Tag Archives: Sonsyrea Tate

I’m OK You’re OK

Posted on by sonsyrea

I’m OK You’re OK

After three bouts of violence with Grandma that day, I saw Granddad plopped down on a chair in the dining room and cry. This caregiving is taking a lot out of him - but also adding a lot of character and spiritual strength to him. After his tears Grandma was calm again and he called her to him for a hug.

After three bouts of violence with Grandma that day, I saw Granddad plop down on a chair in the dining room and cry. This caregiving is taking a lot out of him – but also adding a lot of character and spiritual strength to him. After his tears Grandma was calm again and he called her to him for a hug. “Baby you know I love you,” he said. They kissed and I almost cried – but instead raced to get my cellie for a photo.

I showed the photo of the kissing crusaders – Grandma and Granddad – to my co-workers this morning and they marveled at the beauty of the moment. The facebook note I posted with the photo was simply: 74 years married. Still Standing. Prayers up everyone. One-hundred-fifty people had liked it overnight. When I showed my supervisor and another colleague, they also ooooed and awed. I volunteered the back story – that the kiss came after a long day of fighting and managing Grandma’s disease – and they made the moment sweeter.   My supervisor – who has also become a dear friend – Michelle – said my grandparents remind her of her aunt and uncle who were so close they took care of each other all their lives. When her uncle was put in a nursing home, her aunt took a bus to visit him every day. The day her uncle died during the visit, her aunt went home and died of a heart attack less than an hour later. The other colleague, Tracy, said when her father was in the hospital, comatose, the doctors advised her and her siblings to tell him it was ok for him to leave. They each visited and after all eight of them told him they were fine and he could leave, he died within hours.   “That reminds me of when my brother was dying at 16,” I said. “We told him he didn’t have to stay in that body for us. He was in so much pain. The cancer had spread to his lungs.” He died a few weeks after that conversation. “Maybe it’s time we have that conversation with my grandparents,” I wondered out loud.   I remembered giving my grandparents hints that I’m ok. Several times in the past year Grandma looked in my face and asked, “Why are you so sad?” She knows something’s not right in my marriage because she hasn’t seen my husband.  She’d told me to “turn it over to God…let God fight your battles.” But at one point Saturday she looked in my face and said, “Look at those big, pretty brown eyes,” nurturing and cheering me on and she has done all my life. I felt like she survived her life-threatening surgery four years ago just to be alive and help me through the latest heartbreak. My last big heartbreak was almost 20 years ago and she had nursed me back to whole then.   Yesterday when I visited – doing my Wednesday and Thursday evening caretaking stint – I told Granddad that I’m OK. When he asked how things are going on my job, I seized the opportunity to assure him that I’m doing well, standing on my own two feet, feeling secure, unafraid of getting fired or burned out again.   “How did the people act about you taking off early today,” Granddad said, speaking over his shoulder as he stood at the sink washing greens.   “No problem. This job is waaaay less demanding than any job I’ve had before. I’m not in charge, so it’s not all on my shoulders. All I have to do is make sure my work gets done and I put in the hours,” I said.   “What about the people you’re working with? How are they?”   “My supervisor is great! She’s a praying woman. In fact, we pray together every week,” I said.   “That’s a change from that last one you had cursing you,” he said. We both laughed.   “Yep. My mother-in-law told me to not just pray for any job, but pray for my divine job,” I said. “I really feel like this is a divine job.”   With that, I realized I was telling him I am financially secure enough. I’m OK. My mother-in-law has been the moral support I’ve needed, encouraging me, counseling and consoling me as if God put her in place at the door where Grandma will exit.   Maybe later today I will ask my mother what she thinks about us each having that conversation with our elders, assuring them that we’re ok and they are free to go. I think she will say they are seeing and sensing how well we are and they will leave when they feel like they’ve given us all they can and that we’ve received all we can.

Muslim Madness: No More

Posted on by sonsyrea

 

save-meriam-ibrahim

Muslim Mayhem: No More

I will sing louder. When I lend my voice, lifting praise of God and Christ, I will sing louder than ever before. Never mind if I sound off-key. The angels will laugh. Holding the red, battered book of treasured hymnals up near my heart, standing in the pews where Christians pray, I will hurl those gospel tunes to the high heavens. Singing for the 27-year-old Sudanese woman sentenced to death for converting from Islam to Christianity. I was raised Muslim in America and converted to Christianity without retribution – because I live in America.

Christianity has soothed my psyche, in many manners saved my soul. I will sing this song loud as I can. I will sing for Meriam Ibrahim and the 20-month-old child who is currently in jail with her as she serves time awaiting execution for her conversion. I will sing for the eight-month-old fetus she is carrying, a baby that will be allowed birth before mother is hanged. This baby may grow up denouncing religion altogether, an unborn soul, a witness to Muslim mayhem and religious rot. I will sing for the baby’s salvation.

Catching up on the news today, I read articles about Meriam, a beautiful woman who also is scheduled to be lashed 100 times for “illegitimate sexual relations” because her husband is non-Muslim. Will she become the female Jesus on the cross – lashed and hung to die?

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Sudan authorities are killing individuals who denounce Islam. Sudan’s penal code criminalizes the conversion of Muslims into other religions, which is punishable by death, according to an article by the Associated Press.

“Religious thinker and politician Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, a critic of (former President Jafaar Nimeiri who incorporated Shariah and its traditional punishments into law)…was sentenced to death after his conviction of apostasy. He was executed in 1985 at the age of 76,” says the AP article. “A number of Sudanese have been convicted of apostasy in recent years, but they all escaped execution by recanting their new faith.”

That’s Muslim madness run amok. It’s one thing for parents to bully/guilt-trip their children into embracing family beliefs and carrying on certain family traditions. We see it often. And we understand that in every country some religious beliefs become law. But when a country will kill its citizens over a disagreement of religious ideas, that’s just crazy.

That is about power and imposition. It’s about controlling what is precious: the human spirit. This is about forcing human beings – their mental and physical energy – to serve a particular doctrine. This. Is. Just. Wrong.

Of course Muslim madness is not contained in Sudan. We read about Muslims bombing Christian churches in Cairo and elsewhere. We read about Nigerian warlords, claiming to be Muslim, kidnapping 300 schoolgirls, believing that Western education is anti-Islamic, threatening to sell the girls into marriage. These mad Muslims over-shadow the millions of sensible Muslims living quiet, productive lives, clinging to Islam because of the personal peace they have found in Islamic practices. Meriam, like me, found her peace/power in Christian customs. But she is called to pay a deadly price.

An article in the U.K.’s Telegraph quotes Sudan Judge Abbas Mohammed Al-Khalifa telling Meriam, “We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be hanged.”

The judge should be fried. Meriam was born a Muslim, but after her father left her family, her mother raised her as a Christian, according to news reports. Meriam told the judge, “I am a Christian and I never committed apostasy.”

Amnesty International weighed in saying, “The fact that a woman could be sentenced to death for her religious choice and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion is abhorrent and should never be even considered.” In a joint statement, the embassies of Britain, the United States, Canada and the Netherlands expressed “deep concern” over her case. “We call upon the government of Sudan to respect the right to freedom of religion, including one’s right to change one’s faith or beliefs,” they said.

Some will condemn this execution, which, even according to the Shariah law cannot take place until two years after the woman gives birth. Some will call for respect for religious freedom. For my part, I will sing the Christian songs my Muslim-bred heart has embraced. I will sing them loud and clear.

Creative Writing – Week 11 – The Extra Mile

Posted on by sonsyrea

In her book, “The Word: Black Writers Talk About the Transformative Power of Reading and Writing,” I enjoyed her interviews with many authors, including Wil Haygood, who writes his ass off! I’d been loving his Washington Post articles for years, and when I read his biography of Sammy Davis Jr., for a literary contest I was judging, I fell in love with the jazzy rhythms of his writing.

 

M.G.: What has your writing career given you?

 

WH: Writing has been my attempt to unravel some of the hardships of my past life. My mother was an alcoholic, my father was separated from my mother a month after I was born, divorced, you know, family members in prison, family members who were on and off drugs, all my life, you know? So, I came with a whole lot of turmoil in my stomach, a lot of pain, because there was always a lot of drama around. A writer can be a kind of inward-looking psychiatrist, almost, trying to go back, trying to assess the damage, trying to look for the light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Explore your reasons for writing. In 10 minutes – or more – finish this sentence, “I write…”

Malcolm, Marable and Me – Update

Posted on by sonsyrea

The book is just too big for me to take it all in at once. It was a novel dare. I would read Manning Marable’s controversial “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” in a week and either join the parade of reviewers and social commentators praising his thorough research, or chime in with Bro. Malcolm’s children and grandson, condemning the tome for its dusty innuendo, questioning the author’s motives. I planned to swallow the book whole. But it was too big. Besides, halfway into it I realized I had “been there and done that.” Next!

Half way into the book I was fully appreciating its exhaustive research, its discovery and disclosure of details and FBI documents I had been unaware of as a child growing up in the Nation of Islam, which Bro. Malcolm made famous, and in turn became famous for.

The book was coming up short on what I had hoped to get – a sense of the overall experience of the organization and the people in Bro. Malcom had miistered to. I had hoped it would reveal a better sense of the men, women, and children Bro. Malcolm was motivating to build what, as it turned out, would be a front-runner for the mega churches of today.

The 595-page book requires a substantial commitment of my time, mental energy, and interest. I simply did not have it to give – yet. I bought the book, full-price. Cash, thank you very much, but it would cost more than a couple of weeks of good time to read it. I love reading, but it is a slow grind for me. I have to savor a passage word-by-word, digest a chapter at a time. I’ll pick up the Malcolm-Marable “master piece” again. But right now, I am more interested in hearing from other former NOI members about their experiences in the organization in the 50s, 60s, 70, 80, 90s and now.

So far, based on just a few interviews I’ve done, no one wholly regrets their time in the Nation of Islam. The former members I have talked to, in fact, are grateful for the lessons they learned and for the motivation, self-discipline and empowerment they gained – even if they won’t send a dime to keep the organization going because of the manners of corruptions and personal distress the organization has also caused individuals and families.

However, in case you missed it, here is one former NOI brother outraged by the book – to the tune of a $50 million lawsuit filed last week: http://www.wbgo.org/newsarticle/former-nation-of-islam-minister-is-suing-writer-and-publisher-of-new-malcolm-x-biography.

Also, reading what Bro. Malcolm’s grandson had to say last week on what would have been the icon’s 86th birthday was well worth the time, and I am sooooo looking forward to the book he is writing. Check him out here if you missed this: http://newamericamedia.org/2011/05/malcolm-x-grandson-decries-marable-biography-on-86th-birthday-observation.php.

If you, or someone you know spent any time as a member of the NOI, please hit me on facebook. I would loke to speak with them.

Have a blessed day!

When You Walk through a Storm…

Posted on by sonsyrea

As I stepped out my front door this morning for a power walk around the neighborhood, I was taken aback by the rising storm. Just like that, a song I learned in junior high school came to mind and I began to sing it internally. 

When you walk through a storm

Keep your head up high

And don’t be afraid of the storm

At the end of the storm is a golden sky

And the sweet…something and something and something

 I couldn’t remember all the words, but the part I did remember brought a smile to my face.

Walk on through the wind

Walk on through the rain

Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on

Walk on

With hope in your heart

And you’ll never walk alone

 I took in a deep breath as the main phrase filled me up.  I remembered vividly the music teacher and glee club director who taught us the song.  A smile curled my lips as I remembered Mrs. Overstreet, as heavy as Aretha Franklin before Aretha was heavy. Mrs. Overstreet was very passionate about her work and the messages she intended to impart.

 “Sing!” she demanded, pounded the piano keys.

“You will NE-VEEEEEER walk alone!”

“Louder!”

“You will NEEEEEE-VEEEEER walk alone!” We sang as loud as our voices could stretch.

The memory of the song and the woman who taught it to us quickened my pace as I race-walked through my neighborhood.  The winds whipped up dry leaves around me. Clouds darkened the sky. And the trees whistled, swayed, and danced to the rhythm set by the pending storm. I replayed the song in my mind. When you walk through a storm keep your head up high. But when I glanced down I noticed a shiny nickel and was reminded of another childhood treasure.

My uncles used to tell me, “Don’t take no wooden nickels.” I was delighted by the memory. I didn’t ask them what they meant, because I thought I knew.  A girl in my neighborhood had become the fool of the group because she had taken a wooden nickel from one of the boys in exchange for a sexual favor. We were only eight to ten years old and some of the kids our age or slightly older played a “nasty game” where a girl would let a boy hump her for a nickel. A “hump” was a boy’s bumping his pelvic area into the girl’s pelvic. For a dime he could hump her butt one time. It’s ironic that even at that age, even with strict parents, which most of us had, we found ways to test the taboo and to put a monetary value on sexual gratification and submission. Even at that age at least one of the girls, the one who took the wooden nickel and became the joke of the hood, learned to pay closer attention to what she was giving and getting. When I picked up the shiny nickel on my power walk this morning, I was reminded to pay closer attention to my gifts and exchanges.

Walk on through the wind

I turned the corner and noticed a penny on the ground. Yes, it was a shiny penny, not a dull, dirty one, ironically.  I put it in my pocket, too.  It didn’t generate any memories or inspiration. It was just a shiny penny that could close a sale at the grocery store I planned to walk to later. 

As the wind got stronger, I felt charged and wished I could breathe it in and harness for a flight, as if I could spread my wings and lift up like a bird. I breathed in deeply, thanking God for the fresh air, the charge, and the memories.

 Mrs. Overstreet died some years ago, but the lesson she taught us through a secular song was resurrected in my heart today. Our teacher loved Broadway musicals and used them to connect us to the whiter world outside our nearly all-black one.  This song she taught us for our graduation, had been written for the musical Carousel that opened on Broadway in 1945.  A song written by white men in the 1940s, taught by my school teacher in the 1970s, could still inspire me in the new millennium. Now that’s classic, I thought. Thunder clapped, then roared.  The skies opened up and the first sprinkling of what promised to be a downpour delighted me as I made my way back inside.

I looked up the lyrics on the Internet to fill in the words I had forgotten. Once in cyberspace I saw a news headline saying 250 people have been killed in storms ripping through southern states in the past couple of days; hundreds were injured. As the skies dumped torrential rains outside my windows and I hard the loud clash of thunder, I thought about natural disasters that tore up whole cities, states and rocked whole countries.

How blessed I am to walk through a storm.  To draw inspiration from a storm because it has not threatened my life and the very foundation beneath me. Even before the storm ended, I heard birds singing in the rain. Within minutes this little storm would be over, and I will step outside looking for a rainbow.  Then I’ll find a reputable charity through which to make donations to help others who have suffered life-flattening storms.

Keep your head up high.

Here are the lyrics:

When you walk through a storm

Keep your chin up high

And don’t be afraid of the dark.

At he end of the storm

Is a golden sky

And the sweet silver song of a lark.

 

Walk on through the wind,

Walk on through the rain,

Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown.

Walk on, walk on

With hope in your heart

And you’ll never walk alone,

You’ll never walk alone.

Now sing! Just kidding. Here’s wishing you inspiration from the storms in your life and from your fondest memories as well. A yoga instructor once told our class she loves a storm because it seems to clean the air.  How have storms, real and figurative, inspired you? Does something you learned from a teacher – or coach – in your youth inspired as an adult?

What Dreams Reveal

Posted on by sonsyrea

This morning I had a dream that reminded me of a pivotal experience in my life. I remembered taking my grandmother to a fashion show produced by one of my sisters, starring about a dozen of our cousins, all of whom had been raised as Muslim girls. My grandmother, as always, was dressed “modestly” as the Muslim woman she had become in her 20s. 

She wore a long skirt and a light-weight veil covering her silver, silky hair.  She favored soft, pastel colors and I marveled at her ability to remain stylish while beholden to a very old-fashioned Islamic tradition.  Out of respect for her, I wore loose-fitted slacks and a conservative blouse  instead of one of my sassy short skirts with bold high heels. I could tell we were in for a fun evening when we arrived, but I had no idea how adventurous the event would be.

We were settled into our seats, enjoying my mother’s humorous moderating of the program, enjoying the little kids sporting everything from traditional tiny tuxes and gowns to trendy baggy jeans and jerseys. My grandmother was all smiles, thoroughly delighted –  until the lights changed and the next scene unfolded.

In the blink of an eye, a parade of young women who had been raised with strict religious confines strutted out half naked in mini skirts and tank tops or swim suits and spiked heels. They held a handful of leashes attached to young men crawling on all fours in front of them. They pulled back on the leashes, struck a pose, and flashed their sass, yanked on the leashes. The young men in collars clawed at them, rolled over for them, made the crowd laugh for them and my grandmother was beside herself.

“What in the world?!?!?!”  She spoke only loud enough for me, sitting next to her, to hear. “Astafullah!” she said. that was the Muslim equivalent of “God forbid!” I was tickled through and through. 

“It’s a new day, GrandWillie. Women are owning their sexuality,” I explained. “Actually, it’s not that new. We’ve been celebrating sex since the 70s.”  I enjoyed my younger sisters’ vision and the young men’s willingness to play along. 

At the reception after the fashion show we enjoyed light fare and much laughter with the crowd. Back in my car, GrandWillie returned to our conversation.  She explained that she likes to support all her grandchildren, but she did not need to see what she had seen and she certainly did not condone it.

“These are the ending days for sure,” GrandWillie said. “I can’t stand to see young women giving yourselves away. You know we had a saying ‘why buy the cow if you can get the milk free’.” 

“Oh, GrandWillie I always hated that saying,” I said. “No disrespect. But that implies that I am a piece of meat a man can buy and milk to death or slaughter and eat. I am not a piece of meat.”

“Why would any woman give herself to a man who won’t even make a commitment? I just don’t understand it.”

“It’s not so much giving ourself away. It’s a shared experience,” I said. “We like sex. No disrespect.” 

My grandmother had given birth to eight children because birth control and abortion were illegal when she was a young woman. Sex had been a necessary evil to be endured by those lucky enough to get married. She had proudly told me that she had never been with any man other than my grandfather. I had respectfully declined to let on that I knew my grandfather had been with other women before they were married and during their 40-plus years together. (He was killed by a drunk driver.) Her children had enjoyed the sexual revolution of the 70s, and her grandchildren were celebrating it in new ways.  What would she do if she found out that women were now enjoying sex without a partner at all? She had never been to an adult toy store. Our orientations had been different. The landscapes of our lives were not the same. 

While focusing on the road ahead, taking my grandmother home, I could see out the corner of my eye that she was shaking her head in disagreement about our take on women’s sexuality. I did not tell her that she had been spared a fashion show scene dramatizing lesbian relationships. That would have been waaaay too much for her. The younger women in the family were pushing the envelope but maintained some boundaries in deference to our elders. I appreciated GrandWillie’s wisdom, but did not agree with it all. Conventional wisdom defied and denied too much of what I instinctively knew to be true. 

“Men have to get a license to fish, to hunt, to do whatever else they want to do. Make them get a license to be with you,” my grandmother insisted. 

“I am not a sport or a game,” I argued. “I am not a piece of meat, or a piece of property you can have license to. License to do what? Do you realize how many men think their marriage license gives them the right to sex anytime they want?”  

“You young women think too much,” she said. “The Holy Scriptures lays it all out for us. Ain’t nothing new under the sun. Human nature is human nature, and God knows human nature. When we try to change it or figure it out on our own, nothing good can come from it.”

I agreed with her that there are many benefits to marriage, that stating intentions up front and committing to work together toward agreed-upon goals could be more satisfying than a series of one-night stands. 
 

“I believe in marriage,” I told her. “But I need a wife.” 

“You need a what?” She seemed exasperated with me. 

“I need a wife. Somebody who’s got my back, who will support my dreams. I need a man who will pick up my dry cleaning if I’m working late, or have dinner on the table for me to take the edge off a long day.” 

“These are certainly the ending days,” she said. “You all, as you like to say, got it twisted’.” 

 I smiled, and respectfully disagreed. “I think we’re finally straightening things out,” I said as we reached her home where we would part ways. “GrandWillie, it’s all working out for the best,” I added. “You’ll see.” 

She cracked a smile as she turned to go up the stairs.  “I think I have seen enough.” 

My dearly departed grandmother is among the stars now. Thinking about fun times we shared brings a smile to my face, streaks of sunlight through the clouds of grief. The dream I had reflected sexual domination, but it prompted waking memories that confirmed a reversal of fortune.  We re-create, re-cast, re-fashion,and  re-model our outlook. We have, we can, we must.