Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Being Me (Published Spring 2011 in a literary magazine at the university I am attending)

          It hasn’t been easy being me. I started out this semester just fine. I was eager to begin a new set of classes with a new set of challenges. I had finally solved my son’s behavior problems at school by making the decision to home school him. I had reunited with my estranged husband and it seemed, for once, that he was actually trying to make things work out between us. I had turned my life around and gotten back in touch with my faith. I had even stopped smoking. My bills were finally caught up and I didn’t have much to worry about. Then, the first day of classes came and we experienced the worst snowstorm our area has seen in years. It was like an omen, portending the train wreck that awaited me.

My World of Legacy (An essay I wrote for a class called "Literature of the Harlem Renaissance")


            What is a legacy? Chances are that each person you ask will have a different idea of what legacy means. Even the dictionary definition of the word ‘legacy’ varies, depending on the context in which it is used. According to Merriam-Webster, legacy is defined as “a gift by will especially of money or other personal property,” or “something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past,” and also as “something that is or may be inherited.” If the dictionary itself has difficulty getting a handle on the meaning of such a small word, then how can we hope to wrap our minds around the concept the word signifies?