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1. Introduction
I never truly got to know my mother, who died of cancer when I was ten. The age of ten is old enough to understand the death at face value and miss the person, yet too young to comprehend the implications behind the complete cessation of growth of the mother-child bond. The memories get fuzzy, the love never leaves, but you no longer grow together. I can only speculate (read: daydream) that all my quirky eccentricities could be attributed to one-half of my DNA and not just out of thin air like it seemed.
2. You feel unfinished—like there will always be a portion of you that’s not developed.
Looking back I feel selfish. I had a great childhood. I grew up in what was known as the “Boujee Black Capital U.S.A.” Highly conservative, well-to-do, white collar black families with two-story homes with front doors you could leave unlocked. My childhood was like “The Black Wonder Years.” I don’t remember anything about the White “Wonder Years”, other than the fact that my growing up was just like that. I had a dad, a rambunctious and cute golden retriever pup and a big backyard for him to run around in. I had a very hands-on grandma who—and I mean this in the nicest way possible—was just like the grandma from Everybody Loves Raymond, and who imparted on me her great love of Thai food; she said that the reason I liked it so much was because I was “geechie.” I had my own fiberglass basketball hoop in the driveway that all the kids came to play on. I even had sprinkler parties. For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, that’s when you run one of those sprinklers that sprays the water back and forth in a rainbow arc, and you and your friends take turns skipping through it. Black Wonder Years, I’m telling you.
When I was eight, I announced to my family I would be a doctor. Why? Because this was the Black Wonder Years. You live your life like a sitcom. You don’t question anything.
My childhood was just like that: characterized by this heavy blanket of innocence and naivete. It wasn’t until my mother died that I really started to question things.
3. It’s a tape that plays over and over again. And every time, you swear you see something different, even if it’s as minute as a misplaced pixel; there’s a deeper meaning.
My dad was devoted man of the Church; he led kid’s Sunday School and coached the Church basketball team. I remember my mom going to Church maybe twice. My parents were opposites like that. This tape rewinds and plays again on a loop, testing first impressions against the nth. The tape is of one particular Sunday I got to stay home with mom. It begins with a six-year-old me sitting on my hands and knees outside of a bedroom door, listening to a sound I’d never heard. I cracked the door open and crawled in. She didn’t notice me come in. She didn’t even hear me calling her. There she was, standing in front of the mirror holding a tooth and crying. Imagine my shock at the age of six. It’s not a big deal, Mom. It happens to me and I just put it under my pillow and the tooth fairy gives me a dollar. This is really a joyous occasion, Mom.
“Just put it under your pillow, Mom.” I kept saying it as I tugged at her robe. But she just wouldn’t listen. It was like she didn’t even see me.
4. Everything’s so glaringly obvious now that you know, almost like the memory taunts you.
I always feel a certain way when I’m in the old neighborhood, just passing through. The air smells good. There’s a familiarity to everything that makes me feel like there’s something waiting for me with open arms. I find the house on the corner. The air is cold and thin; it makes sense to me why it feels precisely like November when I’m around this house. I don’t imagine the Black Wonder Years anymore. I trace the same old cracks in the driveway, up the lonely hill to the white house with red shutters. Next to the porch was a space mapped out for a garden we never got around to planting anything in, so instead covered it with red wood chips. Inside, the walls look completely foreign, stripped of their stale flower-print wallpaper and painted white until minds were made up on what color would make the hallway come alive; the once glossy laminate flooring now dry and collecting dust.
The carpeting of the staircase and the upstairs hallway is different: a soft, mocha brown. Try as I might, I can’t remember what color it was before. What hadn’t changed was that there was an old window with rusted metal frames we never replaced, even after we put up new windows everywhere else in the house. This window had gone untouched for as long as I had been alive and was full of all sorts of dead bugs and shit stuck in the screen and lining the corners. It was a window you rushed past in the daytime. But at night, the moon would shine directly through it, casting its glow halfway down the hall. I remember liking to sit there late at night when I couldn’t sleep as a kid. Against the wall was an unused laundry chute that sent unwanted socks down intended to reach the boogeyman’s house, a.k.a. the basement, but never made it due to the giant horde of spiders waiting in the darkness with their million ensnaring threads. Finally, at the end of the hallway, too far for the moonlight to touch: my room, my parents’ room, and the bureau. The bureau was this towering mahogany chest as tall as a door, filled with adult things of no interest to children. But the trick was to dig to the bottom, past all the clothes stored away for the season and the bonnets and other flashy hats and belts, and sometimes I’d be able to find one of Christmas presents. Other times, I’d find a wig I used to play around with before I knew what it once was used for. Now, it’s the only thing I find.
5. You wanting to find yourself becomes an excuse to dwell in the past.
At my most introspective, I would say that no single thing has contributed to my personality more than the contemplation of the things about my mother I didn’t know. As I said before, it feels like there’s a big part of me that has gone unfinished. I’ve had this recurring dream for sixteen years now that returns me to the same spot: the dark hallway, doused in moonlight peeking through the blinds. Except it’s very clear that there’s no moon in the sky; no light spilling down onto the carpet. The only light comes from my mother, standing there in front of the window, kneeling down for me with open arms. Even when I run, of course, I can never reach her. So instead, I find myself standing outside her door, wondering why she liked staying home on Sunday mornings, what child’s words can’t reach his mother’s ears, what cries are in contemplation of death. The answers are on the tape, playing endlessly on a loop.
6. But doing so will never move you forward.
When I opened the bureau, this time I found something unexpected. It was an old Polaroid of a woman leaning on a low fence in a white t-shirt and mom jeans, the long, green summertime grass lapping against her white sneakers. I have no memories of the occasion. But, it must’ve been decades old, because I recognized the big helmet kid riding beside her on a bike with training wheels. I didn’t remember this but here it was, inside this tiny paper window, a happy day of summer. And there were more, too: Mondays and Saturdays, in December and in June. There’s a portion of her memory in everything I continue to live for, like that old photograph, perhaps buried but never forgotten. RIP.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images