Let's Be Clear: Black Pride

Showing posts with label Black Pride. Show all posts

Friday, July 24, 2020

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!

Sunday, May 12, 2019

Happy Mother's Day Sisters...

I bought Paul Goodnight's, "Links & Lineage" in Washington, DC over 16 years ago because its absolute beauty spoke not only to my heart -- but to my very own "becoming" as a Black woman in these alleged, United States of America.

It's always had a prominent place in every home we've owned since. Now, it hangs again, in my new foyer in "the belly of the beast," keeping me grounded in, as Mr. James Baldwin said, "from whence we came."

When I look at it -- I see my Mama parting out the last two sections, so she could finish the "joined-plaits" she routinely put in my hair when I was little. My mother died exactly a week before my birthday and on my niece's (my sister's daughter) birthday in 1996. She was 65. I was 40. My niece was 18. Links & lineage matter, Fam.

When I look at it -- I see me (I cannot tell you how much that little girl looks just like me when I was that age!), sittin' between her knees, lovin' her greasin' my scalp -- even as I wanted her to hurry up and finish when she got down to my "kitchen." Links & lineage matter, Fam.

When I look at it -- I see my Gra'Mama workin' on yet another quilt ( I have one of her hand-sewn ones, stored in an old steamer trunk that belonged to Sal, my father's mother). Gra'Mama died five days after New Year's Day in 2002. She was 92. I would be 46 that July. My niece (who'd later have two daughters of her own) would be 24 that July as well. She'd buried my mother, her oldest child of the living 10 of 15, six years before. Links & lineage matter, Fam.

I know it's been a minute since I've written any-damned-thing. But today, I'm moved to salute all my Sisters who had, have, are, or were Mamas -- because links & lineage will always matter to me Fam...