I kind of want to share a chapter of my upcoming Memoir with you, so here it is.

I am sorry bloggers that all of my social media content right now is about my memoir.  Other than my actual hubs, I’m a bit married to the project, or as I said in my last post, pregnant with it.  Meaning, it’s completion is all. I. think. about.

With rewrites, edits and the treacherous journey towards publishing ahead of me I have started to feel a little sad that I have so long to wait until I can share something –anything, really– that I have been working so hard on.  This, of course is tempered only by my absolute fears that my labor will be trashed.  Instantly plunging me into the depths of despair.  (Just so you know, I have NEVER struggled with exaggeration).

In lieu of this, I decided last night….what it could it hurt to put something out there on the bliggity?  So.  Here we find ourselves.

This is a ROUGHDRAFT.  This particular chapter is in it’s 2nd rewrite.  A chunk of which I wrote only last night.  This chapter is as new to me as it is to you.  I interviewed my Ma two weeks ago.  (Fascinating by the way)!  I am hoping to interview some of my Dad’s family members to get a little background on him as you may notice, it’s quite Mom heavy.

Right now, it’s slated to be either the first chapter or the prologue or somewhere near the beginning.  Who really knows?  I sure don’t! =)

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Grace Sandra is my first and middle name.  Ma named me after Sandra, her first-born child who was born dead full-term.  Ma is in her mid-seventies, which explains a bit about why she didn’t know she was giving birth to a dead child though she had her suspicions after three days of infrequent baby kicks.  Baby Sandra was named after the popular actress of the time, Sandra Dee.

Sandra Dee the golden globe winning actress of the 1960’s was known as the ingénue: endearingly innocent and gorgeous but utterly wholesome.  In my mother’s eye she was a gentle, sweet & beautiful starlet.  If it was good enough for Ma it was good enough for the book in which I -perhaps naively- attempt a piece at my own bite of the notoriety pie.

You see, I had no choice.  My husband gave me the dreadful surname, Biskie.  My real name is, wait for it, Grace Biskie. (Seriously).  Before, when I went by Gracee Biskie it was worse.  It sounded like I was perpetually 17.  Stuck at 17, like Edward Cullen.  I declare Biskie to be the worst last name in the whole world.  If I hadn’t found myself to be too shallow it may have been a deal breaker for my husband, Dave & I.  I love Dave.  I hate our last name.  Artistically speaking, it sucks.

I am a daughter of Detroit.  No right-minded black chick growing up in the hood ever thinks they’ll wind up married to a white man.  Throw on a strong German moniker and you may as well go into hiding.  Every one of us hoped, wished or dreamed we had been named after a country in the Eastern world.  We all wanted to be Indiyah, Asia (spelled Eja, Asiah or Ayjah) & Chynna.  The more convoluted the spelling the better. After that, Native Americans names would suffice.  We used the Native American names as aliases for nights in the club.  When a fine dude wants to holla, I couldn’t say my name was Gracie.  I was Cherokee, of course.  My fellow Gen-X African-Americans born into black Muslim families were blessed with Arabic names like Jabari, Jamal & Ali, Jamilah, Aaliyah & Fatima.  We loved Khiry, Hakim, Tajh & Bilal from the popular boy band,  The Boys.  Who knew they were Arabic names?  All we knew was envy.

I suppose I could write a whole book on the evolution of names for African-Americans.  We are, after all, still a relatively new emergent people group.  Interesting as it is to me, I’ll give it a rest for now.  My point is, the names we wanted compared to the names we got, always seemed to exist some disconnect of dissatisfaction.  The only hope for us girls was to marry into a good name.  Therefore, there was no possible way I would let the word Biskie get on a jacket cover.  It’s too deplorable, clunky and mischievous an utterance.

I could no easier take my Father’s name.  He’s the man who named me Grace.  He told my mother that after four boys (from three marriages not including his affair with Ma) it was “God’s grace to give him a daughter.” Thankfully, I am forever detached from his name.  I considered sprucing up my name with my mother’s maiden name.  A name befitting of her partial French heritage: Beaune.  Pronunciation: Bone.  Um, no.

My maternal grandfather, Alfred Beaune grew up in the French speaking province of Canada, Quebec. Alfred’s mother, Kay Stellan was a buxom blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty emigrated from London.  Do you understand what this means?  My maternal Great-Grandmother was English!  I found this out only weeks ago and am still brimming with excitement.  Having fallen in love with Bridget Jones, Harry Potter, Posh and Becks, Orlando Bloom and the entire cast of my favorite film, Love Actually I must admit: I quite fancy the place.  Never been there, but I will.  Grandpa Al wanted a piece of the American pie much like everyone else in his day.  Sharing the Detroit River with Michigan it was easy for him to swim the 2 mile distance  of the Detroit River between the United States and Canada.  He would come over to Belle Isle to meet American girls.  (Who can blame him?)  Little did he know, 60 years later his only black great grand-daughter would also travel to Belle Isle  as a love-struck teen-ager trying get a little action herself.  It was also across this same 2-mile stretch of that same river that I ran on the Ambassador bridge and through the shockingly stinky underwater tunnel for the 2007  Detroit Marathon (in the record time of 5:45, which essentially means you could have walked a marathon in the time it took my trifling butt to scrape myself across the finish line).  By the by, he met my grandmother, Elsie fell in love and married a year later.

Elsie’s parents, Ma’s Grandma Tombinni and Ma’s Grandpa, Ludivico Tarabusi were none too happy about their daughter marrying a displaced French-Canadian, Englishmen when she had plenty of Italian suitors to choose from in the ethnic enclave of Little Italy where they established their family.  My Great Grandpa, Ludivico Tarabusi came over from (insert city/town/province name once I find it out) Italy in 1855 with his three brothers.  They were a family of means that bought several plots of land near Farmington Hills where you can find in several middle ring Detroit suburbs; Livonia, Farmington, Novi, Redford and Northville Townships the Tarabusi Creek subwathershed.  The smallish creek flows mostly through residential areas with it’s tributaries and streams winding up in the upper portion of the  Rouge River.  If you happen to live in the city of River Rouge, than you probably call it the River Rouge.  Sadly enough my Great Grandpa’s creek drains directly into the Rouge River which became somewhat of a —pun intended— polluted joke.  Dirty River, dirty people.

The massive clean up of the one of the Nation’s most polluted Rivers came in the late 1990’s long after Detroiter’s mercilessly labeled anyone claiming to be from the city of River Rouge, white trash. Portions of the Rouge flowed about 1 mile from my High School where no one dared to skip school there for fear of stench being stuck in your nostrils and the nagging idea that perhaps you should check it out because perhaps they’ve found another abandoned body down there.

Newly renovated,  the River certainly has it’s redeeming qualities, though none as special to me as this.  Henry Ford built a quaint little getaway on Fair Lane in Dearborn right off the river.  His little project became a massive trifecta of entertainment for me during my teen-aged years.  First off, FairLane Mall where I spent entire days with my thirteen year old girlfriends looking at clothes we could never afford and giving fifteen year old boys fake phone numbers.  Also, where I procured my first paying job at Thom McAnn selling mens shoes.  Second, Greenfield Village, arguably one of the coolest historical musuems on the planet where I got my second paying job selling tickets at the train station for $4.80 per hour.  (The year was 1993, the minimum wage paltry).  Finally, the estate itself which is beyond stunning.  Using hydropower dams to provide electricity for his estate, Henry Ford was on to something big.  The sprawling 1300-acre estate is now a national historic landmark open to the public.  It borders the University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus and now includes Noah Websters home (yes, the dictionary dude) and Thomas Edisons lab.  It was on that estate where right under the gazebo, seated next to that wonderfully disguised hydropowered dam that Dave got on one knee and asked me to marry him until the cold clammy hands of death would part us.  (Not his exact words).  Dave chose that place for the significant occasion specifically because of it’s importance to me.

Soon after I became a follower of Jesus I would sit right on the edge of that dam —what I thought was just a beautiful little nature-made waterfall— week after week, year after year, pouring my heart out to God in song and desperate prayers.  Henry Ford’s estate had become somewhat of a spiritual sanctuary for me.  It was the place I would go when I had no where else to go.  It was the water I stared into when I was crying.  I wish my Great Grandfather Tarabusi knew that many years later his great granddaughter would come to adore the sights, sounds and smells of his creek flowing freely through a location a mere 8 minute drive from my home in inner-city Detroit.

After buying up land and creeks, Ma’s Grandpa Tarabusi helped settle an ethnic enclave also known as Little Italy.  They opened Italian shops and eateries in the Downtown Detroit area for emigrated Italians to feel welcome as they entered the new world.  After setting up a successful shoe repair shop (which completely explains my love for shoes.  Hello, it’s totally in my genes), he married Ma’s Grandma Tombini.  Ma’s Mother —my Grandma, Elsie Tarabusi— was born in Detroit on February 4, 1918.  When Al and Elsie got married instead of choosing to teach their six children Italian to honor Elsie’s cultural heritage or French to honor Al’s they settled for the American melting pot mentality and went with English.  My Ma and her five sibs, Fred, Gloria, Roger, Raymond & Delora were Italian-less.  I am Italian-less.  A sorrowful fact.

There you have it.  My maternal grandmother was a Tarabusi, my great-grandmother a Tombinni.  And although I can look ethnically Italian at times, in the right context I’m also told I can pass for Latina and middle-eastern.  Without fail when I leave the United States most mistake me for Egyptian.  Therefore, it seemed to complicate matters, ethnically speaking to throw a big fat French-Canadian moniker (as a reminder pronounced bone) onto my pretty little cover.

My black father, my Italian mother, my German husband, they all got the shaft.  The name I chose for my book cover is after a sister I never met, named for a Polish, Carpathian-Russian, blond-haired, blue eyed, American actress.  Ironical.  All of which is fitting for a life like mine: confused from the very beginning.

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If you’d like to leave feedback in regards to the writing, the mood, the adjectives or whatever, please do.  I invite CONSTRUCTIVE criticism as equally as GLOWING praise. =)