For Context:
I was inspired by Jasmyne Gilbert’s idea of “talking with ghosts”. As someone who found her way into traditional Christianity, talking to ghost was not something you do. As I navigate and unravel this mystery of my work—creating a praxis of this theory of radical hospitality, I felt the longing to be able to set at the feet of the wise. For me I think of my Nana. Kathie Denise Dones-Carson. A bad woman. A second generation lawyer, the woman with Black Panther lore. My she-ro. My beloved departed this Earth in 2016 just 2 days before my 21st birthday, symbolic that her journey ended at my transition from child to woman. And now as a woman I long for her, I long to be mothered in a gentle way, the way only I knew my Nana could.
A Conversation With A Familiar Spirit:
Me: its been so much time since I last got to talk to you that im not even sure how to have a conversation with you.
I feel like i stopped having conversations with you when i let my phone delete our conversation, our last conversation, our last messages. Theres a guilt, a pain, a longing.
Nana: * wipes my falling tear*
Me: i’m scared that when i go to recall memories of you that i wont be able to remember. That I’ll go back home and i wont smell you lingering around the halls. I wont hear the hum of oxygen machine, i’ll no longer smell your breath. Nana I dont want to forget you. I dont want to live in a world where your memory holds me.
Nana: Kai, honey you are remembering. You remember when you speak. Speaking creates life.
Kai:
Nana: do you remember when i would sing to “kai moriah washington, thats you, that’s you”
Kai: *parts a smile amongst the river of flowing tears*
Nana: did you ever forget who you are?
Kai: no.
Nana: then you’ll never forget me. We are intertwined always connected. These hands have held you and will always hold you.
Kai: *deep breath* youve always been my safe place, my refuge. I feel like even so, i didnt let myself fully be safe in your presence. And ive been longing for a sense of safety ever since.
Nana: i can understand that, more than you could understand. find safety in yourself. Build trust with yourself. Build a home within yourself.
Kai: i feel like thats easier said than done. i’m learning not to hold anger and resentment with you all- my mom, poppy, my dad, you. Like I know, I know you all did your best, you did what you knew how with what you had, always striving for more. Did we experience pain? Sure, absolutely, but you, this house was a pocket of joy. I remember always wanting to bring people over because this house was something i was proud of. Not the pool, the basketball hoop, the endless gadgets and gizmos. Though nice selling points, I was selling the magic that flowed from the kitchen and the dining room table. The warmth that held you at the door as if it knew that you had been longing to be touched.
Nana: yeah…*with a soft smile*. She holds my hand.
Kai: and with all that magic, im mad at myself the most. Im mad that I didnt learn to care for myself. I spent so much time wondering why my mom thought care looked like 3 meals and an outfit on our back to cover up the stripes she laid across our bare skin. i was mad because you all didnt save me and i lived only next door. But im a woman now and the blame game doesnt work anymore. I gotta take care of me and i really dont know how.
Nana: sugar cookie, i’m sorry. We do our best as parents not to interfere with the lives of our children. We do what we can, strive where we can to create more opportunities for them to have a life maybe better than our own. For some of us, the bar was set really low, giving us no room to dream. Nothing to aspire to or for. And some of us had glass cielings and we choose to fixate on the imperfections. We become driven mad by perfection. I pray that you live to see the second iteration of what you have created. When you become grandparents, your children have aged, theyve left, youve become empty nesters and as a woman you finally return to caring for self. Or so you think. But it gives you lots of time to think. Those babies make you think, you remember your shortcomings, the filing cabinet of all the things you wish you hadve known sooner come flooding in. And then you remember that your children have already grown. You cannot go back, only forward. You find a way to live anyway. You learn to let your children live, and allow them to raise. We never wished harm upon you. Its a hard reality to be in the judicial system fighting, laboring on the behalf of brown & black people and realize you cant save the little black people in your home. But believe me, we, I fought for you. I prayed for you. I told my cautionary tales. And some wisdom is only gained through experience and I gained mine. I know there are somethings I would have done differently given the chance, but we dont get those do we?
Kai: i know what you mean. I think about the way I suffered in silence. Maybe suffer is dramatic. But i held things in, i refrained from laying fully into your lap the way i knew you would have let me. I dont want to suffer. I want to embrace this mantle you’ve passed me. I want to be the walking magic. That lingers long after ive left the room like aunt cathys perfume, like you.
Nana: no one can really teach you how to pick up a mantle and walk. You do. Like Jesus told that leper. Pick up your mat and go. Wherever you find yourself, you were born for it. Remember this life isnt happening to you, its happening for you. You have always been Kai Moriah Washington. You are what the world was calling for, laboring for, calling YOU forth, you were drawn from the water. This place pulled you in and pulled you out. It chose you. Now you may feel unprepared, but we all do.
Kai: unprepared is an understatement. I feel like an infant.
Nana: is that a bad thing? To be born? God, what I wouldnt give to be born, to experience life for the first time. Being born is to experience possibility. All things are possible again. Only death is final. Even if you believe in reincarnation. Your life, your relay ends, and another begins, but when you are alive? The world is still possible.
Kai: the world. The thought of being of service to the world makes me feel so small.
Nana: who taught you to be small? The smallness is a reminder of the divine. A reminder that its outside of you, bigger than you, but its something to reverence. When you reverence something you give it weight. When we try to carry that divine weight thats when you realize you cannot. You cannot carry this Kai, its not meant to be carried by you, this, this beautiful thing is carrying you.
Kai: its funny you asked. Who taught you to be small. The truth is i dont know. I feel like on the outside ive been chasing being big and bold and on the inside ive been scared, small, unsure, and even so somehow I cant quit, I cant let go, I find it hard to walk away.
Nana: thats what it feels like to be carried. Like when you open your mouth to sing, the breath carries that melody and it pulls you up. You have to use your breath. Let what carries you take you.
Kai: mmm, thats beautiful. I cant even decide what I’d ask you next. It seems so many questions come to mind, and its like I already know they have no answer or I have the answer already. Like im at the part where theres no cheat code, no one to answer if I raise my hand.
Nana: who taught you that you were alone?
I am with you wherever you go. But its not me who was called, drawn for this. But you will never know the answer if you dont try.
Kai: the answer to what?
Nana: to all those questions in your head fighting to get out. Courage is the only remedy for worry.
Kai: i thinking about what you said. About perfectionism making one go mad. Despite the only context that i draw from about being mad is my mothers rage, i think about how ive confessed my desire to go mad, to be mad. To be wild, out of control.
Nana: this world, the scared people who inhabit this world want you to believe that the desire to be wild, wayward, unruly, is something to be ashamed of. The scariest thing to them is the idea of not being able to predict or control. We develop this ridiculous idea that safety is about control, domination. When thats quite contrary, perhaps even morbid to the fundamental core of safety. You will never be safe in a controlled environment.
All the movement in this world, all the revolution was done by mad people. The wild, the unstable, the wayward.
Kai: what if i dont want to be revolutionary.
Nana: is that true?
Kai: i wish it was. Thats all ive ever dreamed of. Not necessarily to be famous or well-known, though I want to be known, to be remembered. But the desire to do something, be something revolutionary has been haunting me for as long as I can remember. It nags at me and perfectionism makes it so damn hard.
Nana: ive watched you be revolutionary all your life.
Kai: what do you mean?
Nana: the way you would just exist. you exist in the world in a way that many people are too scared to. I remember watching you dance. Do you remember dancing with Baba Ali? They put you two on that stage and you could tell Zaji was sooooo scared, so nervous, but you took off. You danced and you danced I didnt think you’d come off that stage. When you lept that was what gave Zaji the courage to fly too.
You’ve always been one to leap first. And to watch you just fly. Thats freedom. Thats liberation. Being able to exist freely. Fear doesnt really make any sense when you’re free like that. Why should it? What place would fear have put to bring you right back down. Who said we couldnt live in the sky? Thats where everyone wants to go right? Concerned with if we’ll go up, or if we go down. Everyone wants to just know if they’ll be free. And thats the biggest con, the biggest time waster. Choosing not to be free while you’re still living. All this fight, all this marching is about being free, about living. So why arent you living freely?
Kai: you know poppy reminds me all the time of that story of being at Aunt Shelleys wedding. I laugh thinking about how many similar stories there are of me being wild on the dance floor. Its like I can almost feel the ecstasy of it just recalling those moments. How free my body feels just moving it, moving it wildly, even when im tired the urge to move just takes over.
Nana: you’ve always been wild. Our wild child. You have taught us all what it means to be free.
Kai: i didnt know that. If ive always been wild, why does it feel so foreign now. Why does it feel like such an impossible task, it feels like everything im working towards im laboring for is this embodiment of wild freedom. How have i become do disconnected from something that had been so natural.
Nana: what if its not unnatural to you? What if you just stopped? What if you started to believe that the reason you didnt fit in was because you were “too wild” that wildness would lead to isolation -isolation being a slow agonizing death. We’re wired for connection.
Kai: no, I think you’re right. I think my wildness scared my mom. I think that watching her discomfort caused me to believe that would always be the reception to my wildness.
Nana: you will always make people uncomfortable with your wildness. Accept that, walk in that, handle that now, and lay it to rest. Bury it, have a ceremony, mark it in time. But do it now. You are a wild, wayward, beautiful, talented, gifted, gifted black woman. This world will always want to tame you. It will always have opinions of your existence. Is commentary worth not doing it anyway?
Kai: well don’t i know it. my brain has blocked out the specifics of the comment but I remember receiving death threats for playing football at Powers. That was the first time when I realized that I made white people truly uncomfortable. Like what it looks like to rattle the chain when I say no.
Nana: no is a powerful word. Its resistance, boundaries, a command, a complete sentence. No demands respect. I would expect for a white man in particular, a man who does not understand his priviledge, to be shaken by the no of a young black girl. A girl who said I’m going to play football, with all these boys. You broke their barriers, you broke their comfort. But who should have to live in discomfort?
Wild Woman
Today, I’m choosing to say no. I’m saying no to having to settle for a mediocre life of servitude and false gratitude. I’m saying no to living a tame life. To be tamed by unrealistic, inhumane expectations. I am a wild woman. I am free. I dance with the wolves and I howl at the moon. I say yes to dancing and to being seen. I say yes to rest and recovery. I say yes to being in service and no to being the service. I am not a commodity. I am a wild woman. I am free. No, no, no, no. No, no. Hell no.
I am a wild woman. I am free.
Man I tried my damndest to make it through this without tearing up. This hits home for a plethora of reasons. Thank you for this. I'm proud of you and I love you.