A Reckoning Force

the language of my origin

These are the women who hold my origin. Soft ones who gift spiritual things from their palms, who shake all the things that they momma gave them and then just keep on giving. Women who command the oceans to move with the hypnotic sway of their waists and women who speak the tongues of religion. These are the women I come from. Women who know the taste of hell and the sweet liquors of Zion. Women who hold fire in their souls and the earth in their bellies. Women who have graced the battlefields of war yet still carry every soft thing. [Blessings of the Mothers, excerpt from Beckoning of the Wind: An Ode to Motherhood]

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This is a heart piece inspired by Cecelie S. Berry’s Rise Up Singing, an anthology of narratives on Black motherhood in its many different forms and a true testament to Black mothers rebelling the portrayals that the world has often tried to pin against them. With contributions from writers such as Alice Walker, Jewelle Taylor Gibbs, AJ Verdelle, Rita Dove, and Maya Angelo, the gathering of these voices explore the inner delicacies of Black motherhood itself, picking apart its very seams. The collection alone is a resounding read, but the examination that it encourages makes the work that much more meaningful.

While the magnitude of this work led me to reflect on my own mothering experience, it also opened space for me to examine the relationships with the women in my life, the women who I come from. My mother, my maternal and paternal grandmothers, my aunts, sisters, cousins, and the bountiful of women whose blood exists in my own—or somehow became my own. One particular passage ushered me into quite the revelation of the mother-daughter relationship and how it travels down through generations, written by Marita Golden on the reckoning force of motherhood:

Motherhood cleansed and baptized me like some necessary massive tidal wave I hungered to meet and to know; it sharpened my sense of self, and of all the women residing within me.

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Myself, my maternal and paternal grandmothers, and my mother.

The women residing within me

LaVonna. Beatrice. Mazie. These are the women who made me — along with many, many more. These are the women I carry in my bones, their wisdom running deep through my blood. They are the fabric I am woven into, the language of my origin. I have seen them endure life through various stages. I have witnessed them as warriors and as weavers — defying the odds against them and threading generations from their wombs through and through.

Becoming a mom adjusted my view on motherhood. It stripped me, yet brought me closer to myself, closer to God, than I have ever been before. I now realize that motherhood is a ministry. It is my ministry. It has been and is their ministry. Each of these women have assumed their roles with honor and surrender. And each of them, in some capacity, ushered me into my own positioning.

Carolyn Ferrell quoted, “A mother’s love is like God’s own.” And it is.

It reaches,
and reaches,
— and reaches.

It don’t ever run dry. It lets loose the weight and way of this world and is a covering that can’t be shaken. A mother’s love is the closest thing to heaven I’ve known.

The creation of who I am today is because of the prayer and the poetry of their tongues. It is because of the love and the liberation of these women. I am a holy forthcoming from their wombs, their language the thickening of my bones.

In recognizing the vastness of the roles they play in my life, I must honor these women, and in the best way I know how: through words.

My maternal grandmother, Beatrice.

Having journeyed through much trial and tribulation in her life, engulfed in sickness, I remembered my maternal grandmother as always on the verge of a setting sun. Still carrying her light, she was a woman of more grit than glory — or maybe both unvaried. She would dig into the archives stored deep within her soul — life lived and life longed for, all which somehow slipped her grasp quite the same. Weaving her stories through the room was ceremonial, a verbal etching of her existence into the atmosphere. I’d curl up at her feet, rest my head on the arm of her chair, and my ears would catch the tales that fell from her mouth with ease. A welcoming to remember her, always.

I remember witnessing her on her death bed, the April showers a concord of her own tears. Though weakened by illness, she was still profoundly strong in the way she welcomed her earthly end. I’d seen how she lived life this way — directing the wind with the weight of her sighs, having her hand in everything that had even just an ounce to do with her. Nothing got away from this woman, not even time. In fact, she made it known when she was ready for kingdom come, and time waltzed right on up and carried her home. We chorused our voices around her that day, wept and praised as she took her last breath.

For just this once, I saw my grandmother give herself permission to release her need to be strong for everything and everyone. “I’m tired,” are among the last words she said before she let out her final exhale — and she had every right to be. So much life was stored up in her bones, she’d become weighed down by carrying it all. She lived long and she lived well and she lived loved. And though grief filled us, peace became her.

She showed me how the sky raises to the moon of a woman. How the end of one thing cycles into the beginning of another, again and again. I remember her final words to me where, “You take care of that baby now.” I gave birth to my son the month after she passed away.

My paternal grandmother, Mazie.

My paternal grandmother’s penmanship reminds me of life—unsteady yet full of love in all the right places. I keep a letter on my desk that she mailed my family Christmas of ‘22, and sometimes it’s the closest I feel to her.

I haven’t witnessed this woman much in my days, and a lot of who she truly is remains unknown to me, but the miles between us have never disturbed the love. That love spills over, runs deep, and fills the space between us.

Her voice is filled with warmth and rasp whenever I call, a song to my ears. Her smile is wide as Saturn’s rings. Her eyes beam like the stars are her home. I’m convinced that they are. There may not be much knowing, but my bones know her name. And I know that deep down, she’s part of the structure of my being, of the woman that I am.

My mother, LaVonna.

My mother has always been a soft being. The epitome of a woman where love abounds. The way she nurtured nine children, alongside my father, will never escape me. Her love runs deep, and it is true and sure and evident. It is all things one may imagine God’s own to be — healing, nurturing, knowing.

Her life has not been absent of hardship, but by the way she has carried on, one would never know. Maybe it’s because not many too often witnessed her in such moments: bent at her knees or in need — openly. Her prayers shaking the grounds on which she would weep. Yet she looks nothing like the things she’s been through. She’s remained a strong power in the face of any adversity.

That’s what I’ve always known my mother to do with her strength. Wrap it all around herself. Armor up for her home, for her children, for the world. In recent years, though, I’ve watched her unravel. I have been moved by this woman’s releasing. Even the way she empties herself of her tears is beautiful, as though she’s making oceans out of them. I’ve watched her, too, take an opportunity to not be everything for everyone. To lean into being more of her for herself. Without knowing, she has and continues to teach me so much.

We often talk about witnessing our romantic partners become new versions of themselves various times within one life, but I never thought of this in regards to other relationships. The opportunity to observe my own mother become a version of herself that she has never been before is moving, revolutionary. She has found her voice. She has found her song. She has claimed her solo and etched a rich vibrato from up under her lungs, without shying away from the sound that falls from her lips. She has become more of herself than she has ever, ever been.

I know the constant of my mother’s worship, how she turns her skin into scripture, her veins into verse. She sang in my left ear on the day of my labor, helped me pace my breath as the tides came rolling in, as the waves came crashing and my son rushed from my womb. She called me a warrior that day, said my strength was like the surge of a tsunami, or the rumble of a thousand mouths opening in prayer.*

From my book, “Beckoning of the Wind: An Ode to Motherhood”

I carry these women with me wherever I go. I’d like to say that who I am belongs to me, but an ode is given to these women who shaped me. They are my sound and steady. I am a foreword of coming generations, and they are the ones that have preceded me. Through these women I am a reckoning force, time and time again.

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footnotes:

— Voiceover music | Love from ngc 7318
— * Poem of mine titled “Amen”