And how are you today my darling?!
She’d brighten my Monday mornings with her constant cheerfulness. Sometimes I’d go to Safeway to get my coffee and croissant hoping she’d be around, tending the express checkout counter… and she usually was. I wondered what in her life could possibly be going so right to make this woman so bubbly. She was black in America, undoubtedly burdened with years of racism and bearing the prints of injustice in her soul. Years of that subtle feeling of rejection, of fear that is too contained to be exposed, yet strong enough to make you ill. Years of negotiating the pain of lacking… things, opportunities, perhaps, encouragement, understanding? Years of loving men broken by a present that constantly tries to rob them of their freedom and dignity, much like the past. Years of pedaling and pedaling on that stationary bike that has grounded her at a check out counter at age 50. And yet here she is making my day.
Oh the irony! I can’t help but feel that something in her is much stronger, much brighter than the darkness lurking from a sad past. Stronger and brighter than me. This, I think is what they mean by “soul”. A desire to move forward through the river of life against a current of obstacles, and the might to do it. Drive, acceptance, joy. A steady disposition that as a woman I would love to have.
And then I think of all the amazing black women I’ve met through the years. Their defiance against the odds… their determination, their love, even when tainted by shades of anger and struggle. I think of my college roommate, whom I grew to love so dearly even though I never told her. How she would cheer me up with her sweet words and comfort food, her happy music and her straight talk. I could see so much of my people in her and yet I kept wishing I could be more like her. Because to me, it was true then and it is true now, few things are more powerful, more humbling or uplifting than a smile on a black woman.
