Four Women, Many Lessons

My mothers come in all shapes and sizes, from my birth mother with her beautiful brown eyes and endlessly comforting hugs to my grandmother, long and lean with arthritis ridden hands that still lovingly perform tasks around the house. I am lucky enough to have had a mother, a stepmother, both of my grandmothers, and all four of my great grandmothers in my life. Women hold a special place in my family because they are the backbone, the pillars of support which all the rest of us lean on when life becomes too difficult. It would be impossible to try to describe or explain all of the lessons that my various mothers have taught me throughout my life, but that won’t stop me from trying. And before I begin, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for loving me and always standing behind and beside me. I wouldn’t have made it here if it weren’t for you, all of you.

My mother, my Mommy, the woman who formed me beneath her ribs and whose heart and blood sustained me before I could live for myself. She is the strongest person I know because she raised me and my sister as a single mother from the time I was five until I graduated high school. She taught me that no matter how many times life kicks you down, you have to get back up, stronger and more resilient than before. Life hasn’t been easy for her, with her father dying when she was a teenager and her marriage collapsing like a house of cards by the time she was twenty five, but she never stopped trying to be better for me, and I am so grateful for that. We moved around frequently when I was growing up, which resulted in me going to eleven different schools, but I never resented her for it because no matter where we were, I knew that I would always have her, waiting for me to potentially falter but never losing faith that I would eventually get where I needed to be. I am so close to my mom because she was one of the few constants in my ever changing and evolving life. She taught me how to make the best of a bad situation because there have been many times when she had to make decisions that didn’t always make me happy but were the only options for us, such as when we moved to Colorado the year I was ten, away from her parents and grandmother. I know now that she was probably terrified but we needed a new start, and she was offered a job there, so we went. It turned out that Colorado was one of my favorite places to live, so it wasn’t too bad. She taught me that it always gets better, no matter how bleak or hopeless it might appear. My mother made sure that our birthdays and holidays were celebrated in as grand a manner as she could manage because she never wanted us to feel the shame and embarrassment that came with not having much money. She taught me a love like I’ve never known, and I don’t how to thank her for all that she’s shown me.

Here’s a poem that I wrote for her.

Mother

My mother made me

Promise to never leave her.

I didn’t think twice about

It at the time because it

Made sense.

I loved her and

She loved me and

You don’t walk away

From that sort of thing.

Even though some days it

Feels less like I want to

Walk and more like I want to

Run to keep myself from

Being engulfed by her expectations

And dreams and hopes.

But I can’t because I

Promised and even if I

Hadn’t, her blood flows through

My veins and her heart

Was once mine.

Sometimes I wonder

If she is more scared of

Losing me or if she is

More scared of

Losing a part of herself.

My stepmother came into my life when I was fifteen, and I am thrilled that my father managed to find her out of all the women out there. She is loud and proud and we’re polar opposites in so many ways, despite our birthdays being one day apart. The first day we met, I wasn’t really sure how I felt about her, but that uncertainty faded soon after in the face of her outgoing personality and unwavering positivity. She may be tiny, but she is fierce, and she never lets anyone forget who she is. My stepmother has been forged through her various life experiences and I don’t think she ever expected to suddenly get into a relationship with a man who already had two teenagers, but she stepped up for the challenge. She also gave me my baby sister, and while I was shocked at the prospect of having another sibling, I don’t know who I would be without her. My stepmother has encouraged me to live my life to the fullest and achieve my full potential because I am deserving of a life beyond fear and uncertainty. During a brunch, she asked me what I would most want to be if all of the stars aligned and I said a writer, so she asked, “Why not?” I’d never considered actually making my dreams a reality but now I have more faith in my abilities. She taught me not to be scared of greatness and to accept that I can potentially change the world. We don’t share blood, but we’ve shared a lot of love, laughter, and lessons learned throughout these past seven years. I also wrote a poem about her, and her effect on my life.

Dynamite

You swooped in out of nowhere,

Seemingly apparating out of thin air.

You were quiet for the first three hours we knew you

Before you swept us all up into your orbit.

You kept propelling us forward,

And somehow, someway, you managed to

Bring us all back together again.

You were brilliant and funny and confident,

And I always felt a bit dull in your presence.

You were who I wanted to be,

Someone who was never scared,

Or if they were,

Hid it so well they fooled themselves.

I only hope we’re not a temporary stop in your life,

A place to practice for the real world,

But I would never want to you lose yourself

While trying to save him.

My grandmother on my mother’s side, whom I call Nana, is superbly talented. She has worked for the school board, she is a licensed masseuse, and she makes cards and other knick knacks in her “free time.” My Nana never sits down for a moment to rest and she manages to pull in everyone around her because she is magnetic. During the summers, she would run Camp Nana for me, my sister, and my cousins, and we would spend days browning in the sun outside, swimming in the community pool, and going on scavenger hunts and other activities that she would plan for us to do. She taught me that it is okay to eat German chocolate cake for breakfast (as long as I didn’t tell my mom) and that it’s important to enjoy the little moments. She taught me how to bake pound cake, me in the kitchen at her side, pouring the ingredients into the mixer under her watchful eye, which I now make for my neighbors every year during the holidays, even though I’m nowhere near her level of expertise. My Nana taught everyone how to throw a party worth remembering. She makes her own decorations using a Cricut that has seen its fair share of projects, and she never does anything halfway, as evidenced by my high school graduation. She taught me how to be creative and how to make things with just some scissors, paper, and glue and though I’m not as crafty as her by a long shot, I’m still grateful that I got to spend time crafting with her, and it gave me something to emulate if/when I ever have children and grandchildren of my own.

My grandmothers couldn’t be more different from each other if they tried, even though there are some similarities. My Grandmommy, my grandmother on my father’s side, is the polar opposite of my Nana. My Nana is petite and my Grandmommy used to be 5’10”. While my Nana is a genteel Southern lady, the epitome of grace and poise, my Grandmommy hails from Trinidad and is Caribbean through and through. She is selfless to a fault and has more godchildren than you could shake a stick at because people at her church want her in their children’s lives. She has rheumatoid arthritis and for as long as I can remember, she has been stooped and gnarled from its ravaging effects. Her fingers are permanently bent from a surgery to cut the tendons so that she could still move them in some manner, and as a child, I imagined that an angel had been flying through the sky with a basket of sticks and she dropped it, which allowed them to fall into my Grandmommy’s hands. Fanciful, and far from the sobering truth: her disease has been progressing for the past forty years and it has left no part of her body untouched. She has aches and pains in all of her waking moments, but she has hidden her pain because she doesn’t want pity or sympathy. She taught me how to iron clothes, how to fold pants and apply starch so that a perfectly crisp crease is created, how to iron out pillowcases and bedsheets so that they’re smooth for bedtime. She taught me how to do laundry, carefully separating the whites from the blacks and the colors from underwear, pinning pairs of socks together, using five or six dryer sheets per load, and then folding everything neatly and putting it away. My Grandmommy is devoutly Christian and while she tried to instill her beliefs in me, they just didn’t quite stick. I need something concrete to follow and I couldn’t imagine a merciful God allowing a woman like my grandmother to suffer as she does. She taught me how to take care of others because she would get up at five every morning to make my grandfather breakfast, and that act of selfless love is one that I fondly remember now that she’s not able to be in the kitchen as much anymore. I learned how to always look presentable when I left the house because you never knew who you would run into. She taught me to be prepared for anything life could throw at me.

My mothers have all taught me valuable lessons that I will never forget and that have shaped me into the sometimes troubled but eternally optimistic person that I am today. I have seen that it is possible to prevail in life if you keep your head held high and you have hope for the future. I like to think that I have taught them some lessons as well, like how to weave words together to form a tapestry that tells our story and how to own every atom of stardust that is contained within us, though I won’t pretend that I’m wiser than any one of them. But one of the most important lessons that I’ve learned is that there’s never too much love to go around. Love, just four little letters that encapsulate why my mothers do all that they do. They love relentlessly and tirelessly, and I got to see it in high definition. I know I’ve already said it once before, but I just want to thank them from the bottom of my heart once again. All of this, all that I am, is because of you.