Alamogordo, New Mexico

The White Sands I Remember

My first home with my parents was in a white adobe house with two bedrooms. Here is where my memories start with both of my parents, especially my mother. My sisters and brothers don't remember Mom as I do. By the time they were old enough to even understand that Mother was a nurse, nurses wore pants and tunics, not the formal nurses uniform of white dresses, stockings and shoes.
     I remember sitting and watching her dress for work. She had beautiful skin. She had this gorgeous raven black hair, a delicate bone structure and keen features. She was always beautiful to me. What I remember is watching her prepare for work, ironing her uniform and polishing her shoes a stark white. All of my life, my mother's care in her dress was exceptionally beautiful. I have, I admit, always felt a bit awkward around her. I was big, large hands and feet. She had bony fingers and thin feet. Learning later that she had been chubby until she was in her twenties and that it was in this chubby state that she caught my Dad's eye was a revelation.
     Anyway, I loved my mother, idolized her. I wonder if part of it was that in order to take care of me, she had to live some place else. So, I didn't have a mother everyday, but everyday I knew about her, she was an integral part of my life. I never felt deprived. Maybe it was because my grandmother always let me know how lucky I was that my mother loved us enough to work hard. I also realize that because my Mother worked as she did, my grandmother was able to devote a considerable amount of time to my care. This blog is helping me to piece together the chronology of my life and my parent's life. It is my hope to get into more of this as I write this journal, but here is some of what stands out.
     My mother didn't wear a lot of makeup, but she always wore lipstick. She worked the night shift. Most of my life my Mother worked the 11 to 7 shift of whatever hospital she worked for. As she would get dress to go to work, I would watch eagerly. The highlight of my valiant  watch was after she placed her nurse's cap on her head she would expertly apply red lipstick to her lips. It kept me enthralled. I can still feel my anticipation because once she applied that lipstick, she would leave. But not before kissing my lips briefly so that I had red lipstick on, too. Then she would tuck me in the bed and kiss me goodnight. As I snuggled down into my bed, my mother would put on her wool blue cape, swirling it around her shoulders, pulling it together with a gold clasped chain and the final touch, pinning on her nurses pin, a pin I cherish more than any jewelry she owned. This is my one treasure of her because of this memory it evokes.
     My father did some construction work at White Sands. I do remember the mountains of white sands and going there with my mother, father and grandmother. These memories must be of the family times. Abstract and mostly in bits and pieces. The first memory of my father--something that I know happened--was hiding in the back seat of his car wanting to follow him to work. He finds me, of course, and he's not angry about it. I am disappointed that I can't go with him and I am not sure whether I cry or not. I do know that my Mother and Father laugh about it. I think I know why. It meant that I was bonding with him, something my Mom desperately wanted. I think he did, too.
     I don't know when that changed. For some reason, there came a time when I didn't sleep in my room anymore. I always dragged a pillow and covers to the couch where my Mother would find me the next morning. I do remember the dream, though, and it came barreling into my consciousness the night we fled from my father. The night after he brandished a rifle and demanded a lie from me. It shook my very soul as I drove my Mother and siblings to Texarkana, back to the place where I had once felt safe.
     I know now why I slept on the couch, but I didn't until I told my Mother the dream I had. I told her that I remember someone knocking on the door of the house and my father gets up to let the person in. I remember trying to pretend to be asleep, but I peeped out from under the covers blanketing my head as my father and the man walked down to the end of the room not far from me. I don't know how I knew, but the man with my father was the devil. He was as good looking as my father and they talked. I couldn't hear them. They pointed at me and I knew then that they knew I was awake and that I knew who they were.
     Next: The Two Faces of Henry.

My Mom, My Dad and Me

"My Momma said, 'Don't lose you 'cuz the best luck I had was you.'

But I know one thing, that I love you."

Michael Franti singing in "Hey, I love you."

Michael Franti sings these words throughout his song, "Hey, I love you!" I sing it most mornings when I need a pick me up. But, the part I like best is when Michael sings about his mother's love for him. I guess in many ways, I have always known my mother loved me. I wasn't so sure about my father. However, I think I understand why. I can sympathize with him for many reasons and hopefully these vignettes will help you see as I finally was able to see. Everybody needs someone to love them.

     As I sat in the backseat of the car with my mother and father, I wonder what I was thinking. I was leaving the comfort of the only home I knew at Steven's Court in Texarkana, Texas with my Grandmother and her husband, Mr. Leon. I was leaving cousins I adored, aunts who adored me. I was heading somewhere and I only understood that it was away. I guess you don't actually explain these things to a 3 year-old child, do you? I imagine not. 

     The Fifties was an unusual time for blacks in this country. There was unrest and the treatment of black people in this country, especially in the South, was bad. Both my parents were educated. Their combined intelligence is probably what made me a somewhat gifted child. I don't say that to brag, only that I realize my DNA comes from two remarkable people. Isn't it a shame that we don't recognize the best of us. I think perhaps people have always focused on what is wrong rather than what is right when analyzing the past. I am finally recognizing that it must be the whole truth--the entire story--that helps us to understand.

     My father, as I've come to understand, wanted to take us away to a better life. The west beckoned a lot of blacks during this time. Even so, I imagine that the trip out West was difficult. Since I don't remember the drive and only have the memory of wanting to stay with my Grandmother when she asked if I wanted to stay with her, I have to use my knowledge of what that drive might have been. It was summer, I know, probably late summer so it would have been hot. I imagine that we stopped often and that I was probably a little clingy to my mother. Children would be, would they not?

     Seeing my father with other children and even remembering him with my younger sisters and brothers, I would imagine that he tried to engage me. Did I only just meet him? Had he been a regular visitor? The answer, I know now, is no. He saw me for the first time when I was about 18 months old. I don't think he saw me again until he came from Kansas City with my mother to take me away.

      After my birth, my mother went back to work at the Negro Hospital in Kansas City. It has always been a source of pride for me that my mother seemed to have gotten on with her life after such a huge disappointment. My father had married someone else. According to my aunts, he married someone who was socially his equal. She was also fair as he was, meaning that they were both light skinned. My father decided soon after my birth to enter into the ministry. My grandfather, his father, was a minister. He would become one, too.

     I understand that my mother started dating a black doctor during this time. His name was Dr. Hill. Like her, he was dark chocolate in coloring and according to my aunts, "a dream." They were happy for my mother, too, until they learned that my father was entering into the ministry. My aunts thought this was the height of hypocrisy after what he did to their sister. I don't think my mother knew what my aunts were planning that day. In fact, I am sure of it. My Aunt Ollie (ne Olive) and my Aunt Josephine had taken me to Kansas City to visit their sister, which I understand they did regularly. That Sunday while Mom was at work, they dressed me up and took me to church, the church where my father was being ordained. They sat me on the front pew. Have I said how much I look like my father? I think that is why they did it.
     After the service, according to my aunt, they took me away and didn't let him talk or touch me. I don't know what happened after that. Did his wife know? Did the members of the church know? It seems that they did after that. It was a year later that my mother and father married. How did that happen? What was the catalyst that not only brought them together and caused my father's divorce? Was it me? 

     When my father was in his eighties and in the hospital, I went to see him. When I walked into his room, he said, "You were the prettiest child I had ever seen the first time I laid eyes on you." There was pure love in his eyes it seemed as he remembered that moment. But, I needed to know. 

     "What was I? Two or Three?" I asked.

     "Yes." He said it quietly and simply.

     The tears spilled from my eyes. It was the first time he had admitted that he hadn't been married to my mother when I was born. Sometimes over the course of the years between my sixteenth birthday and my late forties, I felt I didn't matter to him. This memory triggered something for both of us that day. Was it forgiveness? Healing? Love? Maybe all three?

     ... but I know one thing--that I love you.

More--Life in Alamogordo

A Little Girl Remembers

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.

Khalil Gibran on Children, The Prophet

Sam and Henry's Daughter--Me!

What are memories? My sister next to me swears her first memory is of being grabbed by hairy hands. My mother told her that the obstetrician was a white man with very hairy arms. Are these memories real? I imagine so.
     My earliest memories are of me playing jacks with my Mom on the broad steps of a building surrounded by lots of trees. I remember my Mom telling me that playing jacks was easy. I remember being captivated by her long fingers, her slim brown hands, tossing the little red ball in the air and then sweeping up the jacks in her palms. The ball would bounce once and she'd catch it, still holding the jacks and I would clap with glee. It is my mother's hands I see in my dreams more than anything. As I got older, I compared my hands, larger than hers, and realized that I was more my father's daughter than hers. I looked like him, was large and tall like him. I wanted to be her, however. For a little while.
     Another memory is of me begging to stay up with my cousins, or what I know now, must be my cousins. My grandmother tells me I am sleepy. "I'm not sleepy, Grandmother. I'm not." She grins. "Okay, but I don't think you'll last." I don't. I remember nothing more than climbing up on her big bed to watch television. I remember feeling safe, if I can describe it like that. I was so happy.
    Another memory is of me sitting in the back of a tan and white car. My mother is in the passenger seat. I don't remember exactly, but I know now that it was my father who was in the driver's seat of the car. I don't remember knowing this, but I do remember vividly my grandmother asking me, "P.K., don't you want to stay with me?" I did my best to open the door and couldn't figure it out. I remember being frightened and wanting more than anything to stay with her, for her to open that door and take me with her.
     These are vivid memories and when I recalled these to my mother (I was about 12), she was astonished. "Why you couldn't have been quite 2 when I took you to school and tried to teach you how to play jacks." School was  in Kansas City. That is where my mother went to get her nursing certificate. When I told her about the memory of my grandmother, she chuckled. She said that I always wanted to follow my cousins around, but that I was too young to keep up with them. However, the other memory made her pause and I don't think she told me how old I was when I first recalled this memory, only saying, "You were pretty young."
     My earliest memories do not include my father.
     I dream a lot. So did my mother. Our dreams gave us hours of conversations over my life. What did they mean? What was the dream's purpose? Sometimes we were clear and those dreams helped us focus. Other times, those dreams were startling and raised a lot of questions. We were dreamers and I think, in many ways, that was a gift she passed on to me. Interestingly, her dreams had many themes running through them and they centered mostly around my father and grandmother. In fact, she would say that sometimes her mother and my dad were interchangeable in her dreams--sometimes the dreams made her weep. Looking back, I think I know why, but we can't have me skipping ahead too far. This story or series of stories in unfolding in my mind, so the only thing I know is that I might start to tell something, but realize that it is not the time. Bear with me, though. After all, this is an experiment of sorts and a journey, too.
     That said, when I was sixteen, my mother and father decided to divorce. Rather my mother decided to divorce my father. I was the only one of my siblings (there are five of us, by the way) that wanted this. I think in many ways, I probably was the catalyst for them getting the divorce (the reasons why will come), but it was during this period that I learned I had been the catalyst for their getting married.
     The day my mother found out she carried me, she couldn't wait to tell my father. My dad taught at the black college in the same city my Mom went to nursing school. They were not married, but she said she thought my father was ecstatic when told about her pregnancy. My mother was 27 years old and finishing up nursing school. She had never been pregnant before. My father asked her to finish up the school semester and he would follow her home (she was from East Texas). He didn't. She thought they would get married. They didn't. A couple of months before I was born, my mother learned that my father had married someone else. What would make him do that?
     Three months later I was born. I didn't meet my father officially until three years later when he married my mom.
     Next: My Mom, My Dad and Me

A Marriage But Not a Lifetime ...

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of heaven dance between you.

Khalil Gibran on Marriage, The Prophet

My Mom and Dad--Sam and Henry

The night or early morning that my father died, I was the first one back to his hospice room. I had been the last one to leave his bedside a few hours earlier and thought how strange it was to be in the same room my Mom had died two years before, not the same bed, but placed in the same place she had been in that hospice space. And just like my mother, he looked peaceful.
   Back then, when my mother was dying, my father came (actually he sneaked in) to see my mother and he told her how pretty she was. She was. She had been pretty all her life, but she didn't know it. She had no vanity where her looks were concerned even though I never remember my father commenting on her beauty before. It made her day. She asked my sister if it was true. Was she pretty? Yeah, she was, my sister told her and remarked later how much it meant to our mother. It made a difference still what my father thought. My mother had loved him most of her life. In the end, it mattered what he thought and said.
     Still, as I sat next to his bed waiting for the coroner and my sisters to come, I sat at my computer and wrote his story. He was the son of a preacher man, a preacher himself. He was an educator, a mathematician extraordinaire. A flirt, he could charm the skin off a snake's back and teaching was his greatest joy. What I couldn't write and it wasn't necessary at the time, was how much I wanted to love him and wanted him to love me. Some of that I managed to get in the end, but only when his mind was slowed by dementia and age. I couldn't fight with him because it wouldn't have been a fair fight, but sometimes I wanted to. I wanted to have it out with him, but time was not on either of our sides.
     But, here's what I wondered. My mother and father had been divorced 34 years when she died. But there was something there. Perhaps, over time, I'll be able to put it all together. That is the reason for this blog. A lot of time we try and figure out the past so that we go on with our lives, resolve something, fix something. It isn't like that with me on this blog. I want to write their story because I believe it was a love story of a great magnitude. This is not to take away from the other women my father married (we know of at least 4 or 5, but maybe 8?). We know my mother was Wife 4, but I don't want to give too much away, too soon.
     No, I don't want to write a story to wrap up anything, but to honor something that was there even though it was often hidden in the pains and sorrows that go with life. I felt then as I do now, that my mother came to get my father that night because it was time. And I will say from the onset, I'm proud to be the daughter of Savantha Lee Walthall and Henry William McCary. I have the best of both of them in me. For me, this is their story and I'm hoping that as they are basking in that silent memory of God, that they like the story I tell, even it is only from my dreams.