We are on our way, children. Sing Hallelujah and praises to the Lord because we have reached a promised land. We have reached a promised land where they told us it would be not so equal, but almost equal and we said, “Okay.” We have reached a promised land where there are promises of wine and roses– good wine and red roses–but not much more than nothing, and nothing is not good.
We have had to settle for nothing for years and years. We have bitched, scratched and howled, but we did not yell at our God. We did not take Him or Her on as if we were confronting an enemy. We said, and quite properly so, “God, this ain’t right.” So it was the way things were handled with the breaks we got, the toils we had to endure, and things just weren’t right. God knew that, but then He new just how much we could bear. And we bore it.
And now comes the time when we are to be paid off, not with dollars and cents, not with promises that still must be kept, but with something as solid as granite and as pure as streams of waters flowing in the heavens and with food so tasty that we mourned just for the taste of it, just for the sight of it. Things have gotten better already. A friend whose greeting to me was always son of a bitch said, “Good morning, son.” Quite a difference between good morning, son, and hello, son of a bitch. Things are getting better.
Everything is going up in price, but that was to be expected. We cannot expect there to be a drastic change in how the country is run just because we are a part of it. Now that would not be fair would it? I know what I expected.
When I got up that Wednesday morning, I knew something was different. Lines had formed around the Amsterdam News. People were buying the first edition bearing the photograph of the first lady, the second lady and the third lady and the first gentleman; the president, the president’s wife and their children. That sure sounds good. That sure sounds good. Blessed be the dreamer, for he shall have forever to dream.
We are on that forever track today. Don’t try to waste my time by having someone ask me where I am on that track. The answer is so easy. I am where I am supposed to be. President Barack Obama is with me and my daddy, too.
I often remember seeing my father pray. I don’t remember vividly being able to see his image in a church, but I’m sure he was in church many times before because momma made everyone else go. Then why not daddy?
As strong a man as he was, he did pray. He said a few hundred words that were possible to hear either praising or cursing something or someone, but I cannot suggest that there was a someone because my father had many strengths and few weaknesses, but he was afraid of God. He would never acknowledge that, but he was. But my momma, on the other hand, was not afraid of God or any man, woman or child. Thirteen children!!! Oh, what a morning. Thirteen children, some still here after my dead mother has long passed. I can still see her describing her mother to us, who was alive when we were born, that is my twin brother’s memory.
She was a big, healthy Black woman with the soul of Black Africa and a hint of the Cherokee Nation, of which she is alleged to have been a part. Who knows? Who cares? But that is pretty good stuff when you consider it. Momma, my mother, my twin brother’s mother, a mother of all 13 of us. It has been another year, and these memories will be with me forever. So much to say, so little time to say it. So long to live, but what for? So long to praise whatever God is yours, but why? It is so much like hearing a child talk when confronted by his mother for some accident of fate, who says to his mother when asked why he had done this or that and he responds, “Because.” Isn’t that really enough, “Because”? Yes, it is, my liege.