Mommy

Friday Freedom #10

Mommy carrying my older sister, Didi.

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My mother has a softness to her that smooths out the rough edges of our culture. She is loud but she is gentle, stern but forgiving. She passes out “I love you’s” freely and laughs like she is a child again when something is really funny.

Growing up, I desperately longed to be told I looked like her. It is only now as I age, that time has begun to leave her memory in my face. I smile as I remember this past December, quietly walking to a bar with my cousins in Lagos, and from the silence my cousin speaking, examining me with familiarity before saying when she looks at me she sees my mother.

I smile with all of my teeth like her. Exposing a gap too stubborn to be closed by braces. As if my body is defiant in looking like someone else.

When I look at my hands I think of my mother. We have the same thick, leathery skin on our palms. They are not soft, they are not dainty. Instead they look like they’ve been handed down through generations. Like they’ve lived past lives. It is with these hands that she holds me no matter my age. It is with these hands that she grips tightly to wooden spoons that stir stews and cook rice to swell our bellies.

From her mouth she affectionately calls me agbo, young girl or nwamberi ime, the last from my womb. I instantly feel at home, I feel called back to myself.

I won’t carry on about her strength. We tend to lose the humanity of black women in the banalities of their ability to carry unwanted burdens. Instead, I will say I am fortified because of her. I often freeze when I try and write about my mother. There are no words to do her justice and still, I hope to write grand stories of her life someday.

Early this month, my sisters and I took her on a road trip to Miami to celebrate 70. On the last day of the trip, we are on a boat cruise. An old double decker boat, slowly bobbing on the water of Biscayne Bay for celebrity house sightings. Mommy is excited, giddy, energetic. Holding her phone out to snap photos of mansions belonging to the likes of J.Lo and Pitbull (she is sooo cute). We venture to the back of the boat for more photos where she throws up her hands and loudly thanks God for her life. We laugh and record to share with extended family. She sees the cameras and carries on with bolstered drama.

A young man to the right of us hears her celebrating and shares it is his birthday too. Mommy is elated and shakes his hand, jubilantly wishing him a happy birthday and sharing that she’s made it to 70. He is shocked. Sincerely, he tells her she looks 20 years younger and she beams.

We find our seats again and fall back under the voice of the woman on the microphone, now pointing to the Scarface house. Mommy rarely drinks but she’s feeling festive. I go to the bar and order a red wine for myself and a piña colada for the birthday girl. I watch her take a sip and her face twists a little, then settles. I smile, happy that we are all here. She is alive, she is healthy, she is at ease.

I’m so grateful for my mother. I rest in knowing I am her child and I can only be in quest for freedom because she steadies the ground from which I leap.

Mommy and me (looking skeptical and distrusting of anyone and anything outside of my mother, ha!)

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