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Parents As Mentors

The distinguished theologian Thurman once described an oak tree in his childhood yard with leaves that each autumn turned yellow and died, but stayed on the branches all winter. Nothing–neither wind, storm, sleet, nor snow –- dislodged these dead leaves from the apparently lifeless branches. Dr. Thurman came to understand that the business of the oak tree during the long winter was to hold on to the dead leaves before turning them loose in spring so that new buds-the growing edge -– could begin to unfold. At winter's end, what wind, storm, sleet, or snow could not force off passed quietly away to become the tree's nourishment.

My parents were like that oak tree. They hung onto their children until we could blossom on our own and always put our needs ahead of their own. When I think of them, I think of integrity, consistency, high expectations, family rituals and regularity, prayer, meals, chores, church activities, study, reading, service, and play. I think of common sense and sound choices, of sacrifice and bedrock faith, of their unwavering gratitude and belief in the graciousness and presence of a Creator who gave us life, and to whom Daddy entrusted us in his will. I would have been devastated if I had ever found my parents not to be who I believed them to be. They never let us down.

Breakfast was always ready when we got up, got dressed, and got ready to go to school. A hot dinner was waiting when we came home from school around four o'clock. Our parents worked hard to keep us physically and morally dean and to maintain the rituals of family lifeand community work.

Mama was a pillar of Shiloh Baptist Church where Daddy was pastor. She was director of the youth and senior choirs which often practiced in our home or at church, church organist, founder and head of the Mothers' Club, and fundraiser-in-chief. Mama was a natural-born organizer of people. She organized the Mothers' Club to emphasize the importance of mothers' leadership roles at home and in the community. She organized a Cradle Roll Department and many other activities for children and young people. She raised the money to help Daddy build the new church and to pay its bills with all kinds of communitywide events and contests: baby contests; Miss Universe contests; Queen for a Day contests; hilarious male-only wedding contests. The winners who raised the most money got bundles of prizes Mama extracted from local merchants and the acclaim of an always jampacked Shiloh Baptist Church.

With her good and faithful women friends in the Mothers' Club, she prepared hundreds of Christmas bags of cheer with fruit and candy and nuts and threw a big party in the church's educational building, which we called the "hut," for all. For those who couldn't make it into the church the church went out to them. With Daddy or Mama and then alone, after we learned to drive, my siblings and I went to deliver food and coal to the poor on Christmas Day. And we were expected to visit and do errands for the poor, elderly, and sick whenever needed throughout the year.

Mama was the creative entrepreneur in the family. Daddy could not have managed without her. She always had a dime and an idea and a streak of independence that my strong father would try in vain to rein in but could always rely on. He called her "Pal."

As I grow older, I look more and more like her. My mother's strength sustains me wherever I waver in the face of tough challenges. I remember once, after I became a civil rights lawyer in Mississippi, I brought home to visit Mama a small girl who had lost her eye when marauding Mississippi Whites sprayed buckshot through the windows of her family's house. I'd been instructed by Jeannie's mother how to remove, clean, and replace her glass eye, which I felt able to do in theory. When confronted by the reality, though, I quavered. Seeing my hesitation, my mother gently pushed me aside, and quickly removed, cleaned, and reinserted Jeannie's glass eye without missing a beat.

I do what I do because my parents did what they did and were who they were. I first saw God's face in the face of my parents and heard God's voice in theirs as they cooed, read, told stories, and sang to me. I adored Daddy's affectionate nickname for me –- "Booster." I first felt God's love in their hands and arms and feet as they held, rocked, fed, bathed, and walked me when I was fretful or sick. I first learned God's caring by watching them care for me and my sister and three brothers and for others within our family and community. When Daddy's sister Ira got sick, he moved her and her five children to our hometown of Bennettsville, South Carolina, where she later died. Daddy and Mama helped raise Aunt Ira's five children all of whom went on to college. When Daddy's Aunts Cora and Alice got too old to live alone in the red hills of Gaffney, South Carolina, Daddy's birthplace, they came to Bennettsville, where my parents tended to them. When dignified old Reverend Riddick became homeless and others in the community could not care for him, my parents began the first Black home for the aged in our town. Mama ran it after Daddy died. My brother Julian ran it after Mama died. His daughters, Stephanie and Crystal, have run it since he died. Many of my childhood elders have found a caring haven in Bennettsville when they could no longer care for themselves.

I learned to speak the truth because it was expected and enforced in my house. I learned profanity was unacceptable after violating this tenet on more than one occasion and having my mouth washed out with Octagon soap. I learned to stand up when an older person entered the room and to give him or her my seat and to say please and thank you and yes maam and no sir to adults. (And I want to tell young and older people-White, Brown, and Black-not to dare call Mrs. Rosa Parks "Rosa" or Dr. Maya Angelou "Maya" or Dr. John Hope Franklin "John Hope" if they are not personal friends.) We need to reinstill respect for elders at all levels of our society and elders need to deserve it.