Nostalgia

What is your earliest memory? Mine dates back to when I was three years old…almost 40 years ago. So many people I know can’t remember their childhoods or even a ton of detail from the first half of their lives but I remember random things and big events from before I could speak well.

Olivia with her daughter and me with the children before left for the airport

Olivia, one of my oldest friends from childhood and her eldest daughter stayed with our family this week. She lives in the South and came to Harlem so her daughter could participate in one of Dance Theater of Harlem’s summer dance intensives. We met in DC during the summer leading into our fifth grade year. We lost touch for two years because her family worked in the foreign service and got assigned to another country, but we reconnected in seventh grade after they decided to send her back to the same school where we met a couple of years earlier.

Olivia’s daughter and Zadie hugging it out as she and mother were heading back to the airport

Throughout middle school up until our ninth grade year before she headed to boarding school, we lived at each other’s houses. For fun, we played M.A.S.H and made up dances that we choreographed. We went to the mall and gave fake names and numbers when boys tried to “holla’.” We saw Clueless at the movie theater and walked Pentagon City like mallrats eating our cinnamon sugar Auntie Anne’s soft pretzels. We were inseparable. Similar in some ways and different in others, there was a balance to our friendship. We were just two peas in a pod.

Throughout the visit. I thought about how crazy it was that despite all of these years and how much life has changed since middle school, there was still this uncanny balance. We both ended up having two girls and a boy, in that order. And her eldest daughter and our kids got along like gangbusters. I can only attribute this connection to how we both have decided to raise our kids, which is informed by our value systems and the people that we were becoming at the pivotal age of 13. We haven’t lived in the same city for almost 15 years, but some things just don’t change.

(L-R): Artist Bianca Mona, Bilal himself, The Laundromat Project’s current executive director Ayesha Williams, me, and The LP’s founder Risë Wilson.

Towards the end of her visit, I traveled to the far reaches of the earth to a village called Brooklyn to help celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Laundromat Project (The LP), the organization that I worked for out of grad school. As their first employee, for what was then very much a start-up, I had a lot to prove…to myself and my professional network. I was hired to do all of the programming work for the artists the organization supported. I worked all of the time to help build the organization, which is kind of what I’m doing now only the organization is my own.

Bilal performing in The LP office Tiny Desk concert-style

I don’t know if this is a story of how impactful good middle school friendships can be or that remembering your past can be an affirming reminder that you’ve always been on the right path no matter how circuitous.

There is so much beauty in reflecting on the past to see what relationships and decisions got you to your present. Reflecting on it is also a reminder that every day is history. Every action we take today shapes future versions of ourselves.

If you can’t remember your past from your own memory, ask others what they remember. Don’t run from it. Find the beauty in it, even if it was painful, and see how it has helped form the current version of you.

I always ask people to think back to third or fourth grade and share what their deep passion or interests were then. More often than not, there’s some good intel on what would rock their boat today if they decided to cultivate the interest.

The past holds so many answers for what today can be. Don’t bury it.

Petrushka

Your Local Ice Cream Lady & Life/Business Coach