[MOTHER GIRL] [mother girl] [mother GIRL]

My mother tells me the story of her career aspirations which became clear for her somewhere around age 16. I will tell it to you the way I saw and experienced it. This story is filled with life and it is a live one - settle in for this one dears.

There was a very spirited young girl who loved riding her bike. She knew by heart the seasons of all the different fruits and would climb trees to gather her finds - through and under fences to avoid the crabby old man’s dogs. He had the best guavas she had ever tasted: buttery, fragrant, and the most intriguing complexion of pink. She loved to sing and was quite good at it. Singing in church for the grateful elders - she was keen on being part of something - a collective place with purpose and ritual. 
Her mother envied her polish. 

Mother attempts to climb the stairs to a landing of body autonomy - a lineage beaten into submission. A technique employed by the mother country for suppression of those who resisted colonial control. 

Everyone fancied the reverberation from her hymns, but I imagine that no one wanted to hear the internal recitations from a girl with such a penetrating lens and a buoyant spirit - light enough to float up and lullaby the divine. Knowing this made me feel in good company. I am from the woman who sought to speak. 
Mom was a heart broken girl. 

Fashioned by a culture as we come of age. Slapped by the relegation of one's spirit to fit a gender presentation. Girls get less, girls do less, girls have to dim, adjust, shift, pivot to allow for boys to have, to do, and be more. The girl who’s mother hated her for the very reasons she hated herself - female. female in this place and time - like all the other places and times - as glorified helper, assistant, servant, the one who cleans, covers, hides, denies, colludes with the mess of the masculine counterpart and by virtue the one who does it for the entire family and culture. 

The evolutionary process of oppression….

There, but not quite central in her life - she looked to women who contorted their bodies in the presence of men. How do you call out your master when he violates moral principles? 
Seen as protection, marriage is a must. There is no vacancy space for a single woman, so women are offered a marriage to a man for “protection.” 

Where does a spirit go when it cannot live above ground? The convent! It’s free of visible male rule, it must have looked utopic facing a 16 year old girl. For a girl in a rural village women’s work was tending home. Girls rarely came within orbit of an adult woman in a professional or occupational field apart from school, if she was allowed to attend. This was where mom made first contact. 

The children during colonial rule were indoctrinated into the goodness of whiteness - made pure - without explicit mention of their lack. 

The nuns were the teachers, they were women from neighboring colonies trained by the English ladies on: how to be properly human while seeking an education. There was emphasis in schools on decorum, speech, dress… In other words: civilization continues.  Black and brown bodies were being punished, trained, and molded into the hopes of being acceptable. 

[bodies who sought the sun, rhythm, and enlightened time as fluid as its medicine // naturally kept failing at being disembodied]

cue corporal punishment.

I was born 2 years post colonial rule and was caned in school, for being late, for wrong answers.... for being a person obstinance. I could only imagine how much more stringent colonial rule was about its indoctrination, I mean the education of the natives during their actual rule. Mom had her career awakening when she was taught by a nun from Barbados. An independent brown woman (if we leave her beholden relationship to God out of it), spirited, dynamic, and smart -  but my mothers father refused her wishes. He arranged a marriage for her at the age of 19 to a boy 5 years her senior because he was from a good family, had strong hard working hands, and a good handshake cause that is something. 

// nun - none - nothing // a word play progression her father wanted far, far away from his daughter's future story. 

                        the sacred vows for successful completion of nun school: 
                        chastity, poverty, and obedience. 

Mom would have been a nunnery drop out. Chastity - she has chosen, even without the insistence of God. Poverty - she would have aced but, obedience: I don’t know what made her think she would have ever been able to fulfill this vow since she has been choosing to know her truth, and speak it, her whole life. She is not content to be silent, look the other way, or pretend she doesn't know what she knows.

a sincere admiration

Holder of an internal compass. A knower of north. An infinity symbol braided like strands of life, age to age - taut and gentle. A keepsake of resistance - a reminder that we share more than a cellular design. The wised young - an infant sagedness. She comes to me in many forms and we recognize the grace finessed by distance. An angular faith. The ides of solitude built a sustaining prayer. An opening with no close - arrive to me and give me breath. Twinkling eye echoes of stained glass - kaleidoscope bits pieced together, framed for ritual and routine purposes. The body - the cup - peering out in wonderment - casting song and dreams from the limb of a fruit tree. mother girl. 

<3 m + a