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Part 3. How?
(Original painting by Gaths) Our daughter is two months and 12 days old today. I spend most of my time marvelling over the miracle of her: her hands, her feet, the lines on her palms, her smile, her laugh, her cries (which we heard often for the first two months thanks to colic), her eyes. Amazing. This is the first time I can’t find words to describe something. When I am not in the midst of doing some practical physical thing for Serene, I find myself daydreaming about her future and wondering how I can ensure that I raise a healthy, happy, confident child and help her grow into a healthy, joyous, confident, woman. My husband and I talk about this often. I think about media and its negation of people of colour; I think of hip-hop, the soundtrack of my youth and consciousness, and how the reflections of women in the lyrics and the videos have become fragmented; I think of beauty standards that render kinky hair and brown skin undesirable; I think of men who don’t know manhood but talk with force and fists and I ask myself how I can ensure my daughter falls in love with herself. How can I ensure that she falls in love with herself so deeply and irrevocably that she radiates? I remember when I was pregnant, I picked up, “A Daughter’s Geography,” by Ntozake Shange, but something strange happened: I couldn’t get through it. Mind you, I have read the book at least twenty times and all that time I thought I knew what Ntozake Shange was talking about, but for the first time I saw—really saw-- that she was speaking to her daughter, she was writing through the eyes of a mother. A fierce, creative, scared, observant mother who knows full well the dangers in the world and wants to give her daughter a map to help her over and through them. The book awakened my fears and gave voice to questions I didn’t have time to explore then, so I put it down. Is it a matter of surrounding Serene with images of strong beautiful Black women? Telling her stories about Ida and Malcolm and Langston and Zora and The Panthers and The Black Arts Movement and Nefertiti and Nzingha? Do I just strive to be the best example I can be? Should I tell her stories of the Orishas and teach her about herbs to keep away physical ailments? Yoga for inner peace and flexibility? Copeira for strength, focus, and self-defense? If I tell her that I love her and let her know that she is intelligent, capable, beautiful and strong, will that help her avoid the booby traps of racism, sexism, classism? Will she be able to ignore all the things that tell her to hate herself? Will she climb the walls of the world with such grace that even she hardly notices there were any obstacles? For now, I am blessed with a daughter who doesn’t know what all is out there and if she does, her easy smile says she ain’t sweatin it. She is vocal about her needs, she is comfortable in her skin. She embodies the hope and the innocence many of us lose when we start to navigate the complexities, injustices and pain in this world. My job is to love her, nurture her, teach her and keep her connected to the smiling, laughing, fearless spirit she is now.
For comments and suggestions you can also contact me by
email: etallie@yahoo.com 
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