I Got It From My Mama

“I do believe in love at first sight because I’ve loved my mother since the day I opened my eyes.”

Florence Etta June was born in 1916. She was the second eldest child born to a sharecropper farmer and a housewife in South Carolina. There were eight other siblings, and granddaddy made sure they all finished high school. She once said that she loved finding a secret place to read and memorize poetry with so many children in the home. Another time, she told us, her family was so poor that they didn’t know there was a depression for the first two years because they always had smoked meat, fresh eggs, and vegetables from the garden.

Had the times been different for a young black woman, mama would have become a journalist. Instead, she went to nursing school and became a psychiatric nurse. She was a good nurse. But she walked away from her profession to raise her five children. She believed we need a mama more than the nursing field needed a nurse. While at nursing school, her mama died suddenly. It was as if someone pulled down a shade in mama’s heart. She was never the same. She was 19 when her mama died, and she grieved her mother’s death for the rest of her life.

Mama was an excellent example of grace and unselfishness. I never heard her say an unkind word to or about anyone. She was knowledgeable, gifted, extraordinarily generous, and kind. As a writer once said, “She was a divine force filled with heaven.”

She taught me to treat others with decency even when they didn’t deserve it and to forgive others: To show kindness, demonstrate love and caring, and individual style. She was a testimony of a Godly woman who shared the love of Christ.

If you ever came to our home unexpectedly, you would never observe her watching soap operas or gossiping on the phone. She would either be reading a book, the Bible or listening to a Christian radio station. She didn’t care much for television.

Mama wasn’t perfect; she had flaws and insecurities, like being afraid to step on escalators and flying in a plane. And she was “old school” and a disciplinarian. She pulled so many switches off our front yard peach tree; I thought the tree would die. But her discipline was wrapped in her love for me.

Mama graduated valedictorian of her class and loved reading and reciting. One of her greatest joys was giving someone a book for no particular reason, just because she wanted to encourage others to read. And she kept a current library card and loved visiting the local library until she died in 2002.

Mama wore many hats: an RN, a writer, an actress, a community activist, a beloved friend, a sister, a daughter, a wife, our mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. I believe the role she loved the most was being my mama!

I acquired my love for reading and writing poetry from my mama. She introduced me to Paul Laurence Dunbar’s black dialect poetry while still in elementary school. As a child, whenever I had writing or speaking assignments, she would remind me, “When one word will do, don’t make two.”

For Black History Month, mama was in her zone when reciting “The Negro Mother” by Langston Hughes. She would dress in the character of Mary McCloud Bethune and perform a recital of Ms. Bethune’s early years, her relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, and opening Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Mama was a great orator and storyteller. She loved to write and compose poems which she enjoyed sharing with her children.

Whenever someone says I remind them of her, I smile from ear to ear and feel proud and blessed. My greatest desire was to emulate her love for others, her sensitive heart, and her charitable spirit.

She never acquired great wealth, but she taught me how to be a loving wife, a devoted sister, and a true friend.

I wish mama’s life had turned out differently than it did. Only because I believe she deserved so much more than what the experience gave. She earned all that earth and heaven had to offer.

Yes, mama, I was listening, and I always heard you!