a singing tree

I have a headache today but I don’t want to take any aspirin. I have a headache because I need to cry but I don’t want to cry because what good would that do? I think today should be about discomfort. This morning I said I would practice radical self-care and saw myself going to the park for a run, but instead I just came home with two slices of pizza. Tomorrow my doctor’s going to tell me that I am pre- pre-diabetic; my lab results were posted online and I worked it out for myself. I have to lose 7% of my body weight and that means giving up sugar. Something sweet and a cup of tea—that’s what comfort looked like when I was a child. And yes, obesity and diabetes run in the family. Yesterday I pitied myself for having to give up sugar but today it feels appropriate. I tried to “stay positive” this morning. I read and responded to some kids in Colorado who read Bird and sent me their reviews and artwork. I decided to send them my latest books when one girl, Anastasia, urged me to “keep riting.” But then I listened to analysis of the Ferguson crisis on the radio and wound up going out into the grey day scowling. The clerk behind the glass at the post office was chatting with her friend and I decided not to be annoyed; maybe they’re talking about Ferguson, I thought, but then she leaned in and told me that one of their colleagues had died suddenly overnight. “You never know when your time will come,” she said before wishing me a good day. I offered my condolences and then went over to the farmer’s market, bypassed all the people buying fresh vegetables for Thanksgiving, and went straight for the pastry tent. I was good, I bought a sugar-free apple pocket, and decided to walk a few extra blocks to the train. Then a young white man asked the Black woman in front of me, “Would you like to help save the polar bears?” and I muttered, “Get the f*** out of here with that mess.” Not because I don’t love polar bears but because he has the nerve to expect Black women to care about his cause when he probably doesn’t care about ours. I don’t think he heard me and I know I’m making a lot of assumptions, but today I feel I have that right.

I will turn this day around. I’m reading Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming and that’s a balm for the soul. In the pizza shop they were playing Ella Fitzgerald and Louie Armstrong, and singing along to “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” made me feel better for a few minutes. We still have something to hold onto. They haven’t stripped the whole tree bare. “One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes/An everlasting song, a singing tree…”