Chicken Soup for the African American Woman's Soul (6 page)

My mother's birthday wasn't until October. As she read the birthday card a full grin broke out on her face. Aunt Kat was well known for sending humorous and sometimes obscene birthday cards. This was the year of my mother's fiftieth birthday, which meant the year of the ring!

My grandparents had eleven children. There was Mary, Kat, Alice, Regina, Elaine (my mother), the twins Joyce and Janice, William Jr., Randy, Pamela, and last but not least, Terri. Yes, I would say my grandparents' quiver was full! Amazingly, over the years they all managed to stay close. They survived trials, fights, different opinions, religions and hundreds of miles between them. Their bond couldn't be broken. When Mary, the oldest, turned fifty, it was a major marker in all of their lives. For her it was like achieving another level in life, a kind of crossing over into ever after. For her younger sibs, it was a milestone of achievement and a cause for celebration. They all got together and bought her a diamond pendant.

Next it was Aunt Kat's turn, and despite the fact that she still claims to be twenty-five (and at first glance you might be inclined to believe her) she accepted her fiftieth birthday with grace and grandeur. The night of her party she was guided in on the arm of her husband, Uncle Joe-Willie. To this day I still say she floated into the room. The evening was perfect, just as long as no one mentioned her age. She was the first to get a ring. A few years later they decided to make the ring a part of the celebration. Aunt Mary traded her necklace in, and it was official. On their fiftieth birthday, each would receive a ring. This year was my mother's turn.

My mother is the mother of four, two boys and two girls. She's always been a single parent, so she worked very hard. I remember there was a time when she worked three jobs. She was a head nurse on the children's ward in one hospital, on call for the emergency room at another, and she did home visits three to four times a week. My mother worked hard all of her life, all just to make sure we had the same chances everyone else had—even when she herself did not always have the best. So after her forty-ninth birthday, my eldest brother had a meeting with us and said that no matter what her next would be a birthday she wouldn't forget. Unlike the sisters before her, she didn't have a husband to throw her a fiftieth birthday bash—we were all she had. So we began planning, sneaking, saving and pooling our resources; her ring year would be her best.

All that year cards came reminding her how old she would be. She would just laugh and light up. Just the thought of getting her ring and joining this “elite” club would tickle her so.

As her birthday neared, there was a light in her eyes and spring in her step, and she always looked like someone had told a joke that no one got but her. Everything was set, even the decoy. Her birthday fell on a Thursday, but the real party was set for Saturday. On Thursday, we had a little party at our house with just her children and their families. It was her fiftieth year, and she was having homemade tacos. She didn't care; my mother never asked for much.

On Saturday, she was still unaware of our plans. I bought her a formal dress to wear to the party. It was a black velvet, two-piece after-five. It had sequins and a split that was a little high, but she could pull it off. After all, the theme of the party was “fifty and fine.” The day of the party my sister drove her around pretending to be lost trying to find this new restaurant where we were all supposed to meet. Then they arrived. She started to giggle as she walked down the hall to the surprise party that awaited her; she had started to get suspicious.

“Surprise!!” We all shouted as she looked around the room, amazed to see all of her family and friends smiling back at her. She was speechless with tears as her first born son, now married with four children of his own, led her to the center seat at the head table. My Aunt Kat took the microphone as the emcee, and the roast began.

After the dinner and the dance tribute performed by three of her four granddaughters, a tape recording was played of her youngest granddaughter and namesake, Alaina, who was in Atlanta and couldn't make it, singing “L Is for the Way You Look at Me.” Once we had laughed and cried and laughed again, they brought out her ring. It was beautiful and elegant, nothing like anything she would have bought for herself—not that she wasn't an elegant woman; she practiced being a well-rounded lady. She just seemed to always have other priorities when it came to indulging herself. The ring fit her pinky just like everyone else's, and then she began to beam—not just her smile on her tear-stained face, but from the inside. I had never seen her so bright.

Once it was all over and we got home, I asked her, “Are you happy now that you have your ring? That's all you've been thinking about this year.”

She said yes, with a smirk and a chuckle. Then she looked at me with glassy eyes and told me what really made her beam with pride was seeing her four adult children, happy, healthy and prospering. She said looking into our faces made her life make sense. “The four of you are the diamonds in my ring!”

That got me thinking; maybe it wasn't the ring after all.

Maybe it was that, at fifty years old, she could look back and smile about a life well lived.

Monica Montgomery

Just Like Mom

I
nside every older lady is a younger lady—
wondering what the hell happened.

Cora Harvey Armstrong

All my life people have told me I “look just like” my mother. When I was young I paid it no attention at all because I simply did not believe it. As a teenager when I heard the words “You look just like your mother,” I would respond with “No, I don't. She's an adult and I'm not.” After all, what teenage girl wants to be told she looks like her mother? Then, I would run to look in the mirror to make sure I had not changed since the last time I had looked. Relieved that it was still me in the mirror, I'd exclaim, “Whew, that was scary.”

When it happened at twenty-five I would respond with, “No, I don't. She is old, and I'm young” and again I would reach for the mirror to make sure things were as they should be. Relieved yet again, I'd mutter under my breath, “I don't know what those people see; they must be blind. I definitely do not look anything like my mother.”

By thirty-five, maturity had set in, and I would not respond at all when I heard those intrusive words, “You look just like your mother,” but my thoughts were,
Oh no,
you see her hair is thinning and turning gray, her midsection is
spreading, and her walk is slowing. That definitely is NOT me. I
can walk a fifteen minute mile, I work out every day, and my steps
are quicker than they were at twenty-five. No, I definitely DO
NOT look like my mother.
I'd still sneak a peak in the mirror, just to be sure.

As I prepared to celebrate my fiftieth birthday, I woke up excited and happy to be alive. As I passed the full-length mirror in the corner of my bedroom I caught a glimpse of a startling figure. I stopped and took a good long look. I could not believe my eyes. There she was staring back at me—my mother.
When did this happen?
As I looked, rather than being upset or in denial over the remarkable resemblance that had somehow eluded me all these years, I found a strange comfort in looking at my mom's and my image comingling in the mirror.

Suddenly, I saw something more than just our physical similarities. I saw beyond the thinning of the hair and the expanding midsection to the strength and courage she had always displayed in the face of tragedy—and that she had given me. I saw the determination that had helped her break free of the shackles of poverty and pain—a determination that she had given me. I saw her spiritual teachings—the ones that helped to shape and mold my own values and beliefs. I saw her commitment to hard work—the commitment that she taught me so that I could achieve my goals and dreams. I saw the love and appreciation that she held for her family that she passed on to me so that I may honor and cherish my own family. Yes, as I looked in the mirror, I realized that it was
her
love of life that taught me to live my life to the fullest and that allowed me to wake up that very day thankful to be alive.

Today, when I look at my mother, I am amazed at how much she looks like her mother and yes, how much I look like her.

Now, when people say to me, “You look just like your mother,” a loving warmth spreads through me, and I simply smile, nod and proudly say, “Thank you.”

Linda Coleman-Willis

Mama's Hands

When I was a child, I thought that my mama had the prettiest hands. They were brown and smooth, the fingers long and slender. Her nails were always perfectly rounded and polished a bright shade of red. I never once saw her polish them, but I know that she did. Even before the days when there were nail shops in every strip mall, beauticians gave manicures—but not to my mama. She never indulged herself in things just for herself. Her every indulgence was for her family.

Mama still has the prettiest hands. Her nails are still perfectly rounded and polished a bright red—these days by a manicurist. Her hands are no longer smooth. Time has added wrinkles and a spot or two, and veins more pronounced. Hers look like the hands of a fifty-year-old woman—a woman my age. Mama is eighty.

Hands tell tales. Hers tell of sewing countless beautiful dresses with sashes that tied into big bows for her two little girls, bell-bottom pants and prom dresses for her teenagers—until her daughters got too highfalutin to wear “homemade” clothes.

The last dress Mama made for me was a wedding dress.

It was not the dress—or the wedding—she had dreamed of for her first daughter. But, I was in
luv
. In the '60s, “living together” was the clarion call of the new women's liberation. It was actually men's liberation, but that's a story for another day. To Mama, it was “shacking up,” and no daughter of hers was going to live in sin. She would disown me first. I would become a twenty-one-year-old orphan. So while my beloved and I agreed that we didn't need a piece of paper or a fancy wedding to validate our love, Mama disagreed. She expressed it by refusing to speak to me.

Nowto say that Mama and I had had our differences during my adolescent years would be an understatement of gargantuan proportion.Our disagreements were numerous and
loud
. Louder on her part because those were times when “Don't you use that tone of voice with me” meant something—as in something bad was about to happen to one who was heedless. So I made sure to keep my voice several decibels below hers. But our disagreements had never, ever been silent. Hers was a silence I could not bear.

In those days of burning draft cards and burning bras, compromise was a dirty word. But compromise I tried. My beloved and I were married by a justice of the peace. Did this satisfy Mama? Oh, but no. Not even the official marriage license that I brandished would convince her. “Humph” was the closest thing to a word that escaped her lips. Mama was going to have a wedding—or I was going to have no mama. And I was definitely
not
going to sleep with that man under her roof.

Why couldn't she understand about
luv?
She and Daddy had been married for over twenty years. Didn't she even remember what it was like to be young and in love? Apparently not. The deafening silence continued.

In the face of her legendary capacity for persistence, I relented. A date was set—three weeks away. Arrangements were made. Invitations were sent. Flowers were ordered.

Then we went shopping for “the dress.” Now a wedding with three weeks' prep time does not exactly scream for a cathedral-length train. That was as much as we could agree on. Mama wanted traditional white, floor length, of course, scaled down somewhat from her original vision. I wanted something African to signify and acknowledge my connection to the Motherland—a place I had never been and still haven't, thirty years later.

After hours of trudging through stores, trying on wedding dresses—always starting with the sales rack—we had not found even one dress that could bridge the gap between us. Tired and exasperated, I said, “Why don't you just
make
the dress?” The scowl that had adorned her face all day—and that matched the one on my own face—didn't turn into a smile, exactly, but it did soften considerably. Off we went to the fabric stores, she fingering the bright white satins and tulle, me searching for something African.

Then I saw it: translucent white voile with thin metallic stripes of gold and silver painted on it, horizontal stripes.

(In those days, I was skinny as a rail and could wear horizontal stripes.) It was the most beautiful fabric I'd ever seen. For a hot minute, Mama held out for
real
white, but she saw that I loved that fabric. I can still see her brown hands caressing the cloth, fingering it, draping it over a bolt of white lining. In the end, it was white enough to satisfy her, and even though I wasn't sure about silver, I was pretty sure I'd heard that there were gold mines in Africa.

We had found our compromise.

Then I saw the price printed on the end of the bolt, and my heart sank. The fabric was “beyond-our-means” expensive. Mama could squeeze a dollar so hard that ol' George would holler for help. But for once, Mama didn't bat an eye at the cost. I stood by, trying to look stoic and unexcited, as the clerk measured off yards and yards of the fabric. Even before the clerk had rung up our purchase,