Superstitions

I have to pray in the morning for my friends and family or...

I have to make the bed and make sure my home is super neat before I leave home or...

I have to say I love you to my friends and family when I leave them or get off the phone or...

I have to do things in groups of three or...

I can't talk about my fears or...

I would like to write an article about the anxiety I believe black American mothers to sons have inherited because of slavery but...

I used to have to pray on my knees for my friends and family at night when I went to bed and if I forgot someone then I would have to get out of bed and get on my knees and pray for the person I forgot or... I released that one because I saw myself getting way too obsessive. I was getting out of bed like ten fifteen times. Seriously. I felt that if I prayed for the forgotten person lying in bed then it meant that I didn't really care about that person and something would happen to them. Like I said, I released that one. I pray in bed now on purpose. Everyone is fine. Even people I forget.

I inherited the superstition of not saying goodbye. When we were young my mother told us we couldn't say goodbye but to say see ya later. Goodbye "meant" that we would never ever see them again. Goodbye meant forever. My grandfather never said goodbye. At least I never heard him. Even now, when I finish a conversation on the phone I say see ya or I don't say anything. Sometimes I just hang up the phone. I didn't realize I was doing it until folks started telling me to stop hanging up on them. Oh, my bad.

Here's the thing about being superstitous, especially if your ego, like mine, will not let you call it being superstitous, it's like it's the ego's way of declaring control. Of everything. Like I can really control the fate of someone because I pray for them in bed and not on my knees grouped with the prayers for my favorite people. My son, mother, other family, friends.

"When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer." That's from Stevie Wonder's song. It may not really really go right there but it popped in my head and I had to include it or...