What a Mighty Good Man
In America we call it Smiling Depression, Professor Makoto Natsume in Japan calls it Smile Mask Syndrome (SMS). It’s when you spend so much time faking your smile you’re no longer aware you are smiling even in stressful or upsetting experiences. This was painfully true of my mother who was always crying and picking the scab of her emotional wounds. By the time I was three, my sisters and brothers were grown and had their own lives. I thought it was my job to inspire her. “Mommy it’s okay, everything’s going to be alright,” I would say over and over, using my little hands to wipe the tears from her eyes. She would tell me her hopes and dreams about leaving my dad, moving to Arizona and becoming a nurse. As I sat on her lap, in a chair in the front room of our house in Detroit, I would say, “You can still be a nurse mommy, you can still leave.” It was the 1970s, and we had one of those velvet pictures of a black woman with a single tear rolling down her cheek, hanging on the wall. That picture, was symbolic of mother. Even on her happy days, she would dance around the house cleaning and singing her self-made song, “Trust no man, not even your brother, if they must be trusted let them trust one another.” She taught that sad song to me, my two sisters and our daughters. Every tear she cried became a yellow brick I used to build a wall of protection around my own heart. Deep down, I was determined to prove her wrong. The harder I tried; the more I failed.
One night, when I had finally had enough, I cried out to God and he answered, “Google your great-great grandfather.” Wait…what??!!?? My grandfather died in early 1950s, well before the internet was invented. I opened my laptop and did a search for John W. Fields, out of obedience. I was shocked to find: articles; blogs, colorized pictures; lesson plans. His slave narrative had been recorded in 1937 when he was 89 years old. Born a slave, he ran away in 1864 when he was sixteen. He ran from Kentucky to Indiana after overhearing that slaves had been set free and his master had no intention on telling them. In spite of the trauma he endured, he married the woman of his dreams, co-founded a Baptist Church and acquired land. He was healthy and worked until he was 104 years old. He even built several homes on his land, renting houses to white people and living with them in the same neighborhood.
For the first time, I felt at peace. No longer did I hear mom’s sad song in my head. Instead, I heard a song by Salt “N” Pepa, “What a man, what a man, what a mighty good man…yes he is.” As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered how my life might have been different if this was the song my mother would have sang to me about my great-great grandfather. I slept hard that night, and I had a dream. As I wandered through the wilderness, all of the bricks around my heart fell off and created a yellow brick road to self-discovery.
Excerpt from Black Beautiful Brilliant: The Black Woman's Evolution to Self-discovery, Peace, and Confidence
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Beautiful-Brilliant-Self-discovery-Confidence-ebook/dp/B07RT81VRM
