"STRONG WOMEN"

“STRONG WOMEN”

            In early March, Caroline and I went down to Helena, Arkansas, where I grew up.  A beloved tenant there, Debbie Reece, living in my mother’s house, had died very suddenly.  She had been living there since my mother died in 2004, and she had taken very good care of my mother after Mother broke her hip in the middle of chemo for terminal lung cancer, which she was doing over here in Atlanta while staying with us.  Mother had insisted that she wanted to go back home at some points in the middle of the treatments.  We tried to talk her out of it, but she felt lost and disconnected here, even though the women of Oakhurst Presbyterian did so much to make her feel welcome.   She had lived in that house since 1948, almost 60 years. 

            So, we relented and took her back 3 or 4 times, including Christmas, which was her beloved season.  On the last of the trips, she slipped and fell on her porch and broke her hip.  The hip was repaired, but her health declined rapidly from there, and she required 24 hour care, which she insisted that she receive at home.  Debbie coordinated that care and stayed with Mother in those last months, so I was glad for her to live in the house after Mother died.  We went down to Helena to clean out and close out the house.  We sold it to a young African- American man who sees a future in Helena, which I do not as an old white guy.  Selling the house was difficult – it means saying good-bye to a longtime physical and emotional space for me. 

            The house was meaningful to me not because of the space but because of the two strong women who raised me there:  Bernice Brown Higgins, whom I called “Gran.” She was the sister of my great-grandmother, and she owned the house after her husband died.  We lived with her from my earliest memory.  The primary strong woman, of course, is my mother, who worked hard as a single mom and as a beautician.  Gran was like a grandmother to me, and she was an Associate Reformed Presbyterian, raised in the strict tradition.  I remember that at times she would refuse to take the quarterly communion at our Presbyterian church, because she had not lived worthily enough in that quarter to receive it.  As an adult, I came to disagree with that view, but I sure admired her sense of the presence of God in her life.  She had a sweet spot for me, though, and of course, I drank that in. 

            My father abandoned my family when I was an infant, and I never saw him until I was 23 years old.  While he did send child support sporadically, he never contacted me or came to see me.  And my heart longed for him.  My mother sought to fill in the void and be both mother and father to me.   I remember many summer evenings when she would walk the mile home from her beauty shop, after having been on her feet all day.  As she came up into the yard, I ran out to greet her and to ask her to play “pitch” with me.  I’m sure that on occasion, she declined, but I don’t remember her ever saying “no” to that difficult request.  There are so many other stories that I don’t know where to begin, but I will share a couple.

            My mother was a woman of her times, so she allowed the racism of our white culture to wash over her and into me.  I do remember that she would not let me say the “n-word” in her presence, even though I told her that all my friends did it.  Of course, as a child of racism, I used the “n-word” often but never in her presence – it was a “switchable” offense, meaning that I would have to go get my switch and get hit with it by my mother.  She would also never let me call any adult by their first name, without a “Mr.” or “Miss” or “Mrs.” with it – again, a revolutionary rule in a world where white children and adults consistently demeaned black adults by using their first names only.

            After my mother died in 2004, Debbie Reece read my first book entitled “While We Run This Race,” about the continuing power of racism and published in 1995.  In it I described how my family and many other “good” white people had taught me racism.   After Debbie read it, she told me that she was surprised to hear that I included my mother in those who taught me racism, because Mother’s reputation in the neighborhood was that she was too close to black people – she even let her black colleague come in the front door, and the neighborhood was scandalized!  News to me, but a powerful witness.

            So, in this Women’s History Month, I want to honor all those strong women, including Gran and Mary Stroupe.  Although it took me a long time to realize it and to admit it, being raised by these two strong women made all the difference in my life.  So, to paraphrase a song made popular by Martina McBride (“This One’s For the Girls”), this one is for all the women who have done so much to make this world a better place:  you’re beautiful the way you are.