My Mother

I do not have that many early memories of my mother. That’s because I spent most of my formative years with my grandmother, aunt, and uncle in Tennessee along with a younger brother.  We moved to Chicago when I was five. While there, I had always felt as though I was away from home.

 I believe my mother was trying to keep up with my Daddy (who already had another wife in mind when she moved us). She was extremely busy; she worked two jobs, attended graduate school, and played tournament bridge. Therefore, I saw little of her while I stayed in our apartment with my younger brother and sister.   While in grade school I felt I was responsible for my younger siblings.

My mother insisted that I go to a predominately white, well off catholic school, called St. Thomas Aquinas.  The school consisted of the children of families who were the cohorts of Pres. John Kennedy, they were harp playing and stuck-up. Teachers and unfriendly nuns complimented the total picture; at least that was how I felt. Cultivating friends was a mystery to me. So I had no friends from high school when I left.  Since then, I have not seen or talked to any of them. I do still have friends from grade school. High school was painful. I was black, shabby, and ignored.  My mother had remarried and moved us from Hyde Park to South Shore. I felt displaced again. 

We had moved to a new neighborhood at the beginning of summer after freshman year of high school, and all I wanted to do was hang out in my old neighborhood of Hyde Park, with my old friends. I was 14.  My mother said I could not just hang out, “You can go nowhere except church, summer school, or work.”  What I did that day was walk out the door, and take a familiar bus back to my old neighborhood; I then just started walking not knowing what I wanted to do. A help wanted sign in the Rexall Drug Store soda fountain window caught my attention. Amazingly, I got my first job. I called and told my mother I was at work. I was back in my Hyde Park neighborhood. I was happy.   

From then on, I left home before my mother got up, and came home after she was in bed.  I did this until I graduated high school ( three years) and then moved back to Nashville to attend Fisk University. 

My mother and I seldom talked during my college years.  Initially she was paying my tuition, room and board, but in my sophomore year I got my own apartment (room and board now paid for by me), developed my own business (renting out small refrigerators), got a job, got a dog, and pledged a sorority. One time in the beginning stages of this challenging time, I was short of money and struggled with having to ask my mother for help. She seemed relieved, and gave me fifty dollars; then asked why I had never come to her before. I really didn’t know.

I was very prideful, as I still am. I still am not sure that trait is helpful or not. Even when I pray, it is usually, “Thank you Lord for giving me the strength to..…. “ I always figured my God was too busy helping those who needed it more than me.

At age 24, I purchased my 1st home in Atlanta.  My mother told many of her friends, “Avonnet bought a house”. Then she came rather quickly to check it out. While I was working, she rearranged my kitchen drawers, later she gave me numerous tips and advice. For several months I tried to live with those drawers and advice, but stuff was out of place. I fixed them back like they were. I felt a calming sense of relief.  

 I appreciated my mother’s advice and enjoyed hearing it.  I called to tell her I had changed my drawers back and thought she should just come to hang out and enjoy the next time she visited. I asked her to simply abide my order and rules. It was my house. Also, I let her know I didn’t have a curfew for myself. More easily than I thought possible, we both agreed to respect each other’s home and follow each other’s rules when visiting.

 My mother let me know that she still followed her mother’s rules when she visited her and still had a curfew.🤣

My mom and I usually talked once a week after that meeting of the minds and we became great friends. We could talk and discuss things freely, most of which, neither of us would have shared earlier in our lives.  I realized my mother had 3 kids and was raising us alone in Chicago, at the age of 26.  What a hard time she must have had, she also must have felt displaced.

In these last few years my mother does not usually know who I am, she has Alzheimer’s disease.

Her loving and laughing spirit will always be with me.