My two-week visit “back home” is nearly drawing to an end, but at least my visit will end with a bang since tomorrow’s the Fourth of July. I love coming home to attend my family reunion and then spend additional time with my immediate family. Some people find it hard to believe that I’m so close to my family since I’ve lived either out of state or out of the country. As a matter of fact, when I flew into Dulles, Mom welcomed me “To the Land of the Living” as if I were coming from a much more exotic place than Austin, TX.
I always feel that I eat too much and exercise too little when visiting my family. I was smart enough to write down some of the beginning capoeira curriculum before I left Austin both to teach my 10-year-old nephew and to make sure that I practiced while I was away. At 40.9, there’s no way that my body’s going to bounce back well from a two-week total absence from capoeira. Fortunately, my nephew’s a very active, energetic soul who happily practiced with me twice in the backyard and once at a waterpark.
This particular waterpark was more geared toward much younger kids, but my nieces, nephew and I still managed to have a rip-roaring good time. In my normal life, I usually swim 21 laps (3 sets of 7 different strokes) twice a week, but I only raced my nephew a few laps in the underpopulated pool. We were very lucky since, as we pulled up to the waterpark around 4pm, two busloads of screaming schoolkids on summer break were fetched away! I spent most of my time in the pool, practicing several capoeira kicks. Of course, my nephew joined me. With nothing much better to do, even my two nieces practiced each kick a few times.
Another day, we went bowling. As soon as we entered the bowling alley, I spotted a sea of gray-haired people and leaned over to Mom and whispered, “This is where people your age hang out.” When we walked over to the counter to get our tacky two-toned highlighter colored bowling shoes, I loudly and without a trace of shame requested bumpers. My older sister teased me, but I didn’t care. I know my limitations. I don’t do well with any sport or game that involves balls; so this would be the only way I could bowl and enjoy myself. Besides, it has been years since I’ve bowled.
Bowling has become so high tech now that they can program who gets bumpers and who doesn’t. Everytime my sister bowled, the bumpers dropped, but they were present for her kids and me. Plus, the score was automatically done by the computer. I had been looking forward to brushing up on my bowling math, but shook my head in slight disgust that all this automation would lead us to being a dumber society. Nonetheless, the automatic scoring told the truth: I won the first game with 133 points! I’d bowled 4 strikes. At the end of the first game, I knew that my second game would be lackluster since my right shoulder was in pain. Even though I was third place for the second game, I was still the overall winner.
When my sister had first mentioned going bowling, her kids had screamed “chili cheese fries!” So after bowling two games, we got two orders of the intestinally challenging dish. It was so warm, gooey and yummy, I felt guilty about every delicious bite. Surely I’d pay somehow for eating it.
This morning, Igot up a little too early for my taste, 8 am. When school’s in session, 8 am is “sleeping in,” but since I’m in the middle of vacation, it’s a wee bit early. We all got dressed to go to church, which I love attending since I don’t go to church in Austin. I love Black baptist churches, but I’ve never had the desire to join one or be baptized. It’s not that I don’t think I’m worthy or think I’m better than any other Christian. I’ve just never believed that those things were necessary for my relationship with God. And whenever I can cut out the middle man, I do. That’s why I self-published my first novel.
The minister seemed annoyed by the low attendance and commented about how we would stay longer if we continued acting like we didn’t really want to be there! Either he was joking or the energy changed enough in the room that he saw fit to release us after an hour and a half. Whatever the case, I liked his message of Independence Day being more than just our freedom from British rule. We should celebrate our liberation from whatever challenges that used to enslave us. As I gear up to start a new school year, I’m going to see how much systemic foolishness I can emancipate myself from.