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Death, growing pains and a little black dress

I looked at the odometer, 27000…270001 and I realized that we REALLY drive, drive a lot. My life as a chaffeur becomes more bizarre when I reflections like this. We got this car in February with 11000 or so miles and already, before the year is out, we’ve driven over 16,000 miles. WOW! How do people lease cars? Don’t they have mileage constraints? We could never lease because we drive cars until they are undriveable. Now, if we are driving the cars into the ground, could we be driving ourselves in the ground? How many miles do we have to put on before we’re “undriveable”? Questions I have been asking myself while I lay in the bed with an awful, almost 2 week old sinus infection.
Our last big family road trip was because we lost the last of our grandparents, the last of the great-grandparents for the children. My husband’s paternal grandmother died at the ripe age of 87. I had to be the one to share the news with the children and I couldn’t believe some of the questions, comments. “Mommy, can we put pictures of us in her grave so that she’ll remember us when we get to heaven?” “Mommy, she was a good person. She wasn’t supposed to die.” I know we often practice or make a big deal about the sex talk, but that grief talk…man, that’s pretty heavy too. They cried for a good hour and I had to rotate lap and arm space because even the “big kids” needed a hug that day. I didn’t have time to grieve until much later. See, I only knew my maternal grandmother and her and Grandma Tootsie were a LOT alike. They even had the same handwriting. I looked to her for the same type of “uncut, sugared over” type of advice that I used to get from my grandmother. Yall know what I mean…like the time I was hanging out in the club after having my first child because I couldn’t master the wife/mother/working woman thing…went over to my grandma’s and she said, “You know that ain’t no way for a married woman to act. Now, you make this your last trip. God’s watching and you don’t want him to after you. Now, come and get some greens I got on the stove.” Uncut, but sugared over with the collard greens. Grandma Tootsie was the same way. I miss the old school, God-fearing, heavy praying, adopting everybody in the neighborhood type grandmas. I’m so glad that our children got to know her. She will truly be missed. One more reason I tell my children to choose heaven because we are going to have a blast when we meet up again!
Shortly after our return from the funeral, we had to kick the Rites of Passage preparation into high gear. Our oldest is now 13 (as of November 14) and on the 10th, we had her formal ceremony and celebration. It was off the hook. The theme was Values, Virtues, Vision and I believe that there was truly an impartation. I’ve been asked why 13 and here is my take: High School is rough and 16 is not sweet any more. I did an informal survey of close to 100 women, ranging in age and background and the average age of first sexual encounter was 14. We don’t have the luxury of assuming kids no better-my daughter took classes at church and at the hospital about sex, sexuality. We talked about drugs, smoking. Self-esteem, self-confidence were throughout this one year training program. She studied potential careers, social issues like global warming, AIDS in Baltimore (it’s number two in the nation). Of course, everything didn’t go as planned, but she had a great time and our entire family was represented (Papa, Auntie Cheryl and Big Big Khari couldn’t make it, but we felt their presence. Love yall).
My daughter and I are very close and as much as I miss the little girl, I look forward to nurturing and supporting the young woman. She had an attitude because I was running late and she wanted to get there early (I thought the grand entrance was better anyway). I almost cut her deep and long, but instead I remembered being 13. I remembered how stressful it is to give your first big party. I remembered the argument with my mother about what I was going to where, so I paused, laughed and left out of the house with a sinus infection, a slight fever and a damp body, wet head because I didn’t get a chance to shower and wash my hair before the start of the party.
The highlight of the evening though was daughter in her little black dress. I bought the dress and it was cute when she tried it on, but combine it with the sharp, bone straight hair and the faux suede wedges…uggh! My sister-in-law was like, “Oh, my goodness, she has cleavage.” My brother in law suggested that I print the picture and put on it, “I’m not ready!” Our surprise gift to her was a wall of wisdom, where people submitted quotes, comments, scriptures, “Words to live by.” The response was so great that we are going to have to do a part 2, but if you want to check out part one, click HERE.
Thanks, DH for working so hard on this. He edited the picture (he took it during one of his outdoor family photo shoots) and put the words all over the picture. We had it blown up to poster size and we are going to get it framed. If you all have some words of wisdom, please include them below. Pictures of the event to come. Thanks!

© 2007 DahGurl.