sankofa
Six and half years ago, after the floodwaters receded and Marcus and I stood in the ruins of our home, we discussed our next moves.
“Well.” Marcus spoke with deliberation. “We have a lot of equity in this house. We could cut our losses: raze the building, sell the land, and move farther out to the suburbs and buy a less expensive, but potentially nicer home.”
I was quiet for a minute.
“Or …” I said, “we could take out a loan and rebuild. People were moving to this neighbourhood and property prices were going up before the storm. I bet we’d make our money back if we stayed. And besides, moving out to the suburbs is a bigger change than just the house. It means Alex has to move schools. Your commute to work gets really hard.” I turned to look at him.
“Despite everything that has happened, the fact is that we don’t live in a flood zone — this was such a freak occurrence. But we’ll build the house higher anyway, just in case. I think there’s got to be a way to make Hurricane Harvey one of the best things that ever happened to us.”
Marcus must have thought I was still in shock because the last thing I ever want to do in life is take out a loan. But that’s exactly what we did, and we rebuilt. I certainly wouldn’t say that Harvey was the best thing that ever happened to us, but I will say that as a family, we emerged from the entire ordeal stronger than ever. Alex remained in her school and graduated with her classmates, a group who, to this day, are incredibly close. And we got to stay in a neighbourhood that we enjoy.
And our house is higher, just in case.
Fast forward a few years, and soon after Alex went to university at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall of 2022, she started mentioning that she might want to transfer universities. As you can imagine, my immediate reaction was to tell her that she needed to stick it out. “You haven’t even seen what the university has to offer, yet,” I said. “Give it a minute.”
So she did. She made friends. She did well in classes. She even loved her major — graphic design, or as it’s now apparently called, Visual Communication Design.
And when she came home for summer vacation, she again reiterated her desire to transfer universities. “I just don’t think I’m meant for art school,” she said. “SAIC is a great fine arts school, but not really good for graphic design, which for me, is more business-focused. And honestly, I think what I’m really interested in is communications — with a minor in graphic design. And SAIC doesn’t offer that.”
“This actually makes sense to me,” I said. “But if you’re going to transfer, the time to do it is now. Any longer, and you might as well stick it out where you are. So you need to get cracking.”
And so, cracking she got: it was too late to transfer for the fall of 2023, but she researched and applied to about seven universities — this time, without any assistance from her dad and me. She connected with admissions counselors in the schools. She contacted her SAIC professors for letters of recommendation. And after a ton of hard work, she got into her first choice: University of Colorado Boulder.
She could not be more delighted.
Marcus and I have just returned from dropping her off, and to say that Boulder, Colorado is different from Chicago, Illinois is beyond understatement. “It looks like Stars Hollow,” she said as we wandered around (referring to the fictitious town setting of the TV show Gilmore Girls). “It’s so quiet.” The house she’ll be sharing with three other roommates (which she also found on her own) is certainly cozy enough, and only two blocks from campus. Of course, because she’s planning on studying something entirely different from what she was studying at SAIC, it means that in a lot of ways, she’s starting all over. But this fact doesn’t seem to bother her in the least, which is a huge relief.
When I was writing Radiant Rebellion, a concept kept coming up in my research: sankofa, a Twi word from the Akan tribe of Ghana which roughly translates to “go back and get it.” It’s symbolized by a bird reaching backward over its feathers, sometimes with an egg in its beak. The idea is that as you move forward, you should remember to take the lessons of the past with you. And while Alex’s new landscape isn’t for any catastrophic reason like a hurricane, it’s going to be unfamiliar ground nonetheless. “Don’t forget,” I said to Alex, thinking about sankofa, “even though you might feel like you’re starting over, the fact is that for the past year and a half, you studied at one of the top art schools in the world. That’s not nothin’. Learning about visual communication at a top art school can only enhance your CV, giving you a perspective that many of the communications students in your major won’t have. Don’t forget to take the last year and a half with you.”
“I won’t, Mom,” she said. I hope she doesn’t.
Marcus and I ended up leaving a day earlier than we originally planned, escaping a winter snowstorm. We’re back home in Houston now, and Alex is settling in, making new friends, and getting ready for life in a whole new town, at a whole new school. May she remember to “go back and get” all she learned in the past few years.
May we all.
Take what you learned.