Tag: storytellingmatters

  • I’m Learning

    I’m Learning

    As I’ve said before—and as most of my close friends know—I’m just now beginning to like my birthday.

    That might sound small. But to me, it’s seismic.

    You spend enough years pretending your day of birth is just another day, and eventually, you believe it.

    You teach yourself not to expect anything; over time, even the presence of joy feels like an intrusion.

    A noise in a quiet room you worked hard to make still.

    But now, because of the stubborn kindness of those around me, it’s changing.

    Slowly.

    Quietly.

    Almost against my will.

    They’ve made my birthday a project.

    Not a celebration, but a mission.

    To make me smile. 

    And I won’t lie—something about that type of caring, unsolicited but insistent, humbles me.

    Still, no amount of cake or candles wipes away the long memory of absence.

    There’s still the question of what was missing.

    And maybe worse, those who never cared enough to say they were wrong.

    A friend told me something today that I can’t get out of my head.

    She said, “Sometimes we don’t get an apology. That’s just reality. That’s why we have faith. God said, ‘Vengeance is mine.’ He will make it right.”

    I nodded.

    But the part of me that’s been carrying silence for decades didn’t just nod.

    It stirred.

    Because she’s right.

    We don’t always get the apology.

    We don’t always get the closure.

    Some of us are walking around with unfinished stories tattooed on our backs.

    We carry them into every conversation, every argument, every strained holiday dinner, hoping—just once—someone might say, “I’m sorry.”

    But they don’t.

    And the truth is…

    Maybe they never will.

    So I’ve been praying.

    I pray for guidance.

    Not for patience—not anymore.

    I used to pray for patience until I realized  God has a sense of humor.

    A disturbing one.

    Because when you ask for patience, God doesn’t hand you peace.

    He hands you people.

    Situations.

    Moments designed to strip you raw.

    I asked for patience and was placed in a line behind an elderly woman who was handwriting a check and logging it in her journal.

    I asked for patience and got coworkers who don’t do their treatments or charting.

    I asked for patience, and God reminded me I still have so far to go.

    So now I pray for guidance.

    Because I know right from wrong.

    But I don’t always know how to move through it.

    Because doing the right thing doesn’t come with applause.

    It comes with silence. With resistance.

    Biting your tongue so hard it leaves marks.

    Smiling at people you know would sell you out for less than you’re worth.

    Standing still while someone else gets away with what you could never do.

    So yes—I smile.

    Because I’ve learned that’s easier for other people.

    And on some days, it’s easier for me, too.

    But it’s not just a smile.

    It’s a shield.

    A sermon.

    A small declaration of war.

    Because inside that smile is the tension between “I’m trying” and “Don’t push me.”

    Because even though I’m praying for guidance,

    Even though I believe God fights my battles,

    Even though I believe vengeance isn’t mine to seek,

    I also think that some people walk too close to the edge—

    And that if I weren’t actively praying,

    I’d push them.

    Into traffic.

    Into silence.

    Into the reflection, they keep avoiding.

    So I breathe.

    I pray.

    I eat the cake.

    I take the hugs I never asked for.

    I thank the people who won’t let me hate this day.

    And when someone asks how I’m doing,

    I say, “Fair.”

    Because I am.

    And I thank God for the strength to keep from doing what I want to do.

    Even if He knows exactly how close I get.

    By Kyle J. Hayes

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  • “What We Remember, We Keep-Alive”

    “What We Remember, We Keep-Alive”

    I had been working on the newest book in my Culinary Crossroads series, where Jamaal was supposed to return home—to the States and the old South.

    I thought it would be simple.

    A return to where it all began.

    A pilgrimage from the polished kitchens of Manila to the front porches, fields, and kitchens that shaped so many of us long before we ever touched a passport.

    I thought I was writing about food.

    But the deeper I dug, the more I realized that it was never just food.

    It was survival.

    It was remembrance.

    It was resistance disguised as Sunday dinner.

    I read everything I could find.

    The recipes were there, sure.

    But what kept catching me, snagging me like thorns on an old fence line, were the traditions.

    Not just what we ate but how we ate.

    Why we seasoned the way we did.

    Why were our celebrations, mourning, and rituals around food and music crafted in ways no cookbook could fully explain?

    It started long before we were “we” in any way we would recognize now—

    on the plantations,

    where bits and pieces of fading memories were passed down by those brought here, enslaved, stolen, stripped, but not erased.

    They blended what they remembered with what little they had.

    Cornmeal. Greens. Off-cuts and castoffs.

    They made necessity taste like something more than survival.

    They made it taste like home.

    And over generations, through sheer will and stubborn brilliance, we built something uniquely ours.

    Not just in the food but in the music,

    the way we buried our dead,

    the way we married our loved ones,

    and the way we danced when the sun went down and the cotton fields emptied.

    These traditions aren’t static.

    They are not museum pieces under glass.

    They are living and breathing things—regional and even tribal, depending on where your people ended up.

    That phrase kept echoing in my mind:

    “Where your people from.”

    The old folks would ask you that when they met you.

    After you named whatever city you lived in now—Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City—they’d look deeper, waiting for the real answer.

    They were talking about the South.

    Not the city, but the state.

    The county.

    The plantation.

    The place that owned your ancestors.

    It was a question about roots.

    (Writing that even now feels like swallowing glass.)

    The place that owned your ancestors.

    So many years later, and it’s still hard to say.

    Still hard to look at without flinching.

    And then came the “Great Migration,” or as some called it, “The Great Exodus.”

    We left with almost nothing.

    No land. No wealth. No easy road.

    But we took what mattered.

    We carried our recipes.

    We carried our songs.

    We carried the parts of ourselves that they could not steal, whip out of us, or erase.

    And for decades, it sustained us.

    Soul Food. Soul Music.

    Names born not in marketing rooms but in living rooms, storefront churches, and kitchens where steam and sorrow rose together.

    And now?

    Now, the word “Soul” feels almost quaint.

    Almost forgotten.

    Funny, isn’t it?

    What slavery couldn’t kill, freedom quietly erased.

    In chasing new beginnings, we risk losing the old songs.

    The taste of real cornbread.

    The sound of a mother’s hum in the kitchen.

    The wisdom tucked into the folds of a handwritten recipe card.

    As I write Jamaal’s story, I realize I’m writing my own.

    Our own.

    The story of a people who carried more than pain.

    We carried genius.

    We carried grace.

    We carried soul.

    And it’s on us—not the history books, not the tourists looking for “authenticity”—to remember what we made from nothing.

    And to keep making it while we still can.

    Before the last song fades.

    Before the last plate is cleared.

    Before the last story goes untold.

    By Kyle Hayes

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    #BlackVoices #MemoryAndLegacy #WeAreOurAncestorsDreams #StorytellingMatters