Kin

“Torberts is our actual last name. Not Brown.” I sat across from my uncle who I hadn’t seen for 22 years at a Starbucks near LAX, skeptical about this meeting. Seated next to him my ‘now’ cousin and his wife. Truthfully, I didn’t want to be there but something told me to go when this long lost kin member, (1 of 8 aunts & uncles) kept messaging me saying that he wanted to see me. “And we all got a Kennedy name. That’s why I’m Fitzgerald and yo daddy was little Kennedy.” I pinched myself so I wouldn’t start to cry as he spoke about the mysteries of my dad; my grandad (a sharecropper) who passed for White due to the Alabama Torberts family and who rode Appaloosa horses; the Brown family fascination with the Kennedys (every boy and girl has a Kennedy name - my middle name is Kennedy); and how the family knew of me and heard of what I was building through whispers. This black southern Alabama family was mine. But these people were blocked out of my life since 95’. Being alone for quite sometime in cities where I have no kin, I’m so used to building on my own with my immediate family always being hundreds and in this case thousands of miles away. But when I tell you that there is no greater feeling to know that there are more of you out there and that they love you, it is one of the most powerful feelings. I looked at this man who had my dad now all in his face, “Uncle Fitzgerald, I wanna’ know you guys [aunts and uncles]. Will you all be accepting of me?..” I really asked that. “Of course! Despite all that...We love you. You family!” 8 lives waiting on me. I clenched my jaw to now fight tears. And while I could not right the wrongs of what had been done, they were my kin so the only thing to do was to open up my own heart and erase the narrative that had been given to me. Part of the process of being whole is to know that this experience truly is so short. Time is precious. When we got up to leave, I wanted more of it and when my sister called me, being a sap I wiped a few tears away saying I wish I had had more of it. And in that brief interaction with my kin, I saw my values and priorities begin to shift