What do you think?” I ask him.

My cousin looks at me with a gentleness he shows to no one else. “Who are we to define what is impossible or not?”

“You’re just saying that,” I tell him.

He shakes his head. “I mean it. You know what’s been happening in your head. You’re the only person who knows. So ask yourself if it feels right, and somewhere, deep inside of you, there’s a compass that will tell you whether somewhere, deep inside of you, there’s a compass that will tell you whether you’re right or wrong.

And as for what my father said about Africa, as much as I wanted to belong to Africa or to any place for that matter, I knew that I didn’t. Not really. Not completely. In countless ways and for countless reasons, I loved growing up in many countries, among many cultures. It made it impossible for me to believe in the concept of supremacy. It deepened my ability to hold multiple truths at once, to practice and nurture empathy. But it has also meant that I have no resting place. I have perpetually been a them rather than an us. I have struggled with how to place myself in my family histories.

Difference is all there is. There is no such thing as same. That’s the curious thing. All this clubbiness, all this we/they super-construction in our rituals and rites, all this being-an-exclusive-member-of drive we learn as we grow up – none of it is real. Inside every group there is so much difference we would drown trying to slosh through it all. So we pretend. Here is your medallion. Now you are one of us. We are all the same. Thank goodness.

There are so many things I wish I could forget, but maybe “forget” isn’t quite right. There are so many things I wish I never knew.

Some days I sit there for hours, some days mere minutes, but I never bow my head. I never pray, never wait to hear God’s voice, I just look. I sit in blessed silence, and I remember. I try to make order, make sense, make meaning of the jumble of it all. Always, I light two candles before I go.