As I sit down to write you, I think of myself at your age, exactly 21 years ago. I turned 21 a couple of months before you were born, so I didn’t have that celebratory first drink on my birthday that year. In fact, I don’t even remember my birthday that year or many others from that time period. I imagine I stayed in with your dad and rubbed my huge belly and elevated my swollen feet. I may have enjoyed an inexpensive dinner that I probably cooked myself, and counted and recounted the few hundred bucks I had saved up for your arrival. I was trying my best to be ready for your arrival! Your dad—a helluva writer and thinker, but pure dreamer at heart—and I—a fervent diarist and blooming artist at the very beginning of womanhood—we made quite an appearance in any room we entered. Your father still jokes that I was the “prototype,” the woman he asked the universe for, and as he likes to remind me, I was the last black woman he dated. Child of mine, I’m telling you this so that you understand the beauty and love and passion and intensity from which you came.
You are the child of artists and writers and poets and painters and dreamers and lovers and friends and family. Though your skin was bright as the sun when you were born, your blood runs deep and dark as the night. Your father and I both carry the melanin of countless slaves and Africans who came before us. We are tall and statuesque. We don’t buckle. We don’t fold. Our hair is thick and nappy and curly and coiled. You, your father, and I have all had our time growing locs: mine, long and soft and flowing with curls breaking out around my nape, your father’s tightly coiled and spun short and straight and black as the night, and yours, sandy and brown and golden with blonde tendrils escaping each loc…you always did look like a child found swept along some distant ocean. It was easy to name you Indigo…
It comes as no surprise to me, as I watched you grow, that you would one day leave the city and towns from whence you came. You have work to do, my child. We poured into you, and I parted ways with your father, and left my own hometown in pursuit of Something Better…for you and for me.
And that is just how quickly the years went by: first, you were the cherubic angel baby in my arms while your dad and I, mere kids with a baby, listened to so much advice and managed to ignore half of it as we felt and fought our way through your early years. But the story continued, and you remember well the childhood I crafted for you as I continued my own journey into womanhood… I always wanted you to know that you don’t have to settle. You don’t have to be poor. You don’t have to be ignorant or dumb. You don’t have to answer to any man. You don’t have to make yourself small. And most of all, oh beautiful-spirited child, you don’t have to make yourself mean or sacrifice any part of the joy you came to this earth with.
It has been my privilege to watch you rise. To watch you adapt. To watch you teach and be taught. You have the gift of perception. A wicked sense of humor and a sensitive soul hidden not too deeply under those layers of Sagittarian FUN. You have every opportunity in front of you, and I hope you always know that we will STILL go to bat for you. We will STILL have your back. And you will ALWAYS have a home both in our hearts and in our house (as long as you are helping yourself, just as Jehovah intended…smile).
So on this day, I not only celebrate you, I also salute you. You are my greatest achievement thus far. I could not be prouder to be your mom. In you, I have poured my every lesson and it is my absolute honor to watch you grow and flourish on this journey of yours. Happy 21st birthday. May your life be always even fuller than you can dream.
—Mom
Nonfiction Woman 