Barack, My Great Grandma Loves You

So yesterday I voted.

It was good.

But what was better was helping my great grandmother vote. She has the softest hands. Like foamy whipped cream clouds or cotton balls doused with baby oil.

As she strokes my face, asking why I have that eye stuff on, I believe her voice takes me places I can never go fore these places are have beens. I hear the past in the tremble of her voice. She has the sweetest voice. Like sugar cubes covered in chocolate with caramel centers or helping a blind man walk down the stairs to his train on the metro.

Hearing her tell me stories of how she not only played a part in voting Barack in office, but years ago, before my mama knew how to French kiss or my grandma had credit card debt, she helped pave the way, it makes me so proud to be in her lineage. It makes me want to be with child to continue her legacy. She should be immortal. Knowing this about her made voting so much better. She shows me the scar on her ankle where a dog almost bit her. The scar isn’t from the dog. It’s from where she fell running from it. She stabbed the dog in the neck and ran. Luckily she wasn’t caught. With our hereditary keloid skin, the scar is easy to see, barely faded.

Sitting with her, listening to her stories, I realize I want to read her childhood diaries and teenage journals. She tells the best stories. Like the time her and her little sister went to get ice cream and there was only one left of the kind they wanted so her and her sister decided to split it. But as they were paying, a little white girl came in the store and wanted (magically) that very same ice cream. The store owner told them they had to give the ice cream to the girl so my great grandma, leaving the money on the counter, opened the ice cream, licked it and gave it to the girl, pulling her younger sister out the door as they laughed. I have her spirit.

I wonder where the disconnect came. Where did the youth forget that our elders hold the key? They’ve been there and done that and can teach us how to do it better. How to appreciate what we’ve got because they did things they may or may not be proud of to make sure we could walk in those schools yesterday and vote. And not be harassed or tested for competency or intimidated by dogs or cheated out of our rights.

I love my great grandma. She has the softest hands, the sweetest voice, and the best stories. Thank you Barack Obama. You’ve made her a very happy woman. Although your grandma passed before she could see your triumph, know that there are others here that also helped you along the way and are just as proud of you. O, and my great grandma said if they mess with you, she still got that knife.