crossings

I was riding the Metro one Sunday and noticed a little girl sitting next to an adult female, both with their legs crossed tightly like twisted pretzels. Seeing this brought a smile to my face for some reason, maybe because the tiny child seemed very intent on imitating what the grown up beside her was doing. I glanced at my friend, noticed that she too had taken note and asked her if she ever sat like that when she was that age. We agreed that the women around us when we were children did cross their legs in a more elegant, sophisticated even sensual fashion however they did not encourage us to do the same. Placing one leg over the other was reserved for our later years…I wondered what that was all about but it got to me to thinking.

As one grows older we try so hard to fall far from the tree not wanting to be anything like our parents. No matter how much we want to be different, there will always be some tie that unmistakable binds us to them whether it be the way we look, some mannerism or just liking what they liked. My mother painted with oils and water colors, created pieces of sculpture made from spray painted cut wood. Her degree from Howard University came from the school of Fine Arts where she met my father who was a student of music at that time. Though I am not formally trained I have become an artist, still have no skills when it comes to playing an instrument which does not mean I am not a music enthusiast, far from it. What’s funny is how much I cannot be without certain performers in the soundtrack of my life.

I remember roaming through a street festival when I lived in NYC one hot summer afternoon. I took refuge under a tent with thousands of CD’s at greatly reduced prices. Needing to cool down, I perused the titles, stopped flipping the plastic cases when a cover so familiar rested beneath my fingers. When I was a kid, my dad played so much Jazz and gospel it drove me nuts. A rocker with a serious adoration for Hendrix, I could not relate to Miles, the Count and all of the singers belting out tunes from the LP’s we were forced to listen to every weekend. I pulled out the CD with the yellow cover, ran my hand over it remembering, then the turquoise one behind it; from that day on Nina Simone continues to be one of my favorite female vocalists. Now the interesting thing about all of this is when I took classes to become certified in arts in medicine, my classmates renamed me Simone after the visual artist in me made her debut with the first collage goddess. They had no knowledge of how enamored I was with Nina…coincidence that they picked Simone born from seeing my art which was in my DNA waiting to be discovered? I think not.

The desire to trace my ancestry is growing. I wonder who crossed what ocean to be in this land, were they artistic, how far or not from the tree any of my family members fell from those who birthed each of them, if any of them were gifted with the creative energy that courses through my veins so naturally that I sometimes don’t know how to harness the talents. Perhaps my fascination with taking pictures of trees is them calling out to me to climb up and find out so…

keep your peepers open!®