My granddaddy was a Baptist preacher. Daddy was a Baptist preacher. And on that side of the family I have uncles and cousins who are preachers and deacons. It is because of that legacy I choose to be a Baptist Christian.
My Indian/Native American/Indigenous roots show up in common identifying features of my Walker tribe. We as a family talked about what characteristics we got from our Cherokee ancestors that was passed down to my full-blooded great-grandmother, the last full-blooded ancestor in my paternal line more than any other influence in our ancestry. When I was born, a white man who Daddy knew was quoted as saying that I looked just like a little Indian – supposedly he couldn’t identify me out of the babies because he was looking for a Black baby and not a little Indian who later sneezed on him, like a little Indian. And when I wore a particular hairstyle in high school someone crudely stated that all I was missing was a peace-pipe. I’m a Xennial so there are some allowances made for the best of intentions despite the inappropriate language. It is because of that legacy I choose to integrate rituals that are commonly associated with those of Indians/Native Americans/Indigenous Peoples into the rituals that are recognized by Baptist Christians.
My European roots were seldom spoken of, however cannot be denied in my blood memory. In fact, I only heard one family member ever mention a sole white man in my ancestry, and only one time in my life. But my research leads me to assume that I have a legacy that includes roots in Catholicism, and it is because of this legacy that I am sure to include rituals that are more specific to Catholicism than Baptist Christianity in my sacred time.
My great-grandfather was an active member of the United Methodist Church teaching, serving as an usher, and serving as an elected lay member. And this is the legacy my mother and siblings were born into. It is because of this legacy that I have reintroduced one particular ritual into my Baptist Christian sacred time.
My Mothers originated from the Cameroonian People. This was never discussed in any measure that I can find or ever heard in family stories. But my blood tells me this is true, and it is because of this legacy I include rituals that are characterized by the West African religions into my Baptist Christian sacred time.
The day I was presented to Earth, I was born of a mother of United Methodist heritage and a father of mixed Baptist-COGIC heritage. I was a critical factor in my parents’ marrying and their marriage was the critical factor that influenced my Baptist Christianity.
Just as society generalizes me a born US Citizen/Black American/African-American (with no Hispanic origin), I generalize myself as Baptist Christian. Despite society not making adequate room for my Indian/Native American/Indigenous People roots nor my European roots – I can’t accurately select any other ethnicity, race, or color on any legal forms – I fully embrace being a typical “slavery baby” and acknowledge my African, European, and Indigenous roots in everyday life and with my blood family (those consequences of my ancestors’ choices). And despite my wearing the simplified label of Baptist Christian, I incorporate rituals typically associated with other religions into my personal religious rites and rituals.
My disillusion with “the church” has led me to a place that is much less structured yet feels much closer to pure in my spirituality, religious beliefs, and sacred spaces and times. Evangelism is not my spiritual gift but Teaching is, and with that knowledge I am better able to rest in this non-structured place even when it results in isolation, loneliness, and sometimes confusion. To teach you must first learn and you learn by research and experience – which can sometimes mean laying down what you already know as true to test something that seems contradictory. If you want to become a Baptist Christian, I will gladly educate you on a few important tenets, and then pass you along to someone who will be responsible with your journey, but I’m not anybody’s recruiter. I’m not likely to ever tell you that any path other than being a Baptist Christian is the right path for me. But I’m not likely to ever tell you that being a Baptist Christian is the only way that’s right for you except in agreement.
And I know eventually I will find my place in a family of Baptist Christians who will embrace me wholly regardless of what they think of me – for better or worse – and I will live with more structure in my spirituality, religious beliefs, and sacred spaces and times. It goes without saying that they will embrace my participation in all things associated specifically with Baptist Christianity, but they’ll also embrace my participation in all things sacred, regardless of its label or its roots without condemning me according to Baptist Christian exclusionary guidelines.
They’ll embrace my cleansing rituals that include smudging with sage, perfuming with incense, purifying with Holy Water, sanctifying with Blessed Oil, and praying with beads. They’ll embrace my use of various beads and prayer ropes with my sacred rituals. It will be okay that I have a sacred space at home that includes beads, candles, very specific colors and fragrances, dream catchers, and pictures of my ancestors. It will be okay that this is where I pray and sing and read and study at home. They’ll do this without condemning me.
They’ll embrace the way I recognize and keep the Lenten Season rituals and make that time of fasting very specific to my needs each year. They’ll embrace my choice to occasionally forsake corporate worship inside a man-made sacred place for an intimate solo worship ritual in creation with beads wrapped around my wrist. It will be okay for me to worship at the shores of moving water, washing my feet as I pray silently for forgiveness. It will be okay that I then release my petitions written on paper that will dissolve into that same body of water where I washed my feet, and then rest for a time while admiring all of creation. They’ll do this without condemning me.
I am Regina Lynette. I am more than a Baptist Christian.
I was raised in the Missionary Baptist Church. At eight years old I publicly made my confession, was water-baptized, received communion, and was offered the right hand of fellowship with membership into my childhood home church, from here on out to be called NNMBC. About nine years later that church split, let’s just say over issues with follow-on leadership. I would spend the next year of my Christianity absorbing religious teachings with an unbelievable and relatively new zeal in a new church, from here on out to be called NBMBC. Later, I would start cautiously wandering away from what I was taught, testing ideas about my religion, and finding out some truths for myself.
Daddy was my trusted personal religious leader and when I had questions about anything regarding religion – ours and others – I trusted him to be completely honest in his responses. I would go to Daddy before anyone else because I knew that what he had to say would be based on experience or from his own research and education, and that he would refer me to texts that would support his answers. I also trusted him to honestly admit if he didn’t know something and that he would do the research and get back to me or encourage me to do the research with him. Even though some of what he would say would fall in the category of dogma, his delivery was never dogmatic and always logical (despite religion or spirituality not being what I would define as logical). But then I went to college, and everything went to hell. Okay, everything didn’t go to hell, and I can’t even justify that level of melodrama here, so, I take it back. But college was the start of curiosity, circumstance, and independence taking me along a slightly different path than I ever imagined.
This is Regina wearing the suit that would become my “Communion Sunday” suit. How I never spilled grape juice on my all white was miraculous.
The first year of college, I partnered up with a new friend who matched my particular freshman demographic in my search for a church family in the town where I attended school. We were both female, away from home, and part of the 5% minority population of the university. One of the things that created a firmer bond early in our friendship was that we were both daughters of black Baptist preachers who needed to find a church to attend regularly while we were away from home, and we believed it should be a Baptist church. We were glad to be on this search together and found we wanted similar things from a church-home-away-from-home. Unfortunately and universally we found, beyond doctrine and styles of worship, that we didn’t feel welcome in those churches. We were our best Baptist Christian selves and were snubbed by those who we expected to welcome us to the family and offer the right hand of fellowship. We dutifully stood as visitors, reciting the most relevant details of what I like to call our “Christian resumes”, offering ourselves to be cradled in the arms of the churches and we didn’t find a place that felt like home as we hoped. After reporting back to our families our lack of success and the new routes we planned to take – seeking Christian churches of other denominations – neither of our families were particularly happy but they trusted us to make the right decision (which was simply joining a church). It wasn’t terribly long after we started with this new plan that we landed at a charismatic church – House of God I believe was the official denomination. This church will be referred to as BHOG going forward.
I didn’t know much about the charismatic churches at that time and had to be brought up to speed on the charismatic denominations. To shorten my learning curve, those who knew I grew up in Memphis likened House of God to the Church of God In Christ. I had been curious about the Church of God In Christ forever. In my ignorance, it was the only church that I would consider charismatic (even though I didn’t get that vocabulary until I was an adult) and therefore stood alone as a strange but intriguing group of Christians. When I was growing up, Memphis was where their official leadership & headquarters was located and the place where they held a large annual conference. I knew it as “the saints coming to town” or “the COGIC coming for conference”. I wouldn’t understand that COGIC was an acronym for the Church of God In Christ until I was a little older so it sounded more like an affliction than an affiliation, and is partly why I seldom use the acronym today, even in writing. The other thing sparking my curiosity as a child about the Church of God In Christ was that Daddy and my siblings from his first wife were involved in that church for a period of time and something went terribly wrong because they spoke about the church with some unpleasantness that I don’t want to give a label. I know the story from a couple of points of view but each of them experienced it in their own way and I can’t articulate their feelings and don’t want to label them. But the point is I was always curious about the Church of God In Christ. And because the pastor of my NBMBC came from the Church of God In Christ I was exposed to certain influences that made for a more energetic style of worship than I had been accustomed.
As I said earlier, curiosity (about charismatic churches and styles of worship), circumstances (feeling terribly unwelcome in the local Baptist churches and incredibly valued in a charismatic church), and independence (more on my own than I wanted to be) led me to BHOG, ready to join under Watch Care. Watch Care was a way of joining a church under temporary circumstances – being away from home at college – so that we’d have a spiritual leader, spiritual family, and could fulfill our Christian obligations and rituals for the duration of the temporary relocation. That’s my own definition by the way, based on my experience at the time. The process of joining a church under Watch Care included presenting a letter from the pastor of your home church (NBMBC) to the Watch Care pastor (BHOG) and then finding out if you were “accepted” which, as long as there was no issue regarding beliefs about baptism (water and immersion) and you came to an understanding of where your tithes were going, you would generally be “accepted”. What I was unprepared for was that my pastor (NBMBC) would outright refuse to write me a letter because, as he explained, he’d spent time in the Church of God In Christ which to him was equivalent to BHOG and I had no clue what I was getting myself into. I found this a bit irrational and not only insufficient but also an unacceptable explanation, so I decided to go to Daddy. He was not my pastor, but he was the assistant pastor at NBMBC; the person who responded to my tugs on his heartstrings; and the person whose guidance, for me, would trump anyone else’s. I would explain all this to BHOG so that I would be “accepted”. Unfortunately it was one of the few times that Daddy hid behind a very weak excuse, refusing to write a letter because he wasn’t officially my pastor. But I knew it was because he didn’t support my choice of church. He did believe in order and that it was my pastor’s place to write the letter, but if he’d felt differently about the church I’d chosen, he would have written the letter and that would have been the end of it. So, with no possibilities of getting a letter, I approached the BHOG pastor and before I could even start to explain that I couldn’t get a letter, he told me that he never expected that I’d get a letter and that if I was still interested in joining his church, he’d give me a modified version of the process which combined regular membership orientation with Watch Care orientation. And he was careful to explain to me that my tithes were expected to go to BHOG and not NBMBC.
This was the last Sunday that I attended BHOG This is on the steps of the new building they moved to just before I graduated college.
While in college I took two religious studies courses while having “left” my home church and denomination for a “new” church and denomination. It was so interesting learning academically about so many other religions and this was the first time I began to embrace all the Abrahamic religions and became unusually fascinated by the Wiccan studies. I’d determined that if I had been born with absolutely no religious belief set and sought out my own by studying them all, I probably would be Wiccan. It would be years, literally over a decade, before I would openly share that with Christians who felt invested in my religious path. It didn’t go over well but at least I wasn’t met with rescue efforts because by then I was certain that I was going to be a Christian for life.
Daddy got sick when I had about two years left in my college career. He was struggling with a cancer diagnosis, and he was nearly 80 years old. As the possibility of his death felt almost tangible, I took my prayer requests to my BHOG church family. I didn’t feel I had a place at NBMBC anymore except on paper and my NBMBC pastor was in jail much of this time anyway. (Yes, I’m going to leave that right there for now and I can’t promise I’ll revisit it with any significance.) And so my BHOG family supported me and prayed with me and believed with me for Daddy’s healing. While I prayed for his healing, I also began grieving him. I had no doubt that God would hear my prayer, but I also didn’t want Daddy to suffer simply for the sake of my not wanting to let him go. After some time Daddy was effectually healed of the cancer but his body was a wreck from the treatment. Not to mention, as assistant pastor at NBMBC he took on the responsibility of managing the church in my pastor’s absence. He fell into a vicious cycle of taking care of the church until he would get sick and be admitted to the hospital. He’d recover somewhat and head back to the church to start the cycle all over again. I was infuriated. All along I had begged my NBMBC pastor not to make Daddy the assistant pastor because he was in his 70s and to get some more preachers at the church. My NBMBC pastor was not in agreement with what I thought was quite logical – having someone who is twice your age be your second in command was impractical to say the least and stupid to say the most. Don’t you want someone who can take on the torch after you’re gone? And hadn’t we as a church just struggled with the idea that my NNMBC pastor had to be “sat down” by the parishioners because he was too old and didn’t want to let go of pastoring? I mean if you are of the opinion that there is such a thing as “too old”, why would anyone who was over 70 years old be in position to takeover the church? I appreciated that he regarded Daddy as a wise advisor – the only reason he gave me for his choice – but I disagreed that Daddy needed any responsibility for the actual running of the church. I digress, but only a bit. My experiences, disappointments, and other slights from NBMBC (along with the ones from NNMBC that I haven’t mentioned) began to change the way I viewed what it meant to be a Christian.
After Daddy’s cancer was in remission and while he was sick from the treatment, I continued with my grieving. I felt he wouldn’t be with me much longer – even though I still had ideas that he’d at least see 90 – and I needed to be ready to let him go. The only problem with my acceptance that he was nearing the end of his life is that my BHOG family didn’t listen to me and continued to pray for something I was no longer believing for or wanted. And my confidences were betrayed – with the best intentions of caring for me – so my trust in them faltered. Daddy died during my last semester of college and while my BHOG family cared for me during my grief more than any other spiritual family, I felt unseen and therefore, though it sounds extreme, no longer loved or safe. I remember being asked to stand at BHOG during the Sunday evening service held the same night I returned to college from having attended Daddy’s funeral. I went because I didn’t want to be alone with my grief and my religion was supposed to be the thing that held me up and strengthened me and would help me finish my college degree. My BHOG pastor said something about how impressive it was that I was at church because it said something about my commitment to the church – not being lazy or using my travel to bury my father as an excuse to not make it to church – and that was the end of my time at BHOG even though I would not officially leave until I graduated.
I’m not headed to church here, but I don’t have any post-college church pictures so, next best thing.
Just before I graduated college I began isolating myself from the church in general, beginning with intentionally not attending church regularly. I remember the first Sunday I purposely didn’t go to church. I sat on my bed and read the newspaper and felt so free. I very specifically felt exactly free. People came by to check on me after service – because as I said I truly had a church family – and I was a bit defiant with some, testing their ministry to me. I remember one thing I thought truly trivial yet hypocritical was that in all the years I had heard “come as you are” in every church, it apparently didn’t apply to me and no one could even hear the contradiction in what they were telling me. What I heard was that based on what I call my religious resume, I was no longer in the category of folks who could just come as they were, and if I didn’t attend church in my regular “uniform” (which at the time was a suit or dress, control top pantyhose, and heels) then I would be inappropriately dressed. Offering that I couldn’t afford dry-cleaning was not met with an offer of financial help but with encouragement to just find a way. I maintained it should have been acceptable for me to wear jeans to church. All of these tiny contradictions and small hypocrisies, the prophe-lies* and the manipulations, and all the things that humans tend to do to anything they put their hands on all wrapped up into one big trauma, and it wore on the ties I had to the religion I was born into and loved – Missionary Baptist Christianity. Add to that the season of Rebel Gina which followed college graduation – my seemingly unpredictable, irrational and consistent anger along with a uniform of olive green and black – and I essentially walked away from the church. It is most important that I am clear that I walked away from the church (the building and the fellowship) – not my beliefs. While I agree that I am instructed not to forsake the fellowship, I maintain that I should be particular in choosing who is in the fellowship.
Tons of words again. Have we made this a three-parter? Probably.
I am Regina Lynette. I am a Baptist Christian. Probably.
*Prophe-lies, pronounced ‘prof-uh-lize’, is a lie, typically that serves another’s own agenda, that is shared under the cover of a prophecy.
I was born a Missionary Baptist Christian. Okay, not exactly. That technically goes against the teaching of the Missionary Baptist Church – if you believe the way to salvation and fellowship is by confession of Jesus as Lord and Savior and water (immersion) baptism. Or should I say I was born a Missionary Baptist Parishioner? Confession and baptism was a requirement for membership now that I think about it so that still isn’t quite accurate. At any rate, the reason I feel like I was born a Missionary Baptist Christian is because that was the church family that raised me and it is the legacy of my paternal family. I was about three years old when my parents joined the church that would become my childhood home church. Because I don’t want to name the churches I’ll be talking about, I’m going to use acronyms so you can keep it straight. So my “childhood home church” will be referred to as NNMBC, and if you were a character in this part of my life you’ll also know what my system is but, oh well. I attended, was nourished by, and belonged to NNMBC from about three to 17 and a half. I remember this so specifically because it was not my choice to leave that church. I literally went out of town for a summer as a member of that church and came back and was handed a card stating that I was a charter member of another church. The last year I physically lived in Memphis, the last year of my grade school education, was spent at a new church, the NBMBC. The other reason this is stamped indelibly on my brain is that I was so looking forward to being recognized as a high school graduate and receiving a leather-bound Bible with my name engraved in gold lettering on the cover from NNMBC. Thankfully, it also meant something to the right people and I was invited to the celebration despite my change in membership, and I received a Bible that I cherish and still own.
Daddy was my religious leader until his death and in some ways after his death. No, he wasn’t ever officially my Pastor, but he was the only person I trusted with my religious questions. I was born into a legacy of Baptist preachers and deacons (and ushers and choir members). I don’t know everything I would like to know about Daddy’s spiritual journey, but I know his father was a Baptist preacher and that he later became a Baptist preacher. I know that for a time Daddy was affiliated with the Church of God In Christ and that he returned to the Missionary Baptist Church before I was born. Daddy was relatively tolerant of most Christian denominations in very general terms but took the adage “as for me and my house” very seriously as head of household so we were all Missionary Baptist Christians in his house. This legacy and childhood environment is why I say that I was born a Missionary Baptist Christian. The reason I even mention being born a Missionary Baptist Christian so specifically is that I, true to my Wandering Spirit, sort of wandered off in other directions over the course of my spiritual journey but found myself back in the Missionary Baptist Church, then by choice.
Look at those long legs – no wonder everyone thought I would be tall. They just didn’t know I got all the leg I was going to have at about that age.
Mommy and her family had a less strict and less specific religious legacy. I don’t believe her mother nor her aunt – the primary women who raised her – were affiliated with any religion in particular as adults because they didn’t go to church (at least during the years I knew of them). However, her maternal grandfather was a part of the United Methodist Church as was she and my siblings, for roughly ten years that I can confirm. When Daddy joined NNMBC, Mommy and my teenaged siblings had to be water-baptized (full immersion) to join the church because through the United Methodist Church they had been “sprinkled”. Joining NNMBC required confession (Jesus is God’s only begotten son, our Lord and Savior), water baptism (full immersion), and communion (along with the right hand of fellowship).
As far back as I can remember, Daddy talked to me about Jesus and God in such a way that I felt they could have been distant family members just as my maternal family was – I was a tween before I met any of my mother’s family. Daddy took my confession at a super young age at home and then began explaining to me the formal rituals that needed to take place. The first problem I told my parents I had with this formal process was walking to the front of the church while the “doors of the church were open”, meaning the time of service just after the sermon when the invitation to come to the front and make your confession was extended. I was painfully and awkwardly shy in any public setting and telling an entire sanctuary of folks what I believed and that I wanted to be baptized was crippling. I thought maybe Daddy could just pass the message on for me. The second problem I told them – because they never accepted my shyness as a barrier to this or anything – was my fear of being completely submerged in water. They tried a few things at home to try and get me over it but when they saw the level of my fear of the water, Mommy persuaded me that swim lessons would be a fun activity. Unfortunately, they didn’t “take” and I still can’t swim, however, I learned to be okay with my head under water and that was enough for a baptism in my parents’ book. They were certain that I understood my confession, had a strong desire to be a Christian and be assured of salvation (going to heaven after death), and that it was time for me to push past the fears that held me back.
This is Gina on her way to church. My friends would later say I looked like Sophia Petrillo (Golden Girls), in my suit skirt almost under my arm pits, holding on to my white pocket book.
When I was eight years old Mommy and Daddy chose a Sunday that I was going to make my confession and then be baptized, and announced to me that this was happening. I was terrified but I knew there was no other way around it. Mommy had invited a couple of friends to come and be there when I made my confession and for the baptism that would take place the following Sunday. Fear would not be tolerated with people watching. I was sick to my stomach the entire service thinking about walking to the front of the church with everyone watching me and having to speak in the microphone. Mommy and Daddy had practiced the questions with me – this was a ritual after all – to be sure I answered correctly. I walked to the front of the church, forcing my head up high because Mommy told me not to do the thing where I walked with my head down so low that my back was hunched over. As I neared the altar headed toward that red upholstered chair I would have to sit on, I could hear mumblings of people who were moved – one way or another – by what it meant that I was participating in this sacred ritual. I was beginning to feel better because it was almost over. After answering the questions loudly into the microphone as Mommy instructed me – because I can be a serious low-talker, almost whispering – it was announced that I would be baptized the following Sunday, and the congregation celebrated while I all but ran back to my mother. All of the ladies – Mommy, her guests, and my godmother were teary-eyed.
I made one request for my support system for the full-immersion water baptism – that Daddy be the one who baptized me. I needed Daddy because of how I trusted him with my life. Only Daddy would be the one I trusted not to let me drown – even though I had never seen or heard of anyone drowning in the baptismal pool. I actually loved baptism Sundays because the red curtain that kept it hidden was wide open and I loved the artwork featuring White-Jesus on the back wall. It seemed to light up the entire sanctuary for me and I was always so happy about the people being baptized and securing there places in the Christian family and in heaven.
This is Little Miss Walker, so named by the members of NNMBC. I absolutely loved this dress.
The Sunday I was baptized there were 22 candidates for baptism. This was an insane number of children and adults being baptized at once and the result of a week-long revival where the invitation for salvation was extended every night. I wore a swimsuit and swim cap under my white robe and white cap that was the “dipping uniform”, and I was second in line to be baptized. This was the first time I remembered ever seeing three men in the pool – because of the number of candidates for baptism they would alternate dips. The other very important person involved in my baptism didn’t have to be asked to participate, but announced that she would be there behind the scenes with me before I was dipped. There in the back, keeping order and directing the candidates for baptism was my godmother, Lucy Bell. She touched my shoulders, adjusted my caps, and reassured me several times while we waited for the ceremony to start. I can still feel her hands on me and smell her. I asked her to make sure the men got it right – that Daddy knew when to step up for me – and I rested assured that she would make everything alright. When it was my turn she took me up the stairs toward the pool and held on to me as I stepped down into the water until Daddy took my hand. He said those words, after some scriptural preamble that served as a countdown to me – “Now, I baptize you my sister, in the name of the Father (3), in the name of the Son (2), and in the name of the Holy Spirit. (1)” And I was taken down under the water, unable to resist Daddy’s strength even though my reflex was resistance, and popped back up with my nose burning from the water. I was rushed off into the arms of another familiar usher, one who was teary-eyed and who gave me some instruction on where to go and find my mother who’d stayed in the sanctuary to witness my baptismal and then rushed behind the scenes to dry me and change my wet clothes. True to myself, I didn’t get the instruction quite right and was found in the wrong place freezing and dripping on the floor where my Sunday school class was taught. Mommy, also teary-eyed, commented on how the swim cap didn’t protect my ring curls quite enough and then sent me back to the sanctuary where I sat near the Mother Board. They made me feel safe and I recall feeling incredibly grateful to officially be a member of NNMBC, to finally have secured my entry to heaven after death, and to have become a part of the whole Christian family. And finally I would be allowed to have communion.
I describe my baptism here in painful details to demonstrate a few important points. I want to impress upon you the level of my devotion and belief in Christianity at a young age. I was very serious about this thing and very well supported by my parents. I want to share the fear that threatened to hold me back and the levels that my parents went through to help me push past it. And I want to explain why I disagree with the people who believe that only an adult can make a decision to accept Christ in their hearts. I know that it is very possible for a young child to accept Christianity with even more clarity than some adults. And even though I won’t change the mind of someone with that belief, I know I don’t need to have an adult do-over baptism because mine was not for my parents, but for myself.
Here I am, sat atop the television console as if I am a decorative item, to pose for a Sunday morning photo.
Even though there are already a ton of words on the page, I have more to say. Should I make this a two-parter? Maybe.
I am Regina Lynette. I am a Baptist Christian. Maybe.
Is melodrama hereditary? I know that most likely it’s learned behavior, but I feel like I inherited mine. It wasn’t one of my mother’s most prevalent characteristics, but it was always there. In most dramatic fashion, she ripped a nightgown off in the middle of the living room after I projectile vomited as an infant all over her and no one was helping her (she told me this story herself). When working extra jobs to get her beau a special collection of books for Christmas, he accused her of neglecting her children by leaving them home alone for several hours late in the evenings. She threw each one of those books at him while explaining what she was doing. I really don’t want to tell you that it was my daddy – but it was. A sibling told me this story that happened before I was born. Those are just two of my favorite recollections of melodramatic Mommy.
When my melodramatic self shows up to the party, I fully embrace her. I can remember falling on the floor in swoon-worthy fashion when hearing something that pushed me to my limits – annoyances or shocking statements. I took preliminary results of my first mammogram (“we see something on the mammogram that we want to look at more closely”) and ran the entire gamut of having breast cancer and requiring surgery and which fundraising marches I would participate. Just a few weeks later – and several months of monitoring – the true results were I have a benign cyst that doesn’t even need to be removed. I can tell an inflated recounting of a situation that impresses myself, and sometimes I have to let witnesses know that I am reveling in my most melodramatic self when they begin to wonder if I was even present in the same event. I’ve thrown some things in anger – fortunately not at anyone – and I’ve slammed a landline phone down seven times after an irritating conversation. And honestly, I’m very pleased with my melodramatic self. I find her completely entertaining.
I am Regina Lynette. I love myself when I’m being the most. Like when I wear all the colors, and dye my hair purple, and wear purple nails, and wear all my rings at the same time, and wear a graphic tee with an identity statement, and choose green because it enhances creativity, and stand beside a giant mural of a mason jar of sweet tea.
Even though I have moments where I am being the most and truly loving the fact that I am being the most, I have moments on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. And the moments where I believe I am not enough or the moments where I intentionally try to be less might also be hereditary or maybe learned behaviors. Both of my parents had certain insecurities, but I spent much more time talking to my father about the moments where he was a victim of believing he was not enough. For my father his insecurities stemmed from a good desire to better himself. Unfortunately, he was embarrassed about his lack of formal education and some elements of his upbringing. When people made assumptions like his attending seminary and having a post-graduate degree, he would shrink in silence – never misleading anyone but seldom if ever correcting them. He lived with a level of embarrassment from only completing the 7th grade. In his 60s he went to night school and got his GED, increasing his impression of his self-worth, but he still struggled with the fact that he was self-educated enough to appear more on the outside while believing he was less on the inside. This story about his education was something I was particularly proud of – I mean what he achieved in self-education in the absence of formal education, but I kept his secret until after he died.
My lesser self withdraws and hides in hopes that I won’t attract the attention of anyone or encourage any kind of interactions that would expose the ways I believe I’m not enough. I don’t believe I am as beautiful as other women in my family, so I purposely avoid dressing up and making up and other primping believing there is not enough in all the world to make me shine as brightly as they. And if I get a compliment, I believe it’s just a courtesy and insincere. I shrink whenever someone boasts that I know a lot about a subject or have great interest in something – I don’t want anyone to be disappointed at any level of ignorance I have about a particular subject. I’ve been so quiet and still in a room that once a person actually turned out the lights on me after checking that the room was empty – they quite literally did not see me sitting in the middle of the room. It’s like I have an invisibility cloak like a superhero except I only use it to avoid interactions with other people. While I consider this trait a negative, I still value it almost as much as my most melodramatic self. What I like about it is I can observe human behavior in a way to see intentions without being noticed and subsequently I can detect ill intentions or ingenuine people without being swayed by their tactics.
I am Regina Lynette. I love myself even when I think I’m not quite enough – when I keep my hair tied down so it doesn’t move, and I wear a cover-up with a full shorts ensemble underneath instead of daring to wear a swimsuit, and I wear sunglasses so dark you can’t see my eyes, and I sit on the back of a boat in silence while everyone else swims, and I decline any refreshment because I don’t want to demonstrate a need for anything.
Of course, the best of me can be found somewhere in the middle. My balanced melodramatic self is hilarious with impeccable comedic timing – a deadpan humor or a retelling of a story that will keep you entertained at worst and in stitches at best – and makes heavy life situations lighter and easier to maneuver. My balanced lesser self is humble and creates a very calm, safe space where a person can be vulnerable and find peace. And I love my most balanced self just as much as the extremes.
I am Regina Lynette. I love myself when I’m being the most. And then again when I’m not enough.
“I love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.”
The end-of-year holidays always drove me into a frenzy as a child that my teachers, siblings, and parents all overlooked, and I am grateful they did. It was a frenzy, but it was joy filled. My siblings who lived at home with me had been away at college, returning for Thanksgiving break. Nearly every conversation in the house started with “When the kids get home…” Even I called them “The Kids” despite their being old enough (biologically) to be my parents. I found joy in every little thing – the drafty house causing the windows to fog and condensation to run was one of the most ridiculous things to find joyful but was one of the happiest additions to the ambiance.
Even though Thanksgiving itself wasn’t particularly my favorite holiday, I enjoyed certain aspects and it was always a good time overall. My siblings coming home was the best part, the marshmallows on that nasty sweet potato thing Mommy made was second, and the mac-n-cheese was third. Outside of that I loved watching Mommy set out her mismatched China and fragile water glasses that she found at a yard sale and I loved how she enjoyed decorating her table and getting us to dress up for dinner. I love seeing those plates and glasses today for that same reason. Mommy’s dressing was pretty tasty as well and generally my soft-drink restriction was relaxed for the Thanksgiving meal.
But Thanksgiving was far too short for me and mostly just served as a defining line for when Christmas, the pinnacle of the year, could start. In between Thanksgiving and Christmas is my birthday, so it would be just a few days after Thanksgiving when I started writing a countdown to my birthday whenever I had to write the date. You know, I’d write my name and December 1st on my paper and then add “eleven days until my birthday”. I wasn’t exactly making an announcement, but my glee was just oozing out through my hand to my pencil and onto the paper. My teachers sometimes commented, and it seemed they understood the level of excitement demonstrated by that simple act. I can recall that at the height of reaching my birthday, I often sat on top of my desk – if I sat at all – and for whatever reason, my teachers had patience with me. The threshold for consequences was lowered for me universally during that time. Finally, about a week later we’d go on Christmas break and “The Kids” would be coming home soon again.
Christmas was always my favorite holiday, and being the only young kid in my household, Christmas was all about me, myself, and I. We went through the basic rules of magic – Santa only came if I was good and at night when I went to sleep – and I would wake up to a glorious toy-filled room at which I was front and center.
One year Daddy was going to have to work on Christmas morning, so this once Mommy decided we’d exchange gifts early on Christmas Eve at 2PM in the afternoon. It was the only time in my entire life that opening presents early was allowed. That Christmas Eve I was entirely out of control from the moment I opened my eyes until the moment we started opening presents. I had developed a special kind of impatience just for the occasion and thankfully I had a significantly lower threshold for when inappropriate behavior was punished. At some point in the day when I reached a particularly unattractive level of unreasonableness, Mommy suggested that I pass the time by cleaning out a toybox. Who the heck wants to clean? Even as a distraction I thought she was really stretching it. But then she insisted that I find a few specific toys and play with them. It was a step up from cleaning, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled playing with old toys when shiny new ones were under the tree waiting on me to open them. But I did it because even though that discipline threshold was low, it was not inexistent, and Mommy was not one to be played with – I truly believed everything under that tree might be taken away if she deemed necessary.
While I was playing with those old toys, 2PM made its way around and we opened presents. I felt a little ashamed by my behavior by the time we opened the gifts. Why was I losing my mind when I knew exactly the time of day I’d be in that bliss? And we were opening gifts a whole day earlier than usual so why was I lamenting the wait? And when I opened the biggest gift, it had everything to do with those toys she made me find and play with. And I was a little more embarrassed. And for some reason – I guess the moments of introspection, that year was the first time I really noticed how the adults exchanged presents and that they were excited by their big gifts, too. There was a world outside of mine on Christmas and it looked pretty nice. I was further embarrassed by my behavior, and I looked out the window into the backyard to let my thoughts wash over me (staring out of windows was something I learned to do because Mommy did it whenever she was thinking). And while I was thinking, it started snowing! Yes, it was Memphis so snowing meant some little flurries that never even stuck were floating around the air, but it was technically snowing. And since we were doing Christmas at that moment, I declared it my first ever White Christmas. And I grew up just a little bit that year. It would be an extremely slow growth, but it started that Christmas.
I don’t remember the toys in question or the gifts I received that Christmas. I remember that I saw myself as selfish and impatient and rude and decided I wanted to be more generous, more patient, and kinder. And I could see that not only did Mommy plan out every detail for a great and magical Christmas, but she had taken into account that I was going to be a restless spoiled brat up until the moments I got everything I wanted.
In the year 1889 in the perfect month on the perfect day, Peoria was born in Arkansas. Twenty years after her birth in 1909 in the perfect month on the perfect day, Peoria gave birth to Odetta in Arkansas. While Odetta was yet 16 years old, she gave birth to Dorothy Lee on October 31, 1925 in Memphis, Tennessee. Dorothy Lee was also 16 years old when she gave birth to her daughter, Donna Maria on September 16, 1942 in Memphis, Tennessee. And when Donna Maria was in her 33rd year of life, she gave birth to me on December 12 in Memphis, Tennessee. I am Regina Lynette, daughter of Donna Maria, daughter of Dorothy Lee, daughter of Odetta, daughter of Peoria.
Peoria Cox {circa 1889 – December 10, 1945}; Mothers unkown
My mother told me who this was when I was a child, but I regrettably do not recall what she said. For many reasons, I have made a guess that this is Peoria. I have no way to know if that’s accurate but until I get different information, the person in this photo represents Peoria, my mother’s great grandmother.”
Peoria, who gave birth at 20 years old to Odetta, lost that girlchild a mere 31 years later to apoplexy due to interstitial nephritis. Peoria was presumably involved in her granddaughter, Dorothy Lee’s, life until her own death on December 10, 1945, of cerebral hemorrhage due to unknown causes. Peoria outlived her daughter – my mother often said that losing a child was the worst pain in the world so I declare that Peoria survived the worst pain that life could dish out. Dorothy Lee, who lost her mother at 14, gave birth 2 years later without her mother. I declare that Dorothy Lee’s losing her mother as a young teenager was something incredibly difficult because losing my own mother as a young teenager was incredibly difficult. Donna Maria was born without a grandmother. She was but 3 when her great-grandmother died – who we only presume was involved in her life. But Donna Maria outlived her mother, Dorothy, who died of cancer while Donna was 42 years old. I would not know Peoria existed until I was an adult and even then, she was only a name in a baby book and on a death certificate. I did not know that Odetta Cox existed until I was in college and at that time she was only a name in an email provided through my uncle from a distant cousin, a name in a baby book and a name on a death certificate. I knew of Dorothy Lee but never met her before her death when I was 8 years old. I lost my mother from a heart attack about 5 years later, 2 weeks after my 13th birthday.
Odetta (Cox) Thomas {circa 1909 – March 24, 1940}; Daughter of Peoria Cox
I am not certain that this photo is my great-grandmother but based on a relatively reasonable deduction, I think this is Odetta.
My maternal ancestry can be traced back to the Bamileke (a corruption of the name) People of Cameroon and this has been guaranteed accurate from Odetta. Where did that heritage die out? Did Peoria – who is not guaranteed by our DNA testing to be from the Bamileke People of Cameroon – pass down any traditions, rituals or recipes to Odetta? Dorothy didn’t live her entire childhood with Peoria and Odetta so would she even have been passed down anything of her maternal line? Was our heritage completely wiped out by the ins and outs of slavery leaving Dorothy, her mother and her grandmother to have little to pass on? I don’t know. I’m left to put pieces together from birthdates, death certificates, and general world history. Peoria was born a free woman but her mother would have likely been born a slave and then freed by the time Odetta was born. I have no details for Peoria’s mother’s history – not even Peoria’s maiden name. I am happy to know my mothers’ names from my great-great grandmother. But I know very little about their gardens because 2 weeks after my 13th birthday, they were all gone.
How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers’ names.
Alice Walker, O Magazine, May 2003
“Mama’s baby, daddy’s maybe” was not the prevalent pattern in my family. Hardy Cox was in his daughter, Odetta’s, life. Rodney Thomas cared for his daughters after Odetta’s death as well as my mother, his granddaughter, and her children. While I don’t know the story behind Warren Terry’s absence in Donna’s life beyond the time he enlisted in the army during World War II, he was married to her mother and his family is mentioned as a part of her young life. And I was Robert Walker’s Daddy’s Girl, identifying more with his side of the family than my mother’s. In fact, most of what I know to be true and passed down in my family is from the men. I’m grateful for these men because I can attribute a lot of positive things from their influence. However, I really miss not knowing my maternal tribe.
Dorothy Lee Thomas {October 31, 1925 – May 15, 1985}; daughter of Odetta (Cox) Thomas, daughter of Peoria Cox
This is a photo of Dorothy from high school. I have more recent photographs of her but she wrote notes on the backs of them stating that she looked horrible and was ill (or convalescing).
A few years ago I felt particularly lost and was looking to find myself in my family. Since I was nothing like my siblings and not a lot like my mother (other than sometimes my eyes and sometimes my smile), I looked to my father’s family. I didn’t find my face (other than my happiest smile), my body, nor my personality in any of them. Much later I caught a glimpse of myself (personality) in my mother’s brother and I realized that I hadn’t looked to find myself in my mothers’ gardens. I’ve decided to use the photos in this entry to represent these mothers in my sacred space and I constantly look for myself in their eyes and faces and hands and hair.
Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.
Michele Filgate, What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About (Simon & Schuster, 2019)
One good thing about the deceased is that the rest of the generations to come have a chance to only know the best of that person. I don’t mean that the bad goes away or that you shouldn’t know the full history of a person – generational curses, ancestral rituals, as well as their life stories. I mean that when I tell stories about my parents, I tell the hard parts through a filter of both understanding and acceptance. I’ve had to forgive them for all of their mistakes. I’d begun the forgiveness process with Daddy before he died, thankfully, but I didn’t realize I had to forgive my mother until she had been gone several years (and family secrets were revealed). I have tried to understand Dorothy as well when I hear hard things about her, often trying to guess what might have happened to her to cause poor behaviors. When my sister’s children indulge me and let me walk them around Memphis telling tales of our history, it’s “my parents met in this lobby and it was love at first sight” rather than “my Daddy was married and 24 years older than my Mommy when they started their affair”. Neither version is a secret and while both are true, one is more fun to talk about to the ones who didn’t know them.
Donna Maria (Terry/Thomas) Walker {September 16, 1942 – December 26, 1989}; daughter of Dorothy Lee, daughter of Odetta, daughter of Peoria
Mommy’s parents married a couple months after she was born and her maiden name on her birth certificate is Thomas (Dorothy’s maiden name). However, I found a doodle from either Dorothy or Mommy that had Terry (Donna’s father) as her last name – kind of the way you doodle your own name with your crush’s last name in your school notebooks.
So, while unfortunately I do not know of any remaining family who can share stories about my generations of mothers, I do get to put the pieces together guessing the best outcomes and I can channel my own femininity from common Bamileke/Cameroonian ancestral rituals and fill in the gaps with pieces of myself.
Regina Lynette Walker; daughter of Donna Maria, daughter of Dorothy Lee, daughter of Odetta, daughter of Peoria
I am Regina Lynette, daughter of Donna Maria, daughter of Dorothy Lee, daughter of Odetta, daughter of Peoria.
My mother went to work on a Thursday, May 27th as Donna Maria Thomas. She came back from her lunch break as Donna Maria Walker. That was the story. In my parents’ romance, lunch hours were never a time for actually eating lunch, but for things like making out on park benches and running down the street to the courthouse to get married. I remember making my parents recount the details for their 11th anniversary – that 11th anniversary was a little over 6 months before my 11th birthday. (It wouldn’t fully dawn on me that I attended that blessed event until sometime after my mother’s death I received a bible with their wedding anniversary and my birthday written together as events in the same calendar year.) I don’t remember my parents ever celebrating their wedding anniversary, but they both remembered it every year. It wasn’t strange to me that my parents didn’t celebrate their wedding anniversary – I never saw any parents doing that except on television. However, I considered it a significant milestone for my own life without any encouragement from anyone else.
Something else very special happened on a May 27th – my little sister was born on a Friday. As her mother, my Godmother, promised me she was born while I was safely at home away from the “drama”. I was nervous when she was heavily pregnant that she would suddenly go into labor like the ladies did on sitcoms and I didn’t want to be around when that happened. I remembered thinking, how perfect is it that my sister – who is not my parents’ child – was born on my parents’ anniversary? Why is that perfect? I don’t know exactly – I didn’t know then either.
May 27th has always felt like an important date for me. Maybe it was my parents’ anniversary but if I hadn’t come along when I did, how many more years beyond those 11 would they have continued their on-again, off-again romance? I used to get a kick out of the phrase “May-December Romance” because my parents were born 24 years apart and were the very definition of a May-December romance. And they got married in May. And I was born in December. And on another May 27th, I was gifted a baby sister. Yep – in my mind in those years that’s who she was to me, a gift. I knew even at age 6 to be chosen as a sister was something altogether different than being born into sisterhood. Neither is greater than the other but the intention behind the former is impossible to dismiss.
After I sent my sister birthday wishes, I decided to write about how I love May 27th. In December I explained how I hate December 26th (the day my mother died). In February I wrote about how I used to hate Valentine’s Day (the day my father died). Then I wrote about hating Mother’s Day. And Father’s Day is next month (and yes, I hate it too). So, I thought I’d throw in some of the days I have managed to love. I don’t have a lot of emotional and detailed events to share about why I love May 27th except that it’s the day that my parents came together, and the day my baby sister was presented to the world. It feels like God made that day just for me.
As a child Mother’s Day was not a huge deal to me specifically. It was always hot that Sunday. I would usually have a new shorts ensemble. I don’t think it was a “ring curls” event but I can’t really remember and for some reason I can’t find a single photograph from Mother’s Day. And as a motherless child with a dream of parenting deferred, it was hell and now it’s just unpleasant. But I remain slightly melodramatic and declare I hate Mother’s Day.
At my church – the place where I was baptized and a member until my last year of high school, Mother’s Day events happened for my family mostly on the Sunday and Saturday before. We still attended whatever rehearsal or practice or meeting that was scheduled even though we weren’t going to be in town on that Sunday. And at the end of either the Sunday before Mother’s Day or on that Saturday just before the day, we’d go to the ladies with the trays of corsages – carnations made from tissues – in red and white. I can’t be certain, and it doesn’t seem quite right, but in my mind the ladies were selling these faux carnations. We received 3 – white for Daddy and red for me and Mommy. Remembering this transaction means this memory happened only a couple years but they were obviously poignant years. It was after Grandmommy died and before Dorothy died. (Mommy’s mother was always identified by her first name instead of any version of Grand Mother.)
And for a period of time, I remember the 3 carnations – one white and 2 red – carried a little bit of pride and a little bit of sadness. I was sad that Daddy had to wear a white carnation, but he seemed to wear it proudly. And I took on that emotion and carried it as if it were my own. I was sad that Mommy wore a red flower and as she pinned it on her left side she’d always say, “I don’t know if my mother is dead or alive so I will wear red. I hope she’s still alive.” She was sad, but hopeful to some degree and I took on that emotion, added it to Daddy’s, and carried it as if it were my own. And then she pinned my red flower on my left side, and I was proud. My mommy was still alive, and I saw her every day and I knew for sure that she loved me. I chose to put my feelings in my back pocket, carrying my parents’ emotions as an expression of loyalty. Even though she received the tissue carnations from the church ladies, we usually wore a different faux flower, a pretty one that Mommy bought, to go to Mississippi.
If my memories are accurate, we went to Corinth and Rienzi in Mississippi – the place Daddy always called home – every Mother’s Day until I graduated high school. I don’t remember the years before Grandmommy’s death vividly – just little flashes of only her like when she saved me from a grasshopper and would have to call me out to come and greet her because I was too shy to just jump in and hug her when we got to her trailer on my uncle’s land. I’d hang outside the door or against a wall, maybe hiding behind Daddy’s leg until she asked about me.
We dressed in our Sunday best, I remember Daddy wearing his clergy collar and I felt like it made him royalty for a Sunday. We’d get into the car and drive toward the country. We would make one stop before heading to church – the church I always believed my entire family for generations belonged, even though truthfully I don’t know for sure how many generations before my father’s attended that church. We’d stop where Grandmommy was buried, beside the grandfather I never knew and Daddy would go alone. Then we were off to Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church. On the way to finding a seat we’d speak to everyone – I told you I felt like Daddy was royalty that day, greeting all of the parishioners who seemed so excited to see him. I determined after all those greetings that we were related to no less than half of the congregants. Daddy preached the sermon. My aunties and cousins sang in the choir. My uncle was a deacon and usually led devotion. After the service was over we spoke to the people we missed or who arrived late. This is when I tried to figure out how I was going to ride to my uncle’s house with my uncle. Most of the time that meant finding his wife, my auntie, because she always just told me I was going with them. There was no asking permission and no risk of hearing “no”. Uncle would always call me his “pretty little niece” when we greeted and for some reason my braids and shoes didn’t feel so tight anymore. We’d head to my uncle’s house where I’d change into my shorts ensemble to play with my cousins. Sometimes we ate at my auntie’s house in Corinth and sometimes she came to my uncle’s house in Rienzi. The fried chicken – Grandmommy’s recipe – was the star of the meal for me. After filling up on dinner and getting to have sodas – pops – without permission (carbonated water irritated my system so they were off limits) I spent the rest of the day playing with my cousins. We’d return to the city (Memphis), and we’d do it all again in one year’s time. Nothing about that day meant Mother’s Day to me. It might as well have been called Mississippi Day.
When I was 6 or 7 years old, Dorothy surfaced. She was dying of cancer and the family who had been estranged to Mommy for what seemed my entire life were calling her to California. After what felt like an eternity of Mommy sitting at her mother’s bedside, she came back home to me. But Dorothy took another turn without Mommy with her, was refusing to obey some doctor’s order – like eat or something – and was calling for Mommy to return to her. I wanted to go but she was going for an indefinite period of time and I had school. Dorothy died a few days after she returned to California and it ended up being about 2 weeks from the time she returned to California, Dorothy died and was cremated, and Mommy returned home to me. The next 4 or 5 Mother’s Days, mommy wore a white flower. Even though she seemed sad, she also seemed relieved to a degree. She would shed a couple tears, but I think just knowing for certain whether Dorothy was dead or alive was enough. I also think whatever happened in Dorothy’s last days allowed Mommy some closure if not a repair of over 40 years of a challenging mother-daughter relationship and she could more easily wear that white flower.
Two weeks after my 13th birthday, I lost my own mother. That first Sunday going to Mississippi the only assertion of my own rights (as opposed to unspoken rules) was to wear a white corsage, one that chose and found beautiful, and I wore a white dress. Even though I had been sitting alone at church services for about 5 months, that Sunday felt particularly lonely. And it was the last time I would wear a white flower. The main reason was because that white flower served no purpose to me and all it did was made me angry. But the secondary reason was because people – I think Daddy was one of them – told me to wear a red flower because I had a step-monster the next year. I hated the entire system of red and white flowers and determined to leave Mother’s Day on the calendar as simply the 2nd Sunday of May and Mississippi Day. Who the hell thought I was supposed to replace my white flower with a red one because of a step-monster? Did no one see that it meant replacing my mother and dismissing that she ever existed? Why didn’t anyone think of at least saying I should wear 2 flowers to represent both women? I wouldn’t have but at least they wouldn’t be suggesting that I erase my mother completely and embrace the monster that my father married in her place.
I tried to pass on some love for Mother’s Day to the other “mothers” in my life. I tried to come up with something to honor Sissy because she was a mother. I always made sure to tell Ms. Bell because she loved me with a mother’s heart and hand, but she was gone I believe just about two years after my mother. But it soon felt that acknowledging other mothers meant dismissing my mother further. It highlighted her absence and was painful. I would be in my 20s before I realized I needed help for my grief and I was going to have to find it for myself – professional help. Until then whenever I remembered Mommy, I felt the exact same trauma and pain that I felt the moment I found her. Once I had been alive longer than I had had her in my life, I determined the pain should have lessened over the years and that it was a problem.
After finding more peace with the loss of my mother and dealing with the associated trauma, I still found I hated Mother’s Day. For at least a week prior, everyone from the checkout counters in stores to the man who detailed my car, wished me a Happy Mother’s Day. And people who knew I wasn’t a mother came up with a list of reasons I should still be recognized as a mother – aunties and sisters and nearly all women were recognized as a mother for Mother’s Day. And in addition to highlighting the fact that Mommy was gone, I was reminded that years were ticking by that I imagined I would have had my own kids. And then I’d approached the age where I’d decided that I would give up on biological children and began grieving my children who didn’t exist and a dream I’d had since I was 11 years old. So, I started staying indoors on Mother’s Day avoiding social media, heartsick.
What happens to a dream deferred? Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life. (Langston Hughes, Harlem plus Proverbs 13:12 AMP)
The only joy I find is knowing that my niece and nephew make sure to celebrate and honor Sissy. I hate carnations and sometimes have peonies in a vase on the day for myself – my favorite flower. I celebrate Mommy’s birthday as Mother’s Day, my Mother’s Day, instead of the 2nd Sunday of May with cupcakes and champagne and tulips – her favorite flower – when I can find them (her birthday is in fall). And I wish the mothers in my family a Happy Mother’s Day on the Monday after.
I once walked away from Christianity as I knew it. I didn’t exactly denounce Christ as my savior, but I let go of every single thing except the fact that I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior and was therefore saved – my anchor point of remaining a Christian. I joked (because it was uncomfortable to talk about) that I was going AWOL from the Army of the Lord. I wanted, no needed, to let go of everything and get down to the basics. I stripped away everything that felt limiting and tried everything I found curious. I wanted to learn for myself what it meant to be a Christian because my teachers and preachers had taken Christianity and packaged it in manipulation and contradictory philosophies bound with illogical rules that were not Biblical. This action didn’t please Daddy, although he wasn’t around for the peak of my departure. He was around when I started questioning things and even challenging him on things. Most often he responded to me calmly, matter-of-fact-ly (I did that on purpose), and honestly. Occasionally he reacted from past traumas from past experiences with “church-folk”. But never did he use Christianity or our Baptist beliefs as a weapon or a tool to sway me in any direction. So when my questions turned to a need to physically explore, he told me it was okay. He said that I have a wandering spirit and though he didn’t say it explicitly, he believed that because Christianity, specifically Missionary Baptist was the truth and the way that I would return.
At the peak of my departure from Christianity as I knew it, I had a couple of close friends who were “church friends”. Our friendship was based on living according to Christian principles and almost served an explicit purpose of keeping each other on the straight and narrow. While I knew they were very pious, I didn’t learn the nature of our friendship until it ended, you know 20/20. When I was exposed to the leaders and preachers that they followed and called anointed, I began to see more of the hypocritical and manipulative tactics used against parishioners and their ignorance and this caused fissures in the friendships. I was told that I have a runaway spirit – among other demonic spirits that had supposedly overcome me.
Senior year of college, standing in front of the church I belonged to at the time. A friend is cut out of the picture. Dear friend, if you remember being in this photo, it’s nothing personal but I just needed to be a solo picture and I didn’t find another.
Wandering Spirit was a compliment and Runaway Spirit was an insult. Well, maybe Wandering Spirit wasn’t intended exactly as a compliment but it was something that my father saw in me and accepted, allowing me to choose to embrace it if I wanted. Is that really true? Yep. Runaway Spirit was a term to encourage me to get back on track, whatever that was, and it felt derogatory and manipulative. Is that really true? Eh…
I’ve only shared one situation here in which I was called a Wandering Spirit by my father and a Runaway Spirit by others but both of those identifiers have a long list of items behind them. And my behavior has been both Wandering and Runaway at times. When I learn that something I’ve always believed is true is flawed in some way, I need to test it for myself. I need to get to the root of the truth, the unadulterated truth, the pure truth, and I need to be right – not insisting that people agree with me no matter what but to know the thing that is true and right. When something is no longer serving me I let it go – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but always completely. When a person is crushing my spirit or rejects the parts of me that they don’t particularly like or understand, I remove them from the closest parts of my spirit, my soul, my heart. And anything that gives me bad vibes – a space or a person – is something I leave quickly. If I wander and don’t return to the thing I wandered off from, have I runaway?
College years again, at a collegiate Christian conference. Again, a friend is cut out of the picture. Dear friend, we took a lot of college + church photos together. And I didn’t find any of me alone. Nothing personal.
Runaway spirit is an identifier, placed on me by limiting and closed minded people, probably with what they believe to be good intentions. I’ve left it behind.
As a little girl Mommy would always tell me to stay with her whenever we entered a store. If my big brother or sister was with us I would beg to go with them. Sometimes she let me but often she insisted I stay by her side. I think that every single time we entered any of the stores we entered during all 13 years I had her in my life that I managed to get lost in that store to some degree. Eventually I mastered the return quickly enough to not cause too much trouble but it all depended on what caught my eye and prompted me to wander off. Sissy has told me that often she turns to say something to me when we’re walking and suddenly I’m not there. And there have been plenty of times that I’ve had to stand still and be found in a store, like I did three weeks ago. As an adult I’ve truly felt like telling a stranger that I lost my sister in a store so I can get some help. But it’s always because I’ve needed to know more about something I’ve seen. And I always return to the original purpose of our outing.
Why would I expect to behave just like all of my family? I was born “off-generation” – my father was old enough to be my grandfather. He was number 5 in a family of 15 children. The brother that I know he spent most of his happier times with was 20 years younger than he. My first cousins weren’t my friends because they were old enough to be my parents. My oldest siblings were old enough to be my parents. In fact, 3 nieces and a nephew are older than I. My youngest siblings were not my friends but my secondary care-givers as they were teenagers in the house when I was born. And because I was born into a blended family – the sole member in the Venn diagram of my family – my home culture was different than that of any of my siblings. The day-to-day norms of my father’s first family unit were different than those of my mother’s first family unit and different than those of my day-to-day norms. Why would I expect to behave just like all of my family?
Why would I expect to look just like all of my family? I was the only child between my parents. I have no other siblings with both my mother’s and my father’s genes combined. I don’t particularly look like my oldest siblings who possess half of my father’s genes and half of their mother’s genes. I don’t particularly look like my youngest siblings and we all have different fathers. My paternal grandfather was gone well before I was born and I never saw a photograph of him until I was an adult. I couldn’t find myself in his face. My paternal grandmother was around for the first 8 years of my life but I probably saw her about 8 times in that life. I couldn’t find myself in her face – she was in her 80s for all of my life which I’m sure didn’t help. I didn’t see my face in that of my paternal aunties and uncles. I didn’t look like my cousins. My maternal grandfather was essentially a question mark and as far as genetics from him he remains a question mark. A photograph was sent to me fairly recently that is unconfirmed but highly likely him and I don’t see myself in his face. My maternal grandmother was unknown to me except in a photograph and I couldn’t find myself in that picture. I didn’t find my face in my mother’s only sibling – my uncle has a different father than my mother. Why would I expect to look just like all of my family?
Why would I expect to be the same person as all of my family? They are my tribe but I was not raised in my tribe. I was raised as if I were an only child. I was raised in a household of three people of three generations. I was raised by people who intentionally raised me with a different hand than the one they’d used to raise their older children. And I was raised in a vacuum of sorts – we were estranged from much of my family both immediate and extended. I was born in what has now been considered a sub-generation, not quite the generation before and not quite the generation after, a proud Xennial. I lived in what was considered “the country” to my maternal family and what was considered “the city” to my paternal family. And much of my life was presented to our community as a series of lies of omission. To be accepted by all the different sectors of my tribe, when necessary for us to interact, I had to imitate a person they would admire and value. Why would I expect to be the same person as all of my family?
When Mommy sent me out with Daddy alone, she told me not to be myself and to not let people see how I really act. I think I’ll just leave that right there for now.
The first years after college graduation were pretty hellish for me (and therefore everyone else around me). If rage could be a person, I was that person. Rage and fury kept my blood between a low simmer and a rolling boil all day every day. During that period of time my sister named me Rebel Gina. The first time she gave me that name she explained that she was confused by my behavior and even pointed out that I looked like I was dressed for combat – I wore Army green and black when I wasn’t wearing heather gray and black which I associated with grief, funeral clothes. My hair was short and red and wild – it was chemically relaxed but I didn’t straighten it with heat and let it dry by holding my head out the window speeding down the highways. I listened to rock music – an unofficial no-no for my family and according to what I’d been told, not intended for black people in general. I wasn’t in church every time the doors opened. In fact, I didn’t have a church home for the first time in my life though I generally attended my sister’s church at the time. And things considered New Age and Occult captured my interest. What was happening was I was experimenting with the “real” me who was screaming to be released from oppression.
I miss Rebel Gina even though she was too angry for me to embrace with joy. And Rebel Gina was not intended to be a compliment of any kind – maybe not quite an insult but it was not intended as a good name. In my rage I loved the name she gave me. It fit what was happening; I truly was rebelling against everyone and everything all day every day. If Rebel Gina wants to come back wearing graphic tees and destructed denim, teaching me how to relax, she’s welcome. If she can simply revel in the joy and charm of Regina Lynette, she’s very welcome to stay.
I am Regina Lynette 