GRAND RISING — Alex Jennings

Every once in a while, when I see her first thing in the morning, I grin at my wife and say, “Grand rising, Queen,” and she grimaces back at me. This is a private joke between us. I’m no Hotep, and I don ‘t believe there is a secret negative connotation to the phrase “good morning,” and it tickles me that others do. When we first started talking, I sent Kechi a “grand rising” text as a joke, and left her to wonder, for a while, whether I was serious.

Today, some of my closest family share birthdays. My nephew, Koenrad, my brother Mikey/Eugene, and my wife, Kechi all share a February 4th birthday. I don’t know Koen as well as I’d like—I’ve spent time with him on a few holidays, but he and my niece Alexandra live in The Netherlands with their kids, and I haven’t made it over there just yet. I’m blessed to be closer to the others. What I do know is that he and Alexandra are raising a beautiful family and there is a glow to her expression that I never noticed before she met him.

Me and Mikey on our front porch on November 30 (I think?) 2025

Kechi, Me, and Mikey at the Turkey Trot, Thanksgiving 2024

My brother Eugene is “Mikey” to me, which is short for “Mikey Likes It,” an ad slogan from Life cereal in the 80s. I’m not going to explain what that means for a few reasons, one of which is that it’s mostly nonsensical. Mikey is a private person, so there’s only so much I can share about why he is one of my greatest heroes. He’s fiercely intelligent—smarter than me, for sure—and he’s uncompromising in his battle to be himself—always has been. When we were little and shared a bedroom, he’d often be put to bed before he deemed necessary. He would stand in his crib and shout “GOOD MORNING” until he passed out, because in the mornings, that was the incantation he spoke to be freed from his crib by some older taller family member. He used to routinely escape from the house, and I’d have to track him through the neighborhood and make sure he didn’t venture into the woods that divided our subdivision from the haunted slave plantation that stood nearby. When we moved to Suriname in the summer of 1992, his companionship made the adjustment much much easier. Mikey is one of the people who taught me what it means to love someone so fully that you would be willing to lay down your life for him. To say that I love and admire him feels truly inadequate.

Me and Kechi with my mom, my father, and my sister in Columbia, MD this past summer.

My mother, Sharon, grew up in hard time Kansas City, Kansas, and in her teen years, she came to realize that the city was too small for her. Stories of her experience taught me what it means to realize you must leave a place in order to become your best self. She lives an artist’s life. When we lived overseas, the people surrounding us always wanted to claim her. In Suriname, people thought she was Hindustani, and living in Tunis, she often got the side eye for speaking French because Tunisians thought she was a Tunisian woman so committed to being upper class that she refused to speak Arabic as a sociopolitical statement. (She didn’t know any Arabic.) Over the years, she has created aluminum flower replicas, decorated cakes, made dolls, dyed batiks, and assembled quilts. The quilts seem to have satisfied something deep in her, and she’s been making those for decades and continues to as she embarks on her 80s.

Kechi in winter wear, Baton Rouge, January 2025

Kechi is in a class by herself. When we met, I had decided that while I was not closed-off to the possibility of romance, of having a family, that I was no longer interested in actively seeking it. I decided to focus on my career and on bettering myself, and that whatever was added to me in the process, I would accept. I’d seen Kechi’s photos of New Orleans comedians on social media, and I heard about her standup performances and her work with No Lye Comedy, but one thing that caught my eye was a video of her dancing her ass off with pompoms. Over the years, I’ve collected what I like to call Personal Celebrities. These are people whom I’ve encountered or whose work I’ve noticed that have some sort of glow for me. Kechi was definitely one of these. We finally met in person when I hired her to take my author photos for The Ballad of Perilous Graves. That was at least a year before she contacted me asking to come swim in my pool in the summer of 2022.

I learned a lot in my earlier relationship, but the most important lesson has been what it means to lift someone up and be lifted up in turn. Kechi is a multi-talented artist. She’s a photographer, a comic, a playwright, and most importantly, she’s a believer. She believes in herself, in me, in us. I tell anyone who listens that it is a true privilege to root for each other in public, and coach each other in private. After abandoning the search, I found someone to share life with, to build with and fight for. This is a happy birthday to my dearest. My mother, my brother, and my wife mean so much to me, and I’m glad I get to celebrate them again.