Dear Mama, You Are Appreciated

About this time thirty-eight years ago, my mom was only a few months’ pregnant with me.

The GOAT rapper 2Pac is going to get some serious airplay over the radio over the next several days following the death of his own mother Afeni who was a revolutionary in her own right as a Black Panther. “Dear Mama” has become a defining song of our teenage years regardless of upbringing – just one of those seminal classics that everyone could relate to whether we were rich, poor, middle class, or somewhere in the struggle. Despite my reputation back then of a good kid, I had a very dry wit that got me whooped and sometimes cussed! For one, I was scared to come home on report card day in junior high as well as all of the times I came home with broken red Urkel glasses:  what was my mama’s firstborn honor student doing getting by with Cs in pre-AP classes? Perhaps she was unaware of the bullying I took for the two years at CJHS, but that’s just water under the bridge many years later. I mean, it wasn’t like we were dirt poor and routinely ate ketchup sandwiches for dinner; nonetheless, we were nowhere near affluent nor even “hood rich”, as so many of the other kids in Friendship flaunted the fruits of their families’ hard work. Then again, we (the community as a whole) were primarily in working-class two-parent households with a handful of exceptions in the mid-90s (different commentary for a different time).

Although my mama didn’t teach me how to make a dollar out of fifteen cents, she certainly taught my brother and me how to stretch out those dollars we did get from hard work to maximize their value. She is the person who gave me the reason to really appreciate secondhand shopping as my wife has found out in recent years. You know, it’s hard to go shopping for jeans when the average pair retails for $45 and up, especially for fat pit masters.

Mama:  You are appreciated.

Yeah, I reminisce on the stress I caused over the years:  It was hell hugging on my mama from the Clark County Jail. It’s also a story I’ll never share. Fortunately for me, that charge was expunged from my record after some restitution; otherwise, my professional dreams would have been dead on arrival. Beyond that (and before I started dating my wife), my mama is quite Afrocentric and I dated mostly white women. Hey, she was a homecoming queen at Gould High some forty years ago and if you’ve been there for anything aside from dealing with traffic court, then you would know ole G-town in 97 percent black. Post-integration, most of the remaining white families ran to Dumas or Star City if not elsewhere – there were too many poor people for a private “whites-only” school in that town.

Because she was a stay-at-home mom until I was in ninth grade, I knew I could always depend on my mama. Let’s say I left my lunch bag at home or forgot homework:  Mama came through for your boy. I generally brought a sack lunch from home from the sixth grade onward until I discovered the virtues of the cafeteria’s taco salad/spaghetti/baked potato/nacho bars, and then I had to remember to keep $1.20 for those lunches.

More, she was my Sunday school teacher because I stumped my last two instructors with questions that they could not answer when I was in elementary school. As a result, I probably picked up more insight of real Christianity than most of my contemporaries from her than what most of the parochial schools would have taught me including the Catholic school across town I nearly was enrolled into as an extremely bashful child. My mom also helped unlock the genius in me and has been the one to somehow push me into being sociable even when I would have rather gone to work at Taco Bell on 3^rd and Oak or stayed in the gym every other Saturday night shooting hoops and grabbing rebounds alone.

Thank you, mama.

Thank you for introducing me to funk music during the rise of gangsta rap, R. Kelly, and grunge rock like The Spinners, Sly & the Family Stone, and Earth, Wind & Fire that I can iron that hard crease into my Levi’s 560 jeans and Tommy Hilfiger button down shirts.

Thank you for putting up with me in those teenage years when it could have been easier to take me out of this world you brought me in – and the quick reminder when I uttered “black boys don’t study” in ninth grade on report card day. I was destined to be a different fish in a sea of mediocrity of which looks to be an incomplete grade at the present moment.

Thank you for being an unwavering moral compass even when it was uncool to go the right thing. Although I didn’t understand why you were so strict, I definitely appreciate it now as I try to figure the best way to raise little Caeli.

Shout out to both of my black queens – Karen, the one I call mama; and Chastity – the one I married about five years ago and is Caeli’s mama. You are appreciated.

Of course, I have a slew of other mamas and much love to them too. See, I didn’t forget my aunts, neighbors, mother-in-law Edna, Wilma, Carol, Terica, Shirley, or Phyllis in her eternal rest.

I thank each and every single one of you. There’s no way I can pay you back but the plan is to show you that I understand.

Happy Mother’s Day.