HER Replay: Behind The Poetry: God Bless Mom (featuring my mom!)

This week I’m taking y’all behind the poetry of my poem God Bless Mom and for the first time ever my mom is joining us as a guest in the HER Living Room! Listen in for how my mom inspired this poem and what she did that inspired me to become a spoken word poet.

To get transcripts, links, and details from each episode, check out the show notes. To continue your support of the podcast and my work, become a member of my Patreon community where you can get access to archived episodes, bonus episodes, and behind the scenes content. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter, for podcast clips, poetry quotes and random quips. For information on how to book me to speak or perform at an event, visit amenabrown.com. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of Her with

(00:03):
Amina Brown. And this week is a behind the Poetry episode.
And if you are used to listening to the podcast,
if you are a part of our Her living Room
on a weekly basis, you know that normally I don't
have guests for my behind the Poetry episodes, but today
I have a very special guest, without whom I wouldn't

(00:26):
be here. My mom is here. So today I'm taking
y'all behind the poetry of my poem God Bless Mom,

(00:49):
which obviously was inspired by my mom. I thought it
would be fun if she came into her living room.
How you doing, Mom, I'm feeling good. Yes, I am
excited to be here. I been waiting for this moment. Yes, yes, yes, yes,
thank you. Thank you for that lovely intro. I love it,

(01:10):
love it, love it, love it. And y'all, the day
of this recording, even though you will be hearing this
weeks afterwards, but the day of this recording is actually
my mom's birthday. She agreed that we could record this
podcast on her birthday, So happy birthday, Mom. Hope you're
having a good birthday so far. Thank you. I am
having a wonderful birthday. It started out real good, real early,

(01:34):
and real good, and it's continuing on the party and
continue on. That's right. In this family, we celebrate extended birthdays,
and so we have the actual day of one's birthday,
and then one is able to decide if one wants
to celebrate the entire month, or celebrate thirty days from
one's birthday, or just make a year of it. We

(01:55):
do all sorts of things. So we love to see that.
I'm so glad you're here on your birthday, Moms. So
before we get into this poem, I want to talk
to y'all about how my mom is responsible for me
becoming a writer and a performer. And I think there
might be a behind the poetry episode when I did
Roots and Wings where I may have told a little

(02:15):
bit of this story. And I used to tell this
story on stage all the time also, and whenever I've
done like interviews and people would ask, you know, why
did I want to write poetry or what inspired me
to become a spoken word poet. There's a very particular
story about my mom that I tell. My mom has
been with me and heard me tell this story on
stage before, but I've never had a moment where I

(02:38):
could get my mom's side of the story for y'all
to be able to hear this. So I want to
start with this, Mom, and then we'll go into the poem.
And there are a few other questions around the poem
that I want to ask you. But when I tell
my side of the story, Mom, I tell the people
that the reason why I am a spoken word poet

(02:58):
today is because because you submitted me to a poetry
competition without my knowledge. I want to start the beginning
part of that is, do you recall telling me as
a teenager that there was no privacy in your house?
Do you remember saying that. I do remember saying that,

(03:19):
And I'm glad that I was that type of a
mom because also you all may not know, and let
me know, if you all have heard this story, you'll
have to let her know. I guess somehow people can
give you responses. But I started finding her poems when
she was about twelve years old, and I would read
them and I would be like finding all these pieces
of paper balled up and thrown in the trash can,

(03:41):
and I'm like, who's working this? Who's doing this? Are
you working on a project. And so finally that's when
I really realized that she was writing her own poems,
but she did not feel comfortable yet sharing them. So yes,
I do remember being that mom. I tried to make
sure you had your own home and other things like
that of your own. But I still am not ashamed

(04:04):
of being that mom because I didn't abuse it. I
don't think I did anyway. No, I don't think so.
I don't think so either. I mean she basically told me,
listen here. If you have a notebook, you got some notes.
I mean, some of y'all listening are like y'all write
notes in class. Yes, because when I was in school,
we didn't have cell phones or we didn't have ways

(04:25):
like electronically to communicate to our friends. It was either
the phone or handwritten notes. So my mom basically let
me know early on if I find it, I'm reading it,
if it's a notebook, if it's a folded up note
or whatever it is. And when I was doing stage shows,
I would tell how there was a little boy I
was writing. I must have been maybe I was a

(04:45):
sophomore jun probably a junior year in high school because
fun fact, I went to Christian School for ninth and
tenth grade, y'all in San Antonio, Texas. And then I
begged my mom to let me go to public school.
Been PowerPoint presentations that I had access to, then, I
probably would have done a PowerPoint presentation to say it
to my mom, please let me go to public school.

(05:07):
So she did. She let me go to public school
my junior and senior year. So I graduated from Justin
High School in San Antonio. Shout out to the Judson Rockets.
And my junior year, this is how bad I was
a science I was taking a class called chemistry for
the community, and there was a little boy in my class, Terrence,
and he and I would write notes during class. And

(05:28):
that's how I knew that you were really reading because
I came home from school one time and you were like,
who's Terrence. Oh, he's this boy in my chemistry class.
And you were basically like, well, I'm not sending you
to school for that kind of chemistry, so you need
to focus on your school work, okay please, Okay, So

(05:50):
let's talk about you. You know came upon some of
my notebooks since I remember you came to me and
told me that you had read some of the things
that I had written, and you told me that you
thought that they were good, that they were good pieces
of writing. You were encouraging me to keep writing. But
of course, like many kids, I just thought, well, this
is my mom. You know, she's probably gonna think whatever

(06:12):
I write is so great. Okay, So then I want
to talk about the oratorical contest that used to happen
at our church when I was growing up, Because we
grew up. I was growing up in a black church
in San Antonio, shout out to New Creation Christian Fellowship,
and every year there was an oratorical competition where you

(06:33):
could compete by either memorizing the work of other poets
or other writers, or you could write something yourself. And
you were competing like against your own age group. And
I competed many years and never won. And Mom, I
would like you to speak to what your feelings were
at that time about why I wasn't winning, or what

(06:55):
you felt we were driving away and I still was
not winning like higher honors in that competition. Well, first
of all, I had to maintain my composure because I
felt that every time you didn't win, I felt that
you didn't win because they didn't know about how good
of a writer you were. But also being a mom,

(07:16):
now this is true, being a mom, I just feel
that my child should have won every contest. I mean,
even if you were doing Maya Angelou's poems or whoever
poem you did, you should have just won the contest.
It was an oratorical contest. And shout out to our
church in San Antonio. They did encourage a lot with
the arts, and I'm so grateful for that for you
because you fit right in. So my feelings at that

(07:38):
time I had to keep my composure. My feelings were
that you should have won, but also I felt that
you would be more of a competitor if you would
present your own writing. But I knew that you had
already expressed that you didn't feel you wanted to share
all your poems with people, So I I had to

(08:00):
think about it. And then our youth pastor he told
me at the time about the contest. Oh see, I
didn't know that our youth pastor, which was Steve Tucker
at the time, told me about the contest. Steve Tucker
was either the assistant or he was the actual youth pastor.
He's assistant still because Elder Campbell was still the youth
custom but they were like working together. They were working together,

(08:22):
and they had already told me about the contests, and
because I was a volunteer youth leader, so he told
me about the contest. And I was just like, Okay,
so Mina's gonna present her poetry. I'm knowing, so I'm
reminding you, and that I keep going back to him,
finding out if he's heard anything, if he knows if
you submitted it. And then I finally asked you again,

(08:43):
had you submitted it? And you said no. And during
that time, which I am still a reader, during that time,
I had I love to read behind the scenes stories
about other writers. And during that time, for whatever reason,
I was reading a book and I don't remember what
book it was by Stephen King, but I was reading
a book about Stephen King. I had read a book

(09:05):
he written, but I was reading a book about him.
And the story was from his wife that he majored
in English. And I may get some of the facts wrong,
but he majored in English. He was a teacher, professor
or something like that. He hated it and every time
he would submit a book to a publisher, it would
get rejected. Well, when he wrote Carrie, and I'm sure
a lot of these listeners out here have heard of

(09:27):
the movie Carry Well that's based on a book by
Stephen King. Well, his wife found a manuscript. Even though
he had been rejected many times for other books, his
wife found a manuscript in the trash. She took it
out of the trash and she mailed it in. And
that's literally the first time he actually got paid for
a manuscript, a book, you know, I guess whatever you

(09:49):
would call the initial book. And he got paid for that.
That put him on the map. And I forget what
it was. It was something like huge amount at that time.
It was like three thousand dollars he had. He got
a book advance. And so when I read that, I
was really inspired by that. So I just started doing
more research on him and how he got to that
point and how his wife was frustrated at the time

(10:12):
because she knew that he was a good writer, but
he just had never hit that one book and Carrie
was the book for him. Yeah, and we see Stephen
King all over the place. So then I got thinking,
I said, I'm gonna ask me one more time, has
she submitted her poetry, and she said no, and you know,

(10:32):
in her teenage way, she was like, no, ma'am. I didn't.
So I found out that they were at the office work,
and they were at the church office working that day,
and I could go up there and use the fax machine.
I'm ABU have to circle back to them that they
were in cohoots with you, because I didn't know about that, Okay, continue,

(10:55):
So I had the forms already and I had her
name everything filled out. I knew someone her poems that
we had printed out, and so I just sent them in.
Did not know she was gonna win, but I had
confidence that at least it was worth them seeing her poetry.
I do not remember you asking me about the contest
in particular. I don't remember that part, maybe because I

(11:16):
blocked it out and I had no intentions of entering.
But I do remember you bringing up to me repeatedly
that you know, you wanted to see me like doing
more with my writing and stuff. And I just really
did not feel confident about it. Like when I would
memorize Maya Angelo's you know, phenomenal woman, like I could

(11:39):
feel confident performing it because I knew I could get
it down memorized and I could say it and everything
and like do well on stage. But something about the
idea of my own work out there, I don't know,
something about that made me feel like afraid and it
would just like stunt me, like I couldn't I couldn't
do anything. So anytime I'm imagining that you were asking

(12:02):
me about this contest, in my mind, I'm like, no,
like who else and who else would like this poetry?
That's how like not confident I felt about it. And
the contest that my mom was submitting me for that
I didn't know she was submitting me forre was the
NAACPS ACT SO competition and act SO was an acronym

(12:25):
and y'all, I'm so sorry that I cannot remember what
all the words were, but I know it was like
arts and now there was science. There were like different
categories that you could submit yourself for, and so it
had been a really big thing in the black community
because it gave a lot of students opportunities in these
different areas to be celebrated. And there was a local competition,

(12:47):
but then if you want locally, then you would get
a chance to also compete nationally. There was a national
ACT so competition, So if you want in the science
category in your local city, then all the winners from
your local city would pull together. The community would pull
together and raise money to help those kids and the
chaperones get to where the national competition was. So at

(13:11):
the time that my mom is submitting this, I'm actually
in my I wonder if that was my junior year,
that was before my senior year, That's what I think.
I think that that's what I'm thinking about.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Ray.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
I think it was the summer before mine. I can't
remember it was the summer before my senior year or
if you submitted it my senior year and we went
to ACT, so the summer before I went to college.
That's the part I can't remember. I can't remember that part.
Either it was either the junior year or was it
summer before your senior year. It ended up that nationals

(13:45):
were in Atlanta, whenever year you submitted. And I'm gonna
circle back to how we discovered that I won the thing.
But I ended up seeing Spellman, which y'all know as
listeners that that is my Ama mid We didn't get
to go actually on campus, but I did get to
see Spellman's campus like from Afar. That was the closest

(14:07):
I'd ever gotten until moving in. Okay, so let's circle
back into the story.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Now.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
You you went up to the church while my youth
pastor and one of the other youth leaders were up
there working and faxed this entry into the competition. Okay.
So then when they say if you want or not?
Are they mailing it back to you? Like, how did
you find out or did they call you? Like, how

(14:31):
did you find out that I actually want the thing? Well,
if I remember correcting, I got a phone call, But
also I think they contacted one of the youth ministers.
Will have to ask them do they remember do they
remember remember being contacted? But they contacted us by phone
and by letter. Okay, because the local chapter, and I
know it's hurting a lot of people that's hearing about

(14:53):
that we faxed it. You gotta puck up. It wasn't
no email, y'all. Okay. We just barely had AOL at
that time, and not everybody even had AOL. It couldn't
be depended on right, right, right, So they sent a
letter and they called Okay, and that's when I found
out that I was notified that you were selected and
that they wanted your poem to be presented at the

(15:16):
local Axle context and that you were one of the finalists.
And I had no idea what that was going to mean.
I was just excited that someone had finally recognized your
poetry right and that it was someone other than me,
that it was outside of me, Even though I know
I was kind of bootleg by submitting it without your permission.

(15:42):
It worked out, so I can't really hate on that
it worked out. Okay, So my memory of how you
told me that I wanted is that it was when
you told me, it was pretty close to when I
would have had to go there and like read the poem,
you know, So in my memory, it felt like it

(16:02):
was a Saturday. I know it was a Saturday when
you had to go there because all the community was
going to gather together, all the different other kids that
were finalists in all the different categories. I know it
was on a Saturday, but I felt like you notified
me I was finding out like on a Wednesday. It
was a couple of days. It felt like it wasn't
that long between when you told me and when we

(16:23):
were actually going to go to there and you came
to me so excited. You were like, you won this contest.
You want something, and so we have to go there,
like as a part of you winning something, we have
to go there and you have to read them like
your poem. And as you were talking is when I'm

(16:43):
starting to realize, because I'm like, well, how could I
win something that I didn't like submit anything for. And
then the more you were talking to me, I was like, Oh,
she sent something of mine there, and now that's the
only way I can like accept my winning my certificate
or whatever, you know, trophy, whatever they were gonna give

(17:04):
all of us, right, And y'all, I know that my mom.
You know, some of you are my friends in real life.
Y'all know my mom in real life, and a lot
of people, even some of you have met my mom
at events because we travel together as well. And y'all
meet my mom, and y'all be like, I love your mom.
She's so sweet. Listen, I love my mom too, Okay,
And I'm gonna tell you right now that the lady

(17:25):
that's on this podcast episode is very different from the
lady that raised me. Okay, So when she came to
me and she said, hey, you want this, she didn't
say would you like to go to there on Saturday?
She was like, we going on Saturday because you want this,

(17:48):
and we're gonna go there and you're gonna read your poems.
And I want to tell y'all that I, you know,
stood my ground and was like, I will not go there,
but I'm gonna tell you that I was afraid of
her a little bit. Okay, I was afraid of her.
Those of you that have black mothers, you understand, Okay,
there's a certain way. She didn't ask me no questions,

(18:08):
so I know it wasn't really no room to be
having a discussion about that. It was like, hey, we
going over there, So you got, however many days between
now and when that thing is you get yourself together
to do this. So I was kind of mumbling in
my breath a little bit. But when she was like
we going, I was like, yeah, no, yeah, sure that
sounds good. Do that. Let's do that. So I get

(18:32):
there and most of the people in the audience are
not people that we know, right, because it was like
a totally different cross section of black folks in San Antonio. Really,
there weren't really a lot of people there that we
went to church with if anybody, like most everybody there,
they were not people that I remember us knowing, right,

(18:54):
you're right, you're right. Okay, So I went there. First
of all, I didn't talk to you all about this
poem and not going to be read over this podcast episode.
But the poem that my mom found was this poem
I had written called Chocolate Mista. Ooh yes, and so
chocolate Mista had been selected. Well, I see, I didn't

(19:14):
remember the finalist part. So Chocolate Mista had been selected
as a finalist and I had to go there and
read it, and we were not finding out until we
got there if I was actually the winner in that category.
Is that how you remember it? That's how I remember it, Okay.
So I read the poem, and y'all all I can
remember I'm seventeen at the time, so this was my

(19:35):
senior year of high school. Now that I'm remembering that,
I'm seventeen, and I remember reading this poem that I've
read to a lot of my friends. You know, I
wouldn't really read my poems like in a public setting,
but I would like if I was talking to my
friends on the phone, I would read it to them
or sometimes when we were like in between classes or something,
or at lunch, I would read poems to them. So

(19:56):
I had read the poem like several times by this time,
but never in front of like an audience audience. So
when y'all are remembering the behind the poetry episode for
Roots and Wings and Roots and Wings, I'm telling really
the second time actually that I think I ever really
performed a poem of my own in a public setting. Now.

(20:17):
I think that time in Roots and Wings, when I
was in Alabama at that bookstore. I had actually memorized
Chocolate Mysta by that time, so that was my first
time ever saying one of my poems like from memory
in public. But this time at the act so competition
was the first time I'd ever read it in a
public setting. So I had the papers in front of me,
and I was reading it, and all I can remember

(20:39):
is seeing like the adults like leaning in when I
was reading the poem, and I remember that feeling so
fascinating to me because I just thought, you know, I'm seventeen,
I'm a kid. You know, these are like grown folks
who read books and seen films, They've been exposed to art,

(20:59):
you know, like they don't have any reason to be
leaning into what I have to say. And that was
one of the first times that I felt like, wow,
like this isn't as scary now that I'm here, It's
not as scary as I imagined it was going to be.
And apparently maybe I do have something to say that
is important enough that not just my friends from school,

(21:21):
but like grown people are like enjoying this thing that
I've written. So honestly, y'all, my mom is completely responsible
for me becoming a spoken word poet, because that really
was like I got bit by the bug. Then then
it was like, oh, now I see how these things
I write are also like to be performed, to be spoken,

(21:44):
that that's also something that I can do well. So
I think, you know, whenever I tell people this story, Mom,
I always tell them you really did a good job
in that moment of pushing me beyond my comfort zone
because I never would have believed in myself, you know,
or pushed myself to think that my work could do

(22:04):
that or that I could do that. And the fact
that you did that behind my back totally wind out here. Mom,
that was a really good parenting choice, you know, So
you got to give yourself a pat on the back
about that, thank you. And one of the reasons why
I wanted to do that, I think I was propelled
because spiritually, I kept remembering a time when I had

(22:28):
listened to some person that was talking to us about
parents and our children during that time, and the person
was encouraging us to know what y'all's dreams are and
know what God was telling us about what your gifts were.
And I saw that that was one of your gifts.
I didn't know that it was what it was going
to turn into, but I knew that it was a gift.

(22:48):
You had other gifts too, Ye had other things that
you like doing. But I when I saw that, I
just realized, Okay, this is something and I have to
try to help her get to this because she will
have a chance to use it in other ways, if
it's just you writing books or whatever. I didn't know

(23:08):
how it was really be expressed. I just remember that
person saying, always try to find out something about your
child that they're good at, right, and if they have
a dream for something, then try to see if you,
as a parent can be in their dream with them
in your own way. Yeah, And that's kind of what

(23:30):
propelled me, and so of course when I read that
story about Stephen King, it was on. Okay, one thing
I have to say about you, mom, just you know,

(23:50):
of course, now having forty plus years of life, having
been your daughter, you know, one thing I'll say about
my mom, y'all, is my mom is a celebrator to
the end. Okay, Like my mom is ready to cheer
you on you doing it, She's ready to support you.
Like I always have this funny story and this memory
I have of when I went from Christian to public school.

(24:14):
You know, here's me showing up to this big Texas school,
big football school, big track and field school. And I
remember this coach coming into one of my classes to
talk to the other athletes and looking at me and
going stand up. And I stood up and she said,
you meet me on the track at three o'clock. And
I was so scared. So I just went out there.

(24:35):
And y'all, first of all, I'm a terrible athlete. Okay,
that's maybe in another lifetime, maybe had I had my
matriculation at school gone differently, maybe I would have made
a good athlete. But I'm really not good at that.
But the coach had asked me to come out there,
so I did. And those of you that have children
or that remember when you were a teenager, sometimes you
know your parents when you get home from school, your

(24:56):
parents are like, I was school today, you know, and
you kind of like blo bah bah bab. You know,
you know, school, school, school, class, class, soft friends, soft friends.
You know, you're kind of like too cool for school
to be like talking to your parents, giving them lots
of details. So I'm assuming that I must have said
to my mom like, yeah, then this lady came in
and she said, she you're at the track. So I
guess I did. And I'm like gonna go out there,
I guess, and see how that happens. Anyways, boo boo boom.

(25:17):
I go to my room, do my homework, talk on
the phone to my friends, y'all. I lie to y'all.
Not my mom showed up to the track. Do y'all
understand me. She showed up to track practice. This isn't
a meat. Okay, this isn't a meat. This isn't the
state competition. My mom showed up to track practice with
my sister, who's also been on this podcast. So if

(25:39):
I'm seventeen, my sister's like six, so I'm assuming what
my mom probably went and picked my sister up from school,
took her and brought her over my mom. I get
to practice. My mom is sitting in the bleachers with
my sister.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Y'all.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Oh, I was so excited. Yes, yes, at the practice.
That's how much my mom believed in us as her children.
She was like, I'm not wait until you get to
the Olympics.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
I don't care that this is your first practice.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
I'm gonna cheer for you like you are winning the game.
And of course when you're a teenager, I just felt
like mortified. I felt so embarrassed. And now as an adult,
I'm like, yo, my mom like really loved me like that,
Like she really believed in me like that that She
was like, I'm gonna come out here and let you know.
Even my mom as a single mama, working as hard

(26:43):
as you worked, you know, there were some times that
your work schedule just it wasn't gonna allow for you
to be able to be like I can step in
to your class in the middle of the day and
bring everybody these cookies or whatever. There were just sometimes
your schedule wasn't gonna allow for that because you were
providing for us by your so but there were moments
when you could be there like that, you would be

(27:03):
there with the bells on, y'all. Okay, my mom is
not playing these games at all. Oh yes, oh yes,
I was so excited for you. And you know, I'll
come from a long line of people that encourage one another,
and my mom, my grandma, you know, whatever you needed,
they would just be like, you got it, you can
do it, you know what, in their own way, they
encourage you and they show the love. So I just

(27:25):
think it just, you know, it just kind of like
ballooned or blossomed in me when it came to you,
and then of course you know when it came to
your sister. I was just like when I found out
some about athletics, I was like, what you gonna You're
gonna try for the track team? Yes, I'm there, let's go.
I was ready. Okay, Mom, let's dig into this poem. Now,

(27:47):
let's get into God Bless Mom, which is a poem
that I wrote about my mom. So, as usual in
a behind the Poetry episode, we're going to play a
recording of the poem so that you can hear the
poem in full know that my mom is not new
to this poem. My mom has heard this poem many
many times. But now we're going to get a chance

(28:07):
to talk through it so that she can share with
you her real life experiences that I'm also writing about
in the poem. So let's take a listen to God
blessed mom.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
My mother read books to the swollen stomach that would
become me, write about what to expect when you're expecting,
about disciples, apostles, prophets, sinners, and saints, until her semi
colon broke, sending amniotic vowels and continents to splitting apart.
The time between my sentences grew less than five minutes apart.

(28:40):
My paragraph had arrived, and her margins stretched ten centimeters
wide so quickly that there would be no time for
epidoral or explanation. She must breathe, push labor count to
ten and then count ten fingers and tintoes, checks her
fingers on the lines of little eyes, egs, little mouth,

(29:01):
little nose, and from the light of touch left on nightstand.
She read me golden books, sat me down in Peter's chair, kicked.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Me rhymes from the baron Stea Bears.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
We put our.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Hands together and said our operators that God would bless Teddy, Rutsky,
Barbie and Kin. Then God would bless Sidney, my one
eye stuffed animal Koala bear best friend. Then God would
bless Daddy and Grandma. Right before Mom showed me where
the wild Things are.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
See.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
She taught me to read until I was reading her
to sleep words given to me by the number five
and letter A on Sesame Street and all the places
I would go with Sam Greeneck and ham in Toe
searching for golden tickets and Robe Dahl's pros. I wanted
to float on giant peaches with James y'all, love with.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Read Beverly Clearing, Ramona and.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Jesus until I was Amina the Brave. And I never
really went through that stage of slipping my little girl
feet into my mom's heels to play dress up. I
just wanted to read her library when I grew up,
hoping I could be one of you Farrell's beautiful daughters

(30:16):
and maybe one day turn the pages of Tar Baby.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
See.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
She taught me to find my roots in the handshake
of Alex Haley taught me to love the stale paper
scent of the library, to treasure books, cards and stationary
and even today, years later, she joins me at kitchen
table talking womanhood over the center of Earl Gray tea,
taking in all the mystery Life's and Walter Mosley's, trading

(30:40):
Baldwin and Baraka, singing psalt with Solomon.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Exchanging journals, wisdom and pens, and she reminds me with
a skillful subtlety that sometimes this is where the sidewalk ends,
That many storylines will come to an end, only for
better ones to begin.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
That life is a page turner. You should write your
own black twists. Then many will call themselves writers. But
there was only one author who knows the end from
the beginning.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
And sometimes the best.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
And hardest thing you'll ever do in your life is
trust him.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Never forget you.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Pay close attention to your character, and remember that people
are characters. They come and go, but never discount them.
People are characters, and your story won't happen without them.
See there was light in the attic at the end
of tunnels and in her eyes.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
So tonight, before I shut off Night's stand light.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
I pray the God, oh bless mom, and I'll read
myself to sleep, not.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
Me or my mom, both in here and our feelings.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Hearing that poem, Man, that poem is from my first
live album, Live at Java Monkey. Ah, I can't believe
how long ago that was. Now. So what made me
want to write this poem is I think I was
actually working on another poem and those beginning lines came
to me about you, mom, and I was like, hmm,

(32:05):
I was like, let me. I was supposed to be
working on the other poem, but God blessed Mom came
to me more quickly than whatever it was I was
working on. And I was happy about the way it
came to me because of course, you know, like many
poets and many songwriters you know, have dedicated pieces to
their mothers, you know. And I was like, you know,
I love my mom. I would love to have a

(32:26):
poem about my mom. But I didn't want it to
be like a generic mama poem. I didn't want it
to be a poem that's for everybody's mom. I wanted
to be a poem that was very specific to you.
So then when that motif, you know, came in my
mind about the words and the sentences and the books,
and then like that that's always been like a bonding

(32:48):
thing between you and I, like reading together when I
was little and going to all these bookstores and greeting
cards stores growing up. You know that felt like, oh, yes,
this this is my mom's poem. You know, this is
very specifically about Jean Brown and what my experience was,
you know, growing up with you. So I was really

(33:09):
really happy to see how the poem turned out. And
since you're here with me, Mom, I would love to
talk to you about some of that real life story
behind writing the poem, because my experience being your kid
was you had a big wall unit. I don't know
if it's because I was coming here to see you today,
but I actually like dreamed about that wall unit last night.

(33:30):
You had a tall, like bamboo wall unit, and it
just had books and books and books and books, and y'all.
I remember as a kid going to that wall unit
and picking out a book sometimes and opening it up
and like I was just too young to understand what
I was reading, you know, Like I mean, you had
like tar Baby on that shelf. You had the Temple

(33:53):
of My Familiar by Alice Walker, you know, on your shelves,
and so I remember pulling out those books sometimes and
I could tell from what little I could understand that
it was beautiful. But I wasn't old enough and had
not gone to school enough to really understand what I
was reading. So that always, you know, that line in

(34:14):
the poem is so true that that's really what I
wanted to do. It was like, get old enough that
I could understand these beautiful books you had. So can
you think of what made you love reading or what
made you really become this like connoisseur of books and stories.
I think it started when I was younger because my
mom used to take us to the library, but when

(34:35):
I was in school, they encouraged us to read so
many books. And it's interesting because now I'm going back
to that to where I'm trying to increase the number
of books that I read per month so that hopefully
by the end of a year there's a large amount.
Because of course, we didn't have the internet, right, we
didn't have cell phones, so that didn't interfere with our

(34:57):
reading team. So that's how it started for me. And
I can remember in high school, especially in high school,
there was just this big I was in a band
when I was in high school, and so by me
being in the marching band. You know, we read a lot.
He told us a lot about music, you know, our
instructor did. But also our English teacher. I loved English,
and I took this literature course, and that really catapault

(35:20):
to me to really even the foundation that I had,
it made me read even more because in the literature
class we started reading Shakespeare, we started reading other authors.
You know, some were people of color, some or not.
But because I just really loved reading at that time,
it just became I don't know, it just became a thing,
a bigger thing in my life, and to the point

(35:43):
where even my classmates they would say, you're just trying
to be the teacher's pet, because we would read Shakespeare
and I would go home and read it again. And
so when we came to class, the teacher would ask
questions and I would answer him or I would give
her my opinion. Or even if we read something, say,
for example, if we read something about Martin Luther King
or Malcolm X or somebody like that, it just interested

(36:06):
me more to want to read it more. So as
a child going to the library and then being encouraged
to read, and seeing my mom read and then of
course in church, of course they read the Bible. We
went to Sunday School and we had a little booklet
that we would read. But that was the foundation of
just actually learning how to read. But in high school
is when it really really just really kicked off. And

(36:28):
I love to this day. I still I love Shakespeare.
I mean, I just love it. And I love all
of the authors that I've read, like the ones that
you mentioned, you know, Alice Walker, I mean, some of
those women that wrote, you know, and there was some
male ones too, Langston Hughes. I read Langston Hughes too.
I read a lot of people of color books that

(36:49):
they wrote. And now I'm catching up on some of
the newer books that I hadn't heard of from some
of the times that we have now we have a
lot of writers now that I'm catching up on some
the books that they've written. And it's just really really
been I mean, it's just amazing. The thing about reading.
You could go to another world, you go to another country.

(37:09):
I may be in Georgia, but I could be in
Africa with this person. You know, I'm reading about Nelson
Mandela or some other person who went through something I
don't know, it just it's stimulating to me. And so
I would say that was the time when it really
got to where I was just like, I'm reading all
this stuff. And then I was in a military lady

(37:31):
was stationed in DC, and DC at that time that
I was there was a mecca and it still is.
I just haven't lived there in a long time. But
there was so many opportunities to actually meet these authors
like Alex Haley, and it was just so many authors
that I met that it was just amazing. I had

(37:52):
read their books when I was in high school. So
when I went to something in DC and that person
was there, it was just amazing to me. Yeah, and
I remember because you know, with Keda and I being
almost eleven years apart, so I was ten when you
were pregnant with Keda, and I remember it being really
important to you that we would be reading, you know,

(38:16):
while you were pregnant. And you also told me that
when you were pregnant with me, you did the same thing.
You said that you read to us even when you
were pregnant. What was it that made you, you know,
just that early on and even you know, as we
were young children, even before we could read ourselves, like,
why was it so important to you that we would

(38:36):
also be exposed to good stories and exposed to good books.
For one thing, I learned that when a mother is
pregnant with the child, I learned that even though the
child is in utero, the child can hear. That's the
reason why they recognize their parents' voices. We don't they're
actually born. But also that it's reading to them and

(38:57):
hearing your voices a stimulation stimulates their nerves. You know,
they're benefiting from that. So when I learned that, that's
what made me want to read to you even more.
And also music. That's another because the hearing of the
fetus when they're inside their mama, the hearing is very acute,
and that's the reason why a lot of times people

(39:18):
will say, well, I don't know how they seem like
they recognized this person's voice. Well, that's because they've been
hearing this person's voice all this time and whatever age.
You know, I forget what the weeks were, but in
certain weeks where they're hearing is just really like they're
really hearing their surroundings. So then it became important to
me once I found that out. After you all were born.
It became important because I wanted you to be able

(39:40):
to think, and not just thinking one realm. I wanted
your mind to be expanded to where you knew things,
whether it was history or if it was non fiction,
or if it was fiction. That was important to me
because I wanted you to be an independent thinker. When
I was in nursing school, they taught us that, and
I was thinking to myself, Wow, I grew up like this, right,

(40:02):
you know, learning how to read something and interpret it,
reading a newspaper or reading just an article, And so
I wanted y'all to be able to as little girls.
I wanted y'all to be able to read a book,
to know about what literature was out here, and to
know what was being said in the books. If you
could read it, you could do it if you needed
to do a certain thing right. And I also knew

(40:26):
that it would enhance your ability. I learned that from reading.
I read a lot of psychology books when you were young, too,
and so I think that influenced me because they were
talking about this. One psychologist was talking about how important
that was in the first year, one, two year fives,
and so that really got me going that just really

(40:46):
got me go. It was like that was just made
for me. When I read. I would read books where
the psychologists would say, oh, you know, reading to children
and helps their development. And so every year I would
look up what words you were supposed to be saying,
and I learned that you started talking at a young age, right,
you started talking even though other people thought you were
a quiet child, but you started talking at a very

(41:08):
young age. And so I attribute that to the fact
that you were write anyway. But also it helped you
to formulate your words because I started reading to you,
and then you started reading me. After a while, you
started reading to me, and I would fall asleep, Right,
that's true. Like that line in the poem y'all is
very true because my mom being a nurse and depending
on if she was just getting off from a shift

(41:29):
and putting me to bed, or if she was putting
me to bed after, you know, depending on how her
schedule was going. So as I got older, I do
remember by the time I was five or six, I
would have some nights where I would start reading and
you would go to sleep. But I would feel so
like accomplished, yes, that, like I was getting to read
to you till you went to sleep, you know. And
one thing I will say, you know, to y'all about

(41:51):
my mom when you know, when you brought up critical
thinking Mom, that my sister and I talk about this
all the time. And this is one of the things
I really do love about you, Mom, that even though,
of course, as my sister and I both have you know,
grown up and become grown women, we all, all three
of us have you know, different ways that we see
the world and our different opinions or thoughts on different things.

(42:11):
And one thing about my mom is my mom is
open to having a conversation with you. Now, you might
be saying some things that she doesn't like, or you
might be saying some things that she doesn't agree with,
and her jawline might be about what you've seen. But

(42:32):
if it's this like sort of intellectual discourse, if there's
an opportunity for you to be like, okay, there's another
perspective for me to learn or hear from. Even if
you walk away from the conversation and you're like, I
still do not agree with the fact that you said.
You know, like even now for us as adult women,
you know, having relationship with you as our Mom like,
that's one of the things I love that I'm like

(42:54):
sometimes I look at Kita and I'll be like, I know,
Mom didn't like that, but you see how she likes
stuck with us. Yeah, oh yeah, I stick with you.
I stick with it, as they say, I ride with
you, you know whatever.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
I mean.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
That's what family does. And it's just the same way
if you have a best friend, even though your best
friend might be saying something that you don't agree with,
because you love them and because you know you know
where they're coming from, you may not understand everything. And
you all just expand me because it's some books that
I hadn't heard of, and I'll ask you all about
this book, or have you heard of this? Or what

(43:28):
does this exactly mean. I like the fact that you
can explain it, and that if I keep an open mind,
that I can become more of a person because I'm understanding, right,
Because if we all agreed about everything, that would make
us pretty much like clones or robots or whatever. And
so that's how we stimulate our brains, how we stimulate

(43:50):
ourselves spiritually and emotionally, and so we just love it.
And I remember one time we would all go to
Barns and Nobles. We could stay at Barns and Nobles
all day in our dating and he would ask me,
you know, what's your family's like holiday traditions, And I
was like, oh, yeah, on my mom's side of the family,
whenever we spend Thanksgiving together, like with our extended family

(44:10):
like mom, Grandma, my aunts and uncles. I was like, yeah,
you know, we have Thanksgiving on Thursday and then on
Black Friday we go to Bars and Noble and just
hang out there all day. Matt looked at me, like,
say what now. I was like, so, what are y'all
doing when you go in there? And I was like, well,
sometimes Grandma plays grabble. We just like read magazines and

(44:32):
read books. And I could just see Matt's eyes glazing over,
like and y'all feel like this is a good time. Okay, Okay,
I gotta read some books. Thanksgiving killing you, you know,
But that is totally like very true of our family, y'all, Like,
like really, it's a family of readers and critical thinkers

(44:53):
lovers of words, which I love that. Okay, I'm wanna
switch gears, mom, and let's talk about tea for a
little bit, because poem. I have that line there, which
is still sort of if people were to ask me,
you know when I close my eyes and think of
like my mom's house, you know, what do I think of?
And I'm like that scene that I'm describing in the
book where I'm sitting at the kitchen table with you

(45:15):
wherever your kitchen table was in San Antonio once you
moved here, the different places you've lived since you've lived here,
it's always this moment of like sitting there at the
table drinking tea with you, just talking about life. And
Earl Gray Tea in particular, is a tea that whenever
I smell like the scent of that tea, like, I

(45:37):
always think of you because that's the first tea I
remember drinking with you. That and I'm English breakfast or
two teas you loved. So do you know what brought
on your love for tea? I'm mean, I know you're
also like a lover of coffee too, but you drank
tea with us too, So like what brought about your
love for tea? Well, I love Earl. I think that

(46:00):
Earl Gray came in because at some point in my
life I was I started reading well there's different schools
of thought. I started reading about how bad coffee was
for you, but then I started reading about it's good
to drink coffee. And so when I started reading up
on that, then I started trying to learn about different
teas that you could drink. And I didn't know. I
was a novice at the time. I didn't know a lot.

(46:21):
So I started with that one because I had heard
that that one was a real good when to drink,
you know, in the morning. And so that's probably what
led me to trying that one first when I first
heard about it. Then later on I found out about how,
you know, the different teas have different flavors. You can
buy teas that have flavors and it's not necessarily caffeine.
But I like Earl Gray. Well, I like Earl Gray

(46:42):
because it does have caffeine. I'm gonna be honest. I'm
gonna just go ahead and be honest. Okay, it's a
good caffeinator. Yeah, it's a good caffeinator. And it's just
something about me aroma of it when you're drinking it,
even before you drink it. It's kind of like coffee
in a way, don't you think, Because you could go
into Starbucks or for me, your coffee shop, and even
if you don't drink coffee, just the smell of the

(47:03):
coffee does something to you. So is your body. You
know your body is going to respond to it. You know,
either it smells good or it may smell like burnt
coffee if it's not the right coffee shop. But you
know that tea is just so therapeutic. So then this
ties back to the reading. So then I started reading
about the healing properties of tea. So after I tried

(47:26):
the Earl Gray and the English tea that you mentioned
the Breakfast Team, then I started finding out there's different
teas that can help you as far as when you're
trying to heal up. That's the reason why when people
would get a cold, I remember somebody saying with you,
like some hot tea, and then they would serve it
to you with honey, because honey is very therapeutic, alsome,

(47:46):
and so I just feel like that just tied me
into it. And then I have a friend, my best friend, Naima,
she is a tea I call her a tea guru,
and she was trying to tell me how to get
off caffeine, which I still don't know that that's good
thing to do, but I understand. So she helped me.
She helped showed me some other teas, like the African

(48:06):
A lot of the African teas. Some of the African
teas you can buy, like the Robos tea have no caffeine.
Some have some caffeine. And when we went to went
to Africa at that time, I got a chance to
drink some actual African tea in Africa. It's amazing. So
that's how I got started with the tea. And then
once I read about it that it is good for you,
it had some healing properties, I was sold. Like that's

(48:30):
how I know my mom's daughter. Because after Matt and
I moved into the house we live in now, I
had all this tea. I was trying to figure out
how do I store it? You know, And so you
know how when you move into a house. You know,
my mom moved into her house a couple of years
ago too, and so when you're moving into your house,
you're always researching, you know, different things people do, how

(48:52):
they store different things. And I saw somebody had a
tea drawer in their house instead of the cabinets. Because
I couldn't figure out the cabinets we had, so y'all,
I have the largest tea drawer I've ever had in
my whole life. But it works out so great because
between both of our houses, we both know there's enough tea. Yeah,

(49:16):
when Mom comes over, she knows I'll have different teas
I'm trying out, and I'll come to her house and
she'll have a tea I've never heard before, so I
can try that out. So that is one of my
favorite memories with you. I wanted to circle back to
the Alex Haley line in this poem because I don't
know that I've often shared this story, but when we

(49:36):
were in DC, Mom is true to what she's saying
that I just have such great childhood memories of us
growing up in the DMV. Shout out to those of
you that are in the DMV right now. We were
living in Silver Spring, Maryland, and you worked in DC
worked at two big hospitals there in our time living there.
You worked at what was then Walter Reed which was

(49:58):
a very big medical center at the time, and you
also worked at George Washington University Hospital, which was another
big medical senat to have worked at there, but at
the time. I don't know if this still happens in
DC or not, but back then, y'all, this would have
been late eighties, early nineties, there was an event called
Black Family Day that was like a big old festival

(50:19):
on the National Mall and there would be vendors there
selling jewelry and clothing and purses and bags. There'd be
performances and like famous black people would come and they
would have different tents set up, and some of them
were authors. I remember we met as the role who
starred in many things, but she was most well known

(50:42):
to me from having starred in Good Times as well
as having started in and Raisin in the Sun as well.
That's right, And so like you would be able to
line up with your family and like actually physically shake
hands with this famous black person that came to give
up their time.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
You know.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
I was real and still am very just fascinated with
Roots and Alex Haley, my mom is die hard, Okay,
Like when Alex Haley had written the autobiography of Malcolm X,
right when he and Malcolm X had worked on that together.
When the movie came out, I was a preteen maybe

(51:19):
maybe yeah, I was preteen, probably like junior high student,
and we're older than preteen junior high student when the
movie came out, and y'all not my mom telling me
that morning that I wasn't going to school and I
need to read this autobiography. She handed me the Malcolm
X Autobiography by Alex Haley, and she was like, you
read this till I get home. And when I get home,

(51:41):
we go into the movie. Okay, so this same Alex
Haley before we moved to Texas. I must have been mom.
I mean I had to be eight or nine years old,
because it was before Kita was born. Yeah, And we
stood in line. You know, it was a long line
because of course, Alex Hayley means a lot to the

(52:01):
black community, and especially at that time, you know, Roots
the miniseries having been out, Really's having been a New
York Times bestseller and everything, and so we stood in line.
You know, you stood in there with me until we
could meet Alex Haley in person, and I like shook
his hand, and you know, I think at that time,
you know, you had told him I, you know, wanted

(52:22):
to be a writer and everything, and like just even
having that moment as an eight year old, like in
this poem, y'all when I say like the handshake of
Alex Haley, like I literally met my mom stood in
line with me to help me meet him, you know,
I mean that was such a wonderful memory. Yes, you
were a little I think you might have been about
eight or nine. Yeah, it was amazing to me to

(52:44):
get to meet him. We met as the role like
you mentioned, and we met the young actor that played
at that time, he was very young that played thel
Oh Malcolm Jamal Warner. That's Ronny met him. He was amazing.
But meeting Alex Haley that was just like and of
course it wasn't once in a lifetime event.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
You know.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
I never got a chance to meet him after that
and not before that. So the Black Family Reunion was
just amazing. You got a chance to meet people that
were from Africa, that came home from Africa to back
to DC to experience that and everybody it was just

(53:25):
so communal. Everyone was just friendly and wanted to meet
your child if you had a child with you, and
I had you with me. When we got a chance
to meet Alla Tayley and he was just so personable,
it was just you know, I think about it, now
and I think to myself, Wow, that was an opportunity. Amazing,
and I'm sure they have other events like that, but

(53:47):
during that time, that was just everybody was just there. Everybody.
We knew what we were there for, and we knew
we were going to get a chance to meet these celebrities,
but it was just amazing that they wanted to meet us.
Because when you went up to shake his hand and
talk to him, I remember he talked to you just
like he might have been your uncle. He did, you
did because he wanted to know, like what you know,

(54:07):
what did you want to be when you grow up?
So I think either you had said it or I
had told him that I wanted to be a writer,
because I had felt that way very young, just from
being a reader. Though it was being a reader that
made me go, whoever gets to write words and put
their words in this book? You know, like I want
to do that. So I'm sure that either you said
that or I did. And he talked and basically said,

(54:30):
like you can do that, you can do you know
anything you want to do, and it's like you don't.
There's so many things you know for those of you
that our parents or our aunties, uncles here, have different mentees,
have children in your life in any way, It's like,
there's so many ways you can speak into the life
of a child, and you don't know, like how those words,
those good words. You know, we hear so many stories

(54:53):
where and so many of us have experienced such negative
words being spoken over us as children. But you can
do a good thing when you can speak those good
words into a child, Like I was just soaking up
everything he said like a sponge. And of course I'm
eight years old. I have no way of knowing that
one day I'm going to become this full time writer, author, poet.

(55:14):
I can never have guessed that I would actually get
to have a career that I dreamed of as a
little girl. But that totally influenced me to feel like, well,
this is a real thing.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
You know.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
I'm talking to him and I wasn't even old enough
to have read Roots, but I had held the book
in my hand, you know, because I think we had
at least one copy at home or in the library whatever.
So those moments are so powerful and so important. I
also talked in this about journaling, about how you know

(55:47):
just that is also connected to my memory with you.
I talked in this poem about the journals and the
pens and those different you know things, and you used
to say to me, and you said this Takita as well.
You would say that we should always have a place
where we could be unedited. And you would say, you know,

(56:07):
that's your journal. Is a good place to have that,
because that's a place that you write for yourself. You're
not writing for anybody else to read it. No one
has to be the judge of that. You should have
some place where you get to put your words, you know.
And that encouraged me to feel like my thoughts and
feelings were important. Whether or not I chose to share

(56:30):
them in a public manner didn't matter, you know. In
that moment, it mattered that me writing that. And I've
passed that on to so many young women because it's
such a powerful message, you know, that you gave to us. Yes,
it is, it is. It's important, And I'm glad that
that influenced you that way. I just knew that it

(56:50):
was something that was valuable. Like, for example, I went
through time in my life where I just wrote a
word down. I couldn't even put a sentence to the
word and then I would just start looking up the
words and say, why is this word coming to me
and what does it mean? And so I would journal
just about that word. That would be the word of
the day. Wow for me, you know, Like I went
through a period of time where I would go, like say,

(57:12):
I went to the post office, and I would just
be like, none of these people in here even know me.
I could literally be invisible, you know, unless I just
happened to run into somebody that I knew. So that day,
I wrote that my word for that day was invisible.
So I went home and I started journaling, you know,
my thoughts about the word invisible or what it means
for a person when they feel invisible. And I think

(57:34):
that helped me as far as growing up in the
South and helped me to be able to recognize people
and to recognize that this is a person, right, This
is a person here that you're talking to. So try
to think about, you know, think about how you would
want to be treated or even if you don't know
what the person is going through, Yeah, try not to
treat the person like they're invisible. Right. So just things

(57:56):
like that that may come to you and you might
get a poem while you're I didn't use your right
that's what might be like you used to say, it
might just be one line right first, right, And so
I'm glad that that influenced you that way. And I
just think, you know now that I talk to different people,
even you know, great people, actors, writers, that talk about journaling,
I just love the fact that that's being wrong. I

(58:17):
just wish I knew it was a thing that other
people were doing. I would have probably been a part
of the community, you know, right, right, right, Okay, So
let me ask you these final two questions about the poem. Normally, Mom,
I closed the Behind the Poetry episodes, And y'all, my
mom knows this because she is an avid listener of
this podcast, even when I be on here cussin. That's why.

(58:38):
That's why I'll go ahead and let her know on
the recording so she can prepare her So, but she
knows this, you know. I close the behind the Poetry episodes.
Normally I talk about what it was like performing the
poem for the first time and how I feel about
the poem now. But I'm going to turn those two
questions to you, and maybe you don't remember the first time,
because I know you've heard this poem now countless countless times,

(58:58):
but in the early few times, first few times you
heard this poem, Like, how did you feel hearing the
poem for the first time? I just felt so overwhelmingly happy.
It just made me just so happy because the way
you put you know, at the beginning, when you mentioned
about the semicolon, how was that? That's just so ingenious?

(59:18):
Who would have thought that a child of mine would
be able to come up with this, even though I
knew your gifting with your writing, But I was just
so happy. I was just on cloud nine the first time,
the first time that I can remember hearing it, I
was just on cloud nine. I was just so proud
and just so happy that you actually formulated a poem

(59:39):
about mom, and the mom that it was featuring was
about me. Yeah, and the things that you remembered in
the poem and some things that I just never even
thought it impacted, you know, moms, and you know, like
you said, aunties and cousins and mentors, we do different things.
We don't even were not even realizing how it's impacting
the person, but it is impact in them. Yeah, and

(01:00:01):
hopefully you know it's in a good way. But when
I realized from that poem that you had actually been
paying attention to some things in life, I said, wow, Wow, God.
I was like wow. And then you were being it
because you could have got the poem and just left
it in your journal, right you could never you could
have decided you were only going to perform it for

(01:00:21):
us personally when we were together, to say on Mother's
Day or you know, the other times. So the fact
that you shared it with the world, I'm you know,
I'm still overwhelmed when I hear it. I love it.
I can't remember exactly the first time that I did
the poem, Mom, but I kind of feel like I
did it several times without you being in the audience,

(01:00:42):
and then by the time I do feel like I
remember one of the first couple of times I was
doing that in my poetry set and you were in
the audience and feeling like the little choked up feelings,
you know, like it was always wonderful and emotional to
do the poem even when you weren't there, because it

(01:01:03):
was sort of this very fun and nostalgic poem that
other people would sort of hear their own. Mom, or
different like you know, Ramona and Esus and some of
those things. You know, people would be like, oh, man,
I remember that show, I remember those books, you know,
And so it was always like very well received by
the audience, you know, but I feel like you were

(01:01:23):
traveling with me or something. Yeah, And I was like, oh, y'all,
I'm about to do this poem, and like my mom's here,
you know. So it was very emotional to sort of
see you there in the audience as I'm talking about you,
and then other people knowing you were in the audience,
so they're all looking at you while I'm doing the poem,
you know, And that was just a really it's a

(01:01:45):
really beautiful moment because I'm not a poet that writes
a whole lot of poems to people, you know. I
only have a handful of poems like that, you know,
like I've written one to you, I've written one to Qita.
I mean, there's very few poems like that that I
also would perform that way. So it was really beautiful
and y'all. Of course, mom has traveled with me many

(01:02:07):
times now, and that poem, you know, especially when I
would be doing a lot of like women's events like
I would always include that poem in my set, and
so even all the times you hear it, she would
always tell me, I never get tired of it. I
never And that's true, I never get tired of it.
It would make you cry, depending on what you're going through,
even though you wrote it for me, with me man,

(01:02:30):
other people, I'm sure it has an emotionally impact on them,
yeah too, depending on where they are in their life
at that time.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Yeah, So last question, Mom, I wanted to know, now,
how do you feel about that poem? Now that you've
heard this poem countless times? You know, we've had a
chance to talk through it. When you think about I mean,
that was almost that was almost fifteen years ago when
I was first writing that poem. Yeah, yeah, it was
almost fifteen years ago, Mom. So now having heard the

(01:03:00):
poem and us having you know, grown to what I love,
is this wonderful place in my relationship with you? You know,
and I'm sure many of you listening will understand this
part that I'm saying. But like you know, you know,
you have a certain time that you're growing up and
it's like your parents are your parents, you know, your
parents are sort of like your teachers. You're just like
you don't you're assuming there's no life other than when

(01:03:23):
you're my mom and when you're my teacher whatever, Like
you never see your teacher like out of the club
or something like that. You know, you know, if you
run into your teacher at the grocery store, you're like,
you go to the grocery store, like you eat meals,
you do things other than gray papers, you know. So
I feel like when you're a kid, parents and teachers
can have very like sort of one dimensional ways that

(01:03:46):
you think of them, you know, and then as you
get older, you then become able to see your parents
more fully. You know, you're able to like, for me,
I'm able to look at my mom and be like, hey, okay,
well my mom's my mom, but my mom is also
a nurse who also had a career. You know, she's
been in a career that she loves. And you know,

(01:04:06):
my mom fell in love many times in her life
and danced on the dance floor. You know, you just
have a more like rounded version of your parent. And
I have enjoyed this season of time with you where
I mean, you're still my mom, but also like actually,
like I really like you as a person, you know,
like we we can like we can get in a car,

(01:04:28):
like go to target and have a good time. We
can go across the world and have a good time,
you know. And I really, I really love that for us,
and I love that for me because it gives me
an opportunity to get to know you as my mom,
the woman, and like, now you can tell me a
few stories that you couldn't tell me when I was ten.
You're like, well, you've grown too, so let me tell

(01:04:50):
you what really happened so I can speak on it.
So I would just love to hear as we're closing
the episode from you, mom, like how you feel now,
have you know heard this poem you know now over
these years, and what you think about that and any
other any other closing thoughts you want to tell us
on your birthday episode. Oh my birthday episode. I just

(01:05:12):
love how you put the poem together, and I just
love how it reaches me and it reaches other people.
Whenever I've been traveling with you and you did the poem,
other people will always come up to me afterwards and say, wow,
how did you do this? I'm like, it's no. Four,
I have no formula. I just encouraged her to do
what she was good at and what she loved, and

(01:05:34):
she did it, you know. And so I just loved
that poem and I'm glad that you still have it
in your library of poems to perform and that we
got a chance to talk about it. And when you
talk about the books, the different books that I had,
because now I'm going back through my library of the books.
You know, Okay, these books I have to keep. This

(01:05:55):
is a new one that I heard about through a mina,
So I have to keep her book over here to
make make sure that I go back to her book,
and then some of the books I'm downloading, you know,
I got to get back to the poetry you and I.
That'll be a conversation that we'll have to have. I
got to find out some of the poets that I
don't know about that may have books that I may
want to listen to some of their poetry, read some
of their poetry. But I just love it. I just think,

(01:06:18):
you know, it's a good way to have your relationship.
And by me having daughters, it gave me an opportunity
to raise y'all. But now I get an opportunity to
Actually it's a daughter mother daughter relationship, but we have
a friendship too, And I like the fact that you
brought up about we might not always agree with everything,
but our family is the type of family. We're very outspoken,

(01:06:41):
so we're easy to agree to disagree, but tomorrow when
you talk to us, that's not even an issue period.
We're not a family. We get it out. We get
it out of our system by talking it over. That's true.
And I love the fact. Closing, I love the fact
that I can call you and I can say I
got some tee to share with you today, and you'll

(01:07:01):
answer me back with an emoji, and I know we're
gonna have a good conversation whether it's five minutes or
fifteen minutes. Come on to your emojic. Now I get
to enjoy a double the tea mon double the team.
See yeah, see how we did that? Yeah yeah, Mom.
Thank you so much for being willing to spend some
of your birthday recording this today. I really appreciate it,

(01:07:23):
and I just I have loved having you on the
podcast to do this behind the poetry that this was
very special. So thank you for coming into the living room.
We appreciate you well, thank you, and I'm glad to
be in her living room. I love it. I can't
wait to see another episode other than my episode. I'm
gonna listen to, but of course other episodes, and I've

(01:07:46):
gone back and listened to some previous episodes, so it's wonderful.
So keep up, keep up the good work. This was
This was just a truth for me. Her with Amina

(01:08:07):
Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Solografeity Productions as
a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network and partnership
with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate,
and review the podcast.