Our Grandmothers Were Green

On the original cover of her classic memoir-cookbook The Taste of Country Cooking, Ms. Edna Lewis stands, lithe and muscular, in a green field looking over the fruit shc's selected for making a meal. Her face is serene and contemplative. She's magnetic and seems to beam though she is not smiling. Her hair, perhaps lightly hotcombed, is as natural as the food she puts on her table. She wears the long, cottony silver strands brushed away from her face and tucked in a neat chignon gathered in back of her head. Contrasting with her simple, starched cotton dress Miss Edna's only flourish is a pair of dangling ornate silver earrings that lend a little of the Far East to her look.

Music. Food. Writing. It's said that all of these absorb all of the elements and energy that go into the making of them. When I see Ms. Edna's face and read what she has to say, it brings me calm because I get a sense of some of those things that went into the making of her. She is earthy and elegant, full of culture, memory and vitality. The kind that Alice Walker writes about in "Longing to Die of Old Age" (from Living By the Word). A foremother to ones like Dori Sanders.

A friend who knows how much I take to heart Jessica Harris' words that "There is history in the pot," recently sent me this "What is Southern?" piece, a prose poem/letter written by Edna Lewis and published a couple years back in Gourmet magazine. I'm sharing with the hope that we all enjoy, remember, preserve and do all we can to pass forward these traditions. Even if it's just telling the story that begins with the words, "There once was a time when..."

Hybrid Soul

I fished the piece below out of several hundred pieces of paper that fill notebooks, folders and spirals near my workspace. I wrote it back around 2001 or 2002 in response to a call for submissions for an anthology on modern, young women's perspectives on spirituality.

The publisher was (is?) a West Coast press with a small list. The submissions were to be lighthearted, pop-flavored yet informative, hip and perhaps even a little glib and sarcastic. I sat down, thought and gave what I had. My truth.

My submission did not end up appearing in the collection, but I like it because it is one of my first attempts at composing a black and white concrete meditation on a topic that's actually more sterling silver and fluid. What appears below is a slight expansion of what I orginally sent in.

***

Most of the boundaries between traditions are artificial. Truth has no boundaries. The differences are mostly in emphasis. ~Thich Nhat Hanh, Reflections from Living Buddha, Living Christ

I am drawn to examine (and re-examine) the Old Ways, the Old Beliefs. To link up my own feelings with inquiries, faiths, passionate dedications which...sometimes startle me by popping up from deep in my subconscious. I think, irresistably, of magic, of blood memories, of God, even of Christ. It is a matter of roots, of place...a search for the essence of my people found in my own blood. ~Alice Walker, from the preface to Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems

Not long ago, I decided to take public transport to work and happened to sit near two people who, before the end of my ride, would engage in something of a religious debate.

He was a middle aged African American Muslim dressed from head to foot in Eastern garb. He was a cool brother, Last Poets-type that I will call Abu. Directly across the aisle from Abu was a young woman whom I guessed was in her mid-twenties. She was also black. Their seats were the ones nearest the doors, seats with the backrests against the train walls so that Abu and the young woman sat facing each other. Sitting nearby in a parked stroller was the woman's daughter, a toddler engrossed in a story told in the pages of a large picture book. Young Mother wore glasses and was neatly dressed in a style very similar to Abu's. However, I doubted that she was Muslim; her head was covered, but her arms were bare.

Abu craned his neck so that he could speak around the bodies of the communters who streamed in and out of the canyon-like space, easing into conversation with Young Mother by commenting on Baby Girl's apparent fondness for "reading." I couldn't help but tune in as he used smooth sly-chology to begin to question Young Mother. He began by soft-pedaling and asking whether or not she was a student of Islam. Her polite reply was that she didn't follow any organized religion. Next Abu, apparently appauled, let go of a barrage of questions: Are you a Christian? (At this question, I wondered if he'd fallen momentarily deaf when the young woman said that she didn't follow an organized religion or whether he viewed Christianity as chaotic, as opposed to organized, religion.) Are you monotheist? Do you believe in God? Do you believe that God created all of the planets or that they just appeared through happenstance?

The interrogation ended with Abu offering that the Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him, was quite liberal in his views of women and that Islamic sharia, as it related to women's dress, was a protective measure. It was only put in place to protect women from men's bestial nature. All of these were reasons, Abu pointed out, that Young Mother should strongly consider converting. At this final statement, Abu turned to a young Levantine/Persian/Desi-looking woman sitting across the aisle from me and asked, "Isn't that right, Sister?" The woman gave a polite, faint smile but looked clearly annoyed by Abu's attempt to get her to help in his mission.

Unruffled, Young Mother held her ground and gave matter-of-fact, pleasant replies to his questions: Yes, she believed in God. Truth is contained in all religions. She had no idea when or how the universe was created and dared not speculate.

I don't know exactly when and how their conversation ended, but after getting off at my stop, I realized that unlike Young Mother whose composure, wisdom and responses reminded me of Scheherazade of A Thousand and One Nights, I was irritated by Abu's aggressive nosiness. It called to mind conversations that a Muslim friend of mine with Louisiana roots would have where he'd laugh and say (in the very Southern way that he had) that minding one's own business is a full-time job as well as a gospel song that I used to hear as a child that advised folks to sweep around their own front doors. Abu's self-serving concern reminded me of numerous encounters I'd had with men, as well as women, who claimed to have the my soul's best interest in mind when they sidled up on publc transport, in elevators, at school or at work. I've been eyed warily and asked whether I am Rasta, Hebrew Israelite, Unitarian. I have even been accused of being a "witch" and can remember being warned by a West African evangelical Christian that despite my being a "good girl" I had a confirmed reservation to hell if I didn't start going to church every Sunday.

I think that for people like Abu, those of mixed spirit are as troubling as people of mixed bloodlines are to some, despite the fact that we're all mongrels. Within our families are some variaton of The Roman Catholic grandma whose rituals and practices speak to secret Jewish roots, the uncle who sold bean pies and Final Call newspapers back in the '60s and twenty years later converted again to orthodox Islam, the cousin who studied abroad in Asia and came back with an appreciation of Buddhism and tai chi. All of these people contribute something to our spiritual understanding.

All this being true, I do still recognize the necessity of giving due respect to one's spiritual roots and that these roots have a strong tie to ones history and culture. Spirtual leaders like the Dalai Lama have spoken to this point. As has Thich Nhat Hanh when he eloquently writes, "After one retreat, a young man told me, 'Thay, I feel more Jewish than ever. I will tell my rabbi that a Buddhist monk inspired me to go back to him.'" So, in a nutshell, it is best for seekers to come to terms with the spiritual beliefs of their ancestors, perhaps picking up tools and techniques of other traditions to shed new light on their spiritual inheritance. Ignoring one's roots puts the seeker at risk of having a kind of identity crisis of the soul. It's like being grounded by one's sense home, family and place yet still showing respect and receptivity to one's neighbors and larger community. As absolutely true as I feel this insight is, I know also that for people with complicated histories it is difficult to figure out what qualifies as being one's spiritual True North.

The particulars of the history of people of color is often convoluted (or fluid, depending on how one sees). I am, for instance, a black woman born in the American South during the 1970s to a common family of modest means. Many of aspects of my history have been obscured or forgotten. In some cases, the amnesia was forced. In other cases, memories and ancestral wisdom were thrown overboard because they were too heavy to carry forward. Most of my ancestors, as far as I know, came from West and Central Africa. Looking at the weathered pictures of long-dead family members makes me also see that we carry the blood of the Native American. In my pale skin, eyes and English name I see traces of the European. I am descended from recent ancestors who were mainly Baptist and Methodist with a few Catholics. I am also one who cannot forget those other ones who were taken from the "wilds"of Africa and hustled into stone-cold churches on islands like Goree, christened with new names like Adam and Eve, exported to ports like Charleston and New Orleans and Santo Domingo and Mantanzas and Salvador. I must honor the Native American whose ways I was never taught, the European ancestors who belonged to the peaceful bands that Marija Gimbutas and Monica Sjoo have written about because there are also insights to be gained through them.

My walk with God has involved holding fragments of truth to light trying to see the ways that the various myths, legends, stories and beliefs fit together and how they, in turn, hold me together. I know that dominant traditions are built upon smaller structures. What may have, for instance, been an ancient shrine or feast day for an ancient diety gets a few bricks added and becomes a cathedral, temple, mosque or in some other way labeled as a new tradition. The Old Ways are the silent spaces that exist in our lives without much comment, while the heralded religion is the printed note that is actually written upon the scale. We need both to make the song.

I was born to a mother who loved the seaside and the moon, who would burn incense after cleaning the house and who pays close attention to what her dreams tell her. Courtesy of my family members, I own at least three Bibles and keep them on a bookshelf beside my bed and take a lot of comfort from the Word written down within them. I came to understand these Bible stories as much from hearing my minister grandfather deliver sermons from his pulpit as I did from listening to long-memoried reggae musicians tell stories of faith, history, struggle and love. My ancestral memory begins to stir when it hears bata drums, muezzin calls and jubilee choirs. I have spent blissful days having outdoor Sabbath at the home of a friend whose yard brimmed with green things because he is a master gardener and true lover of nature. I appreciate goddess traditions (because I know that in order to beget any fathers and sons, mothers and daughters must be given due respect) and yearn for their to be a more solid connection between abstract spirituality and day-to-day education and action. And as uncomfortable as it may sometimes make me feel, I also know that there's a lot I don't-- and never will-- know or be able to explain about the mysteries of Creation.

I like what Jorge Amado once said about Brazilians being ones who revel in syncretism. He said, half-jokingly, that when comes to religion they believe in covering all of the bases. Brazilians also joke that God is Brazilian, probably meaning that there's no escaping the fact that contains multitudes as well as contrasts.

One of the many pictures that my mind holds of the Divine is that God is the grand story. We each hold pages of the mysterious and magnificent text and must use the scripture as the light by which we get to know our highest and most incorruptable Self.

Above image from The University of Arizona Spiritual and Community Resources page

Laundry List of Childhood Memories and Dreams

I found this in one of my piles today.

As a child in the '70s and '80s, I wanted to:

...be a ballerina

...be a model
...to look like Jayne Kennedy or Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe
...be a writer
...live near my extended family in Galveston
...live by the sea
...be better in gym class
...be a leader
...be a cheerleader
...wear makeup and pantyhose
...always protect my younger brother
...be a singer
...play the flute
...to play the daughter of the onscreen superhero, Isis and hang with Samantha of Bewitched
...to visit far away places like England and France
...to spend more time with Daddy
...to have a rabbit fur jacket
...to change the world-- especially South Africa
...for us to have extra money to spend on going to places like White Water, Sesame Place, International Wildlife Park and Malibu
...to travel back in time like people travel to cities

Things I actually did as a child:

Collected stones and sea shells

Listened to "black music" and "symphony music" on my big, blue pair of transistor headphones

Roller skated on the sidewalks in the neighborhood and at Starlite skating rink

Played jacks, Uno, concentration, Crazy 8's and Boggle

Bossed my little brother around

Drew pictures

Wrote notes to cute boys

Read Laura Ingalls Wilder, Encyclopedia Brown, Scott O'Dell and Mildred D. Taylor books

Savored every summer and Christmas vacation spent with my extended family in Galveston

Wrote simple books and songs

Babysat a couple of kids named Talisha and B.J.

wore cornrows or an afro jheri curl

Played in mama's makeup

Got in trouble for playing in mama's makeup

Went to slumber parties

Watched a lot of television-- especially loved Fame, Gimme a Break and The Cosby Show as well as soap operas like Dallas, Dynasty, All My Children and the Young and the Restless

Played clarinet-- badly :)

Taught myself to ride a bike after getting over the fear of falling off

Got chased by dogs

could identify familiar songs after hearing a few notes

Experimented with making culinary concoctions

Made sock dolls, doll clothes and quilt patches

Collected Archie comics

Had a good sense of direction and could help visiting family members navigate their way throughout parts of the city familiar to me

Jumped rope, played hand games, freeze tag, Stop and Go and Simon Says with the other kids at Mrs. Ola Mae Giddings daycare

Drooled over Taimak, Tony Dorsett, Todd Bridges, Gregory Harrison, Ralph Macchio, Joe Montana, Rob Lowe

Plastered my bedroom walls with every Michael Jackson poster I could find

The Constant Struggle

Let me go on and admit it. I have recurrent fantasies of keeping an orderly, austere work space like something out of Real Simple magazine. Chalk it up to me being a Virgo, but I often sit at my desk giving sidelong glances to piles as if to warn them: "You're next!" and I truly wish I could surrender to my urge to indiscriminately toss stuff. Sadly, friends, this is not me. I've spent too much time writing down my words and collecting those of others. My altruistic aim is to string these ideas together like little beads of light and, in one way or another, share them like a devotee of Sophia, I suppose.

And so, I horde. (Sigh and weary smile.)

To my credit, since moving in to this new space I've tossed and shredded God knows how many pounds of paper. But it doesn't take long though for a flood of new paper to replace the paper I have heroically banished from my space. The mail man and my own compulsion aid in the conquest and get the better of my Real Simple fantasy. Still, as Jesse Jackson used to say, I am keeping hope alive!

Today was fairly productive. Though I have not yet done the laundry or cooked a quick meal for the week, what I have done is added to a piece of creative nonfiction that I'm writing about my grandmother and weeded through some of the paper I have crammed in binders, filling up journals and the like. In the midst of it, I began thinking: what better place than a blog to serve as home to some of these thoughts? And so you should expect to see periodic posts from this archive, beginning today.

Paper dragon, I may indeed slay you!

Accounting for Life

I agree with that well-worn metaphor of life being a journey. This space on which I type is a white oasis, a place at which I cannot stay for long. Even if any cared to hear it, I cannot possibly re-tell all that I have seen and felt. No one can. Words pale in comparison to experience. But once any moment is gone, abstractions are all we have to offer. The skin is all that is left behind. The substance has moved on. We make some footpaths here in the world of words hoping that others like us will care to follow and join us for a moment of communion. We must soon trod on, get on back to the adventure, the journey.

This thought is sparked by my feeling that I do not write as much as I would like. Months can pass and my writing might amount to countless to-do lists, e-mail correspondence, scribbled fragments of ideas searching for their completion. My ideas are frequent and would, I'm sure, be more so if I could/would regularly create space and time to not only listen to them but play with them, arrange them, allow them to congregate...

Blogging is my idea of a gathering space for some of my ideas. A kind of play pen. I show up for play rather infrequently, though, since my life (especially in its current state) says that anything that does not yeild cash is a luxury. My basic nature is taken aback by this idea, but its how I'm livin'.

I wonder how others find the time to write about life and attend to all the details of it.

There is no way that I could succintly blog about all the things that have demanded my focus and energy ,seemingly overshadowing the importance of writing. Paradoxically, it is important for me to create something of a personal narrative of how I have spent my time, so that the warmness of words can remind me of what the cold numbers of the calendar and steady marching of time won't: that is how my time was truly spent and how I felt about the spending it.

Here is a basic ledger of my summer and early fall:

• Ended a romantic relationship that spanned most of my adult life.


• Found and set up a new residence.


• Decided whether or not to proceed with a years-old-plan to get an arts degree.


• Decided to proceed with my plan to earn an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and saw to all of the details necessary to attend my first residency in Baltimore.


• Did coursework.


• Figured how to balance new homelife with work (still figuring).


• Hunted for better job and pay (still hunting).


• Hired a lawyer and sought government agencies to iron out visitation, custody and related matters regarding son-shine.

Not to mention cooking, cleaning, playtime and keeping in touch with extended family and friends and that just about two weeks ago we took son-shine in for minor ENT surgery. (Anyone who knows me is aware of how I feel about how emotionally high strung I get about such matters; me being somewhat of an urban-bush type means that I prefer to stick as close to nature as a modern woman possibly can. So, it took a minute for me to be okay with allowing my 2 year-old to go under the knife. And any who may be inclined to point to "bush" practices of ritual scarification and circumcision please, don't even go there...) Then there's the practical end of post-op nurturing and home care of son-shine and attending to my own physical well being.

So, I will repeat the question often asked by modern writers: how do others find time to both live life and as well as write about it, or otherwise preserve moments, with detail sufficient enough to help us to remember or be of help to others (including our children) later?

Writing Residency

As Ms. Celie would say, I’m here. Nervous about my decision, but I'm here: I made it to my first two-week residency for my Master of Fine Arts Program. I’m doing it.

There was a tremendous amount of preparation that went into my being able to come. I got a reprieve from some of my frenzied thinking when I arrived on campus (the frienzied thinking was replaced with an intense class schedule). I found the school to be as much a nature preserve as it is a place of higher education. The campus has trails and when walking along them you come across crows and cardinals, wolves and deer, owls and even a horse or two. A tire swing hangs from one of the walnut trees. Cicadas sound off at night.

One of my classmates joked that she was underwhelmed when she drove onto the grounds. I laughed, because it's true. Our school is understated. It whispers rather than shouts, being especially quiet since we distance learning/low res students, a skeletal admin staff, some construction workers and summer camp counselors and kids are among the only ones on campus. Just beyond the gates is a mall, many retail and grocery stores, a shopping village and the highway. But our school is kind of a world unto itself.

On the side of my dormitory, called the “T,” the resident students are cultivating a garden. Some of the things I recognize are oregano, rosemary, basil, onions, collard greens and kale. There is a scarecrow standing guard; the scarecrow is angular and thin, looking more like the resting sail of a boat than it does anything else. Many of the dishes that the kitchen staff prepare for our meals make use of some of these fresh herbs. Some people complain about the food, but I'm overall pleased with it. The cooks prepare many healthful quasi-gourmet dishes, many of them vegetarian. They always have herb teas and fresh fruit in addition to the standard soda and sweet treat desserts.

As for the buildings, the facades are uniform (great stress is put on uniformity) featuring a type of stone work that I saw used on a number of other homes when I was riding one of the MTA buses through Baltimore. The buildings seem to be inspired by a Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater along with a Natural Home Magazine kind of aesthetic because of their sleek interior design combined with an eco-conscious elegance. The buildings make excellent use of natural light and feel comfortable and inviting. The seem like an extension, rather than a terrible intrusion on, the natural environment that surrounds.

It's a good place to re-charge and prepare for what lies ahead.

My Soul Says Yes (to the MFA)

I've been thinking about whether or not it is wise to take on the responsibility of the MFA program that I applied to. Getting cold feet I guess, especially considering the cost. One big question that my mind has been asking though is can I afford not to atleast try.

The answer came when I got Round One of my nightly sleep (when I lie down with Jared at his bedtime, I end up drifting off and then wake up between midnight and two a.m., stay up for an hour or so reading, tidying, blogging, e-mail checking, self-tending or otherwise piddlin'...)

Anyhow, questions about security versus pursuing dreams are currently at the front of the line in my mind. Like a telegram response, one of my dreams delivered this: I was in a library researching Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. I was so absorbed in the research that I went one level beyond my dream and stepped into the past. Kind of like a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, my research was my time shuttle. When I found myself back in the modern era I was back at the library and had collected a bunch of thin strips of paper (research fragments) that I had stacked and was making neat and organized.

For some reason, in order to go any further with my work and return to the library, I had to get permission from one of the staff members. This made me indignant, but I did as required and continued working (and being delighted by the process) and waiting. Waiting for the yes or no answer.

Yes! Remember that down-at-the-creek scene in the movie version of the Color Purple where a choir and the voice of Tata Vega as Shug Avery sing the prelude "Maybe God is Trying to Tell You Something"? Yes. That's what my mind is repeating now. "Trust yourself and know that it's okay to move forward with your dream/plan/ambition. You have what you need to put the tool to use once it is placed in your hands." This is the answer that came. Now I'm feeling a little like Moses and Jonah: do I really have the courage to listen and act?

That Old Black (Literary) Magic

During the Christmas that I was pregnant, my mother bought me the book African American Writers: Portraits and Visions by Lynda Koolish. Recently, while doing my ongoing research on Maud Cuney-Hare, I happened upon this recorded interview with Koolish.

Greetings, I Bring

Do something. Even if it’s just a little something, they say. So here I am and here this is though I've gotta admit that I feel a bit tentative about this whole blog thing.

Still, I'm interested in taking a step in the direction of routinely making time for a bit of scribbling, something I've always paradoxically had trouble with, despite long having thought of myself as a writer. Now, though, I'm feeling especially "pressed" to maintain sight of my many interests and passions amidst all that has changed in my life, the best change being my new role as mama to an inquisitive, healthy and beautiful baby boy.

I am motivating myself to embark on this diversionary project-- an outlet for my ever (r)evolving heart and mind--by reminding myself that the missives can be as long as an essay or as short as a word, as intermittent or frequent as I’m able to manage. Choppy as mommy-thoughts can sometimes be. Diffuse, if that's how it comes out. And perhaps, on occasion, coherent and on the mark. Maybe blogs should be looked at as the metaphorical equivalent of the gym-- a place where folks go to work stuff out and get conditioned...

In any case, I might-oughtta take my buttocks to bed, since it's a quarter past three a.m. and the baby has a doctor's appointment in a few hours. More later!