Real Spit with Ma Dukes

and twenty three and me. We're gonna talk about little family issues and how it kind of hits the hood and he hits us and what we could possibly do about it. So little background, um I had At some point, I feel like I made this like off hand comment off of listening to another podcast about Dolly Parton. Believe it or not. She had said in this podcast like, and you know you kind of never really know your parents. And I thought to myself when she said that, like, dude,

that's crazy. Yeah, I kind of don't. And listeners know, you know, I'm going to raise Los Angeles. My mom is not though. My mom Southeast d C. You know what I'm saying, Northwest Southeast you feel me? She Obama right there, you know what I mean? And Uh, came over here to l A. You know, actually got married

as kids, married my dad as kids. Stayed there until we were grown and they split up and eventually she went back home, but is itching to get back to l A because she got grandkids now in my life?

Come on now, and okay, okay, I appreciate it, But there's an entire history you know, with your parents that like you just don't know, you know what I'm saying, and how could you you were in there and just the reality that like she was an entirely different person before kids, Like you know what I'm saying, Like marriage and kids changed you. Yeah, so it was put on

your heart to write a letter, right, that's right. Yeah, So you can take over from there a little bit like what you wanted to talk about in a letter, not specifics obviously because that's between us, but just kind of what you wanted to inform well in the letter. I first of all, it you had come on a surprise visit to me, and when you made that comment, it was the look on your face and almost like a dagger in my heart. For a couple of different reasons.

That one was because you and I in your growing up years were very very close, and we had a special bond that you used to share with me some things that were actually t m I for me. But but if a kid, you were as just as curious as you are now, very curious and inquisitive and either not, I don't want to say, you demanded an answer. You inquired until you got one that whoever you were speaking

to thought they had given you a sufficient answer. So when you said you didn't know me, and I had taken you to the airport, and it just haunted me and was in my spirit the whole time coming back home that I thought, well, you know, he really he knows me. He doesn't realize that he knows me, because the am the person that I am in my heart and in my spirit. I have always been that person

because that was how God made me. But the fact that you really didn't know my background on my childhood and specifics because I would only tell you or we only would discuss certain things when they came up, as to well, you know, your dad was in the house, your dad drove a cab, you know, speaking of my dad, my dad smoked a cigar. My dad. You know, my mom and dad had nine children. We lived in a certain place, and some of the things that went on is we were children. But I never really really told

you anything about me as a child. And the funny thing about that is that I always had a curiosity and still do about how my parents were as children. By the time you really know them or actually realize anything about them, you're a little person, or you were

a teenager, or you're an adult. But you fail, or I feel, or we felt sometimes I realized that our parents were little people at one point too, you know, they were they were little people that played on the playground and they go to bed when their parents told them to go to bed, maybe played top scotch or whatever. They played in the areas or the cities where they lived. Because my mother was born and raised in Washington, d c. She's a blood Washingtonian, but my dad was raised in

the South, in South Carolina. So I always, you know, I used to reflect and think a lot about I wonder what they were like as little kids. You know, what did they think about when did they get hurt themselves, or when did somebody pick on them? Or you know, what were the things that they did that they didn't want their parents. It's just little people's life. And so when I was going over all that, and I said, well, my son, you know, he doesn't he didn't. My my children,

they don't know that about me. It was just something that came up. Nothing that wasn't that, it wasn't important. It just was something that never presented itself. So in writing the letter, which you know, I started when you left in February, and I was writing the letter and writing the letter, then we were hit with COVID or COVID came and I stopped. Then I had a little issue with one of life. I slipped and fell and hurt my finger naturally, so I couldn't type on the

computer as I wanted to. And then one thing happened right after the other, then more COVID, and then I got kind of like, okay, I wanted to. Once I got into it, everything opened up. And even now the letter that you have is only what they say half of the story, because there was so much and you know, so um, yeah, you came back a lifetime into a letter, yes, a letter, and then individuals that touched your lives, what they meant to you, the little small little things that

you go through. So what I did. The letter was trying to give to you whatever God brought into my heart to give to you that was about me. And it wasn't about trying to make the letter all about me, but in essence, I wanted you to know all about me, the things that you didn't know, Like how was I in junior high school? And I told you about that where I started off, you know, a brainy act, and then what happened, and so those things that you probably

you never you never knew those things. So I went in writing the letter, and it got longer and longer, not only chronologically but in the duration of the letter. And finally I gave you the letter with something still unfinished and probably something that I thought were very important left out because I thought you got tired of waiting, and I thought, Okay, how much longer is this going to be? Because it was supposed to be a letter, it ended up being over forty page. It ended up

being a novel. And then I went through, Okay, well do I the titles? Do I call it everything you wanted to know about your mother and you didn't know or was going to you? Was getting creative? Yeah, I was just getting creative. And then you kept hearing the phrase in this pop culture is that you know your narrative? What's your narrative? Let's somebody right, So I thought, you know what, that's what I'm gonna call it. I'm writing my own narrative so that my son, my daughter, and

whomever they choose to share it with. Yeah, family wise would would know. And so here we are now you're sharing it on a podcast. Yes, not the specifics per se, because some of that stuffs, Like I'm still kind of processing,

you know what I'm saying. There's some things that I really loved, like I knew but like didn't know, you know what I'm saying, like ideas about like like granddad and and you know, the the running the numbers and the card games and the gambling and stuff like that, because which is just herd life, you know what I'm saying, right, And you know you get it. How are you living? You call it hood life now? But for us, it

was survival. For them, it was survival. For them, it was doing what you know to do the best way you could do it and stand away from the pope po Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you get it. How you're living trying to stay out stay stay under the radar,

you know what I'm saying exactly exactly. Yeah. But what I what I found interesting specifically for why I wanted to tell that story as background for this was, um, I took a twenty three and me DNA test, right, and it gives you not only like your ancestral heritage and stuff like that, but it also talks about the part that we're interested in is like is our health background right, and like a wellness stuff, you know what

I'm saying. And and one thing that like that stood out for me in your story in that story is like there's an assumption and it's a true in most situations that like you know, the projects, you know what I'm saying, Like in the in the sense that y'all actually experienced is a food desert that you're just not eating well and making like good choices for your your health, you know what I'm saying, because you're just trying to survive.

And what I noticed your story, it seemed like that wasn't the case, Like y'all ate all right, it's exactly we were at all right now, I'm not saying that we weren't exposed to the chiplins and the hog mode and all of that because we had it, and I ate it and we ate it. But basically, I don't know if it was because and it probably was because of my father's background being in the sun out. My mother used to say rabbit food, that he loved rabbit food.

And out of the nine of us of their children or nine of us are still eating well, you know, my two brothers are deceased, but the seven of us still live off and love rabbit food. Now, the fact that nobody is in a vegetarian, I'm a Presbyterian, and um, they love meat, they love their ribs. I stay away from that because that was my matter of choice after a few years after I got grown. Yeah, that's that's something I wanted to ask you about. Yeah, okay, okay, no,

but go on. Yeah, but generally rabbit food is in like y'all eat fruits and vegetables. We eat fruits and vegetables. I mean I would sit by as a little girl on my mother watching her make potato salad and before she would People in the black community d and I'm sure another another races, uh, ethnic backgrounds, they make potato salad differently. But my mother a lot of people peel the potatoes and then this is just a side peeled potatoes and then chop them up. But my mother would

boil the potatoes first before she chopped him up. And I was always there sitting behind beside her with my elbow on the table, waiting for a piece of raw potato before it even went in the pot. My dad used to come and he would give us ru to Baker's. We would eat raw sweet potatoes, anything that was. It was like right out of the garden and we all loved it. And to this day, my sisters and my brother, we and you will know in your and our family, when we all lived as a family together, you always

had a what was always a salad. There was always a bull of food salad. There was always a bullet fruit. We would come home and always green, something green. You had to have something green on your plate. So that's the way we were raised, no matter what. And even now it's like any any family functioning or gathering, somebody's

going to make a salad. Yeah, it's kind of crazy because, like like I said, like in you know, in a macro sense, like living in like inner cities are considered like we said, food deserts where you can't really get fresh food. It was like just what you said, like whatever decisions you made, that wasn't the case in our house. There was always fruit. You always had it. We come home and it wasn't like there wasn't a bag of chips. It was oranges. We sat down and we ate oranges

we had. That was just a decision you made. And some of those decisions were around like when I when I go through these results, like I'm really interested in I want to hear your reaction because some of the stuff you you said you just kind of like made these food decisions for us because you was watching what seemed like was hereditary, what was just happening in our families where we was dying over getting sick over and so. And you said it in the in a story too.

But I remember you telling us all the time, like y'all watch out for this because this in your family, this in your blood, and it's crazy without you doing any tests, this was just the stuff that you was just like, well it just keep having it, you know what I'm saying, right, So tell the folks what what what were some of those things that you just kind of picked up and was like, we can't eat this because this in our family. Well, I don't, I don't

know you. You didn't have a lot of things that I said you couldn't eat because the entire choice was not my own. You know, your father was there and he had things that you know that he believed that weren't detrimental, but they ended up being detrimentalably being detri mental. So um, the thing is that I tried not to give you a lot of sugar. Remember I used to say you couldn't have right because of the diabetes that you.

I didn't want you to have a lot of sweet sweet cereals, those sugarcoated cereals that you couldn't have, which was torture, Which was torture. And as a matter of fact, when I wanted to give you a treat, you could have your Captain crunch that. Yeah, and they And that was because that the diabetes was running in the family. My my grandfather, my my maternal grandfather, had suffered from diabetes that put him in it in a in a

chair towards the end of his life. My uncle on my mother's side was diabetic and it took him put him down and aunt that came to live with me as my sweetie, lunar causer on nt Helen on Helen. When she was here living with me, it was always sugar and my mother was a sugar candy fanatic. And my sister who later in years late in life, found out she was a diabetic, would always we would always have sweets. That part of it that came. And so you know, I realized that these things just they weren't

good healthy wise. It had nothing to do with what you may hear quote some people talk about generation curses. I don't believe in generation curse. I don't believe in that. I believe in our blood line and the things that we are susceptible due to because of our bloodline. And so I feel that it's it's wiser to make the choices when you're able to make the choices, then wish

later on you hadn't made the choices. Like I have an aunt that passed away, and when I had spoken to her when she had became ill, the one thing she said to me was that I'm not afraid to die. I'll miss the family, But I wish I had made better choices in the way I ate and so these were this was almost her dying doxology that she had wished she had made a better choice. And the things that she ate because she loved to eat. And I mean it's fatty, fatty stuff like raw ground beef and

raw bacon. And so you know, when I used to see a member of our family delving into that, it would just it would just make me cringe because there's no purpose in it. You know, the vegetables will well suffice and keeping you can, keeping you healthy. And I and you know, I attribute that. I don't brag. I thank I'm thankful for the grace of God on my life. But you know where I am in life. You know how old I am. You know what I have suffered

physically and what I haven't suffered physically. And I attribute all of that because of the choices that I said. Not a whole lot of ships since I was a child, That's what I'm saying, not a lot of fats. And for the past two years, I haven't had a piece of fried chicken. Now you're talking crazy, okay, uh no, Um, So what I noticed what our family was like kidney cancer, you know what I'm saying. And then but some of

these weird things. So so the aunt that she talked about, my Helen, which is my great aunt, that's my grandmother's sister. My mom's direct hunt was like, I mean, she was a two packet day smoker, and she outlived everyone more than that, more than more than two packs to see, That's what I'm saying. So like there was these weird like things where you just like, I don't know, is that just that's just in our blood? Like why how

come that ain't? And of all the things that actually killed it was the sugar, you know what I'm saying. So we like, how is it that you do say it? So, so there's these things that are like our diet and then these things that are in our blood. So but there's one thing I want to interrupt to say, then this could be an inspiration to someone who may have been or know someone that had been a three packet day smoker, is that she had a stroke. After the stroke,

she gave up cigarettes at eighty eight years old. So she had been smoking from her twenties until in her eighties and still not a not a thing, not a drop of cancer in her blood. She um was areas y'all, like The one thing that is in our DNA that I'm pretty sure this some twenty three and me thing is going to prove is that we have sarcasm in our DNA and for some reason, like everybody really good at it. You know my right now, y'all, my mom is being very well behaved, but she's being real nice.

But Helen was hilarious. She was remarkably sarcastic and uh and would say stuff like that like smokes mean facts. I won't you being prejudice against my age exactly say that. So I'm gonna read through a few of these things, can get your reactions on this some of the stuff that you thought maybe like you was like yep, or are surprised about. So the first thing I'm gonna look at is like, once you get this result, I'm gonna look at like the my wellness thing. Right, So how

am I d NA responds to like diet, exercise, and sleep. Right, So your boy's genetic weight meeting, like in my predisposed to become overweight or stay pretty pretty thin? What you think you're gonna stay thin? Yep, that's predisposed to weigh less than average. Just what this monk said so you know what I'm saying. And it's funny because you know, even as a kid, I'll try my best. Remember we bought all the weights. Never worked. Oh yeah, I just did not work right. So all the variants in my

blood are associated to like that, you're just gonna be thin? Right? Well? Can I say something there too, though? Yeah? Go for it? Is that you know that out of my eight siblings, I was considered the runt. Yeah, because I was the only one five five. I say five too, but I'm five one and a half. I never got any bigger. Then, you know, I've always kept my weight down. And then your father was tall and slim. It's tall and slim,

so I can see how that would happen. Yeah, yeah, I look good now, but you know he's much older. And also your choices too. Yeah yeah, totally. Uh lactose intolerant. It's in my blood and it's true. Here's what's funny. Here's a funny one caffeine consumption. I am likely to consume less caffeine than anyone else. Really, ain't that weird?

That's what it says based on my DNA. It says that if you consume caffeine, the current Guidelines of Healthy Adults says adults should drink no more than three twelve ounce cups of coffee or eight ounce cups of tea per day, which is crazy because I drink probably for a Yeah, I don't be getting jittery, but I don't know. Maybe I'm defying my DNA here. Muscle composition. It's my muscle composition is common for elite athletes. Okay, I can see that. I can see that totally. Yes, let's see.

Now let's go to like the not so fun stuff health highlights. Okay, dementia, Alzheimer's. What do you think Do I think that in your DNA you're prone to it? Yeah? Uh? Possibly, yeah, so slightly I risk yeah. And and I say that because of my paternal side of the family. Yeah. And I don't know if it's happening now on in my on this side of the family, but basically not not

on my maternal side. Yo. And here's what's crazy is according to this, like the variant I have generally comes from people of European descent, So thank you again, Transatlantic slave trade. You know what I'm saying, We're just reaching into our blood causing problems age related macular degeneration, which I don't even know what that is that has to

do with your vision. Oh ye, two variants detected, which is crazy because I'm the only one of everybody were related to that don't wear glasses on both sides of my family. And it has nothing really to do with with your vision. It's something that happens to the eye, the eye itself. And um, I can see that because my mother and one of her sisters, two of her sisters, as far as I know, had what's called lacoma. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we weren't supposed to say names. Look at us. Well,

I just wasn't saying that. Yeah, um, kidney disease. What do you think? No, I got one variant okay, yeah, but there's a lot more variants in there. That's my DNA that says that you should probably like watch your kidneys, okay. And then the last one, which you probably already knew this already, is a sickle cell. Yes, of course we do. That's that's paternal also. Yeah, and uh, fun thing about sickle cell is that comes from Africa and it's part

of why we can a lot of us. Uh. It was a it was a reaction to mosquitoes and malaria. It was like with sickle cell, which I think is pretty dope. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, now let's see. Uh, let's see some other stuff in here that's pretty crazy so far as my gut health. Things that will set up, like uh, colon cancer, Okay, I ain't got it. Okay, mccollon is good. Mcguts are good. Let's see here, genetics

of like cilantro version. According to this, like I have a slightly higher loads of disliking cilantro which is not true because it's not true, and I love it. Yep, yep. Let's see sleep movement. It says I'm about average, that I sleep like everybody else. Mosquito bite frequency. You know how black people say you got sweet blood. It's really a thing. Yeah that's from your grandmother. No, I have about the same as everybody else. But like some people

got sweet blood. Nikki, my sister, she got sweet blood. Who news the thing? Ain't that crazy? That's crazy, that's crazy. That's actually that. Yeah sweet blood that you actually do got sweet blood. But yeah, uh, type two diabetes that we talked about before, Yeah, that's prevalent. Huh, I got thirty seven chance. Yeah, so it's like, so the choices that you're saying is like, of all the things that are here, that's the one thing I can do something

about exactly. And what's crazy is like you being wise enough paying attention. Before we knew how to take no DNA, nothing that was just looked around. It was like, look, let's make these changes now, observation you change in the narrative.

One thing I wanted to add to when you talked about us being raised in the projects, and this is not an effrontery on anyone else that was raised in the projects, but my mother, well in the projects, anyone that whose ancestors or family, grandma and grandpa, anybody lived in the projects knew that they used to have uh a community center where they would give you government food, government cheese, government peanut butter. But government this government that

my mother never took it. Yeah, we never received anything from them because she chose not to. And one of the reasons, probably as as I got older, I used to tell people that raising nine children first in what I realized now, which our normal reminded me of, is that when we lived in Southwest Washington, d c. When I was very little and born down there, it was considered the slums. Right now, it is the war, everything is exclusive, but back then, when they had black people

running around in there, it was the slums. But to raise a family like that and not get any government assistance, that talks of the struggle of h And I'm sure my dad wasn't the only black man that when on went out of the house in the morning and returned back home in the evening for the betterment of his family. And so we just we just were never exposed to those things. And so that's how we grew. And that's

how I wanted. I wanted us as a family to eat just good, healthy food, and you know, that's that's that's what I did. I remember the time that I that I suggested to the three of you, let's go vegetarian.

Do you remember that conversation? And when I got so much opposition that the three of you looked at each other as if to say talking about and then and then somebody said, you mean, I can't have any more ribs, And somebody said no more steak, and you said, oh no, Ma, And I said, okay, Well, then you guys just go ahead and do. But this is how I'm gonna eat. And I didn't go vegetarian, but I just I just cut out a lot of stuff and yeah you did,

you know. And I mean I've made similar choices, like I haven't gone full of vegetarian, but um, for the most part pescatarian, you know, in as in as best as I can be. Uh. But I think one thing that we do here is like you know, my wife is like super good at like if we are buying beef or chicken, it's like the high end stuff, you know what I'm saying. Like she'll like she'll break bread for that. That's like, you know, no nitrates, like you know,

completely organic. And what's crazy about like the Latino community to which like again it's just a different narrative than you know, which is posed to us. Is like you know, in Acapulco, like they was dirt poor, you know, no running water styles, but like you got fresh fruit every day. Yeah there was. You got up in the morning and you went and bought the food for the day, so it was fresh fruit, fresh vegetables. She's always eight like that,

you know what I'm saying. They when they were kids, she talks about this too, like they didn't get fast food, like her mom didn't do it. She was just like no, they cooked every day. And it was like but you go to the market, you buy the beans, you boil the beans. You know they bought you go to the corner where there was like the fruit lady right exactly sitting in the corner like eating what I'm saying. So you just they always ate like that, you know what

I'm saying. So you know, of course they was you know when they got to l as you know, you had your you had your talkies and hot cheetos like they did that, you know what I'm saying. But it was like no, we like we chopped vegetables every day, made beans every day, you know what I'm saying. You

know what that that that's a beautiful thing. Though I don't mean to interrupted, but that's a beautiful thing because when you think of people living in poverty, a lot of people that have lived that way and have I don't I don't want to say that have been their lifestyle has been governed because of pap her tea or mid level poverty. They go for the cheapest of things

or whatever it is. Convenient. But when you sign a family like hurt like almost background in my background where no, that was no go that that was just no, it wasn't it wasn't an option, you know. So and um, it continues on, it continues on, and the girls eat well and you do too, very Yeah, it's true, it just continues on. The one thing that did like for her, She's like, what kills us is is there's a tortilla with every meal. So we're just so it's the same thing.

It's like sugar. Yeah, I mean, so we try to do the we try to do corn instead of flower, you know. But whatever we're doing, we're doing the best we can anyway. Mom, thank you for your transparency. Yeah, this was fun. Yeah, and thank you to twenty three and me for letting us do this. And then there's like all the other like that you are on my maternal side, like the ancestry stuff, like on the maternal side, your blood is Bantu, you know that African Yeah, you're

from the Bantu region, according to it is okay. I know that one of my sisters had told me one time that my my dad was from Angola. Is that part of that? Now? My my dad's dad because of like how close that angling is to our to our line, Like since he's like your grandfather, he takes up a lot of the percentage because that just through through that DNA in there. But but we're essentially we're essentially like subsaharent East African Okay, you know, which is like not

average for you know, slave descendants. Most slave descendants are mostly West African. But which we're that too, because any slave descendant is everything, you know what I'm saying. But Bantu and Lonnie m hmm. Well, I used to get a lot when I was in California where you know, especially when I start wearing my hair down, and I used to get comments about how was I from the Islands, and it was like you just don't look like you're yeah, but you're all from that. Yeah. And my comment is

that none of us are all black anymore. Yeah, so there's that, right, Yeah, yeah, all the mistaken for Ethiopian stuff, Like I don't know, maybe you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, anyway, Uh, mom, you want to give everybody your socials. I'm just kidding, just kidding. Get nobody, do not follow my mama on Instagram, I slap and playing man. So checking in from MARYL and from the d n V. You know what I'm saying from you know, PGC, Prince George County. Ladies and gentlemen,

my dukes, let go, Thank you very much, mama. Alright, so my pleasure eat? Well, yes, that's right. Oh yeah. You got any words of wisdom for these folks? Well, my only words of wisdom would be to make wise choices when you eat. Because you aren't always gonna be thirty five. You're always gonna be forty, god willing. You aren't always gonna be sixty one day, you're gonna be seventy or eighty on. And you want to still be able to walk around the block without having your shortness

of breath. You want to be able to run a half mile without shortness of breath. You want to be able like me to do sit ups and push ups and leg binds and all of that. It's all in our choices, not only what you eat, but your life choice is in the things that you expose yourself too. I don't know where that came from, but just eat your veggies. They're the good Earth. There's from the good Earth. Then and stay away from that fried, greasy food you

broke up. You broke up, Okay, as good as smells good. But no, I'm being silly. I just didn't want you to drop the gym's I know, But all I'm saying is that you'd be surprised at what you can ove and fry and enjoy it. So just just stay healthy. If you want to stay alive, stay and eat healthy. You will be thankful when you get over a