Not your average life story

Homemade by the bride and the groom

My other family. Anxiety. Smile. Road. Green. Voices. Accent. Jokes. Kids. Dogs. Cars. Alcohol. Jokes. Silence. Noise. Damn hot. 150 people wedding. Smiles. Tears. Alcohol. Food. Jokes. Dance. Storm. Alcohol. Rain. Ricoré. Hangover. Cold buffet. Four kisses. Road. Exhaustion.

Emotions. My foster mom always has this sad face when I leave. Always. The trauma of me leaving for another family, I guess. I’m doing pretty well but I really need buffer days to build up some nerves and fight this huge blues.

I said on Twitter that my life story has probably never been lived before and bam, I found someone pretty close to my case only older, in the UK and with black parents. He talks about the difficulty of interracial adoption but in my case there’s another twist: being an orphan there is no other culture like in his case, Nigerian. No siblings, nada.

I just have “black culture” in its blurry definition. And it’s great. I transitioned smoothly from white-only culture to my own recipe through the years.

It’s always been awesome to imagine things up -OK, all I know is born in Paris and named Harold- when I was younger but since the adult world needs you to define yourself so much -use this, listen to that tribe tribe tribe- it’s confusing and not as fun now. You need a past. Past creates bonds with people which is why a lot of my friends have a not-so-conventional one. Of course in theory all that doesn’t matter. Sometimes the theory almost works long enough to believe in it. But the reality is much colder, I’ve been doing this for over thirty years and I read a lot.

Adewale ended up for a while in Hollywood. That’s a good L.A. thing for us, weirdos. Nobody gives you the stink eye for anything bizarre you do or who you are, it’s always cool right away. Maybe it’s fake and feels like a dream but at the same time, the last  weekend wedding fest in the green middle of France felt like a dream too.