moving into your own spotlight
Little Khadijah stood patiently in the back of the classroom looking at the table covered in seashells. She looked at each one in turn, admiring their individual fragility and softness. She wondered at the muted colors and the unusual shapes. Each looked different and yet somehow they were all the same. She looked on, mustering as much interest as possible, as she patiently waited for her teacher to return to the room.
Listen to me read the story on YouTube or read it below:
This particular morning I woke up joyful, ready to manifest a wonderful day. I jumped out of bed and headed to the kitchen to make tea. It’s the only way to properly start any day. And this day needed to jump off well, considering it was the beginning of my vacation, and I always feel a little pressure to make sure that my vacations are wonderfully relaxing, which in all honesty, sometimes gets in the way of my reaching that goal.
One evening I sat on the phone with my grandad, a very tall, brown man with an afro of gray hair. He spent many years working in the factories for Ford Motor Company and rented out properties he had bought, building his wealth. On the weekends he mowed their well-kept lawn, fixed the plumbing, worked on his car and visited his grandchildren. My grandad took pride in being a “self-made man’s man”. Masculinity was everything to him. We are talking about a man who refused to sleep on flowered bedsheets.