Michelle and Me

This is probably the closest I'll ever get to Michelle Obama, yet the shiny, happy smile on my face would lead you to believe she and I are sorority sisters or something.

Part of the reason I'm smiling so widely is that since she just turned 47, it's a potent reminder that I am for the first time older than an American First Lady, yet have managed to remain in the above average percentile of the Smokin' category, just like Michelle. Not that I'm comparing myself to Michelle physically, mind you--especially not her Terminatrix biceps. It's just that when I look at this picture, it invokes so many powerful, empowering thoughts.

I guess the main one is that if I live on the African continent for another 20 years, I'll still be American, proudly and fiercely so. It wouldn't matter if I married a Kenyan man, adopted a Kenyan name, learned flawless Kiswahili, even got myself a Kenyan passport. I'd still have more in common with Michelle than most Kenyan women my age. I'd still be more myself with my sisters across the water. After nearly four years of living in East Africa, I may recognize some of the rhythms and embrace some of the patterns, but I've finally admitted to myself that I'll never really, truly belong in this culture.

That doesn't necessarily make me sad, but if I'm honest, I'm also not happy about it, either. As I've written before, I keep expecting that maybe one day, I'll land in an African nation and feel completely at home. But then, the older I get, the more I realize that home is about a hell of a lot more than geography.

Anyhoo, the next emotion this picture evokes is gratitude. I am about to turn 50, and I am still holding the line against Father Time. Oh, sure, fewer people guess my age to be in the early 30's than they used to...I'm lucky if I score a "38 or 39" anymore, and that's only if I got a good night's sleep. But this shot fairly SHOUTS that I am a 49 year old black American woman standing in the heart of downtown Nairobi, Kenya next to a picture of the first American First Lady of African descent, and I have lived long enough to revel in the fact that I am indeed older than said First Lady, yet most days I still feel like the whole damn world is my oyster!!!

That platitude expressed, I must admit that I am also writing this post while seated directly adjacent to a fan turned on high, because I've been gripped in the clutches of a weeks-long continuous thermonuclear hot flash. (Oh, don't act surprised that I've started back on that topic again!! You can't have been so naive as to think it was never going to come up again, dammit!)