Things I learned while packing:
21 Lesson move into your purposes
.jpg)
Many people have asked do I have a book or when am I going to write a book. I've written two unpublished and one published. My reply is I don't have time I'll get to it. However, the Creator said now is the time. You have a message and some lessons that need to be shared.
​
As in with my poetry I always get the titles first and then write the poetry the same held true for this book. It's my earnest desire that "Lessons learned while packing" will help you navigate through your everyday experiences with a new perspective and insight of how life is just one moving journey. The paradigm is not in getting to the destination put how we navigate the road. I’ll will share with your excerpts from the book now again.
​
Editor in Chief, Renata Brown
Introduction
​
FREEZE! PUT YOUR HANDS UP! My body was still moving forward, my brain could not connect that two 9MM guns were pointing at me. The guns attached to yelling voices and uniforms with badges. This is not happening whatever this is. More barks. HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE HERE!
Just then my 22 old month grandson wanders out of the room and now the guns are pointed in his direction. How could I be living a script from the 11 o’clock news.
​
I grew up in Long Beach wear wearing the wrong color could cost you your life. I moved to Georgia when my son was 8 years old to get away from gang filled streets. The last place I lived before moving to the Black Mecca of the South, Atlanta was a 3-bedroom townhouse in a reversed gentrified neighborhood bordering a lily-white suburb. The once nice town-homes now a haven for section 8 families and 3rd generation gang bangers and drug houses. The leasing agent told me that they were moving out the bad element and needed people like me to help rehabilitate the block. I used to work at the City Attorney’s office one of the things I learned is that you can run a report about all activity that happens based on street addresses and surrounding properties.
​
My kids and I had to hit the floor more than once because of gun fire while living there. I found shell casing literally at my doorsteps. One day I was met at the corner with a barrage of news trucks and police vehicles even Telemundo was broadcasting live in Spanish. I was told I had to park across the Street and walk in. At the end of the block a yellow tarp hung over the outline of a body protruding from an SUV the victim succumbing from his injuries instantly after being shot point blank in the head. I was told he was part of a double murder in board daylight just as the kids were getting off the bus. The gunman first shot a victim in the alley. When his homies tried to take him to the hospital in the SUV. The shooters parked right outside of my breeze way saw the whole thing and proceeded to shoot the driver. No more! I would not raise my son in Southern California.
​
The irony of it all is that through all the things I witnessed in Long Beach I had never heard those words or had guns pointed at me by the police until now. I instinctively moved toward my grandson. The barking continued. “How many people are in here “they yell again. “Another child and an adult” I responded an adult and child. How old is the child? 10 months a baby. I can’t share the details of everything. This wasn’t even my house; these weren’t my circumstances. It didn’t even matter. I was moving, moving, moving again. I’m sure there is a lesson in this.