Twenty-five years ago this week, I married Dr. Makanda Ken McIntyre – we stood in front of our friends and family and promised to have a home filled with love and music and creativity. After serving bagels and lox and rice and beans, we danced to funk music, listened to (and played!) live jazz, and watched an amazing African dance group. It was SO much fun. I couldn’t believe my good luck at finding someone who really understood me and helped me to be my best self. We were going to have kids, we were going to travel. He was going to be a full-time musician, and I was going to write a young-adult novel about kids in foster care… we had so many plans.
Makanda and Joy, Dec 2000
And 6 months later, I came home and found him on the floor in his music studio. He had had a heart attack. I held his lifeless body in my arms, grateful for our last moments together in our apartment. And then began the deep work of grieving, incorporating our love and creating a new life. This week, I’ve been thinking about how things have changed in the last 25 years – for me and for the world.
Makanda never had a cell phone. And the phones then weren’t “smart” – they were just phones. We had to use dial-up modems to check email. Nobody had a computer in their pocket, much less on their wrists. We read the physical newspaper and washed the ink off our hands afterwards. We bought subway tokens from a token clerk for $1.50. Manhattan rents were still affordable. Zoom was a verb, and the Amazon was a river in South America.
I stayed in our Washington Heights apartment for 3 years, producing several concerts and organizing Makanda’s music before donating it to the Library of Congress. He had taught me how to improvise, and so I did – not musically, but in life. I got remarried, moved to Brooklyn, started my own law firm, lost my second husband, and moved again.
I am so grateful for the time Makanda and I had together, and for the deep imprint he has on my spirit. And I’m grateful to keep finding joy. After all, it’s in my name. I’ve grown so much in the last 25 years. Time doesn’t stop, and I’ve been lucky to keep pace.
Life doesn’t happen how you think it will, despite the best laid plans. We have to keep reinventing ourselves again and again, don’t we? Here’s to the art of improvisation!