a message to the future, from the past
family trees and time capsules, blackouts and Bélizaire, mean girls and therapists, the very hungry caterpillar and other pregnant cravings
Hi friends - new and old,
Hasn’t this week just flown on by!? I sit down to write this on Thursday morning. With an honest attempt to have it published by Friday, I’ve given myself a tight turnaround. But, I’m not too bad under pressure, so stick with me. Since we last spoke, I’ve pondered this next entry - though with no shortage of topics to bunny-hop around and down the rabbithole…
At first, I thought to discuss the cutesy, reminiscent moments I’ve been having with my inner child lately — case & point: for whatever reason, my go-to outfit this week has consisted of Juicy Couture sweatpants, a multi-colored sweater from Urban Outfitters, and a pairing of my favorite socks that feature Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” characters, to really complete the look. Throwing in some pink Birkenstocks for when I absolutely must leave the house. This medley of calm chaos I’ve worn on my sleeve lately has seemed to comfort me through an otherwise unsure week, like a stiff drink during a 2pm happy hour, followed by a velour-covered hug from Regina George’s mom. (Don’t worry y’all, I hear it - I have therapy next week).
But underneath it all - the caterpillar socks are there, to remind me that the kid is always boss. That nobody puts baby in the corner. Or… (*after rewatching the animated version of this childhood illustration*) maybe the message here is that I should actually just continue hibernating and consuming, ad nauseum, until I’m magically birthed into a big, beautiful butterfly?! 🤔💡 Hmm… a tempting proposal.
I could update you on this week’s progress with my paintings. But I can’t really call it progress, and I can’t really call them paintings; it was just a haphazard third try. And as my boyfriend pointed out to me yesterday, one of the figures look a little too excited to be facing the other (considering I accidentally turned one of their legs into a boner - which is an astonishing feat to give that level of detail to oil-painted stick figures, so I’m taking it as a win after all). Needless to say, we can save that share for a rainy day.
But speaking of art: I have a friend Melinda who is absolutely brilliant at scouring eBay for random and fascinating archival finds. We went to art school in New York together, before she transferred out to Georgia — which was well-suited considering we were 2 of only 3 Black girls in our major, having to attend 6-hour critique sessions with NY transplants and being the few people of color in the room, was not necessarily the enjoyable college experience we were sold. Anyhow, Melinda posted on her Instagram the other day a couple of photos from a stack she found that showcased Brooklyn’s famous Labor Day festivities from 1977. I love her captions —
calling our eye to the McDonalds and the Pharmacy in the background that still stand off Utica Avenue today, allowing me to see them anew as if they’re some sort of historical relics. Also, the commemorative tees of the city’s various blackouts — like the subject’s “where were you when the lights went out?” probe from July ‘77, or Melinda’s own “I survived the blackout” from the August ‘03 surge that I’m proud to say I also experienced. Proud, I guess, that I lived through what feels like a much simpler time. A time when the concept of a blackout didn’t incite apocalyptic anxiety, like the Obamas-backed film “Leave the World Behind” - which is starting to feel eerily familiar. Instead, what lives in my memory is an endearing episode of “Hey Arnold!”, and experiencing community by candlelight. Someone needs to interview her, indeed.
She also shared a story that I’ve been largely moved, and inspired by lately - something I must pass along to you too. If you haven’t heard about him already, please do yourself a favor, and look up “His Name Was Bélizaire”. In short, he was a 15-year-old enslaved child whose existence would’ve been lost to history, had it not been for the restoration and investigative work of Jeremy K. Simien, an art collector from Baton Rouge. One day in 2013, when Simien was, presumably, down a bit of a rabbithole himself, he saw an image online of a painting from 1837 that depicted an affluent white family: “the Frey children”, perched infront of an Afro-Creole teenager.
It was particularly of interest to Simien - being a bi-racial man himself - as the then unnamed figure had been uncovered from many layers of paint and time. In an effort to cover him up, the boy had been painted out - sometime around 1900; the height of the Jim Crow era, and a time of deepening segregation and violence toward Black people in the South. Having been de-accessioned by the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2005 and then listed for auction by Christie’s, Simien had to search high and low for this piece, eventually locating it amidst a private collector in Washington DC. After convincing the owners to part ways with the painting, for an undisclosed amount, Simien was now able to restore the piece one last time — returning the young man to the painting’s original intent. Bringing him back to life. In living color.
Now, that’s not all, because our hero Simien didn’t just stop there folks. He hired a historian who figured out the identities of everyone in the portrait, and used property and census records to find the name of the child who had been, for centuries, hidden in plain sight: Bélizaire. Take that, textbooks! I find it to be such an incredible story - albeit a jarring but unfortunately expected account of institutionalized Black erasure in our country. *Deep sigh for the deep South (shit, a deep sigh for us all)*
Which brings me to the other thing I wanted to talk to you about today — the importance of documenting our own, personal histories. My maternal Grandmother (pictured below) was a woman of few words, but of many, many newspaper clippings. When my Grandfather passed away, she thankfully took that opportunity to write out the story of their lives. Years later, my Mom transcribed these insights, saving it onto a password-protected Tumblr for us both to refer back to and enjoy for decades to come. Being someone who keeps a trunk full of photo albums in close proximity to an exit at all times, in case of a fire, you can imagine how huge this was for me.
Having this information allowed me to, for the first time, piece together a real family tree. And thanks to this recounting, I was able to realize five entire generations out on my mom’s side. While I’m incredibly grateful to uncover this history, it’s also not lost on me - a biracial woman - that the roots on the other side of my tree will largely be forgotten to time. But c’mon guys, you know I can’t let that happen! I mean, I did survive the blackout of 2003, after all. So I’ve started a personal project where I plan on interviewing all of my family members, with the aim of creating visual time capsules to document and bring our many stories to life. My Dad is the youngest, the only boy, and one of nine, so with more than 30 first-cousins alone, I have a lot of work ahead of me.
As most of my family is in Canada and I’m in California, I was always going to kick things off with my cousin Nelly — she’s a psychotherapist, she’s also now based in LA, and is someone I used to co-host a lil talk-show on Clubhouse with (man, remember those days?! The way that app had some of us in an absolute chokehold all throughout lockdown, but then was instantly dropped as soon as we were let back outside lol). So she was already my top contender, but then we got the news that she’s preggers!!! And as the first one among our generation of cousins to get knocked up, I decided that naturally, there was no better time than now to get started. So we did it! We discuss what her first 3 months of pregnancy have been like so far, the great debate in Caribbean households between “bakes” vs “fried dumplings” (hint: our family is team bakes), how she built a thriving, holistic healthcare business that serves everyone from the girl next door, to your favorite Toronto Raptors athlete, and so much more.
Because this is a safe space, I’m sharing the first part of our conversation with you (above), but it’s not yet publicly listed on YouTube because it’s still in progress. For anyone reading that wants to do something similar with their family, there are tools out there - like these interactive storybooks that use technology to turn recordings into written stories. I haven’t purchased this myself, just saw it online, so I can’t personally vouch for it yet, but it’s a pretty cool idea, and I’m considering getting a few for the family members that aren’t as easily accessible. I’m just one interview in, and already am extremely pleased with my decision to pursue this sort of personal project, so I’d highly recommend it to anyone out there considering to do the same.
Welp, until next time — sincerest thanks, as always, for tuning in to the white black noise in my head and giving me a space to get it all out. See you next week! xO.