Martha Lou Brown Deserves Her Flowers

After therapy, I found myself thinking about my grandmother, and realized something: I cannot conjure her face from memory without looking at a photograph.

...but I can see her hands.

Her hands teaching my little brown girl hands how to work, how to cook, how to farm, how to care for myself and others.

Hands performing tasks.

And somewhere inside that realization is a much larger question: Who was the woman behind those hands?

What did she dream about? What did she love? What did she dislike? What did she want for herself beyond the roles assigned to her as a woman, wife, mother, and grandmother?

This episode is for Martha Lou Brown.

Because she deserves her name.

She deserves her flowers.

And she deserves to be remembered as a whole woman—not just a pair of hands.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This morning I had therapy, my regularly scheduled once every two weeks session with my therapist, and we covered everything that I've covered in uh these episodes up to this point. And like the good little student that I am, I was proud when she was like, hey, you're doing good work. Yeah, we strive for A pluses. But uh, all jokes aside, um, no, it was it was nice, it was nice to be affirmed in that way for my therapist that, yeah, no, you are really doing good work in excavating the shadow and the wounds that are exacted in childhood, that are oftentimes the cause of how we relate to other people as we move through life, how we relate to ourselves, even. So it was nice, it was nice and very affirming to hear that. But what I want to talk about today is my grandmother's hands, because that was something that also came up in therapy this morning. How as I unpacked, you know, my discovery of the father wound and how that's colored the landscape of my life and my relationships, and I'm able to trace a through through line from my grandfather all the way through up to my most recent relationship. Um, but my grandmother, where is she? And I realize that I realize that I realize that my grandmother quite literally is a set of hands, she's a set of tasks, and that I cannot conjure up my grandmother's face in my mind without looking at a photograph of her. And even after looking at that photograph, she fades once again back into the fog of my memory. And as me and my therapist talked about this, as we unpacked this, and I started to connect the dots around how the relationship that I observed as a child between my grandfather and my grandmother, and that he was the overseer, she was to execute tasks assigned to her, and she did have a jurisdiction, but that jurisdiction was not even as homemaker, just these tasks have been assigned to your gender, so I trust that you are capable of executing these tasks. So, whenever I have an image in my mind of my grandmother, the only thing that I can see are her copper brown hands and that oxygen cord because she had heart failure and she had an oxygen tank. That's it. That's all I can see. And I see her hands with my little girl hands teaching me how to sew. I see her hands with my little girl hands teaching me how to knead fresh dough into pie crusts, into crusts for peach cobbler and mulberry cobbler. I see her hands instructing my hands, my little brown girl hands up under her, wiry, strong copper hands. I see her hands instructing me how to stir up cornbread mix and not the jiffy, because this is old school black woman here, you know. We made hoe cakes and cornbread from scratch, and yes, I can make bomb-ass cornbread from scratch, by the way. But um, yeah, I see her stirring up cake mix and flipping through her ingredient box. All I see are her hands, hands washing dishes, hands at the stove, hands crushing up a tablet of child medicine to give it to me in a spoonful of sugar. I mean a spoonful of honey. Hands picking up the hot comb off the stove to press out my hair. Hands tying the bow on the back of my dress or the ribbon in my hair. Hands. That's it. Hands. I don't see her. I just see her hands. Hands that were performing tasks. What does that even mean? What does that mean? What does that mean for so many of us as women as we think about our mothers, as we think about our grandmothers, who were reduced to tasks? Because what did my grandmother wish for? What did she want? What were her likes? What were her dislikes? What did she dream about? What were what was her favorite color? What flowers did this woman love? What was her favorite song? I know the music that was played in my house growing up. Bobby Blue Bland, Patsy Klein. I do know that my grandmother had a crush on Kenny Rogers. I am aware of that. But I mean, look at Kenny Rogers back in the day, you know. I do know that she liked Patsy Klein. I do know that. But beyond that, who was this woman who got me ready for school in the morning? Who was this woman that was present a lot of the times when I wasn't just a latchkey kid, but who was present at the house when I came home from school? Who was this woman who, when we farmed our land, who stood apart, stood, stood in the row with me and taught me how to turn the eye of the corner of the potato up so it could burst through the soil? Who taught me how to shut peas? Who taught me how to clean chitlins? Who was the woman who tended to my feverish head when I was sick as a kid? Who is she? I I've I've never really thought about that deeply. But in exploring what I am made up of, I also must explore the people who made me. The people who are inextricably tied to me at a molecular level. Who is this woman whose DNA courses through my veins up my matrilineal line? Who is she? And that is a question that not only deserves answers for me, but it deserves answers for her too. Because so many women from her era, from her time, a woman also born in the 1920s, are lost in the shadow of the men that they married and the children they produced. Who is this lady? And to her, I say, and she will be the only name that I name, Miss Martha Lou Brown Hyphen, my own last name, as my ancestor, I cherish the memory that I do have of you. And I hope that as I do this work in exploring myself, exploring what I am made of and the woman that I am becoming as I age, I hope that more and more of who you are is revealed to me, whether that be through conversation, dreams, my own research, and through talking to the few family members that I actually remain in contact with. But yeah, because she deserves her flowers. She deserves for her garden to be tended. She deserves her place on my altar, my ancestral altar. She deserves her lavender and lemongrass as well.