Byte: Salaam Green ~ The Woman In The Yellow Apron

Hello everyone,

And welcome back to another episode of the podcast.

Every once in a while,

When I interview someone,

I am absolutely gobsmacked by the experience.

I walk away from my conversation with this human being with my world utterly transformed.

And I believe a little bit more in the magic in the world.

I believe a little bit more in the magic in other human beings.

And that's exactly what happened when I had my conversation with Selom Green.

Now,

She is the inaugural Poet Laureate for Birmingham,

Alabama,

But she's also a storyteller and healer.

She's a Kellogg Foundation Racial Healing Facilitator as well as an Alabama Humanities Foundation Road Scholar.

I could tell you so much about Selom,

Like how she holds an English degree from the University of Montevallo and a Master's in Early Childhood Education from the University of North Dakota.

But you know what?

I'm just going to let her do it.

Because quite honestly,

This was one of those interviews where I just basked in her glow,

In her words,

In her presence.

And all I thought the entire time was,

Preach.

And so Selom,

She preaches in the very best way with generosity of spirit and with grace in her poetry,

In her presence in the world,

In the work that she does in the world,

But especially in this conversation with me.

And I looked inside of this,

The Wallace House.

Now,

The Wallace House is swept clean,

So it's not an antebellum home or a space that you usually tour,

That we tour where you see these fancy curtains and all these things.

It's swept clean by meaning it's just wallpaper that's been stripped and been there for hundreds and hundreds of years and just all this thing.

But anyway,

I looked up into the windows of this tall white building while I'm there finishing some writing and getting inspiration.

And I saw this glimpse of this lady in a yellow apron.

I think I've experienced magic in each stage of my life.

I think magic,

I just love the idea of being able to experience magic and call it magic and not to shy away from it and think it's something that's scary or something that is kind of like off-putting and all these kinds of things.

It's a witchery,

Whatever the word is.

So I get like millions of magical stories,

And I think the one that's really coming up,

And it's kind of soon,

Maybe I can quickly tell the book.

When I was writing this particular book,

The Other Revival,

And had gone through so much illness,

I remember one day standing between,

Kind of like if you see the photo on the cover of the book,

Which I had no intention for it to be me on the cover of the book.

I was like,

No,

I do not want to see myself on nothing.

Anyway,

I was standing in front of these trees one kind of dusk night or evening at the plantation,

Which I said,

I will never,

I mean,

I'm not going to this place at night.

Like,

I am not one of those people.

I'm like,

I'm not going here at night.

And I was there at night,

And I have just like grappling with this illness,

And I had to finish the work.

And I looked inside of this,

The Wallace House.

Now,

The Wallace House is swept clean,

So it's not an antebellum home or a space that you usually tour,

That we tour where you see these fancy curtains and these,

All these things.

It's swept clean by meaning it's just wallpaper that's been stripped and been there for hundreds and hundreds of years,

And just all this thing.

But anyway,

I looked up into the windows of this tall white building.

While I'm there finishing some writing and getting inspiration,

And I saw this glimpse of this lady in a yellow apron.

So,

Of course,

I thought that's my,

You know,

Imagination of being here at night.

And then I looked back up and I kept seeing these glimpses of this apparition of this lady in this yellow apron as I'm there,

At this Wallace plantation,

Trying to heal while finishing.

And then as I looked,

This lady came out of these red kind of barn doors,

Which the Wallace House has,

These like old red crumpled up brown doors that just are so large.

And now everybody wants these barn doors,

Right?

But these barn doors,

That was like this labor of this black labor.

And she comes out of these barn doors down these white kind of rickety stairs or steps off of this porch.

And this lady in this yellow apron,

Who I can tell has been the overseer of this former plantation for 300 years,

Walks off the plantation and leaves.

And I'm still standing there watching this black elderly apparition of a woman in a yellow apron with this beautiful wrinkled,

Dark black skin and gray hair with a braid that kind of flows down the length of the apron,

Barefoot,

Walk off this plantation and leave into the fog of this dusky evening in rural Alabama.

And as I stand there,

I clearly hear the ending for the book.

And the ending for the book was,

We all have a plantation or something in our lives that we need to walk off of.

What is your revival?

Where will you find your revival?

If an elderly black woman who was former enslaved can leave her overseeing house and just walk off a plantation,

What do you need to walk off of?

So I walked off the plantation too.

Book done.

Done.

Done,

Done,

Done.

The Lady in the Yellow Apron is my revival and I believe she is all of our revivals.

And that's it,

Everybody.

That,

Alas,

Is the end of my conversation with Selam Green.

But to be honest,

I'm hoping to bring her back onto the podcast because I think that she and I have so much more to talk about.

And I really want to get her voice out into the world.

You know,

I am a fan of supporting and lifting other people up in whatever way I can do so.

In whatever small way I can contribute because I firmly believe that supporting other creators,

Other beings in the world,

Whatever form or shape they might take,

Will be the key to creating more beauty and more justice and equality for everyone.

I need to thank Selam for her gracious presence,

Her beautiful words,

Her way of moving in the world.

All of it was such a gift to me and I hope a gift to you as well.

She changed my life and,

You know,

Not only was the conversation such a blessing to me,

But then again,

You know,

I get the double pleasure of producing it and going back over our conversation and her words.

And gosh,

Another reminder and another gift to me.

So yes,

It felt like Christmas came early this year and I am so grateful.

And please do remember,

I live and thrive on ratings and reviews.

So whatever platform you listen to this podcast on,

Please do consider leaving a rating or writing a little review.

I'm so very grateful to those of you who take the time.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Selam.

And,

You know,

There are a lot of things I could say about her.

Show up to your life,

Be generous of spirit,

Include everyone,

Step forward to the challenge.

I mean,

The list was very long when I had to pick how you could be like Selam.

It was so long.

But then I settled with this.

And I've said it before.

Accept the invitation.

Life is giving you invitations all the time to show up more profoundly and with more capacity than you've ever had before each and every day.

You never know when those invitations are going to come.

And Selam calls them appointments.

But whatever language you use,

They are being offered to you.

And I love Selam and just her utter humanness when she said,

I applied to be poet laureate in the last 10 minutes because sometimes we show up for invitations right before the finish line.

And that doesn't mean that we're going to fail.

It might mean that we showed up right on time.

So be like Selam and show up for your appointments.

Accept your invitations because you never know.

Oh,

My gosh.

You never know what kind of magic and what kind of just amazingness is waiting out there for you to walk hand in hand with it.