Life Lessons
Remembering How I Got to Be Me
I had to reinvent myself, repeatedly
Being in the path of four hurricanes in the space of fourteen months will make you think about your life as nature howls outside your home, and you are afraid. It is amazing how fear brings clarity to thinking.
My destiny was to be a substance abuser, a crack whore on welfare, with many babies from many daddies living in the projects. I defied that destiny by jumping over life’s obstacles. Over and over, I invented a new me.
My family started on the dangerous West Side of Chicago and then moved to the even more hazardous South Side, which had earned its reputation as the “baddest part of town of town” in Jim Croce’s hit song “Bad Bad Leroy Brown.”
Let’s follow this winding path via my name changes. I was the first grandbaby for all four of my grandparents, so I was a spoiled child. My mom was fifteen when I was born.
Boo
Boo is the name my mother called me. You’ll know me as your sister, your niece, or your cousin. I am family. I am beautiful and contentious, and I am a firstborn. I’m the cousin playmate running headlong into trouble. Our neighborhood, 1505 West Adams Street, was so dangerous my mom sent us to live with our cousins in the projects for the…
