Lesson 1-Cotton Pickin' Paycheck

Once upon a time a baby was born into a family.

On day 29 in the month of December she arrived in a hurry.

She would dream to be free.

She would even fall through a tree.

Just so she could get out and see.

As a toddler she was just that nosey.

I can do anything even when others are afraid.

I will not quit until history is made.

Who am I?

Family stories reveal to me that my mom's first husband fought in WWII and came back "a changed for the worst" man.  Born in 1926, she graduated from high school class as valedictorian and was in college getting her bachelors degree from HBCU Virginia Union University when the war ended.  He came home, quickly proposed, rushed to marry, made her drop out of school because he quickly got her pregnant, beat and abused her and the baby on its way.  Eventually he moved in a mistress a fact that I was told drove my mom to divorce him and leave the south.  She packed her bags to start a new life and nursing career in NY.  Leaving her two small kids to be raised by my grandma and aunts in rural Virginia while she scraped and lived in shared housing with relatives.  Finally she felt financially stable enough to send for my sister and brother to become a family of three.  Whew!  My mom had a complicated and whirlwind young adulthood as a single parent living so far away from her small Virginian town.  Her class valedictorian hopes and dreams seemed to be slashed and dashed.

At the end of a tumultous 1968, I was born.  Dr. King has been murdered in April. My mom had just turned 42 and was well established in her professional nursing career.  She had remarried an older man.  My dad was 59 years young, and they were living in a changing neighborhood in Mount Vernon, New York.  So they used to say they had sort of a fresh start with a renewed vigor raising a new baby post MLK.  In contrast to many of their peers who had missed many opportunities to stay intact while a family unit.  By the time I was born, many of their friends and relatives were on second or even third marriages.  My aunts say they were so inspired by seeing their big sister walking around pregnant and then later doting over a small infant.  My older cousins talk about how cool they thought it was that their Aunt Vernelle had a little baby.  Everyone always looked at me twice to see if something had gone wrong.  Was I really normal?  Granted, my mom was a nurse, but would that and could that possibly translate to a healthy child at her age?  Much younger couples in the community gave clear evidence of the birth abnormalities that were possible in life.

My mom used to candidly describe stories about friends who stopped coming around once I was born because my dad stopped spending and wasting money.  He had to think about my future.  He believed in investing and saving for the future.  He was very serious about me going on to college from the day I was born into this world.  He told people that he was putting money aside for me to go to college. Their friends used to shake their heads and wonder "what were you thinking or NOT thinking bringing a baby into the world at your old age!" 

I once met a woman who was about 90 years old in a wheel chair at a family reunion who shared insight into how I changed their party days.  She told me that when I came along my dad became very serious about life.  She also confessed that she had given my mother the name of a physician to perform the abortion.  She said back then, it was certain that an older couple would have a deformed child.  Tears welled up in her eyes when she looked at me and held my hand.  I was so touched by her sincerity and I looked down at her nursing home wrist band as she softly whispered, "God please forgive me I can't believe that I lived to see you all grown up and beautiful.  I was so foolish that I did not have the vision to see what he had done when he brought you here.  Who was I to suggest such a thing?  I am soo glad they had the sense not to listen to people like me and my husband".   Over the years, different people have shared story after story with me of naysayers who had doomed me to be handicapped at birth.  I was predicted to be a financial burden and strain to my doting parents during their glory retirement years. 

So I do realize that my foundational life views were mostly formed by my optimistic parents. As I have lived life I can see that my views are probably very different from most of my peers because my parents were very different.  They did not follow the crowd or the popular way of seeing life.  They surrounded me with loving people.

In fact, my parents spent a lot of their waking moments teaching and showing me "grown up" things because they were always afraid that 1) they would not live to see me grow up 2) I would not have anyone to protect my outspokeness that they helped instill.  Very often they would warn me, "Joan, you better learn how to do this because we MAY not be around when you need to KNOW how to do this!"  

 Growing up, my grandfather on my mom's side nicknamed me "Squirrel" because I was always climbing and trying to get to the next level.  I never seemed content to just sit and be a baby.  I had a passion to want to see what the view was like from the top of someone's shoulders, back, or a dresser, perhaps a closet shelf, the top of a kitchen cabinet or heck even the top of a refrigerator! 

There was an early incident that actually cemented this nickname for me.  When I was 2 years old I fell out of our 2nd story apartment window.  I recall that I wanted to go outside and be with the other kids.  My brother and mom were sleep in the twin beds in the room.  I think my mom had worked a late shift and asked my brother to keep an eye on me.  He denies this fact. I probably was supposed to be sleep too. 

All I remember is that I wanted to get outside and neither one of them wanted to get up and take me outside.  I remembered watching how my mom used to open the screen by pushing on the side levers and out the screen would fly out.  So I figured all I had to do was get that screen open and I would be right outside with the other kids because I could clearly hear them playing together.  I remember pushing open the screen and looking down through the trees.  Funny.  I couldn't actually see any kids but I could still hear them so clearly.  That is all I personally remember. 

The family would love to tell the tale how a neighbor saw me laying in the dirt on the ground and thought I was her daughter.  She ran through the apartment building screaming that her daughter was dead.  She lived on the 5th floor so if her child had fallen she more than likely would have died.  My mom woke up to all of the screaming and of course could not find me.  Because she was a nurse, the neighbor ran with the baby in her arms straight to our apartment.  My mom took one look at the baby and screamed, "That is not your baby, that is MY baby!"  So she claimed me, took me to the hospital and the sustained trauma is probably why I am writing this book today-LOL! 

My lessons about independent thinking began when I was about 4 years old.   I often ran my mouth a lot about what I liked/didn't like. I often seemed to forget that unlike most of the kids in my apartment building and neighborhood I had no siblings around to back me up when in a tight spot.  My sister was married and living in Boston by this time and my brother was away in college at HBCU Virginia State.

One life changing incident that I will never forget was when one day an old man rode by on a ten speed bike.  I recall sitting in our apartment building's courtyard, drawing images using a sticks in the loose dirt with a few kids.  I looked up and quipped "Ha! Look at that old man trying to ride a 10 speed!".  One of the little boys snapped "He is NOT old and don't you dare talk about that man that's MY GRANDPA!".  Well I didn't and couldn't really believe that mess because my own Dad couldn't even walk.  He had suffered several strokes and was confined to a wheelchair.  It seemed awfully unfair that this old man could ride around town and yet my dad couldn't even stand up without my help.  In hindsight, that was actually the source of my pain, but instead I mocked him.  I spat out, "Ha!  He looks ridiculous and he is too old to be doing that". 

So the little boy immediately ran and told his older cousins that I was talking junk about their granddaddy.  In fact about five of them ran up to the man who was breathing hard from his bike ride and collectively tattled exactly what I had said.  He looked at me oddly because he knew my parents were decent neighbors and just brushed it off some kind of way.  Well that dismissal made his pre-teen grandsons even more upset and caused a bigger uproar over my smart mouth!  Seems like after all the adults left the scene they started taunting me about not being as brave as their grandpa.  I said "I am too brave".  They dared me to jump off the apartment building to prove my braveness.  See some fool had dropped a dog named "Duke" off the roof of the building and I think it somehow survived.  So they mocked me to say that the dog was braver than me and I was a chicken!   I said "No I am not,  but I bet I can jump out of the 2nd story window!".  I made this dumb statement because I knew from childhood stories that I had fallen from a window and was unhurt as a toddler.  So I figured if I could do it at age 2 I definitely should be able to do it at age 4!  Well this mob of kids are now chanting and dragging me up to the ledge of the 2nd floor "chicken! Chicken! chicken!".  This thing started out with about 6 kids and it seems that it quickly became about 25 as word got around the hood.

So evolves this entertaining sight of a skinny little knock-kneed four year old being led up the stairs by a crowd of rowdy kids.  Where are the adults?  I do not recall seeing anyone but these loud kids.  So now I am at the 2nd floor of my 5 story apartment complex with these screaming kids ordering me to jump.  I looked down and saw their faces.  Not one of them was scared for me.  I scanned the crowd.  My eyes are getting blurry and more blurry.   I kind of got a little anger twisting turning with my fear of failure.  "I am not afraid.  I am brave!"  I keep chanting in my soul.  Some of the biggest scaredy cats are in my face chanting right along with the crowd.  It dawns on me that these are some of the same exact kids who I had the thrill of teasing just the other day.  These very same kids had been teased all year long for having "buggars" or "being too black" or "being too ugly" or "being too slow". 

Now they are all united together chanting for me to jump out this window!  Just wanted to see me land on the ground.  I kept calm and just kept trying to imagine how I could jump and not get hurt...like the cartoons.  I am calmly closing my eyes trying to visualize Fred Flintstone or Bugs Bunny how they would be running in the air and would effortlessly land safely on the ground.  Whoah!  Someone actually pushed the back of my legs at one point, but I wobbled but then quickly caught myself.  I am now realizing that I am trapped.  I can't back down because they are not going to move from behind my legs.  I say to myself, "OK...  If I jump down on top of one of them standing down there under the window, maybe just maybe it would break my fall like on the cartoons?"  I begin to tremble because I just don't know what to do anymore. 

Out of nowhere, a young adult neighbor, "Karen" was coming home from work.  Her apartment happened to be on this side of the building and she couldn't help but notice me up there with all of these kids.  She pushed through the crowd and rescued me from the ledge.  I stayed strong until I wrapped my arms around her neck and then I cried like an infant.  She didn't really make me feel any worse about the decision or the result.  In fact, till this day I do not know if she ever told my family.  See, "Karen" was an old girlfriend of my brother who was born 15 years before me.  She and I are still in touch today, but oddly we have never revisited that day.  I don't even know if she knows that she saved my life.

So my trust in other peers died on that ledge.  No matter what anyone says to me...I will NEVER allow others to cheer me to another ledge.  So from that frame of reference or your F-O-R (F.O.R.).  I read facts and study ideas to develop a CORE F.O.R.  A F.O.R. is a core set of values and expectations for my personal salvation using my own frame of reference. 

Your F.O.R. always changes based on your exposure to certain environments and situations, but it allows U to have an open mind to become educated about what U do not know vs. allowing others to deceive U into embracing their own perceptions and realities. 

As I try new things and approaches, I respect others, I work cooperately with others but I strive to temper my mouth and keep my reliance on others opinions or evaluations of my character to a minimum.  I simply refuse to bicker with people over distracting topics.  Over time I have been trained to create a  need to go outside of my "comfort zone" to get raw, candid or even accurate objective feedback because often the folks who TRULY KNOW YOU are not the BEST folks to rely upon.  They are sometimes afraid to tell U the truth.  The truth is the light.  Without it U are in the dark.  But in the end, I choose what feedback I will use in my decision making process.

Will I miss out on opportunities?  Of course, we all have opportunities that we miss due to our frame of reference or F.O.R.  However, that is the beauty of our country...despite the ugliness...we still get to choose who and how we follow. Know what makes U unique.  Don't let others make that perception your reality.  Be true!  Be U!  Do U!  If U don't spend enough time exploring life and getting to know who U really are...nothing else U learn is really worth knowing is it?

It is the respect for differences and the celebration of results is what I think is important for the journey to be productive and meaningful when we are asked to take our final breaths.

LESSONS LEARNED

Do not depend on anyone but yourself

Do not depend on the opinions of anyone "outside of core using your F.O.R"