More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
These people, my people—my ancestors and my parents when they were young—were characters in a long drama that I was now a part of. Their struggles were not mine, but their lessons could be. This was my inheritance, these stories that people had done their best to erase or degrade to keep us from passing them down. So that we wouldn’t know our history and ourselves.
We were playing poor, none of us knowing we were actually very poor. Some of that comes from living in a neighborhood with so many people in the same boat—you don’t have people to feel less than in comparison.
One of the many cruelties of racism is that mothers are made to be the guards of their children, enforcing rules that were designed to limit them. Constantly telling them what they cannot do for fear that if they don’t remember the box they were put in, they will be hurt or killed.
They resented that he didn’t hide the feminine dips of his voice, and maybe more, that he didn’t pay a price for it. The same way he bought his mama a fur coat. Didn’t he know we were supposed to be poor and act like it? Wasn’t he supposed to be hiding who he was?
“It’s not that I didn’t trust you,” she said. “I didn’t trust the world. I know what people can do to you.”
A mother’s protection
but spending so much time with her, I could see the rhythms of her personality. She could be the warmest person in the world, and then a little switch would go off and she’d withdraw. Some people do that when the cup runs dry, and she would sometimes do it when the cup was full.
There were already problems in our marriage that first year. Mathew had an ongoing struggle with fidelity, but the suspicions I had would get washed away by the fact that our love was stronger than a misstep.
I did the impossible. Didn’t know how I would do it again, but I would. You will keep doing the impossible every day, Tenie, because that is what mothers do.
Looking at a client, I could hear the voice of Agnes, and how many times she’d told me, “You need some grease in your hair ’cause it looks dry.”
In fact, they said a Black woman could choose a perm for her hair or color—but not both. I proved them wrong.
Hairstyling is more than the act of doing hair—it’s how a mother’s love is transferred through that care.
because wherever they went that I could control, it was going to be a place that let a little Black girl know that she was beautiful. Not beautiful “too”—there was no need to factor in a certain criterion of beauty that centered whiteness. The pride should be based solely on her own self. Black is beautiful.
I have no problem saying that my children are geniuses born with gifts, but all that just remains unrealized potential if they don’t work on their craft.
True wealth was measured in their ability to share blessings, feeling the honor of someone letting you care for them, and staying grateful that you even have anything to give.
Isn’t it humbling how love can begin with such a simple feeling? You like talking to someone over the phone. You’re twenty-one years old and you can’t know someday you will take that love to the stars, but it begins with such a small instinct.
One of my favorite pieces of poetry in the Psalms is 34:18: “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and He saves those who are crushed in spirit.” God was about to hold me very close.
It was never important to me that I get credit, but I had never given myself credit.
“I’ve always been proud to be Black—never wanted to be nothing else. It’s such beauty in Black people, and it really saddens me when we’re not allowed to express that pride in being Black, and that if you do then it’s considered anti-white. No! You’re just pro-Black, and that’s okay.”
often wonder what my mother could have crafted if she had more exposure, more education, and more opportunities. She showed such promise, and now Solange is the fulfillment.
I never questioned whether Mathew loved me or his family, and that was what made his issues so hard for me. Here I was so protected by him—if you messed with me, you had to deal with him—and the only person he ever let hurt me was him with his demons.
Nothing else in a marriage matters if you are not first priority with each other.
My minister, Juanita Rasmus, says that when you’re going through something, it means you’re going through it—you’re not going to get stuck there. You will come out the other side and survive.
She’d come to Galveston, taken life’s sorrow, and planted a garden. Mama understood it’s in the chill of February that is the best time to plant roses. She turned her tears to water for her garden and relied on the full sun of God’s light to warm us.
I hope I find love again, but if I feel the relationship is not mutually fulfilling and nurturing, or if we don’t bring out the best in each other, then I don’t want it. Because if I don’t find companionship, I’m going to be okay. And that’s a new revelation for me. I am seventy and I just learned that I am enough. I wish I would have realized this at forty or fifty, maybe even younger, but that is why I am telling you. I have tried to collect as much of that wisdom as I can to pass on here.
