Mother Maps - fond memories of a mother, and her advice - Brief Article

Ebony, May, 1999 by Laura B. Randolh

FOR the last three years, I have set myself a Mother's Day task--to write down all the advice my mother has given me over the course of the year. On the second Sunday in May, after our official Mother's Day celebration has ended, I turn off my phone, turn on my computer and list all the pearls of wisdom, the precious life lessons my mother, like generations of Black mothers, grandmothers and other mothers--the countless Sisters to whom Black daughters are related, not by blood or birth, but by unbreakable bonds--seems to know innately, intuitively, instinctively.

I started The List for two reasons. I thought that if I took the time to put my mother's advice on paper, then maybe all her wisdom, her seventysomething years of world experience, would somehow seep into my brain. Once that happened, I reasoned, I'd be on Easy Street. Life would be a breeze. All that knowledge would make me, if not invincible, at the very least incisive. There'd be no situation I couldn't handle, no problem I couldn't solve, no disappointment I couldn't deal with. (It hasn't happened yet but, hey, you never know; that biological, Black-mother-wisdom thing may kick in at any moment.)

The other reason I started The List, though, is far more important. It's my way of saving my mother's priceless gems of wisdom, of safeguarding the words that, for my sister and me, made stepping into the unknown possible and dealing with the uncontrollable bearable. Though I didn't know it when I started them, my Mother's Day lists have become something sacred, something spiritual, something sacrosanct. That's because these lists have become a way to link the future and the past. A way to let the next generation listen to my mother's life. A way of preserving her hard-won experience not just for myself, but forever. I cannot read or write one without remembering so many of the essential truths my mother has made clear to me that no Black woman should ever forget.

For a long time, I didn't know what to call these annual lists. And this year, it finally hit me. The perfect name: Mother Maps. When you think about it, that's what they are. Blueprints to help her daughters understand where the trapdoors lie. Beacons for us to follow when we're feeling lost and life's everyday burdens seem too heavy a load.

This year's list contains some real gems, including:

* Failure is not falling down, but staying down.

* Whenever a task looks impossible, remember the old African proverb: "When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion."

* Always prefer a loss to a dishonest gain; the one brings pain at the moment, the other for all time.

* You are not what people call you; you are what you respond to.

* If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.

"A hard head makes a soft behind." That's what my mother always says when I've disregarded some life lesson she's drilled into me since I was a child and am suffering the consequences.

"Thanks for the sympathy," I moan, trying in vain to win a little bit of hers. "Give me a break; with all the stuff you've told me, you can't seriously expect me to remember everything."

Deep down, my mother knows this is not a cop out. You'd have to be a genius to retain every single piece of her advice. Vast and varied, it covers everything from trials to triumphs, all things emotional, spiritual, social and familial. But I think I understand why, when it comes to teaching her daughters how to live in this world, my mother, like African-American mothers everywhere, has tried to leave no stone unturned. It's because of our unique history.

"Even though today's Black mothers ... were not there, their racial memory includes African men, women and children being torn from their land and shipped like cargo into slavery in the interest of White men's greed," Johnnetta B. Cole, the renowned teacher and Spelman College president emerita, eloquently explains it. "In the New World, children were literally taken from their mothers' arms in one of the most cruel systems devised in the West."

And so, for African-American mothers, all that advice they give comes down to this: They want their daughters to know, as Dr. Cole puts it, "as many of their joys and as few of their pains ... as they grow into both their Blackness and their womanness."

Some words you just remember--even without trying. Like Proverbs 22:6. "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." As a teenager, whenever I'd done something stupid or silly or scary, my mother would repeat these words over and over. As a woman, I finally understand why.