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Grandma’s Hair: Back to Baby Soft

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Grandma’s Hair: Back to Baby Soft

Aint weekends grand? Love and inspiration I get on the weekends charge me up!

We were on our way to church, about 6:45 a.m. – in time for breakfast , when Grandma realized she had forgotten her hat.

“Look at my hair. It’s a mess!” she said, looking at herself in the visor on her side.

“I guess I hadn’t noticed because you’re usually wearing a hat,” I said, mostly keeping my eyes on the road, but glancing to my right to notice that her hair was, in fact, undone.

She changed the subject .

“I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings yesterday,” she said. “I know you’ve got to live your own life, and you will wear what you want to wear.”

“Didn’t bother me,” I said.

She had criticized my dress as too short, and said my husband might react to such inappropriate dress.

“No man wants to see his wife leaving the house that way,” she had said. But I felt that I had defended myself by explaining that her sensibilities were “from another generation.”

In the fellowship hall at her church we enjoyed breakfast together and talked about her recently deceased best friend whose husband had been insensitive during her season of sickness. I listened as Grandma shared her opinions as if they were rock-solid “gospel.” Her friend’s husband surely would suffer for mis-treating his wife in her time of need, Grandma said.

“That kind of stuff comes back on you. You can’t turn your back on the sick. His conscious will eat away at him,” she said. I nodded, indicating agreement just to keep the peace. “She asked him to hand her a magazine, and he told her to get up and get it herself,” she had told me. “I was over there with her one day, and she told me he hadn’t even come home the night before. The last thing you need when you’re sick is for your husband not to come home.”

Seemed so sad.

I enjoyed my pancakes while she ate her grits although her face looked painfully sunken in without teeth to hold up her jaws. She’d lost her last two pairs of dentures and Granddad, who fusses profusely, finally agreed to pay for a pair of custom-fit dentures. I looked at her, and, thinking about her relentless criticism, thought of an old joke: “How’s your mom gonna take a bite outta crime when she ain’t got no teeth?” Grandma’s opinions could be biting even when she’s literally toothless.

A few moments later, in the mirror in the bathroom, she lamented the lifeless look of her hair. It was un-styled, flat.

“My hair’s a mess!” she said.

“Let me see what I can do,” I said reaching for the blue plastic comb she retrieved from her purse.

I combed it all straight back at first, and marveled at how soft it was. It was soft and manageable like baby’s hair. I quickly realized it had a natural soft curl that could be easily shaped around my fingers.

“Grandma you got curls! Naturally!” I said, clearly delighted.

I combed all her hair straight and curled the ends at the nape of her neck. Looking at her in the mirror, I admired my handi-work, then decided I could do better. I parted her hair on the side and styled it the way I wore my own hair just a couple years ago.

“I liked it better the way it was,” she said.

I thought she looked younger, more stylish in my style, so I was not inclined to change it for her. She accepted the style and we proceeded to the sanctuary. A young man stopped her and complimented her on her hair.

“Thanks. My Granddaughter did it,” she said with a smile.

I felt vindicated.  She had persuaded me to wear a long dress, which I considered old fashioned. Now, I had her in a new-fangled hair-do. Even! She looked cute. I was happy and so was she.

Later that day, I remembered pictures I had seen of her as a young woman wearing the most stylish wigs. I remembered her pressing her hair. She had taught my mother to press hair and later taught me. When I was a young woman wearing perms, Grandma was in her 50s and 60s wearing a short, natural fro. Her hair was growing long in her 70s and when she began chemo-therapy, we feared she would lose it all. I took her to the beauty parlor a few times on my dime since her husband considered that an unnecessary luxury she couldn’t afford.  She began washing it and setting it on old-fashioned rollers, the pink sponge kind. Now it had become soft and naturally curly again.

These days she wears her hats she’s collected over the years, but this particular Sunday she’d left home without a hat. I was happy to comb her tresses. In doing so, I was reminded of memories with her I’d treasured.

Honey Suckle Anyhow

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Honey Suckle Anyhow

I was leaving home, heading into the city to pick-up my grandparents to take them to church, one Sunday morning when I decided to grab a hand full of fresh honey suckle from the nearby forestry to sweeten my ride.

Honey suckle grows wild in my neighborhood. But I hadn’t thought to pick some to freshen my home and car until I saw a neighbor picking it.

I had loved honey suckle since I first noticed it’s sweet fragrance as a little girl. It grew in the front yard of my biological grandmother, the woman who had given my mother away as a toddler and later rejected my mother’s attempts to reconnect. I hated visiting her because she was so mean. But I was forced to spend time with her, and, to make the most of it, I delighted in whatever I could. When my cousins and I discovered the honey suckle bush in her front yard, we delighted in pulling the stem from the flower and dipping it on our tongue to savor its sweet juice. Honey scent of honey suckle always reminded me of this grandmother I loved to loath.

This grandmother had been contrary when not down right mean. Unlike the woman who adopted my mother and became affectionately known to me as “my real Grandmother,” my biological grandmother had mocked religion and church folk, calling it all “some foolishness,” and “non-sense.” This grandmother, who had conceived 11 babies by a married man and given all but three up for adoption, had gone to church only on Bingo nights as far as I knew. She had left her three young children at home to fend for them selves. She had used the child support money their father gave her to gamble. She had died a withering death, first losing her ability to maintain her own health and hygiene, then she succumbed to heart disease. But honey suckle always reminded me of her because I had discovered it first in her front yard.

As I picked a couple fists full of honey suckle to scent my car for my ride to church this particular morning, I delighted in realizing that God had blessed this grandmother with abundant honey suckle in her own yard despite her often spoken disdain for our notions of God and for organized religion. God had blessed her with honey suckle anyhow.

I was reminded that the sun shines on sinner and saint and the rain nourishes us regardless of our beliefs.

 

 

In the Garden I Grow

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In the Garden I Grow

When I told my husband I planned to spend Saturday morning picking strawberries, he teased.

“You’ll be the only little chocolate drop out there,” he said. “Black people ain’t picking NOTHING – no more!”

I burst out laughing and explained that I like to get my hands in the dirt. It’s a way of connecting to the earth. Also, I have fond memories of gardening with my paternal grandparents. Every year, since I was a young girl and they were retired, I watched them delight in their harvest of corn, okra, green beans, lettuce, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, radish, kale, collards, and other veggies. Grandma, even more than Granddad, eagerly anticipated the spring, waiting for the first break in the frost so they could till their plots. I had watched them pickle and “can” enough produce to last them through the winter and afford them significant savings in their grocery bills. My mother and her mother-in-law, my maternal Grandma, had welcomed me to their garden, where I learned to plant, weed, and harvest beets, carrots, yams, and other veggies right in the heart of “the urban jungle” where we lived.

I’d live in a row house in the inner city of the Nation’s Capitol. My Grandparents had gardens in the rear and on the side of their brick house and also manned a plot in a nearby community garden. Y mother and paternal grandmother had a plot in community garden in another area of the city. Gardening, to me, meant ensuring your own food in case any major calamity hit and the grocery stores and its supplies ever shut down. Gardening meant working your connection to the earth to secure your and your family’s survival.

Although I have neither the time, energy, or inclination to create and maintain my own garden these days, I enjoy novelty gardening.

“Why don’t you do this: save up your little money, buy the strawberry farm, and spare the whole race the embarrassment of you going out there picking the white man’s strawberries,” my husband teased.

I enjoyed a hearty laugh with him, but proceeded to the strawberry patch.

With my sleeves rolled up, kneeling down with my flat box in hand, I suddenly remembered one more thing I loved about gardening: my great grandparents had kept a strawberry patch in their backyard, located in the heart of Washington, D.C., for me and my cousins. Kneeling and picking strawberries now – in my 40s – I was reminded of days in my youth when I first learned to pick strawberries in my great-grandparents’ back yard. I remembered eating as many as I “saved for later.” My great grandparents and grandparents had experienced The Great Depression and believed in “saving for hard times.”

I recalled other lessons I had learned through gardening – and from my grandparents and great grandparents who gardened.

I was helping my grandparents prep their soil for seeds one year and Grandddad told me why I had to chop and pull up some old weeds that had branched out from a tall tree in their yard.

“The old roots will choke out roots from your new plants. You’ve got to cut those old roots out,” Granddad said. I thought about that one comment for weeks, and applied it to other areas of my life: cut out the old or it will choke the life out of what’s new.

Weeds – which are “unintended plants” – will drain nutrients from the soil and destroy your “intended plants,” Grand Dad believed. But I delighted in unintended red tulips that showed up in my yard.  I allowed them to live until they died a natural death.

In the garden, I realized I must root out some of my grandparents’ beliefs and traditions in order for my own to grow.

 

Basically Resourceful Sisters

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Resourceful Sisters

 

As my best friend from high school dressed her daughter for the prom, we reminisced about our own high school days. We laughed about playing hooky once or twice, and fell out recalling antics in the hallways before and after school.

 

“I got banned from the band room forever!” my friend said. We laughed like waters gushing from a damn. Days later, we were laughing again remembering other high school treasures. I recalled her older sister proudly making her own prom dress, and that stirred memories of when all of us sewed.

 

“Remember that polka-dot outfit you made!” my friend, Chee-Chee said, howling with laughter. “Damn polka-dot culottes!

 

“Girl yeah! I made a light blue set just like it. Those were the pieces for my first professional wardrobe! Remember? I had an internship and had to dress up. Chile please, I put on my white buckle-up sandals, one of those outfits and you couldn’t tell me nothing!”

 

“And that green dress you made!” she continued.

 

“Oh girl! Remember I had to make the pattern outta newspaper!”

 

“Hey. You had to do what you had to do!” she said, laughing.

 

“We was some resourceful sisters!” I said laughing.

 

“Remember that time we saw that outfit at the store but I couldn’t afford it? Then a couple weeks later you was like, ‘You got it!” And I told you I made it!”

 

We had taken “Home Economics” classes in junior high school and high school. There, we had learned to cook and sew. My grandmother had given me a sewing machine. Chee-Chee had used her big sister’s sewing machine. Chee-Chee was a plus-size and found it easier to make the clothes she wanted than to shop for them. I was – uh – economically challenged and found it was cheaper to make clothes than to spend all my summer job earnings on them. But then you could buy a yard of fabric for $1.49 and I could make a skit and top with two yards, some thread, my time and creativity.

 

“You know how old we sound?” I told my friend as we reminisced about our good old days, declaring them better than these days.

 

“Embrace it Honey,” she said.

 

In our 40s, we’re accepting the inevitability of “middle-age” picking off our youth. We agreed on the value of our out-dated home economic classes.

 

“They don’t even teach home economics anymore,” she said. “Kids don’t learn how to cook!”

 

“Who needs to cook these days?” I said. “Po something in the microwave and call it a day!”

 

“That stuff’s no good for you. That’s why everybody’s so fat!” she said.

 

“I know. Those quick meals don’t really satisfy our taste buds and don’t really nourish our bodies – that’s why we keep eating,” I said.

 

“That stuff’s got all them hormones,” she said.

 

“I know. I try to get back to basics as much as I can.”

 

“You got to,” she said.

 

“We know what to do, we just gotta do it,” I said.

 

She agreed.

 

 

 

 

Granddad’s Optimism – from A to Zinc

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Granddad’s Optimism – From A to Zinc

 

What are you doing for Father’s Day?

I’m thanking God for my paternal granddad, who inspires me from A to Zinc! Since a blood transfusion he had during surgery in the 1990s, he’s had absolutely no taste in his mouth. But he is optimistic that his sense of taste will return.

Granddad will be 94-years-old next month. He’s lived a good hearty life, but the past few years have been challenging beyond denial. He’s become more fussy than before. He’s got aches in his hips, past heart attacks and strokes that must come to mind every now and then. He’s become the care-taker for his wife (his love, joy and partner of more than 70 years). But he believes his taste buds can be restored.

Grandma said God took away Granddad’s taste buds because his mouth had been so foul for so long. He had cussed and fussed at her. He used to call her “heifer,” she told me. “God fixed his mouth,” she said.

I had laughed and joked with him about his loss of taste. “Granddad I can cook for you now!” I said once, laughing. He had teased me about my cooking spaghetti every time I invited them to my home for dinner. When I baked him a chicken with rosemary, he laughed at my attempt at gourmet cooking.

“What’s these weeds in the chicken?” he teased.

Granddad had been an executive chef for Marriott Corp., where he worked 40 years before retiring, and pleasing his pallet had seemed impossible until he lost his taste buds.  He eventually learned to appreciate the love and effort that went into preparing a meal though. Since Grandma’s life-threatening surgery three years ago, Granddad’s been cooking all their meals, and Grandma has complained that his food lacks flavor, a criticism I imagine must have cut to the bone.  On Sundays, he treats her to a hearty meal from their favorite soul food carry-out and sometimes takes her out to a restaurant when he can get a ride. (He’s 94 and lost his driving privileges last year.)

Earlier this month, on our way to church, he mentioned that his doctor is prescribing a new agent to revive his taste buds.

“My doctor’s going to start me on Zinc,” Granddad said. “She said that’s going to bring my taste buds back.”

“After 30 years?!?” I said, not intending to sound doubtful. “You’ll have to let me know how that goes. If your taste buds come back, that’ll be something for me to remember forever.”

On the way home from church I decided I would make another spaghetti dinner for him for Father’s Day. If his taste buds are back, he will fully appreciate the flavors. If his taste buds are still absent he may appreciate the zest of my mere effort. At the very least, he will get another chuckle out of me offering another meal of spaghetti.

 

 

 

 

 

Go Ahead and Cry

Posted on by sonsyrea

How was your weekend? Mine was great!

Saturday morning I was power-praise walking through my neighborhood. It’s my favorite exercise. I gear up in work-out clothes, strap on wrist and/or ankle weights and stride evenly along the sidewalks, exercising my body while soaking in inspiration from surrounding forestry, neighbors’ flower gardens, and children playing in front the Cul-de-sac in front of their homes. This Saturday morning inspiration came from a small boy who fell off his bike.

I was walking, thinking about better managing my emotions so they don’t swell up inside leaving me vulnerable to crying or breaking down at the most inopportune times.

I walked past honeysuckle, enjoyed the sweet fragrance, but was reminded of my mean maternal grandmother who had called me a crybaby when I was about eight because I cried when I fell and skinned my knee. When I was about 13 and complained about the cold draft from the window she wouldn’t close, she’d called me a “heifer.” My paternal Grandmother, as loving and well-intentioned as she was, had warned me against feeling sad when my grandfather died. She had told me to use what was in my head, not what was in my heart to get on with life. As a young journalist I had been compelled to be “objective” and dispassionate. Just the facts. Deal with only the facts.

But being whole, healthy and vibrant now depending on me acknowledging and accepting all aspects of myself – emotions, included.

I walked on, enjoying the warmth of the sun pouring through clear blue sky, and the tweeting and chirping of birds. I noticed a tiny yellow bird and felt delightful. I remembered that I had a chart of emotions at home. It was a chart I bought to use teaching English to immigrants last year. I would use the chart to help them express their feelings in English. I would ask them to point to the picture on the chart expressing the emotions they were feeling that day then write why they were feeling that way. This turned out to be a good ice-breaker at the beginning of the semester  and a good warm-up activity. I decided to use this chart addressing my own emotions each day until acknowledging and accepting them – without judgment or penalty – became easy, natural.

I was strolling when I heard a boy’s happy squeals, “Dad look! A butterfly!” I looked across the street to where he was. Next thing I knew the boy was flat on the ground, his legs tangled around the metal bike frame. I ran to him, “Ooops. Are you ok?” He was too startled to cry – at first. I began helping him untangle as his father quickly set his bike on its stand, removed his helmet and rushed to his son’s rescue. He picked up his small child, while another child riding with them looked on. (It all happened very fast).

He clutched the boy to his chest and allowed him to cry on his shoulder. The boy buried his head at his father’s neck, seemingly more embarrassed than anything, and cried.

“What hurts?” his father asked. “Tell me where it hurts.”

I remembered when parents beat a child then scolded them for crying – and believed they were doing the right thing – disciplining and toughing their offspring for the harsh cruel world they would have to face. I remembered fathers teaching their sons, “men don’t cry!” I remembered being happy when Michael Baisden came out with a book titled “Men Cry in the Dark,” and Bishop T.D. Jakes’ message: “I want everyone to forget about stereotypes and know that real mean have emotions, cry…”

I’d spent years hiding, denying and analyzing my emotions rather than simply accepting them as part of my human experience.

I resumed my praise walk, thanking God for showing me such compassion when – and where – I least expected it.

Posted on by sonsyrea

Dear Mr. Romney

Dear Mitt Romney,

Here’s how much we love our President Obama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEZG8y7xJQQ

Here’s how much we love him through the vantage point of a senior veteran:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/18/1121614/-Hilarious-poem-about-Mitt-Romney-by-92-Year-Old-Retired-ND-Judge-WWII-Vet-needs-to-go-viral

And here’s what I think of our First Lady: Amazing. Beautiful. Classy. Poignant. Skillful. Our First Lady made us proud.

I half-watched the speakers leading up to our First Lady, busying around the house as they spoke. But when Michelle Obama sauntered onto the stage, I found myself planted in front of the TV, my fingers dancing across the keyboard, twittering her comments that resonated most with me.

“(Our forbearers) had unwavering hope grounded in unyielding struggle. That’s what makes us great,” she said. “I love that we can trust Obama to do what he says even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard.” That line resonated, too. “We must work harder than ever before.”

I called my friend Sharon Jenkins, who is working as a communications volunteer at the convention now as she did four years ago. What did she think about the speech? “Amazing, beautiful, classy,” she said. “She made me so proud.”

Mr. Romney, even if it had been Hillary Clinton speaking to us about persevering through struggles, reminding us that times can be so hard that you can see the pavement through a rusted out whole in your car, we, as Americans would have felt proud. This is a pride based on our collective appreciation of triumph over struggle, our collective beliefs in rainbows after the storms. This pride transcends race and class.

We’ve had some tough times with our President. The honeymoon has passed, and the real work of moving this country forward has begun is hard. But we made a commitment four years ago, and we will see this through.

You were wrong Mr. Romney. You and your crew imagined that four years after a fervent, feverish push to elect the first African American president, supporters now lay on our backs, staring up at fading Obama posters, disappointed, and feeling duped.   At your convention last week, you posed what you thought was a loaded question: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” You posited that we are not as excited about President Obama as we were about candidate Obama. Wrong, wrong, and wrong Mr. Romney. You and your crew were observant enough to notice a lack of Obama commercialism currently in sway. But that’s because people are out of party mode and into work mode.

Yes, in 2008 we there were Obama tee shirts, buttons, flags, caps, and coffee mugs everywhere you looked. Yes, in 2008 those of us who still had full-time office jobs spent some of our time exchanging exciting snap-shots, news updates, and many musings about our would-be first Black family in the White House. We were excited out of our minds. Many of us had not even believed that American would elect a Black man to represent our country on the world’s stage. We were hopeful indeed. In 2008, we huddled around large TV screens at sports bars and restaurants to watch the results of pivotal primaries. We screamed when Obama was declared winner in Ohio.  We hosted watch parties in our homes for his historical nomination acceptance speech, and we clamored for coveted tickets to his inauguration.

This year, we haven’t been glued to MSNBC or CNN with the same addiction. Times have changed, and so have we.  Some of us have lost jobs and, finding none, learned to market our skills, creating jobs – and starting companies. Some of us who had never volunteered for a political campaign before found ourselves immersed in Obama’s and became enriched in ways that you Mr. Romney and your crew cannot imagine – much less measure.

There are some African American women in Prince George’s County, for instance, who are better off today than they were four years ago. And, I’m betting that they are indicative of millions more around the country who are better off – in ways you and your crew would not count.

Vanessa Davis, who volunteered 16-hour days managing what became Maryland’s grassroots headquarters for Obama, based in Largo, is better off. Her retirement portfolio, which had begun declining in Bush’s final days, is on the rebound. But also, out of her excitement for Obama’s first campaign, she and other ’08 campaign volunteers formed a lasting friendship that has brought them together once a month in the past four years to discuss politics and community service.  One friend Davis met in the ’08 campaign, Yvette Lewis, a resident of Prince George’s, has gone on to become chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, and two others who volunteered with Davis in Obama’s ’08 campaign, Jackie Garrison, of Glen Arden and LaFonda Fenwick, of Bowie, are in Charlotte this week as delegates.

“We are better off, and if we don’t put Obama back in, we’ll see how much better off we were,” Davis said when I tossed her your question like a hot potato. “Yes, today I’m better off because my retirement has started to grow again,” said Davis, who retired as a Verizon manager after 30 years. “It’s not back at the level it was, but it’s starting to grow again. It was going down every month when Bush was in office. Now it’s going back up.”

Davis and her husband live in Prince George’s but are planning to move to South Africa in a year or two. Meanwhile, she also plans to volunteer for Obama’s 2012 campaign in the coming weeks. She has written checks in recent months, but in the upcoming weeks she will volunteer on phone banks on Obama’s behalf.

“His heart is in the right place – for everybody in the country,” Davis says. “A lot of people want to say he’s not doing enough for Black folks. Do you think Romney is going to do more for you?” Romney, she is certain you won’t.

Mr. Romney, even my friends and family who are disappointed that Obama didn’t push back hard enough against your party’s agenda of obstruction and sabotage, will vote for him over you. And even my friend, who frowns at Obama’s support for same-sex marriage, will choose Obama over you in November.

Even Prince George’s County’s Tamara Davis-Brown, who in 2008 was chair of the now-defunct Surratts-Clinton Democratic Club, is sticking with Obama. “I think four years are not long enough to turn around all that Obama had to turn around,” she said. “So, I’m equally excited about his campaign this year – to give the president and his administration an opportunity to turn this economy around. I think it mirrors what President Clinton was able to do – deliver a balanced budget at the end of his second term.” She thinks Obama can do that if your party eases up on its obstructionism. “If the make up of Congress stays the same, I would like to see Republicans more cooperative instead of being the party of obstruction,” Davis-Brown said.

Original post at:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/a-letter-to-mitt-romney-we-made-a-commitment-four-years-ago-and-we-will-see-obama-through/2012/09/04/20c4714a-f6d5-11e1-8b93-c4f4ab1c8d13_blog.html

Creative Writing – Week 10

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J. California Cooper (one of my favorite storytellers!) tells Marita Golden she loved telling stories with – and to – her paper dolls growing up.

 

M.G.: I read in an article that you played with paper dolls.

C.C.: Until I was 18.

 

M.G.: What did you like about paper dolls?

 

CC: You could tell a story. And that was that. The fact is, they were paper, so they couldn’t do it without you. It was the fact that you had somebody who could stand there and say, “Oh Howard, don’t do that.” My mother said you could put me in a room by myself and shut the door and you’d think a crowd of people were in there if you didn’t know I was in there by myself, because I talked to myself.

 

M.G.: And you were never alone when you were in your world of imagination.

 

C.C.: Right. That’s why when I was 18, my mother got scared and thought I was retarded or something….

 

I loved this book because it affirmed so much of what I knew, experienced, and felt as a writer, and because reading it feels like being in the company of a bunch of people who “Get it!”

 

Do you have a favorite book about writing or the writing life? If so, do share. And tell us why. 

The Other Side of Unemployment

Posted on by sonsyrea

Previously published in The Washington Post

Find a way or make one. That was the motto drilled into a certain set of Washington area young women when they studied together at Clark Atlanta University. This motto fired them up through difficult times on campus, it helped them through bouts of unemployment, and it continues to instruct them today in their work on prominent Black radio and television shows and at the DNC, working on behalf of our first African American president.

I first heard their story when I met one of them at a networking party recently. I was fascinated that they all succeeded – and at the same time.  Sure, I had heard stories of all eight children in a family getting their college degrees and having successful professional careers. I had heard of groups of friends from college all succeeding in their respective endeavors. But after a few years of streaming reports of job loss, families losing their homes, and public frustration mounting to the levels of widespread “Occupy” protests, these young women’s stories of success, of success after set-backs, seemed refreshing, a nice reminder that things do work out. All is not loss.

As we geared up to celebrate Dr. King’s birthday, I asked them how Dr. King’s legacy and the motto they learned at their historically Black college helped shape their life.

“Find a way or make one? Those were words to live by,” said Janelle Morris, a Largo High School graduate. That motto instructed her when, just a few months after graduating, she and her husband learned they were having their first child. She was working as an administrative aide in Howard University’s School of Communications at the time while her husband continued his studies at Morehouse University.  She worried that starting a family might stall her career in television before it got started. She picked up extra work at CNN.

“It was right after 9/11 and they needed all the help they could get. That was my break into television,” she said. So, after working her nine-to-five at Howard, which she held onto to maintain health insurance, she clocked in at CNN and worked an over-night shift. Within months, however, she landed a full-time job working at WUSA. She loved working in her chosen career field and reaping full benefits. But then she was laid off when the company downsized. She was unemployed for almost a year. “That’s when the motto really kicked in, because I had to keep the faith that I would get back in.  Every report I saw said I’d be lucky if I got a job again, let alone a job in television,” she said. “I was unemployed on Oct. 16, 2010. On Oct. 16, 2011, I was in a live truck covering one of the biggest stories of my career. That’s my testimony of faith – and that motto,” she said.

She was hired by Roland Martin’s Washington Watch, TV One’s premier political talk show, just in time to help produce the network’s three-hour live broadcast of the historic dedication of the King Memorial on the National Mall last year. Now, she is excited about helping cover the presidential race this year, excited about producing live television at the DNC when America’s first African American president likely gets officially crowned by his party for re-election.

Teria Rogers, who grew up in Fort Washington and graduated from Friendly High School, is one of the producers of the Michael Eric Dyson Show.  She has also produced for local radio talk show calebs including Bernie Mac and George Wilson. “Find a way or make one? I had to apply that early on. Financial aid didn’t come through? What? Find a way or make one. This class is full? Find a way or make one,” she said. When she graduated in 2000, she found a paid internship at News USA in Fairfax, Va. She later landed jobs at WHUR and Radio One, and made lasting relationships with mentors.

When Teria was between radio gigs once, she took a job working for an afterschool program. In 2008, Teria, who was raised in Grace United Methodist Church in Fort Washington and still draws on her spiritual beliefs, found herself producing Sirius XM Radio’s popular Mark Thompson show live from the Democratic National Convention when Obama was nominated as the party’s first Black presidential candidate.

Teria and Janelle have been friends since middle school. On campus at Clark Atlanta, they befriended Janaye Ingram, who would go on to become Al Sharpton’s D.C. Bureau Chief for his National Action Network, Kimberly Marcus, who would land a job as the Democratic National Committee’s national director for African American outreach, and Valeisha Butterfield-Jones works on Obama’s campaign, charged with helping turn out the youth vote for 2012.  Together, they became what President Obama, Al Sharpton, Michael Eric Dyson, and Roland Martin all have in common.  They are among the women behind the movement today.

In her DNC capacity Kimberly planned King Day volunteer efforts in D.C., Pennsylvania, and N.Y.  Gearing up for Black history month she is promoting even bigger plans.  She is working to ensure Black voter turn-out for candidates “up and down the ballot,” she said.  “Most importantly, this cycle we’re making sure President Obama gets re-elected.”

Kimberly moved to Maryland from New York ten years ago to work for the NAACP as its director of economic development, before starting her own consulting firm, then going to work for Jesse Jackson Sr.’s Rainbow/P.U.S.H. Coalition in D.C.  “I left corporate America because I needed to do something to contribute to the up-liftment of my people,” said Marcus, who is also married to the soul mate she met in college and raising their three-year-old twins.

Hearing their stories reminded me of so many I have heard, and experienced – but had forgotten during the recent years over-shadowed by stories of economic crisis and public turmoil.

A Personal Resurrection

Posted on by sonsyrea

Previously published in The Washington Post

As millions of Christians around the world celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ Sunday, I joined my grandparents, 92, for the celebration at Tenth Street Baptist Church on R Street, N.W. We read from Mark 16:11, and Pastor Michael A. Durant gave a powerful sermon about redemption and resurrection. But the real ministry for me was from the brothers in the congregation who jumped up in joy and broke down in tears.

 

First, the church band cranked up DeAndre Patterson’s gospel hit “He’s Alive – And I know it” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hbcD-u4pPY). That got us stirred up, and had me on my feet rocking and swaying and singing at the top of my lungs. “Jesus died, and I know it. He’s alive, ’cause he rose again.”

 

The pastor lectured on resurrection – from despondency, disappointment and despair. He lectured, too, on resurrection from death.

 

“Even those who say they want to go to heaven don’t want to go through the cemetery,” Durant said. With that, I understood clearly my sadness about recent deaths in my family. There’s something sad about putting our loved ones’ bodies in the dirt even if we believe their souls are going to some place better. That “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” reading over their buried bodies somehow reduces our grand love to something as common as the ground. So, Easter morning I relished the idea of everlasting life, keeping our loved ones alive in our hearts. I belted out my hopes in Patterson’s song. “He’s alive! And I know it!”

 

The band was electrifying. A keyboard artist in his 20s sang out loud, inviting us to follow. A slightly older man in beautiful dreadlocks wailed on his electric guitar. A bearded, bow tied brother kicked on his drums, and a calm, bespectacled young man rocked the bass line. Next, a young woman in the choir stood to lead an Easter morning classic, “The Lamb of God,” and all manners of restraint were loosed.

 

Individuals began shouting. “Hallelujah!” Praise him!” The shouting gave way to people jumping up from their seats, dancing in the isles, spinning, twisting, shouting, and crying. It was a typical southern-Baptist-style, “holy-ghost-getting” kind of celebration. A middle-aged man in the congregation jumped up, shouting and crying. He bowed down on one knee crying on the front pew. Another middle-aged man in the pulpit shouted, jumped, jerked and cried. The young man who had been sitting next to him pressed the palm of his hand to the crying man’s back to keep him from falling off the platform. What we witnessed was an enormous emotional release.

 

I used to think there was something wrong with such public displays of emotion. Growing up in the Nation of Islam, I had learned to dismiss such overwhelming emotions. (Malcolm X’s legendary passionate oratory skills aside, our Sunday services were decidedly cerebral.) At best, I believed, emotions were a sign of weakness. This belief was reinforced by many other influences over the years.

 

In recent years I have preferred the quiet, happy, guilt-free sermons of Joel Olsteen on Sunday mornings. But a couple of my friends have been urging me to go to church. It’s a different experience than watching it on TV, they insisted. Easter morning found me completely engaged at Tenth Street Baptist.

 

As the young woman sang and the men shouted and cried, I considered how much better our world might be if people simply cried sometimes. I wondered if we would have less violence – and fewer unwanted pregnancies – if we accept, expect, even encourage crying sometimes as a proper emotional release.

 

As the singing continued, I reached for my smartphone to research the benefits of crying. Sure enough, doctors say crying is healthy physically, and psychologically. (http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/healthy-living/wellbeing/the-health-benefits-of-crying.htm) I was reminded of when and why I had stopped crying so many years ago. Where I’m from, the motto was curse, don’t cry. Those of us not inclined to cursing – simply held it in, watered it with liquor, numbed it with drugs. I had not seen my grandparents cry until they were past 90. I saw my dad cry only once in his life – on his death bed a couple days before he died. So I delighted in the flow of tears Easter morning.

After service, I wanted to know what my granddad thought about it.

 

“I haven’t seen that much crying – ever,” I said as we were leaving.

 

“Oh yeah, people shout in here,” he said with a chuckle. “Even the pastor will be up their shouting.”

 

I prefer crying to shouting.

Millions of Christians around the world – and many in this Washington area – will spend this week, known as Bright Week, from Easter Sunday through the following Sunday, celebrating resurrection. For the whole week, they will meditate on Psalms in the Bible, and in other ways tune into spiritual songs and truths celebrating Christ. I will be with them in spirit. Celebrating the resurrection of Christ – and of my own compassion and emotional compass.