What my Grandmother Left Behind.

Inspired by Alice Walker’s stunning essay, “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: The Creativity of Black Women in the South.” I pay homage to my own mother Queen Ethel, her siblings Candetha, Ivory, Wilbur, Thenell, Joyce, and the souls of the siblings who never reached a full life. This is for their unforgettable mother, my grandmother, Annie Mae Green who died in 1946 following complications during her last pregnancy. This is what remains of a Southern-bred woman who loved fiercely and forever.

Without ever personally hearing the songs of her heart, my grandmother’s Annie Mae’s signature in this life that says “I am still here!” is captured in bold, pretty, cursive lines imprinted with vibrant red clay and unshakable southern dirt; signed expressively and beautifully as her great-granddaughter Ta’Rea Campbell, Actor, Singer.

Her spirit river runs gently with quiet waters that continually feed her offspring with encouragement, a prodding in dreams to run ahead, “go on now chile,” her whispers to ears and heads bent low in fervent prayers. She laughs like a child discovering the secrets that make the magic of words, fed to many in stirring sermons on the breaths of her grandchildren, the Rev. Diane Henson and Elder Kelvin Green.

Dappled sunshine warm and nourishing on brown skin fills and stretches in contentment, fueling ideas, reinventing minds to achieve and speak into existence her dreams. Worn, but young hands that constantly soothed and wiped tears, hands that carried homemade jars of remedies to the sick and shut-in transcends into the capable hands of her granddaughter Marcia, whose dedication to preserving life as a nurse manifested into an ushering towards comfort with the compassion of Annie Mae.

I can only imagine how much of a life she was able to weave into the young souls she left behind, the immense love that floats in her wake is an alive and moving entity, tangible yet ethereal surviving the intrusions and unjustifiable societal norms of her time. Like grains of loose sands and scents of tall Southern pine trees she fell, at age thirty-six, into the lure of cool earth’s song and floated to heaven on a melody to which she had not yet danced. But, her legacies would! Giving her unfulfilled treasures a doorway into the future in demeanors and voices that against silent strains vociferously ring the challenges to our truths. Her great-grandchildren live boldly in the tendrils of what remains of Annie Mae, realized in the fullness of this time, knowing the beauty of her life will continue in the next, and after all.

Everything she was able to do creatively such as sing praises to the Lord, sew homemade quilts, set bountiful tables, and blow errant kisses to a husband who set out in the sea-salt tinged morning air to make a way for their home, where other people’s memories of her are now our beautiful realities. There is much more to a meal prepared by her granddaughters, Sherri and Sybil, whisked into their ingredients is the essence of Annie Mae, with her calm hands guiding sprinkles of this and that into magnificent feasts for the soul.

Nurturing deeply, her capacity was limitless, spiraling out to envelop others in cascades of laughter, captivating and reborn inside the merriment that exudes from yet another set of granddaughters, this time within the souls of Michelle and Gloria.

Nothing crushes an unfulfilled spirit, it survives and floats onward to a forever destiny, sewn into our narratives like the many stitches our ancestors pieced together to shape this America. This woman, of grace and power even after death, is realized inside the brown orbs of her many legacies, especially the grandsons and great-grandsons who seeing beyond to possibilities unimagined by some, never forgot the words of her life. Minds alive with wisdom and curiosity, her seeds hold talents that invoke spectacular visions and truths laced with her fertile cultivations.

She is the scent of Southern dirt, church handkerchiefs, un-hugged children meant for dusty backrooms, worn bibles blotched with fallen tears, and everything good inside a grandmother’s arms.

She is Annie Mae…still. Born day February 7th, 1909

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