Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
What’s Your Legacy?
The Besties take you on a journey back to a cherished time in their lives when they were children being doted on by their grandparents. Leslie grew up in Brooklyn in a brownstone where up to five generations lived at one time whereas Angella recalls fond early years in Jamaica being loved and cared for by her grandparents. This is a nostalgic episode full of funny memories, family dynamics and the budding cultural awareness of the 60s. They even share stories about how they each were introduced to coffee.
Angella and Leslie transition to exploring the legacies that they may be leaving for future generations and how they might want to be remembered. They conclude that as they themselves become elders they acknowledge their obligation to impart information, guidance, and pass on traditions to their families.
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For me, and I guess she didn't associate my being educated and going away to college and all of this with coming back with a job that's more than cleaning up.
Speaker 2:You know domestic work.
Speaker 1:Right, and I guess if you're born in 1894, you know you don't really think about those things Exactly, it's not innate.
Speaker 2:The value of it is that you were gainfully employed. Yes, your value, the value of it wasn't your value wasn't removed because of the work that you did Right. You know what I mean, because come Sunday morning, like Jackie Shelton Green was saying, you know you dress up for church and nobody recognizes you from when you used to serve food at school. Hey Ange, hey Leslie, how are you? Thumbs up, thumbs up, don't get your laptop to do that thing. I know that's a different application. No, this thing, I know that's a different application.
Speaker 1:No, this one is on Zoom, that's a different one. Oh okay, so I can do double thumbs up.
Speaker 2:How are you pal Nice to see you. I'm doing so much better you do you look really? Terrific. It's crazy. I could barely get out of bed a week ago. I know I'm glad you're feeling better and now I feel 110% Good. I do Good, thank you.
Speaker 1:That's why I think I had a little something to do with that. You had a little something to do with it.
Speaker 2:You know I do what.
Speaker 1:I do.
Speaker 2:And my family sending me groceries and friends. That's so nice. It was friends and it was just such a reminder that it's okay to ask for help I have to struggle with that, so that's good. Yeah, yeah, people are ready, People are ready.
Speaker 1:Welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.
Speaker 2:Brooklyn. Hey, I am Angella and that's my bestie, Leslie. We are two 60-something-year-old women, We've been besties for almost 50 years and we invite you to think deeply and act boldly. If you are an inquisitive older woman, or if you love one, or if you want to become one, please stay with us. You'll be glad you did, Okay. So what are we talking about today?
Speaker 1:Well, you know that I grew up in this big house in Brooklyn with up to five generations of people at one time.
Speaker 2:It was always a party.
Speaker 1:It was always a party. As a result, I always had a love and respect for my elders. It was a really nurturing environment for me, and it taught me so many things and really just colored the way that I live my life, so I thought that it would be a good idea to talk about that.
Speaker 2:And I agree because I grew up in a very different household. But I did grow up for a while in my kind of years where I can remember very clearly the things that I did day to day, hour by hour. I lived with my grandparents, and so they also had a huge influence on my life, and so that would be, I think, a great topic for us today. Okay, all right, jump in, because I could tell you stories about your grandparent.
Speaker 1:I know about Nana and Bala Boobie and all of that stuff, so let me just set the stage for our household unit. I was blessed to grow up with not only my grandparents but my great grandparents, two of my great grandparents, my great grandmothers. Nana Margaret was my paternal great grandmother, no, my maternal great grandmother. And she was born in 1894 in New Jersey.
Speaker 2:Okay, man.
Speaker 1:Another maternal great grandmother, nana Lena, I believe. She was born in the early 1900s in, I believe, in New York. Although her ancestry might be European, she was very fair-skinned, so these were the extreme elders by the time I came along in the early 60s. You know these were my. You know Nana Margaret and Nana Lena, and at that point they did a lot of the child rearing. You know of us and then subsequently our children which is the craziest thing and made up the fifth generation Crazy children, which is the craziest thing and made up the fifth generation Crazy and Nana Lena. I was fortunate to grow up with her until I was in my middle teenage years and then Nana Margaret, I was in my mid-20s. I was pregnant with Amari when she passed away.
Speaker 1:So by that time she had already had two great great grandchildren.
Speaker 2:That is incredible guys.
Speaker 1:Two great grandchildren I should say Great grandchildren, yeah, wait. No, she had great great because Monique's children were her. She was my great grandmother, so she was Shani and Saeed were her. Great was my great-grandmother, so she was shani and saeed were her great-great-grandchildren let me tell you after one great, it could be right it gets to be like a thousand removed.
Speaker 1:you know how they say. So, yeah, a whole lot of good maternal nurturing in the home, great food, yes, yes. But I'll tell you, in addition to the care that they provided to us and the support that they gave my mom, a young single parent, we supported them also, you know, with providing a household and taking them shopping. And one of the things I remember very fondly was that every time we took Nana Margaret to a doctor's appointment, it us a picture of that.
Speaker 1:Well, all of the children, the three of us, my mom, her, and it's like whoever else could come. There might have been eight of us squeezed in the car sitting in the doctor's appointment. Obviously, I wasn't a physician at the time or anything I was a kid. But I just remember, you know, with her, whatever medical problems Nana Margaret had, it was that and then we would all go out to dinner, wherever you know we chose.
Speaker 1:So it was really we're going to the doctor, yay, you know it was an outing, it became a real outing for the family, you know, because obviously at that point I guess Nana was in her 80s perhaps, but you know, she wasn't going out a whole lot, you know. So the doctor was a huge deal.
Speaker 2:Right right, that's so funny. That reminds me of when I don't know if it was like that up here, but in Jamaica when anyone was going to the airport like everybody extended family.
Speaker 1:I have pictures where maybe 20 of us were there to send my cousin off I think that was the big and you had to be dressed up, of course, because he had crazy.
Speaker 2:It was like an.
Speaker 1:Oliver scene.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oliver, oliver.
Speaker 1:Samuels, if you guys don't put some links to his stuff. I travel regular, very regular.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you, leslie is such an honorary Jamaican Like most people think she's in Jamaican, but she is so infused with Jamaican like deep Jamaican cultural, iconic stuff, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:That's like I had herring and plantain for breakfast this morning and cultural iconic stuff. It's crazy. That's like I had herring and plantain for breakfast this morning. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:You cook that more often than I do, actually, because it's become like a staple for you. Not just a staple, but it's a good memory.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, but we digress Back to madness. Okay, it's always good to digress to food, that, yes, but we digress Back to madness.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's always good to digress to food. That's okay. That type of digressing is allowed. Yes, yes, so I remember we have this running joke about something, nana Margaret. First of all, I have to say a few words about Nana Ruby.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Nana Ruby was my mother's mother, my grandmother. So that was Nana Lena's daughter. So Nana Ruby was grandmother, nana Lena, great grandmother, okay.
Speaker 2:And we'll try to get some pictures. Oh, yeah, yeah, I have pictures, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I have pictures, Pictures, yeah, because it'll just kind of give your story, or hardly, because these women were born in the New York. City tri-state area, many of them in Brooklyn. So so when? When did the south come in? Do you know? Interesting, you know, so it definitely wasn't the great migration that on my mother's side of the family.
Speaker 1:We don't have southern roots, but my father's family got from South Carolina or in South Carolina and that's where the Southern part comes from, the Southern history and likely enslaved people, and that comes in, although again, that's not something that's talked about very often, but my grandfather my mother's excuse me, my father's father is one of 13 siblings. So my grandmother, cornelia, my great-grandmother Cornelia, had 13 children, one of which still lives, my Aunt, maddie Mae, and they have the Southern roots, you know, coming from the south, and then the migration north.
Speaker 2:Right, right, okay, but enslavement could have happened in the north too. You just don't know.
Speaker 1:A different type of enslavement. How about?
Speaker 2:that or no, but yeah, yeah, okay, very good, so, yeah, so, nanarubi. So I'm not sure which of the great of the whether it was Shawnee, I think. Maybe it was Shawnee. Maybe it was Omari who started, who didn't know how to pronounce Nana. Ruby and so so to me she just became Bala Booby, because Okay.
Speaker 1:And let me, let me set the scene where that came from.
Speaker 2:Tell me that.
Speaker 1:We lived in this, my mother still is there in this beautiful brownstone in Brooklyn, and there are four levels plus a basement. So it's very you know that those brownstone townhouses.
Speaker 2:Right, the real ones, not the made-up ones.
Speaker 1:yeah and so nana margaret, us and nana ruby. They were on the upper floors and we were on the lower floors or whatever. So from always calling, I mean from, I guess when he was a toddler he would always hear us call Nana Ruby, but he heard it as Bala Booby, so that's what he grew up calling her, and as a result. That's what you always referred to Nana Ruby as Bala Booby.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God Bala.
Speaker 1:Booby. I wonder if Shana remembers that.
Speaker 2:I don't know it's just become family lore at this point, but I remember one of the kind of lasting things from Nana Margaret is when she once asked you I forget where you were working, but you were a teenager, I don't think you were in your 20s yet and you're working somewhere and you said and she said you told her you were going to work.
Speaker 1:I got a new job and I'm you know, I'm happy about it. I'm coming home, they hired me and whatever. So what did Nana Margaret say? She was so happy for me.
Speaker 2:She was so happy for you. She said oh great, what are you doing Cleaning up the place?
Speaker 1:And here I am with my college degree in chemistry and I'm like Nana no, I'm not cleaning up the place. You have to put it into context, though you put it, and yes, and that's what it is. That was a good job. It's like Nana Margaret's framing yes Is that there are certain things that we do Black jobs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my black job.
Speaker 1:I was supposed to be cleaning up the place. Oh, I'm so happy for you.
Speaker 2:No, I'm not cleaning up the place oh my gosh, she meant no harm she was like she was happy for me, yes, yes, a job, because those cleaning up the place jobs.
Speaker 1:You keep them for a long time, but clearly, she I don I don't really know her level of education. I'm assuming that it was probably grade school, although her son was a high school principal. Okay, so she, you know, obviously knew that education was important for her children. Right, Even if she didn't have Her son, my mother's father. But for me and I guess she didn't associate my being educated and going away to college and all of this with coming back with a job that's more than cleaning up.
Speaker 2:You know domestic work.
Speaker 1:Right, and I guess if you're born in 1894, you know you don't really think about those things.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Why would you? It's not innate, right, and there wasn't a. The value of it is that you were gainfully employed. Yes, your value. The value of it wasn't. Your value wasn't removed because of the work that you did Right.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean, because come Sunday morning.
Speaker 2:Like Jackie Shelton Green was saying, you know you dress up for church and nobody recognizes you from when you used to serve food at school because that's your job, that has your value, is still your value.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I?
Speaker 2:mean yeah.
Speaker 1:That's actually different than society is today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know so much of it is well, what do you know?
Speaker 1:We meet people. What do you do?
Speaker 2:And then we associate, you know, that much of it is well.
Speaker 1:What do you? You know we meet people. What?
Speaker 2:do you do, and then we associate you know that with value Like my mom being, you know, so proud of me and I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:But you know the first thing she does everywhere she goes my daughter is a doctor.
Speaker 2:She's the doctor and she's the teacher.
Speaker 1:He's the musician, you know. And first of all, why do people care? They?
Speaker 2:don't they do they do actually. It may have felt funny to you, but you know people care and that's why she did it.
Speaker 1:It feels funny to me because the way that I move in the world, well, in many ways, but I have more to offer than my profession. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I often say that when I leave the hospital.
Speaker 1:You know I leave that behind and I enter another being or type of being. But you know, society being what it is, it is Right.
Speaker 2:Right, all right. So let me tell you guys a little bit about my grandparents that I grew up with and some of the things that absolutely shaped me continues to just that thread, and I see this with my children as well. I'm my paternal grandparents. I was born in the parish, the town, the home, because I was born at home with my paternal grandparents but I left there when I was pretty young, so I knew them, I knew of them, I know stories of them, I know kind of how they moved in the world, but I really spent time when I was maybe from six to eight with my maternal grandparents and so that, and because you know you're connected, typically on your mother's side for many of us more than fathers, because, whatever mothers give birth.
Speaker 1:You know, but as an aside, as an aside in the Ashanti kingdom it's a maternal lineage also of the royal family ah right so the men in the family are not afforded well, the sons, I should say, born in that side, are not afforded the same, and I'm probably not saying it accurately, but um yeah.
Speaker 2:It's matriarchal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the women that are born and their offspring are the ones that carry the official titles, not the offspring of the males.
Speaker 2:Well, same in Judaism, right? That's how your Jewishness is, through your mother's line, not your father's. Ah, I didn't know that. Mm-hmm, it is true, it is true. Similarities, it's true. So, yeah, yeah, that is that Mm-hmm, it is true, it is true.
Speaker 1:Similarities, it's true. So, yeah, yeah, that is what I am.
Speaker 2:Okay, so my grandparents actually met in Cuba. They are Jamaican but they separately went to Cuba, which was not uncommon at the time. Havana was kind of the um eastern side of the of the island of cuba, right. So due north, due north of jamaica is cuba and it is um, it is um, um. So havana is more on the west side and due north. So anyway.
Speaker 1:So it wasn, it wasn't uncommon.
Speaker 2:We were there and what we learned when we were there is actually there is a group of Jamaican descended people. There's a name for them and I don't remember the name, but I remember one of our taxi drivers was telling us that there's a group there of Jamaican descendants. So there are strong ties to Jamaica and Cuba. So my grandparents both went to Cuba and they met there, and so my mom and all of her siblings are Cuban, born there and then emigrated from Cuba to Jamaica when they were 10, in that range.
Speaker 1:I see, I see.
Speaker 2:So I grew up in a household with my grandparents where there was a picture of Jesus but there was also a picture of Marcus Garvey. I didn't know until up in my years that my grandparents were Garveyites and that my they had four children. My mother is the eldest, her sister and the firstborn son. His name was Marcus and my aunt's name is Amy Jakes, who is Marcus Garvey's wife's name. So when I say Garveyites I mean staunch Garveyites and so being political and just really active in the politics of the country. When Jamaica was becoming independent in 1962, we gained our independence I always saw my mother, by extension, and my grandparents very much involved in the, in the politics of the day and, um, something that I'll always kind of. You know how I love listening to British movies, british stuff. I just it's just baked into me, I guess you're, what do they?
Speaker 2:call it an Anglophile. Anglophile In that way I'm not a fan of, you know, royalty and that stuff. I'm not kind of like that but I do love-.
Speaker 1:We had some discussions when Queen Elizabeth died.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had some discussions. But I understand why people feel so tied because you know, that's that's where we looked outside of the country. We looked to this other place, you know cause it was. It was the, the, the, the center of so much um of Jamaican life and all of the members of the Commonwealth. But the other thing that I remember is we had a shortwave radio.
Speaker 2:There wasn't a TV at that time and we didn't have electricity for a while at my grandparents' home, but there was a shortwave radio and our kind of process. Every day we'd go out and, as we would say, romp outside, you know, up and down in the gully, and there was always fruit and little pigs. I had a pet pig, the runt of the litter, that we used to play with, but it was all kind of outside play we used to play with, but it was all kind of outside play. But in the evenings we would come and we would listen to the BBC on the radio, so getting news from all over the world. That came because of how I grew up with my grandparents.
Speaker 2:I think maybe too, because, as they used to say, the sun never set on British soil. The British were such the center of colonialism. They touched countries, they colonized countries all over the globe, and so the BBC became this place where all of this kind of global information is disseminated right. Yeah, which America is? In comparison, America is kind of insular versus the way that I grew up, kind of learning about things going on around the globe and my interest in that Americans, I guess, believe that we're so important we don't need to learn about the other people.
Speaker 2:Well, it's that and it's kind of. You know it's a country of rebels. They left and they formed their own thing, created their own thing. They weren't kind of, they were trying to cut away from the British where you know, the British were at sound.
Speaker 1:So certainly yeah.
Speaker 2:But definitely my interest in what was going on in the world came from my grandparents and through them my mom and also my grandfather was the justice of the peace. So I guess what that means in a kind of small town is any legal stuff, any political stuff, any kind of grumblings or rumors or or infighting that had to be dealt with.
Speaker 1:people would come to my, my grandfather and that felt it to you all, because that got, that's my mother would say little pigs, have big little pigs let me tell you.
Speaker 2:let me tell you, we were in the know, we were in the know, we were in the know, especially my sister just being naturally inquisitive. But I was mostly just outside romping.
Speaker 1:My sister was the one kind of getting the news ready with my face. And Jessica come here. You gotta hear this.
Speaker 2:She knew I was very uninterested in that stuff. It was important only to the extent that it affected my life. But it just meant that we grew up in this home. That was kind of a hub place and my grandmother was not this kind of docile homemaker. She was very. She was clever, just really like intuitive.
Speaker 2:She ran the house. She didn't, she wasn't a homemaker. She ran the house because, you know, we had helpers and things like that. So and she managed the kids because we were there, my two other siblings and I because my elder brother had already immigrated to America too. He got a scholarship to study abroad, and so it was the three of us, and so sometimes my aunts and uncles' children would come in for a time, a few months or whatever, and then they would leave. So this place became just kind of this central place where a lot of the ways that I think about the world feeling responsible for others who are less fortunate than me came out of that growing up, my love for coffee, because we had a lot of property and my grandfather had fruits and vegetables and things like that.
Speaker 2:But I remember the coffee was really just for our consumption, or at least my grandparents so they would pick coffee beans. Yeah, they would pick coffee and there was a tarp on the side, the sunny side of to dry them to dry the coffee, really, you never told me yes, yes and then, at night, while we were listening to the shortwave radio, there was a wooden hand grinder that we would use to grind the coffee for the next morning's breakfast, and so we would pass it around and grind coffee. What nice memories.
Speaker 1:It's so great, and the smell of it. The smell.
Speaker 2:I mean, coffee has that kind of connection for me, right? It's not just oh, how can you drink coffee so late? Coffee doesn't affect me in any way that I don't want it to, if I need it to keep me up it doesn't.
Speaker 1:It's always right by you.
Speaker 2:It's just, it's always. Coffee is my friend and we weren't allowed to drink it per se when we were younger. But my grandfather always left, you know, you put the sweetened condensed milk in the coffee and he would always leave the dregs of it in the cup for us, and it's funny because we have a coffee history also.
Speaker 1:Oh, really, and it's a nice connection history because, nanalina, we would spend very often weekends at Nana Ruby and Nanalina's house because that's where our church was. So we would be there for Sunday mornings, either before or after church with the big breakfast, and that's where we would get like coffee, which is maybe like a third of a cup of coffee, and the rest of it was milk.
Speaker 2:And then we would like, and you still drink your coffee that way.
Speaker 1:And we would be able to dip our like bread in the coffee. But you know, I also when you would tell them what's your grandmother's name, by the way, I think we should say it out loud.
Speaker 2:Mary, mary Marie we call her Mary Mary Barnes, marie.
Speaker 1:Barnes.
Speaker 2:Wheatley was her maiden name.
Speaker 1:So so you talked about how you get your curiosity about the world from being in space with your grandmother, but you know and grandmother and grandfather and grandfather. Obviously, I was with my grandparents in the 60s, during the Civil Rights era you know, strong time for the Black Power Movement.
Speaker 1:Yet I don't per se have a specific memory of them, you know, being that connected to the movement and the Black Panther movement and the Black Power movement and things. I really got that awareness from mom and the Black Liberation Movement and the connection to the cultural and political side of that. I got that from mom.
Speaker 2:Do you think she got it from them or not directly?
Speaker 1:I think she probably got it more externally. My great-grandparents and grandmother. They were more into surviving you know the difficult financial times of the period Right, and not just that, they were also bringing the family together. So their bent, I would say, is more internal in terms of a lot more closer knit, keeping the family together and surviving in society financially. I remember asking Nana Margaret or Nana Ruby, I don't recall which one how was it? You know, after learning about the Great Depression and people jumping off the sides of buildings, and things like that when the stock market crashed, I said well, how was it for you?
Speaker 1:What do you remember about it? And she's like you know, I don't remember it very much. It was just another day for us and I don't get the sense that they lost very much in the stock market. I don't think there was a loss of their home or anything, because I think that they were always, as Clay Kane would say, scratching and surviving, you know, making a way out of minimal ways and whatever it is jobs that they've had, you know. So she really said that it didn't affect them and this was about 35 years after that event. She didn't say that it made that much of an impact in her life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because they were living. You know, in the ways that I think, from what I read of that history, a lot of what happened for people is a shock from going from having to not having, and so I would imagine for many Black folks who didn't have to begin with it was a blip for them instead of this kind of big, big, big change.
Speaker 1:And one could say that in a way, my family in that regard was better prepared for the changing economic upheaval change than many other people who, as you said had it first and then did not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, we still ate our lamb chops for breakfast on Sunday mornings. That's so funny. I definitely remember my grandfather would get angry when I would be given white dolls. Mm-hmm, I would be given white dolls.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:You know. So this sense of my connected to Africanness was definitely instilled pretty, pretty early, pretty early in me and I remember just never feeling like like the, the, the, the feeling less than which, which, especially some of the hierarchy in Jamaica you know, would be around the white priest, you know, at the Catholic school the nuns.
Speaker 2:And the nuns were.
Speaker 2:Often they were white, but they were also Black and Indian nuns also, but a lot of the power in um the shop owners.
Speaker 2:It was either um chinese or white, you know, syrian, which we just call them white um, and I never grew up nor I think, um I could say the same for my, my um siblings and my cousins feeling inferior to anyone, which which I think comes comes from you know, my, my grandparents, my, my grandfather. He actually was involved in some, some labor activities in in Cuba, which at the time this was pre the revolution, the Castro revolution, and so he was. He was always into the rights of the people, the rights of the people, and so I think that I don't know I, just as I, as I think about the parts of who I am that really define me. In thinking about it more deeply, in preparation for this conversation, a lot of that came from my grandfather and my and my and my grandmother, and again through them to my mother. But, yeah, this is this is, this is what this is what this is what life was like for little Angela until.
Speaker 2:I came here in the eighties. So we're just coming into Brooklyn and Tibet style, you know, and kind of the young, gifted and black, and say it loud.
Speaker 1:I'm black and I'm proud.
Speaker 2:I mean it, just it, just it, just fed my soul. Yeah, yeah, You're like, I'm ready, I'm here for it, I'm here for it Bring it.
Speaker 1:You know, and for me with this background that I would say I got from my grand and great grandparents the how important family was, you know, and connection and the rituals of the family, you know, the church going and the Nana. Ruby was celebrated. Everybody's birthday, no matter how small?
Speaker 1:or what little time I mean here. We are busy adults with kids and this and that and jobs. If it was any family member's birthday, we had to go to you know the house to have the birthday cake and then if in 30 minutes, if we had to leave, we could leave.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had to show up.
Speaker 1:Every celebration birthday, holiday, thanksgiving, this you know Nana Ruby made it a big deal.
Speaker 2:That's a beautiful thing To bring us together. That's a beautiful thing. We didn't have that tradition at all. I mean, our family was pretty splintered and that's one thing that I. You know the tradition of family reunions that is so strong in the Black American community. We don't have that coming from the Caribbean. It's not a part of our tradition, and so you guys, like you know, all the generations come together and then you know the color coordinated and the planning years in advance, and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2:I think it's so beautiful it's so it's so beautiful. So okay. So the next part of this is, as we think about well, as we think about the legacy of our foremothers and forefathers in our lives, what do you want to say about our legacy for those who come after us? And this is not an invitation to get on your son, about making your grandmother. Do not pivot there.
Speaker 1:I will not go there with you. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:But what do you think?
Speaker 1:about. There's so many things, I almost feel like you put me on the spot. Thanks, pat.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry, let's go, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 1:You know, there's so many things that I want to impart to my boys or to my nephews, or to my loved ones. I, too, want to show by example, and I think it's easier to emulate behaviors rather than words. So you know, when I made the decision to change careers in my 30s and go to medical school, I think the one of the lessons or that that people may get from that is one it's never too late to start living your dream. But also that it's that dreaming is and reaching is possible. And you know, I say, while you have life, especially as a Christian, I believe that we have such power that he has given us that we don't often utilize that when you make the effort, that when you make the effort, he needs you. You know if it's his will.
Speaker 1:So in that regard, I certainly want to be an example to those people behind me that you know, mom or Auntie Leslie you know she really was a go getter, yeah, yeah, but family is also very important. The other thing is that I want to leave a legacy of supporting people around me and loved ones. I mean, that's my love language giving and being there for people in need and things like that. I think that's why I am blessed to be a healer, both in my professional life and, you know, privately. I think that people recognize that I have an ear and a heart for that sort of thing. So if that's something that the generations after me can remember me for, I'd appreciate it. I think that would be wonderful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think too, as you talked about your family culture around coming together, you are also that person. I mean, you're naturally like the. You know bring people together to have events. You know just, you're such such great at entertaining, creating, just cooking. You're an amazing cook, you, you know that, but you love to set a set, a beautiful celebration.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just, just, whatever your serving platters, or the way that you would set up outside, or just you always have this way and this is wherever you are, wherever you are, even in your vacation home, you have this way of presenting these inviting spaces for for people, and I it as you have said it. Now I realize that that is a part of the legacy of your four mothers that makes makes you this way, because it's so natural, it's so natural for you mentioned the vacation home, because I'm here now at my vacation home, and you guys might hear some workers here because they are now enhancing the entertainment space in my yard to create more of a gathering nook for the fire.
Speaker 2:This is what you do. So you're on vacation and you're and you're doing this on vacation because I can yeah, because, because, because, and that's what warms my heart to do that yeah so what?
Speaker 1:about you? What do you want? Oh my gosh, um. The used to be little, now big people to um know, yeah, I, because all your nieces and nephews. They're all like, wow, really. And children, that's like they're not kids anymore, they're all adulting and all of that. They're all adulting.
Speaker 2:I, I, it's, it's. It's so hard for me to think about um, because I have um about, because I have nieces who are the closest one to this is I was 12 when she was born and 14 for the other one, my, my eldest brother's two daughters. So they're kind of like the in and in between generation and they have children who are. One of them is in college and the others are coming along.
Speaker 2:So I, I, what I'm hearing in terms of my legacy, it is not being afraid to do something different, to try something new, to go outside of the boundaries, to color outside of the lines, and this is in in so many different aspects of my life.
Speaker 2:They've not all been been positive experiences, I'm going to say that, but what is consistent about the way that I live, and increasingly so, is to seek joy, is to try things that you might not have thought was possible, because the possibility exists and you can try, try it and you just might be that person. So what I have had the pleasure of hearing now, as these younger folks have gotten old enough and can let me know, old enough and can let me know, like when I'm introduced, when I was up in New Jersey a few weeks ago and my niece was introducing me to some of her colleagues just hearing the way that I'm introduced to other people. Oh, this is my aunt, who, and if you wonder why I'm like this, it's because of her and things like that it's very affirming, it's so affirming, and it, it, it is some things you hope to be.
Speaker 2:And then, when you, when you hear it, um, it's a beautiful thing, it really is a beautiful thing, it really is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:So this is a great theme and a great talk. Thank you for that.
Speaker 2:You're welcome for that. Thank you for engaging. I know that you know that there's this, there was this. These, these beautiful vignettes that we were able to share about these generations, and because we are about getting people to think deeply and act boldly, I wanted to pass on the idea that we are if not already we are the ancestors of other people, whether they are biological or otherwise, or otherwise. Our lives tell a story also, and we can still decide how we want to shape that story Right.
Speaker 1:And I think that this, just thinking about this, can encourage us to be more storytellers. I mean our whole podcast, and it's going to stay because it's archived and it lives on, and that's a story in itself. However, we can verbally pass on a lot of stories because we're the elders, as you said. You know, I'm blessed to have my mom still, so I'm one generation away from that, but many people our age you, of course have lost both of your parents at this point. So, yeah, yeah, we are them.
Speaker 1:You know, so yeah, we be there so the stories that, um, we pass on are the ones that it's like hey, grandma leslie used to tell me that, or mom used to always say, or you know, yes, my little lady I know she calls she sends me pictures of what she's wearing to school. In the second grade now.
Speaker 1:So I said what are you wearing? She said I'm wearing a pink. And then she said something I'm wearing a skort, a skort, oh Lord. I'm like, what do you know about a skort? A short skirt, a shorts and skirt combo. I used to love those. I like these.
Speaker 2:I used to love a skort, couldn't tell me nothing. Yeah, that's a good skort, that's right. Anyway, that's right.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, I hope that this gives you guys something to think about in terms of either your legacies or what legacies have been left for you that you might be living out.
Speaker 2:Good and bad.
Speaker 1:You know, there are always things that you want to promote, but there might be also things that you may want to downplay. But I think talking about it and uncovering things that might have previously been secretive, I think that might be helpful. You know, there may be enough time removed from the pain and sting of difficult things. You know, difficult conversations Maybe.
Speaker 2:anyway, Awesome, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, this has been another episode of black boomer besties from Brooklyn, brooklyn.
