7/24 -- always a day of mourning, celebration and anticipation...

I woke up this morning, rolling over and looking out my bedroom window where, for the last three years, I've seen a cardinal flying from its nest in the trees behind my back yard to my neighbors bird feeder next door.  I didn't see the cardinal this morning which, to many, is a sign of a spirit watching over you.

It's been 24 years since my mother died in Charleston on my niece's 18th birthday -- a week before my 46th birthday.  It seemed to explain the fitful, sweat-drenched, menopausal sleep I had last night.

I told the husband about it this morning and he said,"Maybe it was your Mom saying, 'You got this, Deb,' you don't need me anymore."  I think he was right, at least partially.

She was "Woman" in my life.  Sometimes gettin' the hell on my last nerve, sometimes bein' the person whom I looked up to most as friend, ally and not-takin-any-shit-from-white folk role model. I remember her coming to Immaculate Conception (ICS) to pick me and my brother up to go march in Charleston's, 1969 Hospital Workers strike, led by her friend and fellow Dreamer's Social Club member, Miss Mary Moultrie.  I was 13.

These women met monthly, pooled their "dues," had a great time playing cards, eating and talking about family and friends and had an even better time annually, as they used that pooled cash to travel America. Miss Dora, my family's next-door neighbor, is the only one left to my knowledge.

I remember her fighting her way up from short-order cook on the Navy Base to running all the cafeterias on that base.  I also remember her (respectability politics aside), demanding that we do better, be better than who she was. As I look back on my life at 63, I did better -- but I could never be better than the woman she was.

I miss you so much, Mama -- you'd be proud of these young, Black folk today!