends, family and colleagues to an unwed pregnancy—even to a woman in her late thirties with two advanced degrees and a room of her own—forced my developing boy and I to have many heart to hearts. I was elated when science confirmed what my heart knew. In less than twenty-four hours that elation would transform into intense worry.

My son was conceived in Texas. A place where my family has lived in relatively the same place for nine generations. Texas is the place where my family’s home and labor and blood are built in the soil. Where their race had for most of those generations determined their destiny. James was also conceived in “the field” or what social scientists call the places where we conduct our research. For just one year I had returned to Texas to immerse myself in this place where my intellectual efforts, if not my body, are always toiling. I visited death row. I attended hearings. I sat next to lawyers who were my teachers and models for how to be a lawyer and the ability of lawyers to change and save lives. I read. I wrote. I conceived a child.

Despite being submerged in the history and sadness of the death penalty, I had not connected that part of my life to the part that was about to be a parent until the day the sonographer said, “it is definitely a boy.” Happiness became worry when I thought about the black men I had met in prisons, jails, and other unproductive places over the years.I thought about how easy it can be for black men to be caught up in a system that does not value their survival or preservation. I thought about the first day he would be pulled over by the police for performing the ordinary task of driving an automobile. I thought about the intra-racial contests of masculinity that have lead to young black men being, at times, their own worst enemy. I thought of how, because he is my child and will surely have my mouth, the public school system will try to pathologize what I know to be precociousness. I thought about my father who only learned the grown up art of parenting a few years before his death with his 14^th child and 3^rd son who was too young at his death to fully benefit from his late maturation. All I could see were the negative statistics on the lives of black men I trade on in my professional life.

If I could save anything with my work, it would be those first hours of elation without the gradual worry for the physical and mental health of the black man in my womb now born. When asked by Nikky Finney what I would save to do the work I do, I thought about that day when modern medicine confirmed what I knew from mother wit. I would save the world, if I could. I would save it for James and all the other black men, women and children, high yellow and pitch black whose mothers have the right to have their burden of worry free from the concern that their children’s blackness will make them vulnerable in ways our arms and love will not be able to protect them.

Thoughts on Rearview Mirrors and Reflections of Love

I made a decision to have a child four years ago. First deep in the recesses of my heart and then my mind began working out the how. I thought and did a lot. I got in shape. I got my finances in better shape. This was such a proactive and productive time for a girl who had spent so little of her effort shaping her personal life.

Four years ago is also the last time I drove home. Seventeen hours from my door in Lexington, Kentucky to my mother’s arms in Houston, Texas. I have made longer drives to her healing embrace. For a few years after law school, I moved between field research on the death penalty in Texas and toiling in graduate school at the University of Michigan every six months. Twenty-two hours from the coldness, emotional and weather wise, of Ann Arbor, Michigan to the warmth of my mother’s bed. I drove alone. I drove with my sister. With a niece, a nephew and a stray friend. Although the idea of such a long drive can be daunting, I came to appreciate the solitude and the silence. But this last drive was different.

The last time I drove to Texas, I was accompanied by longings for motherhood. I kept glancing in the rearview mirror thinking about how this drive would be different with a child. Would we stop more often? How would I entertain him or her? How many times could I sing their favorite song before it drove me crazy or I drove us off the road? I imagined the face of my mother on seeing her seventh grandchild born two decades after the last. The one who lived away but was daily present through the digital magic of skype. I gently touched my belly and imagined the feeling of new life along with the tingling of a taught hand too long wrapped around a steering wheel or a foot braced too long in an effort to maintain pace.

This seventeen-hour meditation on motherhood came flooding back to me when performing the simplest act of care for my now 2 year old son. The other day I turned my son’s car seat around so that he faced forward. After I checked the security of each latch, I sat in the driver’s seat and looked at him for the first time, in real life rather than in a dream, through the rearview mirror. His perfect face was smiling at me from the safe restraints of his child seat. I knew all the things I had imagined on that drive because they had all come true. With out reaching for my abdomen, I knew the feeling of fingers caressing a belly swelling with baby. I hear almost every morning and or evening my mother’s sweet love as she says, “Hi!,” to him and he rushes to the computer to say, “Hi Grandma!” I sing his songs on demand and am able to continue even when I tire of them. He and I are now fellow travelers until he can move in the world on his own.

This boy and I have been traveling in the same car for two years but watching different aspects of the world we inhabit together. In the baby carrier that left him seeing the world only as we passed it by, he often said, “Bye bye, Mama,” as if I were gone only to reappear at day care and release him. With his cognitive abilities at that time, that is probably how he saw our daily commutes with the exception of treat or sippy cup passed back when he was older. His quiet or cooing or singing was in his small way and act of faith or, at least trust, that I would return.

I too in some ways occupied the distance between the backseat differently than I do now. He could not see me in what were sometimes my only moments free from his gaze from pick-up to bedtime. Driving was an act of solace for a woman mothering alone. A respite, if not from the duty, from the unrelenting face of the recipient of so much of your time and energy. Babies are almost all need.

But, he is not a baby anymore. Turning him around is really a reminder that as he grows, our interactions will be increasingly dialectical. His expression of will have moved beyond monosyllabic refusal to full-fledged and sometimes nuanced communications of preferences. I, as the mother, must now engage and learn to decipher when to impose what I believe is best and when to let him be the person he has transitioned into this life to be and become. This is really the hard part of mothering, not the day-to-day labors of making meals and doing laundry. I did not know this four years ago.

In retrospect, he was conceived, in part, in the reflective mood of that trip and reflection of my heart’s desire. On the eve of the completion of his second year, I am thoughtfully excited about all the things we will now see together in his next.