Making A Joyful Noise: Elegy For Mom
"Empathy has become my superpower."
This is Radical Joy, a column curated by Tracey Michae'l Lewis-Giggetts.
“In a world that often demands way too much of our labor, joy can feel like a radical act. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to edit the Radical Joy series for Raising Mothers and I’m excited to celebrate the boundless joy of BIPOC mothers through the curation of essays and stories that uplift, heal, and sustain us. My hope is, through storytelling, we can collectively sit with all the nuanced ways joy shows up in our lives and explore how we can nurture it, despite the burdens we carry. Consider this series an invitation to and for mothers of every background to tap into the energy of joy and become its witness.” - Tracey Michae'l Lewis-Giggetts
“Thinking of you for always thinking of me, Debbie”
—Corrine B. Powell - Sunrise: November 30, 1935, | Sunset: October 15, 2001
My mother was a natural mystic. A Black Girl Magical Woman who birthed six children, five of us a year apart. I am the second child, the oldest daughter. In some inexplicable way, she sowed the seeds of creativity that manifested into my first being a late-blooming poet and later, becoming a serendipitous sewer. Her own writings appeared mostly in silence though; frantically penciled hieroglyphics printed in old-school black and white composition books while she sat at our two-parent kitchen table. Mine showed up, a product of voracious reading, in grown woman keyboard strokes, spoken out loud in public places after my forty-fifth birthday. The sewing came more recently—in January 2023, as I began retiring clothes I no longer needed at the age of sixty-six. There on a shelf of my at-home workspace, and prior to sending several piles of fabric to a nearby thrift store, I rediscovered her small woven basket of needles and threads, purchased at a corner store in our Germantown neighborhood. In that moment, I heard her voice again, "Here Debbie; now it's your turn to sew."
I became aware on the day of my mother’s passing—a little more than a month shy of her own sixty-sixth birthday—that she’d been preparing me to mother myself from the time I was nine years old. Back then, I was afraid that I, too, would become a Black Girl Magical Woman. That I would be like her. I was afraid that ancestors or others from an unseen realm would whisper only to me and I would respond to those voices out loud. Back then, I only wanted to have little girl sleepovers and not feel ashamed of being the Black and smart and brave one whenever we rode the H-bus to the Sears & Roebuck Lemon Frog Shop for school clothes on credit.
After her first diagnosis, schizophrenia, she was straight jacketed and sent to Byberry State Hospital for nine months. I was nine years old. Her second diagnosis would also be her last: Cancer. The day I found out, I was completely broken. There I was, never married, with an adult daughter I’d birthed at eighteen, and still it was my mother who somehow made me brave. I held her hand as the doctor talked about the location of the growth in her duodenum, with surgery as the only option and no guarantee of recovery. When I made the words plain to her, hiding my fears and tears, Mom said: I want it out.
Three days prior to her passing, I placed Iyanla Vanzant’s little red book—Faith in The Valley: Lessons for Women on The Journey to Peace—to my forehead, said a prayer, inserted my finger onto a random page and read: “Before your mother was your mother, she was a playful little girl…” Maybe back in Tennille, Georgia, mom had a childhood best friend, same as me. Maybe she won at Monopoly or Scrabble. Perhaps she liked hopscotch and dodge ball. I imagined her being like me, or I should say, me being like her. A little girl having fun. That’s when it dawned on me: my path to grace had been paved.
"I became aware on the day of my mother's passing—a little more than a month shy of her own sixty-sixth birthday—that she'd been preparing me to mother myself from the time I was nine years old."
Two weeks after she transitioned to the next realm, I attended the mural dedication to Philadelphia’s first poet laureate, Sonia Sanchez, at the corner of Diamond and Carlisle Street. Standing outside on that chilly day with my sisterfriend and poet, Pat McLean-Smith, I heard Mama Sanchez say the words: Poetry will wait for you. I penned a new poem that evening that began with those words. The following week, I quit my job. During the nine months that I was intentionally out of work, I went back to college in pursuit of an undergraduate degree and started therapy. Perhaps nine really is my magical number. Or perhaps all that self-care empowered me, untied my tongue.
Even before I emerged from my mother’s womb in January 1957, I imagine that I had already been mothered by the DNA of thousands of years of African ancestry migrating from places like Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal, and Mali. Although I knew little of my mom’s life on a cotton-picking farm in rural Georgia, I understood migration as a physical movement and a cultural process that carries knowledge in the form of language, cuisine, music, art. I am my mother’s daughter.
I also know that death changes life and shame opens the way for fear. Guilt can create inertia and I recognize that trying to be the best daughter surely led to moments of being a not always attentive mother. This is why I recently called my daughter, who will be fifty next year, to ask her thoughts about my mothering of her. Her first recollection: the two of us not understanding each other in all the ways puberty shifts and evolves the roles of mother and daughter. She was nine when mom came to live in the home that my youngest sister and I had purchased together and that apparently had a huge impact I her. I pressed her to tell me more. Embarrassed, she said: “I felt alone.” Unable to have girlfriend sleepovers. Without saying it, I required her to be okay with any of the decisions I made: You will not go away to college. You will pay rent here until you get your own place.
Thankfully, two years after mom passed, I became the wife of an eight-years-younger man with a six-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old son. As she watched me become their bonus mother, Mama-Two, as they later affectionately referred to me, she finally began to understand my sacrifice in love and struggle as a fact of life. She says that she now sees me as strong, rather than neglectful; kind, rather than stern; caring rather than indifferent.
"Although I knew little of my mom's life on a cotton-picking farm in rural Georgia, I understood migration as a physical movement and a cultural process that carries knowledge in the form of language, cuisine, music, art. I am my mother's daughter."
My daughter witnessed the joy and freedom that allowed me to make being my own caregiver a priority. Although she is not a mother, in the text-talk that followed our phone conversation, she let me know that my mothering of her makes her proud to be my daughter. The thought of possibly being a different person if I had become bitter about the responsibility of growing up too soon makes me appreciative, thankful. I know that being of good character is more important than being nice. There is so much value in listening. Empathy has become my superpower.
A few years before her passing and during one of her weekly pick-ups to go to the mental health daycare center, my mother gifted me with crayon written words in a handmade purple construction paper card dotted with stick-on stars and hearts: Thinking of you for always thinking of me, Debbie. Each time I take those words to heart, I recognize that all along, she was preparing me, with love, for love. In response, I wrote:
“I remember the nights we danced to reggae rhythms and the days I bathed your brown-skinned beauty | not because of any sense of duty, but because I knew those moments would be the ones that showed you love | I will cherish those moments, Mom.”
And still.
first discovered her love of writing after her poem, “New Black Voices or The Rap on Ebonics” was selected for publication in BMa: The Sonia Sanchez Literary Journal, as the second-place recipient of the 1997 Audre Lorde/Sonia Sanchez Poetry Writing Award. Since then, she has been the recipient of several grants, including the Leeway Foundation Transformation Award and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Travel Grant in recognition of her art and social change projects utilizing poetry as the focal point for mentoring and collaborating with youth and women of color creatives. Among publications in which Debra’s written work has been included are Drum Voices Review; Essence Magazine; The African; Check The Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees; and Imagining the Black Female Body: Reconciling Image in Print and Visual Culture. One of five founding members of Philadelphia’s Black female spoken word ensemble, In The Company of Poets, Debra continues to occasionally work as a teaching and performance artist. A retired higher education office manager, Debra relaxes by creating hand-sewn fiber artworks that have been featured in numerous local and national exhibits.
Thank you for supporting us since 2015! Join us as a monthly, annual or founding member & keep Raising Mothers ad-free. Help us reach our first goal of 100 paid annual members. Invest in amplifying the parenting & personal narratives of Black, Asian, Latine(x), Indigenous and other voices from the global majority at all of our intersections.
Before you go, leave us some love by tapping the ❤️. Also, restack & share! Help others find us. We’re @raisingmothers all over social media.