Hey Everyone. You’re here and you’re welcome to stay.

I was born and bred in San Francisco and now existing as a reluctant New Yorker of the last decade. I’m a public school teacher by trade and a mother by firing squad. I am also a mom of two bi-racial Asian-looking boys. My partner in life is from the suburbs of NYC by way of the Bronx, East Harlem, Ellis Island and Southern Italy.

Despite my reluctance being a New Yorker now, I have an even greater reluctance accepting my job as a mother through any lens of convention. See, convention is rather rude. It doesn’t introduce itself, it just imposes. It doesn’t ask. It takes. It doesn’t listen, it assumes.

A mother. That’s me; despite still trying to figure that one out. I thought I knew it all. Seriously, college clicktism, early morning AIM discussions on race, gender and class defined my previous life. My notebooks were soaked in angst-ridden spoken word scribbles and dribbles written in incandescent light because I had no work the next day. I had lecture in a hall comforted by the hard labor of the slightly verbose classmates claiming one-ness with class consciousness. Being political was just another damn luxury afforded to me on loans and credit.

Alas, I had always wondered what would happen to me in the event that I became a mother. What would happen to ME, my ideas, my convictions, my political ideology: some of my most precious belongings? How could children compete for my intellect? Did having children atrophy your brain as much as it did to my body?

Well, IT did happen and I’m still here and hell, I’m still pretty damn flabby, but that’s nothing new. At a certain point in my life, I had never thought I’d leave my beloved San Francisco behind and have such a long layover with her much more seasoned older sister. Here’s to doing more things I never thought I’d be doing.