One of the reasons I write is that when I do, I find out what’s on my own mind. Like my best friend from elementary school, for instance, who loved my jokes even when I didn’t think they were that funny. Or my grandpa, who raised a family in tough times, and kept them all together. Or the time I ran away from home, and I had that rare experience where, for one quick moment, I knew exactly what I wanted out of life – which wasn’t to run away!
While we’re on the subject – my grandpa, who everyone called Papa, was a very cool guy. He owned and worked his own farm and, in his spare time (which he can’t have had much of with nine children), he ran the molasses mill in the town, where he turned stalks of sugar cane into hot molasses for anybody who brought him their crop. When my mom and her siblings grew up, most of them became a part of the great migration, in which thousands of Black people fled the segregated South to start new lives in the North. Papa missed his children sorely and made sure that all nine of them visited often and brought their own children with them. He didn’t ask much when we visited– just a few quiet minutes sitting next to him under the carport. And like my favorite characters in books, he was always ready with a story.