For the love of Black hair

Sitting at an all Black hair salon for the first time in several years, and the entire experience is like communing with my ancestors.  
Why did I wait so long? My stylist grabs the tiny stands of hair at the front of my head and breath in deeply and out reminding myself to pace my breath as she weaves her fingers though my hair revealing my tortured past.
I close my eyes and take another deep breath as I sink lower into my seat hoping to merge into the silhouette my chair and into my soundings.
On the radio 700 club is selling Christian prayers to the tune of someone describing how white Jesus saved him. The latest soap opera is play on the TV as someone yells "she's faking that pregnancy" over the sound of the industrial fan blasting recycled air sweetened with the smell of oil sheen spray. Ladies with manicured nails sit under the hair drier reading the latest fashion and tabloid magazines. The stylist beside me kisses her teeth and while others laugh to the point of tears as I show them the pictures and articles claiming that Marc Jacob invented Banu Knots, another customer exclaimed from the waiting area "did you hear, the Chinese invented steel pan music" every one laughs. I have tears in my eyes but it's not the over whelming sense of community in this shop on a Tuesday morning it's the searing pain from the process of having my hair tightly styled to perfection. In a distance I can hear my grandmother saying "dry those tears, beauty feels no pain" 

Oh Mother!!

Big shout and a warm thank you all the folks who mother without ever been given the title; to those who had to mother themselves;  to the fathers who mother; the folks that fall inbetween and are too often left behind; to the mothers who aren't with us anymore but will never leave our side; to the almost mothers and the never will be mothers who nurture us near and far; to the mothers who's sons and daughters have been taken too soon by state santioned violence, by patriarchy and by white supremacy; To the Mothas who vogue, who care for the motherless within our community, to the Trans women who Motha and Modah and Mother, I see you; and I thank you all for inspiring me to being the best revolutionary mother I can be.
Pick a day any day and take it for yourselves.