Bangles and Colorful Cloth for Ma…#316

Bangles and Colorful Cloth for Ma…

“Repost – Dedicated to my Great-Grandmother”

When I was born, you were a young ninety-years old,

your hair pulled tight at the nap of your neck, still

black and bold.  At night, you let it down to braid before

you went to bed; it almost fell to the floor; at first I would

watch in silence from a crack in the door. 

The night you caught me I was six, you called me into the

room…asking that I bring you a single broomstick. 

I quickly plucked it from mother’s broom, and rushed

back into the dimly lamp lit room.  You showed me how to

break it into small pieces; when I looked bewildered your smile

showed all of your dark wrinkles and creases. 

It was then that my eyes opened wide as you put the stick right

through the lob of your ears, its magic I thought; but this is my

Great-grandmother I have nothing to fear.  As a child, I did not

realize that there was a hole, because when I would touch the

bangles on her ears, she would quickly scold.

Just like the time when I tried to sneak a peek at her button up

shoes by raising the hem of her long dress, she did not have on

shoes, there were moccasins on those tiny feet…who would have

guessed.  Yes, I was a child without a care, and I spent many

hours sitting at the foot of her old rocking chair.

I never tire of the stories she would tell, sometimes we cried together

and now I can say, as a child she lived in a white man’s world, she

called it “hell”.  Her parents had walked on the “Trail of Tears”, proud

and strong, with every step wondering where they had gone wrong.

She help raise me and she taught me “The Way”.  When her mind begins

to wander in those later years, I was sad when she would tell her stories

that she only remembered the bad.  This grand old lady dressed in bangles

and cloths of many colors, long braids and black hair; a great-grandmother

like no other.

She died a few days before her birthday; she would have been one-hundred

and five.  My daddy said, Ma as we called her would have scolded you saying

 don’t you ever cry.  I was fifteen-year old and the world was bright and

colorful with the artwork of fall, a befitting day to bury a  beautiful and

proud Chickasaw. 

[Repost]

Copyright©2012.elizabethannjohnsonmurphree