 culture juice. Take 30 million Africans from their mother fatherly blend for 600 years in the new world. 400 years in America. Stir 300 years of bodies in chains on auction blocks, rub tar and feathers, cancel lynching and colored only johns, spend 100 years in emancipation, hopscotch around black codes, watch Ghana, great Jim Crow to integrate education, plus 20 years of civil rights. Hello, Africa. Add 400 tons of elbow grease in the American School of Hard Knocks, sift 150 years of blues with 5000 years of sacred songs and 100 years of jazz 50 in the fields and back alleys. 50 years of rhythm and blues with 20 years of rockabilly rock. Pour 25 years of funk, 15 of thin visibility at 40 years of OG rap. Love legacy. Leave respect for all brothers and sisters. Shake, rattle and rock. Lift every face from cafe au lait of chocolate. Thank our creator toast today. And let's drink to tomorrow. Creole daddy ways. My Creole, my Creole daddy's first wife was caramel cute, five feet petite, had wavy hair like white folks, a cradle Catholic church going regularly like waking up to sunshine, sunshine. She was his sweetheart, warming the home front, when his long river road trips kept him away nights, delivering newly rolled tobacco packed like sardines and wooden boxes, then something about one homecoming. She was asleep in the sheet she pressed so perfectly. Daddy said she broke his heart and half, like a walnut split down the middle. My Creole daddy's second wife was my mother. Deep dark chocolate tall like me five eight heavy bones, a black beauty he said often. She a PK a preacher's kid the eldest, the rock of her family, born and raised Baptist Mount Zion style, had no idea why my Creole daddy saw beauty in her face. She could so grow roses like her chocolate to his mom. He'll most cuts and ailments with herbs from the yard from Baptist mother converted to Catholic to marry my Creole daddy. And that was the last time most saw him in church until his end. My chocolate Creole mother was more Catholic than my Creole daddy he said, and she prayed enough for him. She played pray to the Blessed Mother and practiced healing. When folks needed it few spells only blessings. When she passed my world crushed like smash pecans scattered hope here broken dreams there. I see her nose daily in my mirror. I kiss with her lips, smile with her eyes. She taught me to crochet when it rains for days to find the beauty in any space of the home. And though she feared water I swam for her, brought home metals to assure her the kindness of water, and that Negroes can swim. Mother really. Okay okay you swim for me she said. My Creole daddy's last wife DD was tall and milk chocolate. She was gorgeous and the rock of her family, raising nine kids alone, caring for her ailing father, a good Christian woman. Like my mother she sang, any day. My mother saying Charles Browns bills will be ringing. Every season anytime she had a mouth to belt it out like a sneeze, but DD. She sang. Oh, amazing grace. How sweet the sound all hours of the day staggering or sober. Now DD was common and had little common sense stayed drunk daily. And that ain't no big my team no big lie. I was small because I earned my way. So I said my Creole daddy insisted that I stand up for myself. I have to lay it down for anything or anyone skills he said, a woman had to have skills her own, just not too many. So she don't need a color man. My daughter's daughter about to graduate Joseph S Clark high school like me was killed, going to the senior prom, a hit and run on the new Claiborne Avenue interstate. Like me she wanted college choices a woman can make for herself. Carol Ann died instantly. And that killed so much and DD, my Creole daddy's third and last wife. She drank herself to death. And they say DD had bourbon with a coat back for breakfast most days and I can witness. Still I know better grief grief got hold of her like the left side of bad luck and never let go. Finally, she has peace.