My Whole Family Was On the Earth to Greet Me

Graphic by Morgan Ogryzek

In Yoruba, my name, Ajibabi, means that when I was born, my whole family was on the Earth to greet me. 

Yoruba was not a language I was greeted by growing up. I only heard it when my parents spoke of things they did not want me to hear. I was not often greeted by my extended family members either, as many of them were many cities and oceans away from tiny suburban New Jersey. In my place of birth, I was greeted by a red-white-picket-fence-and-blue neighborhood with friendly faces that were never friends in brick houses all around me.

In nursery school, I was greeted by tiny pale faces. I did not speak in nursery school. My parents say that when they drove me in the car, as soon as we approached the school, I would tightly press my lips together. I wouldn’t say a word until I got in the car at the end of the day to go home again. They thought something was wrong with me. In truth, I was quite the chatter at home—my teachers didn’t believe my parents whenever they insisted I knew how to speak. I still wonder why for so long I never opened my mouth. Perhaps I felt lonely in a sea of tiny pale faces. Perhaps I knew they would not listen to what I had to say. Somehow, I ended up being the valedictorian at my small nursery school’s graduation.

In primary school, I was greeted by Christianity, America’s civil religion. During mass, I was greeted by hard wooden pews and pious faces that looked like they all knew something that I didn’t. I was not greeted by the presence of the Lord, and as hard as I tried to make his acquaintance, he seemed to be inside of everyone else but me. I was greeted by more pale tiny faces and mostly spent my time running around and roughhousing with the boyish ones. I was greeted by one other face that looked like mine, but several shades lighter; this face and I quickly became best friends and a few years later when I moved from Catholic school to private school just as quickly became nobodies to one another.

In middle school, I was greeted by countless books by tall dead pale faces and they poisoned my love for the written word. Gone were fantasy tales of ancient Egypt; now I read only of America and England. I was greeted by an English teacher who forced us all to say nigger with a hard r when we read To Kill a Mockingbird aloud in class. I was greeted by many more young pale faces, some of whom I became friends with. I was greeted by stress—already, somehow, worries for the far-off future had set in. I was greeted with love from many of my teachers—I was a good student; patient, curious, inquisitive, hard-working. But a tall pale Latin teacher had it out for me one year and wrote in my comments that Babi is often contrary in class—an interesting word to describe a young lost dark face. When my father read those words, I was greeted by his wrath at midnight. My spine begged me to straighten it as I hunched over my study guides. Midnight quickly became a familiar hour to me, for in middle school I was greeted by the sensation of what it feels like to stay up and watch the sun creep slowly back around the Earth through my curtains. I was greeted by existential dread as a result of seeing so many young pale faces dressed in stale, starchy uniforms, greeted every day by equally stale and starchy teachers who read from stale and starchy books so one day we could live stale and starchy lives—a young me struggled to bury these thoughts while I stayed up working into the night. Depression greeted me in middle school, and it greeted so many of the young faces around me that I often thought this cannot be normal.

High school greeted me with more of the same, just worse. Depression and I had an on-again-off-again relationship, like a clingy paramour who you can never quite break up with. Stress swelled inside me perpetually, exploding once in a while like the window I didn’t mean to shatter when I greeted it with a heavy jar of coconut oil one morning before school. God still refused to make my acquaintance, so in his place I was greeted by guilt. Biology and chemistry and calculus greeted me with closed fists, and when I limped away from them, SATs and ACTs and all the other acronyms were right behind them, cracking their knuckles and waiting for me in the ring. I was slowly greeted by disillusionment in academia. The young pale faces liked me, I liked them too, I loved a few of them, a few of them loved me too; the old pale faces liked me, I liked them too, I loved a few of them, a few of them loved me too; a few of them hated me, I hated a few of them too. In high school there were more faces, both young and old, that looked like mine; we greeted each other rapturously every day at 8:15 to stave off the inevitable torment of the day. Existential dread kept knocking at the door to my brain, then pounding, and at some point, it burst through the door and greeted me viciously. It was loudest in the classes with closed fists, the classes with the old pale books, in the Senate meetings I had to lead as school president. 

College greeted me with more young pale faces, and many dark ones, too. Many faces were more of the same, but many faces had ideas written on them that I had never read before. I learned that my existential dread had also taken up residence in the minds of many others. I learned that what I saw in front of me was only a fraction of what is. I learned about the fallacies of the way we live in America, the theft we tolerate every day that happens right under our noses, the greed that is vital for the maintenance of our cyclical societal suffering. I did not learn most of these lessons in the classrooms that I sat in every day, I learned them from the new faces that greeted me while sitting in untidy dorm rooms or dingy barstools. I learned from friends who grew up just like me, in red-white-picket-fence-and-blue neighborhoods, but I also learned from friends who came from oceans away (I liked learning from them the best). I was greeted by immense freedom tied to stifling confinement. Depression and I continued our little fling, but I was also greeted by colossal joy. I was greeted by a new me, one that tried to grow towards my truest self, one that tried to grow past the way the world saw me and focus on seeing myself.

Now, before greeting my family or my friends or my chasmic mind when I wake up in the morning, I make sure to greet myself first. I look in the mirror, I read aloud some of my favorite clichéd yet effective mantras to pull myself farther away from that which tries to pull me down, and I carry it with me in a pocket of my brain for the rest of the day. 

I never know what will greet me tomorrow.