Wildflower

I was 25 years old. I didn’t have a care in the world. Just moved back home so I could return to college. Yeah I was one of those kids that didn’t listen to my momma and tried to be grown and move out.

“I’m grown! I need my own space!”

But I soon found out that working, partying and paying bills was not conducive to my higher education in the ATL.

Especially Atlanta before the Olympics. Those were the days!

Freaknik 91-94!

The AUC Center!

112! (The one by the disco Kroger!)

Café Echelon!

KAYA!

Club hopping on Cheshire Bridge, College Park and in Decatur!

I could go on.

Now you see why academics were not my focus.

As long as I remember it was just me and my mom.

An occasional companion here and there, but she kept most of that business far from home.

She had a girl child to raise and as she would say….

“I’d kill a MotherF****er dead if someone I dated touched you. And jail ain’t for me.”

She was raised by her minister grandfather until she was about 14 years old and then returned to live her high school days with her mom and brother in the Ensley Birmingham projects. My mother was a track star that had a dream to study where her idol Wilma Rudolph went to school. Feeling like she wasn’t college material, she signed up for the US Army in June 1968 and then found out two weeks later she had been accepted to Tennessee State and that her grandfather was prepared to pay her way to attend. But she made lemonade out of lemons and moved up the ranks pretty quickly. She wasn’t a bad looking tall chocolate sister either, so I’m sure that didn’t hurt. The guys definitely took notice. They called her and her best friend Edna, Salt and Pepper. Edna was what my momma called “thick and yella”, to my mom’s slim dark frame. But that attention wasn’t always good. She was date raped by an officer that she had casually dated for a few months. Not a memorable way to lose your virginity. But she cared more about her own reputation and how she could be blamed for the incident and never reported him. When she finally spoke to him again it was to tell him she was pregnant and him telling her that he was married. The word devastation just scratches the surface. I can’t even imagine the pain she felt. The glorified track star returning home from the military, 19, pregnant and alone. That’s why putting me up for adoption was her first choice. She thought it would be best for me. She didn’t have a clue who she was and that would be unfair to drag an innocent child through all that until she figured it all out. But God had other plans and gave me big bright alert brown eyes that no mere mortal can resist. And my grandmother looked at her holding me and said one thing.

“What are we gonna name her?”

My mom’s part time gig was barbering for about 20 years. She went to work at General Motors in the daytime and school at night. When GM shifted her schedule. She shifted her school schedule and me to. She made it work. Lots of sleepless nights but not becoming a master barber was not an option. That was the one thing about my mom that amazed me, she always found a way. My mom would be out on disability from GM and cutting hair on the side to make ends meet. If all we had in the cabinet was pork and beans, Kool-aid and hot sausage, she would turn that into a barbeque party for two! She was the cool mom that everyone talked to. She encouraged my single mom friends and told them they could make it. She even kept their kids on the weekend sometimes just so they could get a break. She took in kids all the time that just seemed lost and needed someone to listen. She went from the teen that didn’t know what to do with a kid, to the grown woman that wanted to save and listen to everybody’s.

Now don’t get me wrong. My momma was far from perfect in the eyes of society. But that’s what made her so perfect for me. Her choices and experimentation with drugs and alternative lifestyles kept all things real. It made me see a lot of things from a variety of view points and it helped me mature fast. It kept me from experimenting with a lot of things. What mother do you know would sit you down and have a conversation to describe the high from cocaine and the fall afterwards?

“That shit aint worth that trip baby.”

And she tried a lot shit.

I asked, “Momma why didn’t you become addicted to that stuff?”

Her answer was, “I’m on an assignment from God. Besides, weed is cheaper than that mess. And its good sleep afterwards.”

Yes she really did say that. LOLOL

When she became an evangelist after I moved out, she hosted bible study on her front porch for the kids in our neighborhood that she knew was up to no good. People still walk up to me and ask, “Are you Miss Juanita’s daughter? I used to come to her porch study sometimes. Your momma was cool.”

She reached people where they were in life. She had been there, rode the ride and got a t-shirt. Nothing shocked her.

I got baptized a few months after I moved home and she praised in that church like nobody’s business. I still can hear her shouting and saying,

“My job is done. It don’t get no better.”

So on June 16, 1995 I lost my wildflower. She passed in her sleep due to complications with her Epilepsy.

But every time I see them growing on the highways and in overgrown yards I think of my mom and the things she taught me.

“Cussing is an art form. You need it to paint pictures sometimes. But you better not cuss.”

“Keep moving through your storms.”

“Smile and make the best out of the hand you are dealt.”

“Stay focused.”

“Always try to finish what you start”

“Don’t worry about what other people think. They don’t know his plan.”

“Do you”

“Respect your elders”

“Don’t have regrets”

“You can always start over”

“Treat people how you want to be treated”

“When you got kids, they come first, you can get another N***a”

“Just because you saved don’t mean you was always saved.”

There are many more….LOL

And if you have any doubt…I am proud to say, that yes I am Miss Juanita’s daughter.

©ThickE