Part 1

On May 5, 1975, I graduated third in the 1975 class of Douglass High School, and on May 6, 1975, I had some decisions to make! My mother had this rule: You either worked or you went to school. She preferred I worked, and I knew I wasn't going to school any more, so I decided to go into the United States Air Force! It seemed like a decent way to help mother by way of monthly allotments, and to get out of Baltimore at the same time. After about a week or two of smoking weed all the time, hanging out with my friends all night, sleeping late all day, and having way too much unprotected sex, my mother started looking at me with "the eye". You know "the eye". That one where she can look at you from across the room and stop you dead in your tracks? So, one afternoon while strolling around downtown Baltimore, high as a kite, I saw the USAF Recruiting Center. I went, just out of curiosity, and low and behold, the recruiters were men! BINGO! I loved to flirt, and the next thing I knew, I was in the process of enlisting. Don't get it confused. I was aware of everything that I was doing; but it's just so strange to look back at it now and see it for what it was. I now know that my intent was to flirt and be a temptress to those grown men, but my Higher Power's intent was to get me positioned for the series of events that He had planned for my life. As for me, I asked this man well over 20 years my senior if he would take me to my prom! He accepted (for reasons of his own). I just know he took a heck of a ribbing from his co-workers for taking doggone-near jailbait to her prom. What a night that was! I was so young, naive and uncultured that I didn't even know that I needed to bring an overnight bag with me since I knew I would be spending the night at his house after the prom. I didn't even have a toothbrush! He had to give me one (funny how he happened to have a spare brand new one). The days following the prom are not quite so clear. I partied so hard and consistently after prom that I barely made it to the recruiting center on induction day to become United States Government property. I do remember that I basked in the glory and attention I was getting from making such a decision. No one I knew was going to do anything like that. Most of them were not even going to work much less the military. My mother practically lost all of her friends due to bragging on me. None of her friends' kids were going into "the Service" (as she always said). She must have told anybody and everybody in Lexington Terrace that her daughter turned down many scholarships to go into the Air Force. To be perfectly honest, I didn't think it was a big deal. I had to do something, and the military seemed like the thing to do. In a way, I felt like she was faking a little. Acting all proud, and in reality, all she wanted me to do is get the cash value of those scholarships, give her the money, then go into "the service" and start an allotment to her. You know what? I was happy to do it because that's the way I was raised - to always look out for her and my sisters. I was proud to do it, and resentful at the same time. Looking back at that decision, I now know that it was not my decision at all. My entire life has been totally orchestrated by a Power so much greater than myself.

On July 1, 1975, I was inducted to the United States Air Force. Airman Joanne Scovens. I was a wild weed from Lexington Terrace Housing Projects in Baltimore, Maryland. There I was, 18 years old, going on my first airplane trip ever to San Antonio, Texas, Lackland Air Force Base Basic Training! Boy! Was I in a fog or what! I probably had a hangover. My seat on the airplane, I've since learned, was the most undesireable seat on a commercial aircraft: that first one in economy class facing the closet panel with the window to my right. I can still recall the terror. I didn't know that no one else on the plane was about to throw up! I must have looked like a runaway slave, because the stewardess asked me if I was okay,and I must have responded affirmatively because no paramedics came. I couldn't even process the thoughts: First time out of Maryland, first trip on a plane, and going into "the service". What the hell was going on here? Little did I know that this was the beginning of a new plan and a new chapter; not just for me, but for my entire family. A new root structure to my family tree began to take hold on that flight to San Antonio. The maternal side of my children's family has been so deeply rooted in poverty, shame,and way too much darkness. Always hiding and rebirthing the kinds of secrets that keep generations of aunts and uncles and cousins mad at each other for things they know nothing about, and had even less to do with.