Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
This is what the world needs now: two free-thinking “seasoned” Black women speaking their truth and inspiring others to do the same. Shaped by 45 years of friendship that began at the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School through the Ivy League, medical school, marriages, divorces, triumphs, parenting queer children, life-threatening illness and many many amazing adventures. Each week, besties Leslie Osei-Tutu and Angella Fraser will push against boundaries in love, culture, careers, faith, politics and out-dated assumptions about women of a certain age. Remember, you’re never too old to change your mind…or your hair! (but more on that later :-)All views are our own and do not reflect the views of our institution/company. Information provided is not intended to serve as medical advice.
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Our Bestie Beginning: But Can She Sew?
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So, we’re actually doing this: letting the world into our deeply rooted friendship: a safe and sharpening space from which we’ve weathered many storms for over 45 years.
In this premier episode we tell you where the “we” began; why we feel compelled to lean into our fears; and the ways our differences (not only what we have in common) continues to strengthen our bond since meeting as 14 yr olds at Brooklyn Tech High School.
Episode Highlights
13:26: ‘But can she sew’: What that means
05:18: We are two clumsy chicks
06:16: Our vastly different upbringings
17:23: The left-brain and right-brain bond
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
So I'm sure a lot of people are gonna want to know how we met. Like how did we meet in nineteen seventy-six, was it? I think we met in seventy-eight. It wasn't no seventy-eight. I guess it could have been seventy seven. Oh seventy-seven. Okay, let's meet in the middle. Okay. It was nineteen seventy-seven. Is that in the middle? It was nineteen seventy-seven, folks. We met. Where did you first see me that you can remember?
SPEAKER_01I gotta tell you, I think before we even go into how we met, why are we here speaking about ourselves? Oh like why are we doing this podcast? And what, you know, where did that come from? First of all, I gotta say, you're the one that brought up the idea of the podcast. Absolutely. I thought you were insane.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. But that's the story of our lives. It is. I'm the um very creative, like, you know, let's do this, Leslie. We can do this. And Leslie is real cautious. This wasn't always the case, so we'll talk about that, but that's how it is now. Um I really recognized how blessed we have been through our lives. It's not always been easy, it's been devastating the circumstance. And it's not like things have gotten some things have gotten great, but other things have gotten worse. And um and I think also I feel like we have a responsibility to share the ways that we have um learned and been blessed through experiences to share that with other people. I really felt that that was uh a duty that we had, and that's why I brought it to you, and I think you felt it as soon as I said it. You didn't you didn't always realize that we could do it or that you could do it. Yeah. But I think you always knew that you ought to have done it. And so it wasn't that hard a sell.
SPEAKER_01Well, nothing that you do for me is really that hard a sell. I tell you, what's coming up for me is that you and I have talked about over the years, over these 45 plus years, how uniquely different we are in the way that we navigate the world. Yeah. Um, our spouses, our other friends, our coworkers, people have looked at us over the years and have remarked at how we do things differently. Right. Um, trendsetters, maybe, trailblazers maybe.
SPEAKER_00Well, differently, when you say differently, you mean differently from other people or differently from each other?
SPEAKER_01Differently from other people. Yes. Definitely. That's what I thought was important to bring to the public.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That give me an example of that. I'll give you an example of that is actually pretty unusual. That obviously at my age at 60, I've had many other uh romantic relationships before this long-term relationship with my cu my husband. And I gotta say that I am very close friends with all of my past people in my relationship. I don't harbor ill will. I think fondly of them. Many of them I still love deeply. And I've come over the years with maturity to recognize that I was never meant to be with them forever. I was with them for a season, and I can appreciate that season. And it's created who I am, and as a result, I'm a better person in relationships for it. But that's a different outlook. You know, not everybody can think of their exes in a way like that. And certainly current partners don't, you know, don't appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's true. You're you're really special in that way. Um let me stop you for a moment. Are you recording, Leslie? I am recording. Okay. Are you sure? Let give me evidence of that. I want evidence of that. Okay, I see the evidence, so I will continue. Listen. Listen. He's got me. Listen, if you listen. Okay, I can't be mad at that. Listen, let me just tell you, you will see why that is necessary. We we need to do this for each other because we may seem to be these two cool chicks, but we are these two clumsy. We are clumsy and charming and capable and all the things. So um we check in on each other. So and I I wanted to make sure that no one was gonna miss this juiciness.
SPEAKER_01And we also make sure like that we don't come out of the bathroom with like toilet paper like in our um in our waistband. Yeah, that type of thing. And that has happened too.
SPEAKER_00So um anyway, yeah, Leslie's very unique that way. And um I I didn't always appreciate the ways that uh you were uh different, right? I think that um because you you kind of you grew up very differently than I did. You know, I grew up in a very strict West Indian immigrant uh household. I wouldn't say it was very strict, it was very strict in some ways. I remember I was um the biggest kind of uh scolding that I would get from my mother, especially, is that I was too Americanized. You know, I I came to America when I was eight. And the the the idea of having friends outside of your siblings or wanting to sleep over people's house, I think that's a black thing, not just a Jamaican thing, but um those types of things of of wanting to having friendships outside of the home, you know, it was a very kind of American concept. And so there was a lot a lot of rules that I had around that. And you grew up, how did you grow up?
SPEAKER_01Well, I as you were speaking, I was just thinking, one of the things, surprisingly enough, that attracted me to you was the type of structure that you had in your home. Now, we both grew up in homes headed by women. Our parents, our mothers were single mothers um at the time when we met in high school. For sure. Um, my mom had um the three of us, my brother and sister, um, we were three, um, very young, and she and my dad divorced um young. So I grew up in a single um mother household. And my mother being very young, we did not have as much structure as you had. So I know one, I mean, I was in a very permissive household where I didn't have a lot of curfews. There weren't a lot of my mother was too busy to have a lot of eyes on me. Um, so I really appreciated the structure that mom glads provided, you know, when I was over your house and the sleepovers and things. It was a safety feeling, too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, wow. So imagine that, folks. Um this chick here wanted more structure, and I was dying to be free. I was dying to be free. And I think what what Leslie, what I saw in Leslie and what remains true, is that she's a safe place. So I was able to kind of push my boundaries without feeling like she was going to put me in any danger, right? So what what a what a level of freedom that is when you feel like you can fly, but you're protected by someone who loves you and and and wants, you know, the best for you. And that's what I had with Leslie. And um, and we've we've felt this way about each other from pretty early on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, even before we had words to talk about it. Exactly. And how ironic it is for you to say about a place of safety in lack of structure when we met in the middle, me yearning for more structure, you appreciating less structure. And man, because I conflicked so early on.
SPEAKER_00Because I I knew that your well of love was really deep. I when I came to America in elementary school, I was bullied a lot because of my accent. That was at a time when being Jamaican was not cool, being, you know, reggae was was considered some kind of jungle music, and and I was bullied. And so um to have an American friend who I felt safe with, it said a lot about you. You know what I mean? I don't know if I ever told you that.
SPEAKER_01I didn't really know that you were bullied.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, I didn't know that. Yeah, it was um I've never been bullied.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because you were the bullier. No, I'm kidding. No, you weren't a bully, but everybody was was scared of you because you could fight.
SPEAKER_01It wasn't that I was fight f uh a fighter because the last fight I had was met you. You were not a fighter. I I found out that people were intimidated by my perceived maturity.
SPEAKER_00Right. You were not a fighter, but people were afraid to fight you because they probably thought you could kick their ass. Probably. Yeah. So imagine just really beautiful, um, fun. All the guys, you know, flocked around Leslie. And um, with all of that, just this beautiful spirit, really smart. Um, you know, who could not just want to be around you? Whoever didn't see it in you, that just it just didn't matter. Some people saw you, I think, superficially. It's like they just wanted to hang out with you because you were popular and all of that. But that was that wasn't me. I saw you deeper, babe.
SPEAKER_01I saw you deeper. Okay, I like that. But listen, let why did we name this episode one, What Can She Sew? Oh, this is such a great story.
SPEAKER_00Such a great story. We were such nerds. Like, okay, so Leslie and I both know how to sew. We knew how to sew then, okay. My mother taught me how to sew from when I was little in Jamaica. She had one of those sewing machines that had the the um the kind of rocking plate underneath and used her foot pedal. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And little by little, she would let me hang around, she would let me cut the strings off of her um garments. You know, I wasn't allowed to take the scraps to make what we call dolly clothes until she finished her outfits because my mother, she didn't use patterns. She just, so she you never knew when she was going to use pieces to kind of make a pattern out of it. So, anyway, I've been sewing for um for quite a while, and Leslie knew how to sew also.
SPEAKER_01My grandmother taught me how to sew.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So isn't that amazing?
SPEAKER_01I would go over to my grandmother's house, and very often I would be the only one at my grandmother's house. And my grandmother was a seamstress. So as a result of that, I would use the fabric that she had at the house, and she would just teach me to show sew to the point where I was sewing in middle school, and certainly in by high school, I was making my own clothing to wear to school.
SPEAKER_00And hence another connection with we loved it because it was we could use very little money, get some great fabric. There was like a dollar stores, dollar yard stores, and we could just make anything we wanted. Clothing, unique clothing. So anyway, um, it was whenever we saw someone that we were a little jealous of, you know, whatever, they were cuter, had nicer clothes, or whatever.
SPEAKER_01Or if we wanted to allow them into our inner circle.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. We always said, Yeah, she's this or that, but can she sew? Because that was like something that only we could do. That was like our God no higher. We could, we could sow. And it's like, but can she sew? And that was our way of saying, okay, they may be all of that in a bag of chips, but if they can't sew, they're out. They're out. They just can't. We don't need them.
unknownWe don't, you know.
SPEAKER_00So we named this episode, but can she sew because it was a way of kind of nodding to our our our growth, um, the ways that we found protection um and found our voice, I think, uh uh around being being different, but not seeing that difference as something that made us weird. It was something that um that we both had, and um it just felt right that it be kind of our origin story because it it it reminds us of this time when we were um becoming self-assured and becoming um different and comfortable with with being different than than you know uh the rest of our friends in high school.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So you may be thinking that these uh ladies have been hanging around each other for 45 years, so we're so similar and we finish each other's sentences, which we do. And whenever I agree with her in conversation with my husband, my husband says, Yeah, but Angie is always gonna say that, or like she's a plant. But we're actually not as similar as one would think. So you want to talk about that for a little bit?
SPEAKER_00I do want to talk about that. So um Leslie, I would say Leslie is very sequential, right? She's a logical thinker. Um if we haven't said it already, she's a physician. And um it's really her being a doctor comes out of her being the way that she is, not that she learned to be this way in medical school. She's always been this, okay. You do this, then you do that, then you do that, then you do that. Me, I'm like, okay, that's one way to do it, but you can also do this and then that over there, and then that over there, and then that, and then come back to this. So I've always seen me nuts. I've always seen possibilities. And Leslie, once she finds that one way to do it, that is the way it's gonna get done, and that is the way it's supposed to get done. But but here's the thing the fact that we are that different is actually one of the things that brought us so close together because she definitely expanded me, and I definitely expanded her. And so the idea of um, I don't even think it's like opposites attract. It wasn't like that type of thing.
SPEAKER_01Do you think so? No, no, not at all. Because we have enough similarities that I wouldn't call each each ourselves opposites, right? Right. But I think that we fill in each other's holes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And we have a high level of respect for each other. So and each other's opinions. And each other's opinions. Right. It's like we trust each other's opinions. And we seek each other out. We seek our opinions out. So I think in general, I would consider myself right brain and Leslie left brain. For sure. Definitely. For sure. But we meet in the middle at that intersection of the two. And I pull her over to my side a lot. And she tries to pull me over to her side a lot, but um, I think she has a tougher time than I do. Um but I think when people hear that we're very different, they they can't believe it because they think we think a lot. And if you stay with this podcast, and I certainly hope that you do, we will expose the differences that we have, the different opinions that we have, the different ways of looking at life that we have. And um one of the things that uh we're hoping that our listeners learn is that um difference does not mean that you cannot coexist or find joy in another person who thinks differently from you. You know, it's um there's there's some uh middle ground that you can find to to make um relationships with people who are different work really well. And um, but you'll get to see that. We don't have to talk about that anymore. You'll get to see it.
SPEAKER_01Well, while we're speaking about that, what I do want to say is, and I'll give you a shout-out by saying that what one of the things I still appreciate about you all over all of these years is how I still grow with you. Um, we talk a little bit about we we trust each other in our opinions and we know that the love is there. So um we're not out to harm each other, but I'll run something by you that an instance where I know that I'm correct. And um, because I'm very linear in my thinking, just speaking to you about it, you can still, I can still learn things and expand um my thinking about it. Right, right, you know, and I give you an ear because of that trust and respect. Whereas with other people, I might not, you know, have that much faith in them. So also it comes out a lot.
SPEAKER_00I'll take that. I will take that. You receive that. I receive that down to my toes. Um, so what do you think is on our um next 40-year journey? What are some of the things that you think we're gonna go for?
SPEAKER_01Wow. I'm I'm I'm really excited about that. What I one of the things that I envision is that the people who are viewing us will think that we've lost our minds.
SPEAKER_00We lose our minds on a weekly basis.
SPEAKER_01But for example, I've always been pretty conservative in my dress, in my um, in my thinking, and I'm now seeking red dreadlocks. And when I say red, I mean color red, not just auburn red, you know. That's a big change. I just think that as I'm getting into, I'm 60 now, in my next 20, 40 years, I want to go out with a bang.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, I want to go out with a bang. I want to um realize things that I've been thinking about. Now's the time to start checking off your bucket list with vengeance. And a lot of it I've already checked, but um, I'm fearlessly going into those things. So if you come across a physician with bright red dreadlocks, that might be me.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, I think this podcast for you is one of those things that is breaking you out of your shell. I was a little concerned to be honest. I knew that you were all in, um, but I was concerned about whether you would find a place to be comfortable with um, you know, being as open as exposure. Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean I knew that you would, but I thought that it would be harder for you than it is. And I really appreciate you pushing through because um I I know that that's what you're doing. You're pushing through. You want to be more um, more relaxed, more, more comfortable, more vulnerable, and um, you're willing to do that with me. And I think that's so awesome.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And I may have said it a few times already, but growth is still important. I don't want to be that person that has nothing more to learn or nothing new to experience. I think I have a wonderful life right now, but I, God willing, um, I can only vision envision more. Right, right.
SPEAKER_00So we are um right now in New Jersey. We are in a beautiful closet that um is perfect for its sound quality. It's actually one of the bedrooms in Leslie's home that was converted into a gorgeous closet. And um it's a perfect place for a podcast. I am gonna be going back to my home in North Carolina tomorrow. Um, but so I don't know where I'm gonna podcast from there yet, but um I'm gonna find a great space that will give us the best sound quality possible. So I um I think are we gonna call this a wrap?
SPEAKER_01I just want to say thank you again for pushing me in this direction, and I really want to invite our listeners to continue to come back to hear some of our funny stories, to hear some of our more serious stories, um, how we got through um challenging times, challenging interactions, and um talk a little bit about um our faith journey, which is a little bit different than um many other Christians. Yeah. So we we have uh we have good plans for you guys.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. So stay with us. We are in it to win it. We are gonna keep this going because we do believe that this is um this is ordained for us to to do this. This is a part of um it's little it's our testimony in a sense, right? That um and we're supposed to share our testimony. Oh, yeah. So here we are. So we're gonna call this a wrap. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time on what is it? Blackies from Brooklyn. See you.
