Heavenly Birthdays are for Angels
Ten years ago today, I lost the one person in this world who was most like me, who understood the shy, quiet, silly, secretly smart girl whose moods ranged from happily silent to loud and opinionated about everything. I believe she lived her life, similarly, so that unbeknownst to her, the universe wouldn’t see me as this strange new thing and would perhaps have mercy on my being. She had this way of seeing me, of quietly understanding the person I was, and am, even more so than I understood myself. She was a Black woman, underappreciated in this white patriarchal America, unacknowledged for her genius, only for her kindness and availability. And loved deeply by her family and very few long-term friends.
She wasn’t just a caretaker of people or steward to the heirlooms of her sister’s passed on before her, she was a problem solver, fierce advocate for herself and her loved ones, an artist, with a keen connection to the land, ahead of her time, in choosing herself by leaving her husband, when she found out he was cheating. Something that was not done in 1950’s America and certainly not done by Black women.
She was born in Dinwiddie, VA after her parents, my great grandparents as sharecroppers settled there after leaving South…
