Rescue of her family from second floor used with permission
Sometimes the bough breaks. Sometimes the Broom of the Fate is brutal, and its straws are made of pain and destruction. They destroy all we had and leave us with little else than the accounts of love and esteem that we have contributed to with our goodness and kindness and honor. It is in these darkest of times that our way is lit out of them by the glow from the stepping stones our friends lay upon our path. Such a time is here for Fae Laume.
You know her. We know her. She is us. We see her at ConVocation. We see her on social media. We know her laugh. We light up with her smile. Her steps in the community leave happiness in their wake.
But not today.
Fae lost everything. She lost her momentos. She lost her cherished memory holders. She lost her belongings. She lost her sense of safety. She lost her household goods. She lost her intact home. She lost her secret joys that all of us have, things kept in drawers, photo albums. She lost her books, her Book of Shadows, her besom, and her supplies. She lost her floors and walls.
Public Image, "Issues and Events in Midland Michigan"- Facebook Public Post
Eleven, a number of illumination. Eleven, the number that is just so much more than the end of a sequence in our base ten world. Eleven, the number of feet of water that swept away and destroyed the physical world and home of a remarkable woman.
Fae is us. Fae is any one of us. She is living that nightmare we hush in whispered fear, in the backs of our thoughts, that we could be the next news story.
Fae lost it all. But she did not lose us. Now, what are we all going to do about it?
To help, send donations to https://www.paypal.me/laumephotography or to specifically help with reconstruction so the family can use the downstairs of their home again... email is faelaume@live.com for home depot or lowes Egift cards
On Monday, I experienced something that seems trivial to others, but was a profoundly moving experience to me.
A woman requested free tickets to the festival I am running. She asked
because I have posted on the event there is a limited amount of free
ones available to the community for hardship. Well, she asked, so she
got. Closed mouths don't get fed, you know?
I dropped them off at
her home, and she introduce me to her son and her infant daughter. The
boy is 13, and wants to study Reiki. He was also interested in learning
to lay hands. Well, that is at the event, so cool. The mother was doing
Psalm work, and practicing herbal crafts.
Her eyes were so large
and her spirit so happy when she found out she was not alone. She had no
idea there is a community of magical folks and was so happy that the
event was in a place that is just off the beaten track enough that she
can maintain her privacy from her neighbors.
Meanwhile, the whole way home, my eyes were filled with tears. I mean, lay my face in my hands, tears.
Why?
Because it filled my heart so deep and hard with how much I miss seeing
my people, seeing other brown faces, breathing the same air as I do as
we speak of things that make the impossible happen.
It struck me
like a bell. I have never been to an event in Detroit like this event
will be. I thought I made this event for several reasons, but maybe it
was really about reunion. A Black magical family reunion.
The
city is so spread out now. The only spaces and faces that gather
together that I travel are filled with good and honorable people. But
there are so few that are like mine, that when I see them, it is like
filling a cup and drinking deeply when you didn't even know you were
thirsty.
I find that my heart hurt so much, but was so glad, at
the same time. Because I know the legacies of why we are so segregated
here, I am not surprised it is this way. But it doesn't mean that an
arbitrary mile road stops the flow of our magical folks on both sides of
the 8 Mile border.
For those who are not from here, yes, 8 Mile
is really a thing. It is the Michigan Mason Dixon line. We have others,
as well. Going downriver has its own divisions.
But that simple
moment, that act of connection, when my brown eyes met her brown eyes,
all the memories came into my breath. As I shared what became, for me, a
sacred moment in time, I was overwhelmed.
She did not know that
as we talked and I smiled, that my chest was filling up with emotion.
She did not know that I had been so happy to see a Detroit address. She
had no way of knowing that with every block, my childhood of sitting
cross legged on the porch and listening to my friend's Mother's blues
records came back to me.
I had memories of hair being oiled, and
the smell of Ultra Sheen and Pink Oil on Creole hands and African
hands. I remembered looking through glass cases, filled with Anna Riva
books and brown paper bags stained with conjure oils. I heard the voice
of my mother in her kitchen, and felt the hands of my father as he put a
new set of lodestones in my palm.
As I sat in my car, I turned
on the Curtis Mayfield "Diamond in the Back" as I turned South from 8
Mile rd, that I felt like I was riding on a cloud. I played that song 7
times on the way there. On the way home, Al Green led my way back up,
up, up to a home in a city where I would have taken my life in my hands
if I had been caught there after dark in my childhood.
I no
longer believe that this festival was just my idea from my own mind. I
am not divine messenger or anything. I walk the path of the Sacred Fool,
and make more mistakes than I can remember. But maybe, just maybe, in
this moment, I found the reason why this had to happen. Maybe this will
be the beginning of a bridge.
Or maybe, it will be just a good day in a park.
But in any case, this I believe. Magic is a thing, and cannot be
contained by borders, cities, races, or nations. It lives and breathes
and travels and is passed on as it wills.
And on this day, I felt it pass onward, to share with a younger set of brown eyes....like mine.
