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Mama's Magic
By Glenis Redmond My
mama is Magic!
Always
was and always will be.
There
is one phrase that constantly bubbled
from
the lips of her five children,
“My
momma can do it.”
We
thought my mama knew everything.
Believed she did, as if she were born full grown
from
the Encyclopedia of Britannica.
I
could tell you stories
of how
she transformed
a run
down paint peeled shack
into a
home.
How
she heated us with tin tub baths
from a
kettle on the stove.
Poured
it over in there like an elixir.
My
mama is protection
like
those quilts her mother used to make.
She
tucked us in with cut out history all around us.
We
found we could walk anywhere in this world
and
not feel alone.
My
mama never whispered the shame of poverty
in our
ears.
She
taught us to dance to our own shadows.
“Pay
no attention to those grand parties
on the
other side of the tracks.
Make
your own music,” she’d say
as she
walked,
she
cleaned
the
sagging floorboards of that place.
“You’ll get there.”
“You’ll get there.”
Her
broom seemed to say with every wisp.
We
were my mama’s favorite recipe.
She
whipped us up in a big brown bowl
supported by her big brown arms.
We
were homemade children.
Stitched together with homemade love.
We
didn’t get everything we ever wanted
but we
lacked for nothing.
We
looked at the stars in my mama’s eyes
They
told us we owned the world.
We
walked like kings and queens
even
on midnight trips to the outhouse.
We
were under her spell.
My
mama didn’t study at no Harvard or Yale.
The
things she knew
you
couldn’t learn in no book! Like...
How to
make your life sing like
sweet
potato pie sweetness
out of
an open window.
How to
make anybody feel at home.
How at
just the right moment be silent
and
with her eyes say,
“Everything’s gonna be alright, chile,
everything is gonna be alright.”
How
she tended to all our sickness.
How
she raised our spirits.
How
she kept flowers
living
on our sagging porch
in the
midst of family chaos.
My
mama raised children like
it was
her business in life.
Put us
on her hip and kept moving,
keeping that house Pine-Sol clean.
Yeah,
my mama is magic.
Always
was and always will be.
Her
magic?
How to
stay steady and sure
in
this fast paced world.
Now
when people look at me
with
my head held high
my
back erect
and
look at me with that...
”Who
does she think she is?”
I just
keep on walking
with
the assurance inside.
I am
Black Magic!
I am Jeanette Redmond’s child!
*
* * * *
posted 19 June 2006 |
