Keeping the Faith

by Tavis Smiley

  Eventually, my mother lost her eyesight completely. She went from being able to walk everywhere to having to be pushed around in a wheelchair. By this time I was in high school and Michael was in middle school. Even though my mother was burdened with so much, she still kept our needs in mind. She was worried that my brother and I would not get the education she felt was necessary from the Camden city school system, so she moved the family to Mount Holly, New Jersey.

  The apartment in Mount Holly was in a great location because it was right across the street from the high school I attended. On my lunch break, I could come home and check on my mother. Mother made sure that I continued to do extracurricular activities such as singing in the choir, acting, and speaking. I even managed to compete in the Alpha Kappa Alpha oratorical contests for another three years, each time winning first place. Even though she wasn’t able to “see” me, she managed to attend everything I performed in. I was able to maintain a B average in school while working part time to help out financially in the household. Once my brother reached a certain age, he worked as a waiter to help bring money home, too. Mother encouraged Michael to keep participating in his track-and-field endeavors. In fact, he competed in the Penn Relays four times and won a variety of medals. In spite of her condition, my mother never missed a home track meet.

  When it came time to attend college, my mother encouraged me not to choose a school close to home on account of her. She wanted me to apply for college wherever I wanted to go. “Do something for you,” she would say. But I couldn’t. I ended up attending Cheyney University, a historically Black school in Pennsylvania.

  We didn’t really have the money for me to attend college. In fact, I’m not quite sure to this day how I made it through. I had a work-study job and a part-time job off campus while attending classes full time. I would travel back and forth from Pennsylvania to New Jersey every weekend to help with the house. My brother was still helping out as well.

  I finished my college degree and today am working for a firm as a public relations specialist. I also have my own home business. My brother, Michael, is now married and has a son, Xavier. He is currently attending Laney College and plans to transfer to San Francisco State to major in political science.

  As for my mother, she lives on her own in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, in an independent-living apartment complex. It is not a nursing home, but a special apartment with lower shelves, larger showers to accommodate her wheelchair, and remote door access from her telephone.

  My mother never allowed us to feel that we were incapable of accomplishing anything! She always told us that we were blessed and that she loved us no matter what we chose to do. She is a shining example of a woman who knew how to fight and knew how to love. My brother and I often reminisce today on the little encouraging things she said to us growing up. We still call on her heartening words to help us keep our heads above water, especially when we are having struggles in our own adult lives.

  The last time we took a family photo together was at my brother’s high school graduation. To me, looking at that picture of us says love, trials, and most of all, triumph!

  HONOR

  Yolanda Zanders-Barr

  My mother died when I was twenty-five. She had been my rock!

  Never having finished middle school herself, her biggest wish was to live long enough to see her baby graduate from college. I was the baby—the youngest of nine and the first to attend college.

  I graduated from Tuskegee Institute in May 1995, nine months before she passed away. This strong, independent, vital woman who was never sick turned into someone who couldn’t bathe herself, who sometimes couldn’t make it to the bathroom by herself, and who ultimately had to depend on other people for her well-being.

  At first, I was angry. Angry at her dying and leaving me alone, angry at God for letting her die, and angry at myself for not being able to let go. I stopped going to church because I couldn’t believe that the God I loved and served would take away from me the one thing that mattered most. My mother was not only my mother to me, she was my father, my healer, my doctor, and my soul.

  It has been six years since Mother passed, and it has taken me this long to realize that grieving isn’t enough. I must honor her. I’ve cried a river, but as long as I honor my mother’s memory, my tears are not in vain. Every day that I get up to go to work, I honor her. Every time I go to church, I honor her. Every time I tutor someone who looks like me in algebra, calculus, or geometry, I honor her. Every time I look at her picture and smile instead of cry, I honor her. There is something no amount of money or education can buy. And that is a mother’s love.

  MA JOSIE’S GAL

  Rhonda Thompson Maddox

  “Ma Josie” is what they taught me to call her. “Gal” is what she decided to call me! I often begged her to call me by my name, but she never would.

  Josephine Dickey, my great-grandmother, died when I was ten. I believed her to be the meanest old woman in the world! We were like oil and vinegar. Ma Josie was a master at yelling, and I hated it. She used to always yell that she was going to beat my behind, that I didn’t eat enough to stay alive, and that “them young’uns” were getting on her nerves!

  When visiting her, everybody always elected me to sleep with the white-haired old lady. She obviously did not like me and made me help her wash white folks’ clothes in an old black wash pot. Then she would stand up and iron them in the heat of North Carolina’s summer days.

  She always said I would pay Mama back because I was just like my mother, hardheaded. Ma Josie lived to watch wrestling on TV, and if I breathed too loud in the process, she’d holler, “Gal, you better hush up!” Ma Josie was infamous for calling you out in a heartbeat. When she died, I missed her biscuits. But I never missed the hollering!

  Thirty-one years after her death, my world fell apart. In the middle of a divorce, I became careless with everything, even my life. On a December night, two weeks before Christmas, depression took possession of me physically and emotionally. Around eight o’clock in the evening, I placed a pot on the stove and went to lie down as it heated. I had just recently moved into an old rental house and had not yet purchased a smoke alarm. Before long, I fell asleep.

  Then I heard her voice softly and calmly say, “Get up, Gal.” Deciding the dream I was having was about Ma Josie, I turned over and fell back into a deep sleep. However, when I heard the voice again, I knew better than to ignore her a second time. “Gal, I said get your butt up!” I felt like I was ten years old again. When Ma Josie yelled, I moved! I immediately sat up in the bed and realized that black smoke was everywhere!

  I ran toward the kitchen to turn off the burner. I began to cry uncontrollably, thanking God for allowing Ma Josie to come and thanking Ma Josie for arriving!

  At three o’clock that December morning, many life lessons became clear to me. I finally celebrated the gift I had in the white-haired old lady. Thirty-one years after her death, I could feel a great-grandmother reaching out beyond the grave to save the life of her child. That’s when it hit me! It didn’t matter what my real name was. What mattered was that, to Ma Josie, I was still her Gal!

  ON GOOD GROUND

  LaTorial Faison

  I am from a small Virginia town where hardly any siblings have the same father, almost everyone is related to everyone else, and folks hold on to secrets for years.

  I’ve always lived with my grandparents. They took me in when I was two weeks old. My mother was only eighteen at the time, and their son, my father, was not mature enough to raise a child.

  My grandparents showered me with love, supported me, and supplied all of my needs. They were wonderful grandparents! I actually called them Mama and Daddy, and I still do to this day. They are the only parents I’ve ever known. Although my mother and I have since established a close friendship, my grandparents are still my real parents.

  During childhood, it didn’t take long to realize I did not resemble anyone else in the family; I looked more like the
people down the street. Rumors started when I was about ten or eleven and continued for the rest of my teenage years. These kinds of small towns, where people have little else to do, thrive on rumors.

  I was a teenager when I first confronted my mother about my ancestry. I told her I had heard the man she married was not my real father. She admitted that I was right. She claimed that the identity of my real father was a secret, and she promised to reveal the truth to me when I reached the age of eighteen.

  Folks in town sometimes called my grandparents’ house just to raise questions about me. My grandparents never said a word about any of this to me. But I eavesdropped on their conversations. After a while, I figured out I was related to the people down the street.

  I later found out that my father was now a married man, living in New York somewhere with his wife, son, and three daughters. When I found out, I didn’t know whether to feel mad, glad, blessed, sad, or cheated. I felt a little of all of those things; some days I still do. But my greatest joy is that, in spite of it all, I had fallen on good ground.

  I was given to people who loved and cared for me and raised me as their own child. I had every opportunity to excel and to succeed at whatever I desired. And so I refused to let the rumors bother me. I became the president of my student body in high school, and I was an honors student. I decided early on I was not going to let myself down, and I was not going to let my family down.

  I attended one of the best colleges in Virginia and enrolled in yet another distinguished school in Virginia in pursuit of my graduate degree. I married a man who understood me and loved me.

  Today, as I work with others who are striving to succeed educationally, emotionally, and professionally, I often run into folks who are distraught and torn because of issues from their past. Like them, I could have let the question of whose blood ran through my veins destroy me. But I chose not to.

  We can’t help the situations we’re born into, but we can remain positive and strong and always believe in ourselves. Family is not about blood or last names. It’s about folks who are there for you when you need them most. Family is about good ground, and my grandparents are my good ground. I am fortunate I fell into their hands. Because of them, I am what I have become today: proud, independent, strong. I’m grateful to God for allowing me to fall on good ground!

  THE REV …

  Rhonda Y. C. Johnson

  Our family newsletter was first produced in March 1998. At the time the newsletter was called Umoja Times. Our newest family members, Little Devy and RJ, from the sixth generation of traceable ancestry, were introduced on the front page. On the following page the newsletter’s editor-in-chief, Envision, introduced herself. The rest of the newsletter included the achievements of other family members, a birthday list, and a classified section. There was a homemade seek-and-find puzzle and an original horoscope/funnies segment on page six. Page seven contained a crossword puzzle and a cartoon sketch. The last page announced, “Let Me Hear You Holler”—it was a request to rename the family newsletter, offering a cash reward. Although the newsletter did not look very sophisticated, it radiated an inviting warmth; those reading it felt like they belonged in the family.

  By July 1998 the name of the family newsletter had changed to Reviviscence, from the root word revive. It means “restoring us all to life with vigor.” Reviviscence, soon dubbed The Rev, moved up a notch in sophistication, and by the end of 1998 it was being sent to homes from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Richmond, Virginia, and on down the coast to south Florida. Among the contributions were “Bad to the Bone,” “See What the End Is Gonna Be,” “We Are Family,” “The Heirloom,” “From Whence We Came,” “A Proud Past and a Bright Future,” “Honoring Big Ma,” and “The Maat.”

  There were a great many stories, dedications, prayers, poems, home-going announcements, birth announcements, and home-front news. Two family reunions were held that year: the Clarke-Coleman Reunion, in Nockamixon State Park in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, and the Patterson clan reunion, in which West Turner Street in North Philadelphia was blocked off. African violets sprang up everywhere!

  The Rev kicked off 1999 with twice as many contributions and continued gaining interest. That year the family visited the Ebonics question and explored “Recipes for Living” as well as “The Fears of Memory Loss.” The newsletter introduced graduates of nursery school to graduates of graduate school, announced quite a few wedding bells, recognized our armed-forces heroes, provided book reviews, and shared stories such as “Dreams Do Come True” and “Caring for the Caregiver.” One of the largest contributions that year came by way of family trivia. A cornucopia of family nicknames was entered into a contest; the families were able to not only enjoy a chuckle but learn a little about each other through the origins of the nicknames.

  The Rev has published hundreds of original stories, poems, letters, prayers, and photos, and plenty of laughs and jokes. In 2000, a Web page was created, and the family met a number of Oasis of Love faith ministers in the Charity International Church in Richmond, Virginia. It has included in-depth accounts of our ancestors, such as Pop Patterson, Momma Love, and Carrie Coleman, retracing their ancestral steps through various versions of their stories remembered in different ways by different family members. A detailed family tree was drafted and little-known family facts were plowed. From native German family members to the family who opened their home to adopt a child, from all the families that shared recipes and got on their knees to pray for each other to the families that sent stamps, cash, and check donations, The Rev sought to restore all of the African violets in our family garden by way of each and every family member or descendant of the Clarke, Coleman, and Patterson clans—with vigor. And through it all, in spite of the reunion spats and e-mail squabbles, The Rev never lost focus.

  Five years later, having never missed a month, The Rev continues to document and uplift our family. The Rev does not focus on our flaws, but embraces all that is good in our garden, empowering us with the knowledge of our individual and unique characteristics. Combined, they make us beautiful.

  Looking back, we have been grateful for the joy The Rev has brought into our lives. It has helped us to recognize that of all the donations one can make, the greatest endowment is the ability to reach out and focus on the glories in our own garden.

  SACRIFICE

  Joyce Smiley

  I am Joyce Marie Roberts, daughter of Curtis and Daisy Roberts. I was born and raised in Gulfport, Mississippi. In 1947 my mother was diagnosed as diabetic and went on insulin. If you know anything about the disease, you know there can be a risk of losing your limbs to the disease. When my mother learned of the diagnosis she said, “Lord, please don’t let me lose my feet or my legs or my toes.” Even while I was a child, she said to me, “I don’t ever want to have to go into a nursing home because of my condition; please don’t ever put me in a nursing home.”

  My mother and I lived alone at that time; I was the baby of four children. Mother often repeated to me, “Please don’t ever put me in a nursing home.” Finally, one day, when I was a teenager, I promised her, “Mother, you won’t ever have to go into a nursing home.” I just felt obligated to say this to her. I’m sure Mother was looking for some type of commitment from us that we wouldn’t put her away. I went ahead and made the commitment to her, and I was serious about it. However, we never know how our lives will play out or what our circumstances will be.

  My husband and I moved to Indiana in 1969 because the Air Force transferred him there. In 1981, my mother had to have eye surgery as a result of her prolonged diabetes. She was about seventy-two years old at the time. I went back and forth to Gulfport to take care of her, and in no time an entire month had passed. My mother lived by herself, and I didn’t feel I could leave her there all alone. But I knew I had to return to my home and family in Indiana. I talked to my husband and we decided that we would ask Mother to come and live with us. She did. When Mama moved in with us, I had ten children—six of my own, an
d four who were the offspring of my deceased sister.

  Mother was still able to get around on her own when she first came to live with us. In later years, however, her health began to fail her. One day she fell in the house and broke her hip. This required surgery and an extended stay in the hospital. The hospital advised that Mother be moved to a rehabilitation hospital for physical therapy once she had recuperated. Because I felt being in the rehab hospital would feel like being in a nursing home to her, I wouldn’t allow it. Instead, I brought her back home and cared for her myself. My husband and I were no longer together, so I was the only adult in the household. Mother was pretty much incapacitated and couldn’t do anything for herself. I had to do everything for her: dress her, bathe her, and comb her hair. The only thing I couldn’t do was give my mother her insulin shots. So I asked one of my sons to handle that task.

  Mother was doing pretty good until one day she fell again in the house. I had to take her back to the hospital, and when she returned home this time, her confidence was broken. She wouldn’t even try to do anything for herself anymore. That meant I had to lift her up, dress her, turn her, and so on. Sometimes I would find her sliding out of the bed, and I would have to pick her up and put her back in. I would have to lift her out of bed and put her into the bathtub to bathe her and then help her get out of the bathtub and back into the bed once I had re-dressed her. I didn’t mind, because I had promised her I would never put her into a nursing home. Her condition continued to worsen, however.

  I bought a motorized chair for her, which was a big help. This chair would lie almost flat like a bed, and Mother would sleep in it often. The chair would also stand Mother straight up. But because she had become so fearful of standing or walking, if the chair stood her straight up, she would just slide back down to the floor. I found myself in the position of trying to readjust the chair while holding on to my mother to keep her from sliding down to the ground. Mind you, my mother was not a little woman. She was a robust woman who weighed over two hundred pounds. As I continued to care for her, I eventually strained my back from having to lift her so much. I didn’t have in-home health care assistance or anyone to help me. A health aide would come out to the house to check Mother’s diabetes and her blood pressure, but I never had anybody to help me lift her or bathe her. I had to do it all myself.