by Ah-Keisha McCants

I sat in my idling car at a rest stop. It was around 11:40pm. My husband, four kids and I had just had a day to remember celebrating the unveiling of a friend’s new artwork at MoMA PS1. Laughing in the streets of Brooklyn with my children’s god mommies, our fearless blackness blanketed an ever-changing backdrop. Gentrifiers’ stares be damned, we re-branded the streets that night with off-key renditions of r&b/hip hop oldies, and original satirical folk songs. We captured that moment (our children sang along, and somehow we were bigger kids than them), and shared it on Facebook. We were happy, proud, well-fed, well-cultured, silly, black and carefree.