COPYRIGHT ThisNest
I laid in bed with the boys last night. I cuddled them to sleep and, after they had made their departures to dreamland, I tenderly kissed their sleeping faces and hands. After a three day weekend, out of town enjoying our Dee Dee’s MLK volleyball tournament, I was so happy to be home. Dee Dee and I had a blast…but man I missed the rest of us!
Back to my point.
I was gone for three days. Three days unable to kiss the little ones. Three days they were unable to feel their mama’s loving presence. Three days and I was so relieved to be reunited with them.
Three days.
Do you know that Frederick Douglass was torn away from his mama when he was barely a toddler? I am reading his autobiography and, as happy I am to be reading it…I am equally sickened by the details contained in each page. He was a precious little baby, who loved his mama, and then she was gone.
She would walk twelve miles, probably barefoot, over rugged terrain, in the dark…just to lay with her baby as he fell asleep. He would wake up and she’d be gone, because if she wasn’t back in her appointed field by sunrise…well, the details are grisly.
She died when he was just six or seven. He didn’t get to see her while she was ill. He wasn’t told of her passing. He wasn’t given the opportunity to attend her funeral (if she had one) or say goodbye. She was just gone from him.
So, after three days of missing them terribly, I laid in bed with the boys last night. I cuddled them to sleep and, after they had made their departures to dreamland, I tenderly kissed their sleeping faces and hands.
Their beautiful brown faces and hands.
And I mourned for Frederick Douglass (who was also biracial like my boys) and his mama (whose experiences I cannot fathom, and can barely bring myself to even read about), who were so brutally robbed of this most basic human right…to be a mother and son.
And then snuggled down into the blankets, I cuddled a little closer to my own.
