Jimi,
Please read this. It will make you appreciate God and His will to keep us alive and to appreciate this ferocious (in a good way) woman for her willingness to share her road to death. May God grant her His healing power.
D.
-----Original Message-----
From: La Vonda R. Staples <lrstaples@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Fri, Dec 6, 2013 10:15 pm
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Mother's Pride Goes Beyond A Daughter's Belief: Love Given, Love Returned
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-- From: La Vonda R. Staples <lrstaples@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Fri, Dec 6, 2013 10:15 pm
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Mother's Pride Goes Beyond A Daughter's Belief: Love Given, Love Returned
I have been told that there is nothing more that the doctors can do. That I'm now in hospice care. And although my spirit is resigned to trusting in God my human feet are now directed to put my life in as little disorder as possible. I'm making my arrangements so that my children can be free to grieve my transition. This, despite the opinions of a few, doesn't mean that I no longer have faith in God. It means that I'm pragmatic and realistic. I live in this body, they don't. And I am the one who screams for relief from this pain. I am the one who tenderly puts a swollen foot on the floor each morning or afternoon or whenever the pain drugs run out and I'm brought out of the world of dreams. I am the one who awakes to this pain. Fortunately, I am also the one who wakes to receive emails, letters, phone calls and a few (too few) visits from those who put their love into verbs and display action. I'm happy to know many of these surprising sources of strength (and I say surprising due to the fact that if I had been asked, years ago, who would be by my side, I would have been wrong on each guess) which constitute the hands and shoulders that keep me from hitting the floor. I'm happy to know, finally, to really know, these friends and family. I am humbled that they have elected to give me their precious time.
I'm so happy to know you as well. One of the reasons, in September of 2011, that I started the blog and really a life in the public sphere, was that I said to myself, "there just has to be some goodness in this world." I have learned that we call to ourselves the elements of which we are comprised. In street language? Game recognize game. Game know game. And game is always game (it can never suddenly transform itself into anything other than what it is as when revenge turns into a blessing). I decided that I would be as honest as I could. I would say, "I love you." I would search my heart and truly mine that source for its greatest treasure: love without reason, without cause, without quid pro quo. I sought to meet Black American men (on a micro level of my theory) who could do more than spout meaningless and endless nauseating slogans and banter. I wanted to meet males who had become men. I didn't want to date them. I wanted to encourage them. In short, I wanted to mother men like you. For a mother is the ultimate and first cultivator of the gifts God gives to all men and women. In my small way, I wanted to keep you congratulated by letting you know that your duty is to lift up like-minded men.
I wanted to shelter Black women and I wanted to let our White brothers and sisters know that they were not exempt from any judgement of God because of what man had told them about their non-White fellow citizens of this great nation. Yes. I wanted to speak truth to power, caress those who have been too strong for too long, and to remind those who were meant to lead that we (the women and children) were ready for them to come home and take their God-given place at the head of the family table. All eyes on you. I knew I would be a small voice. Tiny little whisper trying to hurl my heart into the whirlwind. Yet two years later it is this very pursuit which has sustained me. I started something for someone else and it has born fruit which feeds me. I'm stunned. I was talking to my mama the other day and I said something she didn't believe. She said, "you're a smart woman and I know you don't believe that." You see, my mother has just now become my mother. We have let past pains go, for the most part and as much as we can. I had to realize that no matter how old I get, I still need to be mothered. I am always growing so that means I am never grown. Until you are grown you need a mother. This means that as long as I am taking in oxygen, growing, stretching my fragile fonds to the sky, I will need to be some one's baby.
What prompted her in my face remark? I said, "I never thought that anyone would take me seriously." And I'm telling you and everyone else that I am telling the truth. I was telling her the truth. But, we know that God is the only one Who truly knows our hearts. My mother, although she is my longest running friendship, has no idea how insecure, afraid, and anxious I am regarding my written work. If you think I've written a lot in the last two years I invite you to take a look at my portable drive as well as the u-haul moving box full of files, not documents, but files of written work from 1979 to 2002 (this is the year when I started using a computer to save my work; until that point, I made hard copy printouts and stored them in a metal cabinet).
All of this work as well as my notes (in yet another u-haul moving box) which were taken down in long hand on yellow legal pads (I think there's at least 100 of them), UMSL (University of Missouri at St. Louis where I earned an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in Contemporary European History along with a not so small variety of courses on African politics) 3 and 5 section notebooks (about 10), and stray napkins, post its, and index cards are stored as well. There is a small, sealed box of my journals. These are very different and will never be read. As soon as I am well they will all be burned along with my autobiography (And All Of These Things In My Father's House). Even my library of 1,000 books bears witness to my failure to believe in myself fully as I've never removed all of the tabs that were used to mark pages of text I had planned to use as footnotes. No. Even though she has seen all of this, for lack of a better word, stuff, she doesn't believe that I do not possess an endless stream of confidence. That's fine. I have to accept it because it's her truth. I can't change it. I can only tell you that I wanted to have this relationship with the world because I needed it. I needed goodness. I used the only tools I possessed in pursuit of realizing my dreams. I wanted to send something out and I'm so happy to say that something came back. Something very special which cannot be bought or sold. You. I thank you. For every breath inhaled and exhaled along my journey is executed with your assistance. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. And it is a heart which is bottomless for it has to store my love.
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