Wednesday, September 29, 2010 – As I write this blog I’m thinking of my mother, Irene Margaret Smith (my Keba). I’m thinking of the wit and wisdom I’ve missed out on these past ten (10) years. I’m also thinking of the overwhelming pride she would feel as she stood shyly by and watch me taking these bold yet baby steps towards becoming what I’ve always dreamed about becoming—a published author.
Many years ago I had an opportunity to be published. I refused. Why? It was a matter of principle. The principle was the most important part of my decision making. The person who was offering to publish my book (not this one) had themselves started out by self-publishing and had, along the way, gotten ‘picked’ up by a main-stream publishing house and now had their own imprint. This individual was now ‘gathering’ authors and so I was offered a sum of money and assured a certain number of books would be printed for the first run. I didn’t like this author’s work and I also felt that I wrote better and so, against the advice of the person suggesting the offer I turned it down. Was that a wise choice? For a while I wasn’t sure if I’d made the best decision but upon reflection it must have been the best decision for me since I have no regrets.
Now here I am without my mother and wanting to tell her about this journey. My mother was not an educated woman but she was the brightest woman I knew and she loved words. My mother always had a book. She didn’t use any fancy book marks she used bits and pieces of paper to ‘mark’ her page. Sometimes when she was reading she would say “big Jerusalem” and I would invariably know that she’d encountered a word that she didn’t know. I understood “big Jerusalem”. When she said that she knew I would come. I would tell her the word, what it meant and help her to, as she would say, “sound it out.”
Sometimes if she encountered the same word again she might not fully remember and she’d say, “Here’s that big Jerusalem word again.” I also knew she didn’t want help with it this time. She didn’t need to know how to say the word. She’d gathered the gist of and she was just helping me to recall our having worked the word out together—our moment of shared discovery.
It is for times like those or times when she was busy being the best griot I’d ever met that I would miss her and terribly.
On August 28, 2000 my mother’s voice quieted. I accepted (with a lot of difficulty) that I would never hear her stories (and God were there stories), her whistling (my mother could whistle Ava Maria and make you cry), her singing (that’s where she got the nick name “Keba”) or her talking. It wasn’t so much the words I would miss but the sound of her voice. The way her Bajan accent wrapped itself around familiar words and changed them. She made them free floating rhythm I knew every inflection of her voice. I knew the nuances of her speech and even when she didn’t speak I knew her ‘language’. My mother’s language was one of love. Even when she chastised you she didn’t strip away the love. Love was always there.
This journey without her has been like learning to live without my right hand (I’m a righty), without sight and her insight(without both I’ve been blind to so many things), and most of all the words and emotions with which she coated her thoughts. These words were rich and they touched me deep enough to help me create unbelievable characters.
As unimaginable and surreal as this part of my Etched journey has been without her. I keep telling myself that somehow she knows. Somehow she’s in that place that allows her to know what I’m doing and in that place where she is right now she’s proud of me. She’s talking about me in that wonder lilting Bajan voice she’s saying that she knows I miss her and she’s sorry that there’s nothing she can do to let me know but she knows that somehow my heart will feel her and know. I know. I know because I’m her daughter.
My mother’s mark or etchings on my life and soul are indelible. My mother’s words resonate in my spirit and help me to keep on even when my eyes are blurry with tears and the road ahead seems like a haze or like fog has touched the ground. Even in the zero visibility days I know she’s there—just up ahead so I forge on following her—my own angelic GPS.
My mother loved all her children. There was never any doubt about her love for her children or the pride she felt when one of us, and it didn’t matter which one, accomplished something—she was proud. Her smile might have been shy or sometimes practically covered by her hands but her eyes laughed out loud. My mother’s eyes would explode with every range of emotion and finally when they were full as her heart she would close them. I think she would shut her eyes so as to etch her pride on her heart.
Etched is the kind of book that would bring about that kind of response in my mother. She would laugh at the funny parts, share the sadness of the characters, and at the parts of pure love (physical expression of love) she would be shy but her eyes would betray her. They would laugh and I would know that she was proud.
Irene Margaret Smith…..my mother, my friend, my Keba—I missed you before but now as I get closer to the end of this journey of seeing Etched become a book and I, a published author I’m having many zero visibility days.
Excerpt from Etched - …..came out of the kitchen and she had a white candle in her hand. It was lit and without a word she put it on the side cabinet. Daddy said that the candle was to remember Mommy’s spirit. Seeing the candle started to make me feel really sad. I watched the candle burning and each time it flickered the more I missed Mommy.
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