Exactly one year ago, on August 11th, 2024, Great Things Take Time (GTTT) was launched. The date has deep significance for me as it would have been my grandmother’s 83rd birthday. It only seemed fitting since the GTTT name comes from words she frequently told me when I experienced stress over a lack of progress.

The goal behind GTTT was to find new ways to share experiences that I felt fit with lessons Nana had shared with me during her time on this earth. Short-form content on social media can only do so much, which is why I launched this newsletter to put more dimension to the words I want to share.

Today, I write to you on the other side of a year that has taught me so much, and in turn, has hopefully presented you with something of value. GTTT continues to live on, but your Monday newsletter will now show up in your inbox on Wednesday mornings, the perfect way to reinvigorate yourself mid-week, providing you with all the same good stuff.

So, on what would have been Nana’s 84th birthday, and because I’m not one to leave you hanging (Nana would have some words about that), today’s newsletter is a re-publishing of moments with Nana that deeply influenced who I am as a person. It’s a special story for me to share and gives you insight into the incredible woman Nana was.

A Year of Nana’s Words

So much in life is fleeting. In the moment, it may feel like great triumphs and numbing failures will never end, but when we look back on them, they are a blip in our lives, like the split seconds during the day in which we experience a variety of emotions. People who feel like pillars in our lives will pass in and out of them as quickly as they came into them, teaching us lessons we could never have learned on our own. 

Our lives are a product of these micro-moments. Sounds we never forget, smells that drop us into a place, smaller events that shape our lives, and the people who helped us learn about ourselves.

So much of who I am and the person that I have become is because of my grandmother. It only felt right to introduce her to you.

Meet Nana

Affectionately called Nana by us (my siblings, cousins, and myself), she was a wealth of wisdom and knowledge. Although whether it was all accurate and correct is another thing…

A majority of my childhood was spent at her home in The Bronx. With two working parents, she was more than my grandmother; she was a caretaker who was deeply involved in my upbringing. Nana was the one who kept her eye on us kids, constantly reminding you to  “wash your butt” and could tell if you hadn’t scrubbed everywhere with a washcloth. 

She taught me how to develop an appreciation for everything in my life, but with that came some tough lessons. While her building had a washer and dryer, we’d have to wash all our clothes by hand, hanging them up to dry on a line on the terrace of her New York apartment. The years of scrubbing my laundry on a washboard made it so I will never not appreciate a washing machine. She’d even make it so that when we were on a family vacation in North Carolina, we had to pick our own food. Returning back to New York meant a return to a luxurious and convenient life.

Now, if you’re reading this in air conditioning, I am happy for you and your temperature-regulated environment. If I were in your place 30 years ago, sitting in my grandmother’s apartment, I most certainly would be drenched in sweat, “cleansing myself”. While her 26th-floor apartment was equipped with an AC, it was reserved for special family events. We kids were left to appreciate the natural air; our daily visits did not merit chilled air. It could be 90 degrees outside, and my grandmother would have the terrace doors wide open to let in the breeze. We’d foolishly think we had a chance at cooling down the apartment, so we’d say,

“Nana, you have an AC right here. Please turn on the AC. It is so hot in here.”

But whether my Southern grandma didn’t need it, wanted us to learn to appreciate the amenity, or was trying to save money and didn’t admit it, that AC never went on despite her fanning herself, dripping sweat. 

“Go in, drink some cold water and cool off, or eat some fruit,” she’d tell us no matter how hot it got. “Sweating is your body's way of cleansing itself. The more you do it, the better.”

Okay, Nana. Okay.

I suppose that if that’s the case, I’ve gotten pretty cleansed over the years from my profuse sweating, a trait in the family she seems to have passed down to me. If you’ve worked out with me, then I’m sure you’ve seen my dampness or felt an unintentional sprinkle. Yikes.

Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness Nana-ness

But despite both of us being sweaty people, Nana ingrained in me the importance of cleanliness and presentation. However, this manifested in a slightly different way for me.

My grandmother did not tolerate sloppiness or dirtiness. I feel this was especially true because she came to New York from the South. She knew that how you looked was important if you were brown, and people would judge you based on how you presented yourself. My grandmother loved color, large hats, gold jewelry, trendy shirts, and sunglasses. Even when she dressed down, she did so in style in a way I can only describe as being very “Brooklyn”.

Often dressed to the nines, she expected those around her to follow suit. Crust would be wiped out of eyes by her licked finger. Chapped lips, ashy elbows, and knees would be called out before an about-face would be demanded to go lotion up. Nana would walk up to strangers, teenagers, and grown men, and pull up their sagging pants. This was another source of my boyhood embarrassment, eliciting a bit of fear on the streets of The Bronx.  

She was relentless in her demands for the boys in my family to keep ourselves clean. We were at that age where, for many boys, showers and soap were as necessary as my grandmother's AC, that is to say, not at all. Cleanliness was more of a hobby for the young boys, and my grandmother would make sure we showered frequently. Since I loved feeling clean, I had no problem scrubbing myself with a washcloth, passing my grandmother’s sniff test every time. My cousin, on the other hand, thought splashing water on himself was enough to get around my grandmother’s demands. She could tell if you didn’t use a washcloth, claiming to be able to smell it on your skin, and would send him back into the bathroom to try again.  

Being taught about my body’s upkeep led me to ask Rosie, the barber in the neighborhood, to shave my head. But when I started wanting it done more often, it was decided that paying someone that frequently to just shave my head was a waste of money. I got my own clippers.

To this day, I have enjoyed the freedom of shaving my head whenever I want. Keeping it as short as possible, and always being obsessed with being clean-shaven, until recently.

Cleanliness became a constant and predictable thing in my life, so much so that I began to get my guy friends on board as they became interested in my various scrubs and lotions. Some of their wives have even thanked me for introducing them to skincare.

While I love showers, a nice face scrub, and a shaved head, presentation to me means a different thing. My wardrobe is more like a uniform; it’s composed of a few well-loved staples, lululemon gear, my signature cut tanks, and some white overalls, you know the ones.

My favorite and most worn shirt, a black t-shirt with holes in it that would most likely cause my grandmother to descend into a light outrage centered around my decision to put that on my body. 

How I show up as a person to those around me and how I make them feel, what I leave them with, is more important to me than the clothes I put on my body. While I can appreciate those who dress up or carefully select their outfits, that doesn’t bring me the same joy as knowing that my interactions are

Speaking in broad terms, Nana would say to me, 

“Maurice, when you listen and pay attention to people, you make them feel like they’re the only thing around.” 

With our lives being so short, why would you waste the precious moments you have with anyone? Being present in every moment, showing up for people, and being invested in their lives is what I think of when I think of presentation. You don’t want to wait until you can’t get those moments back to appreciate them.

My grandmother’s passing reaffirmed this for me in the most gut-wrenching way.

Sunday Dinners

Sunday dinners as a family at my grandmother’s were the bookend to the week. Family day was Sunday, but in 2018, it was also the day I would set myself up for the week ahead by prepping food, doing laundry, and finding a time to recharge as my Monday started at 3:30 am. My life had gotten really crazy with the endless grind of long work days and rarely turning down outings with friends. I called my grandmother that day to tell her how tired I was and that I wasn’t going to make it. In response, she told me, 

“I really want you to start thinking about a life you can create where you have time for the people you care about, because we don’t get time back. It’s only being taken away.” 

Sometime in the middle of that night after the family dinner, she had a brain aneurysm.

The following days were spent with family in the hospital being part of impossible discussions that no one thinks they will ever have to have to take her off of life support. As a vibrant woman so full of life, Nana would not want to be trapped in a body, unable to share life with us.

Feeling the lowest of lows and like absolute trash, my grandmother’s words from that Sunday were playing out in front of me. 

“You don’t get time.”

My last minutes alone with my grandmother were filled with apologies for neglect of family, that we’d never be able to take the trips we planned, or that she’d never meet her newly born great-grandson or my kids. I asked for forgiveness for being selfish, for assuming we’d always have tons of time.

When it came time to remove my grandmother from life support, my sister and I were in the room. Lying my head on her chest, I focused on her heartbeat. 

A heart sounds very different when it’s dying. A sound I will never forget. 

I focused on her heart as it got fainter and fainter until it stopped. Laying there in shock as the doctor came in to tell my grieving sister and I that she had passed.

You can be prepared for someone to pass when they’ve been sick or know that elder relatives are nearing their time as their age increases, but to me, my grandmother was immortal. I never thought she would die. It was the real-life lesson that anything can happen and anyone can be taken at any moment. The feeling of loss was so raw that it felt like someone wanted to hurt me by taking her.

Searching For A Meaning

The grieving process made me evaluate my life and what her death meant to me. I looked at what I was currently doing, where it was going to take me, and why I was spending so much time doing it. I remembered my grandmother’s words about transforming my life to be able to dedicate time to the people I cared about. I asked myself,

“What do you want? How do you get it? What’s going to get you there?”

By cutting out the things that were inconsequential to me, the noise, and what didn’t serve me, I was able to get more focused on what I wanted from my life. There were the things that put gas in my car (metaphorically and literally) and people who I couldn’t bear losing. Life turned into something I didn’t want to muscle through, it was meant to be enjoyed. I looked for the moments that were important to me and brought me closer to my grandmother.

One of those things is being outside. To this day, my grandmother’s love of nature and her determination to make me spend time outside has allowed me to find solace when I’m alone in the outdoors. 

But being in nature with my grandmother was not always the most calming experience. One of the most distinct memories I have from when I was little is my grandmother taking us to a park off Dyckman, the one filled with people we knew, to hug trees. 

This is not a figure of speech; she would stand there and make us wrap our arms around the trees, while we burned with embarrassment, praying no one we knew would walk by us. 

“Oh Maurice, just hug the trees”

“Nana, I’m not hugging these trees”. 

But I always did it, because my Nana was not someone you said no to, whether it was hugging trees or changing how you lived your life.

Every moment of my past has been necessary to shape me into the person I am today. Whether it’s been sweating buckets in The Bronx, hugging trees, or being with my grandmother in her final moments, they’ve all provided me with a direction on how I live life now. I look back on my past with appreciation, considering even the toughest moments are something to be grateful for. Despite shame or embarrassment in the moment, there is no space now for regret or disdain; these moments made me who I am and with so many being centered around my grandmother, she has continued to be with me every day of my life.

So when things get tough, I don’t feel present in my body, or I feel lost in my direction, I bring myself back to the reminder that the struggle is contributing to where I’m going. These events are fleeting, like so many things in life. But as my grandmother always said, 

“Never give up because great things take time.”

-A