Village Mothers

Anyone who denies the value of the village has missed the most important thing about community. We didn’t learn it in school. We gleaned it from our every experience every day living in proximity with people of value and conviction who loved on us by teaching us everything they knew. Not in a classroom. Not necessarily even in a group setting.
But at every opportunity, without even knowing it, Village Mothers dropped nuggets of wisdom and instruction. This is the most elegant form of discipleship. And we benefited from the constant exposure.
That’s why, first of all, I’m personally offended when people scoff at the village concept. Most of us in the African-American village are a melange and hodgepodge of the many-colored love, the shades of hope and the kaleidoscope of vision offered by everyone who cared.
I’m proud of the work my village mothers have done and continue to do to make me the person I’m becoming. Yes, becoming. Even at 68. My life is wide open and I’m embarking on new horizons with brand new hope and energy.
One of those sainted women was my cousin, Anita, who was not a blood relative, but the 7-year older person in the foster household to which I was assigned at 7 when my principal caregiver died. The important thing about this relationship was that Anita was the only happy person in the household. She talked to me. She listened to me. She spoke the same language, although sometimes I had more mother wit. She was always there for me without making me feel like a burden. She alone was able to convey that and I’m so grateful. So we laughed at all kinds of things. And we poked fun at the elders in the house. Quietly. And as she got older, she found myriad ways to enlarge my horizons. She took me to art museums. She took me to teas. She secured my first part-time summer job as an assistant in a church office, recording amounts from offering envelopes.
She took me to New York to the 1965 World Fair. I saw telephones with screens on them so people could converse with “face time,” when we had not long since escaped party lines. While others groused about my unladylike behavior, she told me how to act like a lady. She showed up for all my important days. My wedding. My ordination. My first pastorate. My graduation from Coppin University and from Wesley Seminary. And when I started a magazine, she contributed the first thousand dollars. Without my asking. We continued our relationship as grownups do until her death in 2016.
And when we knew it wouldn’t be long before she left us, I wrote a piece, “May the first face she sees be Jesus,” to celebrate her life here and her new life in glory.