top of page

My Mother, Myself

  • VL CLARK excerpt from "A Spiritual
  • Apr 1, 2019
  • 2 min read

Updated: Feb 4, 2024


Mom has always been present and available in my life, no matter what. Her dedication and love for me in good, and bad times of my cocaine addiction and incarceration because of crimes I committed while using it never faltered. She held my hand through the cancer episodes, although she had failing health. Without her, I would have never had the strength to recover from them. She will always be my role model. I watched her achieve seemingly unattainable goals for a colored girl born in the '30s. When I was in elementary school, she worked at Walgreens downtown on 16th Street. During the summer, Dad would take me there after our daily adventures. I filled up on milkshakes made with vanilla and strawberry ice cream, proudly watching her move efficiently from the counter to the grill to cook short orders. In the '50s, it was rare to see black women working in any stores. Most had "day work" jobs in Cherry Creek, Park Hill, primarily on Monaco Parkway. My mother worked as a waitress for years at various locations in Denver and Los Angeles until the opportune hiring of telephone operators with no experience happened. Mom passed the aptitude tests with flying colors with only a tenth-grade education. That was in 1956. She worked as a telephone operator in Los Angeles and then in Denver until her retirement in 1989. She was also a Communications Workers Of America union steward, and to my delight, I was able to walk the picket lines with her. My mother was punched, stomped, and called out of her name....and never thought about giving it up.

In the '60s, we gathered at the City And County building, carrying signs of discontent. Looking through the prism of today to then, it has stayed with me. In my first year at the University of California at Berkeley (Cal), I participated in sit-in protests and wrote radical papers rather than going to classes. Though I had gotten a full-ride scholarship, I preferred to ditch the classes. In doing so, I knew she and others in my family would be disappointed, but I also thought of her continuous conversations about staying the course of what you believed. She vocalized the importance of taking a stand on issues that affect you and your community. Her views impacted me greatly. The prime incidents were:

(1)My high school creative writing teacher warned me about writing about the treatment of Black students (2) LAPD officers humiliating me for my Black Panther membership by making me lie on the dirty pavement ;(3) members of San Diego's conservative Christian community spitting and tossing eggs and other things on Gay Pride Weekend. (4)And, sadly, decades later, the backlash from Autism Speaks when they found African American Autism Center donations went to our organization and not to theirs. They all resonated throughout the years, and I always heard her voice in my head asking as she did when I questioned my efforts "Did you fold under pressure or did you fail at the moment? That's the question you must ask yourself when you do not complete the task you started. Your answer will motivate you to change your strategy to solve the problem.

 
 
 

Yorumlar


Featured Posts
Recent Posts
Search By Tags
Follow Us
  • Facebook Classic
  • Twitter Classic
  • Google Classic

© 2023 The Journalist. Proudly created with Wix.com

bottom of page