A Tribute to My Mother

BY THERESA GOLDEN

My mother was born in 1930 in Okolona MS, during the white/colored only era, and like Jim’s mother she grew up in the Great Depression. Now, The depression hit African Americans extremely hard. Many African Americans were already living in poverty. She grew up with ten siblings in Tupelo MS a small southern country town. Her late father Willie Hamilton, who I think my mother is like in many ways, yet she disagrees with that opinion, was a very no-nonsense kind of guy. According to my mom, my grandmother Mary Elizabeth was constantly afraid for her male children’s lives especially my grandfathers’. As a result, eventually ended up migrating up north in 1955 (I was three months old) to Wisconsin because my mom’s younger brother refused to placate the whites that were calling them niggers, and white men were always threatening him
My mother’s parents were the first generation coming out of slavery. Her father was born in 1902. However, my mother said, “the state did not keep very good records of the births of African Americans back then so it may not be the correct date.” Her parents were sharecroppers in Mississippi. A sharecropper is a tenant farmer who gives a share of the crops raised to the landlord as rent. Now she would told my siblings and I a story about how her parents did not have money to get the seeds, shovels, and other supplies needed for planting. So they had to purchase everything from the landlord. He would then at the time of harvest take most of the crops that were raised; telling the tenant farmers that they broke even thus leaving them with minimum food to feed their families. She shared many stories like this one about what they went through with this whole sharecropping situation, I would always say, “ That sounds like slavery to me.” And my mother ‘s response would be, “that’s exactly what it was, slavery! And we never could get ahead doing this so my parents moved the family to the city of Tupelo Ms (Elvis’s home town) for better opportunities. ”
You see, I am my mother’s “mini me” My mother was very candid, prideful and sometimes comical when she told us stories about the old south. The comical ones were always about how her parents would out smart the whites and the prideful ones were about how they stood up for themselves in the Deep South. As I reflect on the stories she once told us I couldn't’t help but to think the stories were lessons for us. One lesson being, that we came from a strong lineage. However, she would usually end her stories by saying “Now, there were some good white folks but the good ones were afraid of what the bad ones would do to them, so it didn’t help us much especially when we really needed it.” There was sometimes sadness in her voice when she would tell my siblings and me these stories. I believe the other lesson was, she wanted us to no how they were treated by the whites in the south, but she did not want us to have any hatred in our heart against them. She had a motto: “Treat people like you want to be treated.”
My mother was married at the age of seventeen to my brothers’ father. He was an alcoholic and after three children she decided to cut her losses and leave him. My siblings and I had different fathers. Now, this is where I am not sure how my father and mother hooked up. Though she never talked about him much; she never spoke negatively about him either. He was sort of a mystery man for most of my life. I meet him for the first time when I was eight years old.
He arrived one afternoon when my cousin and I were playing outside in front of my mothers’ beauty salon. He pulled in this navy blue car (don’t know what type) and my aunt’s husband was with him. They parked the car and my cousin and I ran up to the car. I said to my uncle Calvin, “Uncle Calvin whose car are you driving “ he said, “It ‘s your fathers.” I thought he was playing around with me, because he was a real jokester. So I said, “he ain't my daddy “ and ran in the shop yelling, “Mom this man outside in the car with Uncle Calvin, is talking about, he’s my daddy” She looked out the window and said “That is your dad” I stood there surprised but happy. I was happy because I finally got a chance to see the man, who my mother said on several occasions that I was just like. I was surprised because he finally came to see me.
My mother was a single parent and an entrepreneur. She believed in working for herself. She repeatedly told us to create our own business. My mother got this drive from my grandmother who owned her own restaurant, and her uncles who had their own businesses. (i.e. Corner grocery store, tavern, and haulage business) It was very hard as a child to see how hard she worked, but she played both roles of father and mother quite well. I remember my brothers and I for years bought her a father’s day card, and a mother’s day card.
There were seven years difference in me and my older brother’s age and me and my younger sisters age. My oldest brothers and I were the most responsible of the five of us. So we pretty much ran the household. I was nine years old when I learned how to cook and do laundry. My mother worked twelve to sixteen hour days. Many a times she would not stop to eat. So I would go in the shop and would say to the customers that were waiting to get their hair groomed, “I am sorry but my mom have to stop, and eat her food right now.” If she would not come upstairs to our apartment then I would take the plate of food to her in the shop. Her female customers really understood, and on many occasions one of them said, “That is really sweet of you to make sure your mother eats, Ludie this child really loves you.” What most of them did not know, was that she had created this habit, of not taking any breaks to stop and eat. She didn’t take breaks, because she did not want the customers, to have to wait too long before servicing them. My mom enjoyed her work but physically it was challenging because she stood on her feet most of the time.
My mother was an excellent provider for her family. My siblings and I ere never homeless, we always had food to eat, and strangely enough she was not keen on us kids eating a lot of meat. In spite of this, we enjoyed her great chicken casseroles. My mom would show me how to make a dish, and after that it was my responsibility to do it by myself. We had fashionable clothes because I learned how to sew to help her save money on buying us clothes. She bought me my first singer sewing machine one year for my birthday. I sewed on it until I married and moved out I bought my own.
I was very close to my mother being the only girl for seven years I bonded with her since we were the only two females in our household. But watching her work such long hours made me very sad. So I would help her as much as I could by cooking our family meals, taking turns doing the laundry, cleaning up the shop, (washing and sterilizing the combs and brushes, laundering the towels, sweeping and moping the floor) Even though I did a lot of work around the house and in the beauty shop, somehow I managed to be an excellent student in school. I did not want to give my mother any trouble because I felt she had enough challenges to deal with.
My mother is very courageous, faithful, loyal, resilient, loving, (in her own unique stoic way) nurturing, kind, and resourceful, as well as, a powerful woman. She never took no for an answer to something she was attempting to do, and it involved needing some assistance from others. She would say, “No, just means find another way to do it.” As a single parent it took courage to raise five children. She elicited help from her father and brothers, who were the male figure in our home.
Her resourcefulness and thriftiness I contribute to growing up in the depression era. But that experience surely helped her to be the best single parent on the planet. I remember when she bought the building that housed her business in Racine WI. She wanted to be available to her children so she purchased a building that had a two-bedroom apartment attached to it. So we lived in the back and she worked in the front. (Which by the way we could never play hooky from school because she was always there!) She bought this building on land contract and I was with her when she paid the last payment to the realtor. She was so happy and I knew she would buy more property because she always used to tell us that the best businesses to be in were real estate, food, and clothing. Her rationale was this, “People always need a place to live, they need food to eat and clothes to wear.”
My mother is a very spiritual, practical and simple woman. I am lot like her in this way. Although, there is eloquence in her practicality and simplicity she really didn’t care much about being fashionable, so she would put on anything as long as it was clean. This is where my mom and I are relatively different. We would frequently exchange words with each other about her lack of interest in fashion. I would say, “Mom you have to care more about how you look because you are a business women in this city and you have to look presentable.” her response would be, “I ‘m clean and my clothes look decent to me and if people are going to judge me by how fashionable I look then they are not worthy of doing business with me or being my friend.” These kinds of conversations went on quite often with no change on her part. So, I started to make her clothes and shop for her. Maybe it had more to do with my feelings of embarrassment in seeing her in mix match clothes than what others felt or thought. In fact because she was a community activist, she knew many of the residents and the community loved her very much, our house was always filled with the neighborhood kids, and they all called her Ma-dear.
Education was a value that we both share. My mother only had an eight-grade education. She finished “beauty school” as she calls it, because the standards for black higher education facilities were not very high. When she was forty years of age she later went on to get her high school diploma. She sent my oldest brother to college, and he obtained his MA in Business Administration. After I finished high school I went to Gateway Tech College to study Cosmetology. Hummm-I wonder where that influence came from. When I was in elementary school I told my mother I wanted to be a teacher, but she ignored that and insisted that this would be a good fall back occupation because it is recession proof. (This worry probably comes from her post traumatic stress from the Depression) She was right I end up using these skills many times. But I did not mind going to Cosmetology School because I was learning the theory behind all the practical work I had done in the salon during my youth.
My mom was extremely proud and happy when I told her I was going back to school to get my bachelor degree. She said, I always wanted to go to college but my life took another path.” Such as motherhood and entrepreneurship. “ It is so funny how our lives have been parallel to each other. I entered college at the age of fifty after raising my children. Fortunately I choose a husband who was a partner in raising our children.
As I reflect on my life growing up in Racine Wisconsin, I have an enormous amount of appreciation for my mother who provided us with a very decent and comfortable life. Actually my siblings and I used to say, “we never knew we were poor because all our needs were meet.” It wasn’t until we started going to school outside of our neighborhood that we saw a difference. Now, I know without any doubts that it was my mothers exemplary example and my respectful relationship with her that without a doubt has made me the woman, the mother, the world citizen that I am today.
When I started writing this essay there was many times I was overcome with tears of thanks and appreciation for this remarkable woman's' influenced in my life from conception to my fullest development. Maharishi ‘s fondest saying is “Mother is at Home” and I can say it and literally mean it as well, because for her children, and everyone in our community. My mother was always at home.