There are three women whom I would like to give a special shout out to on this Mother's Day. My mother, Maxine DeLois Cowan Ruffin, my Grandmother, Lois Louise Valentine Cowan (RIP), and my Great-Grandmother Gussie Mae Joyner Valentine Walton (RIP). These women were very instrumental in shaping the woman I am today. I am also thankful for my three children whom without them I would not be a mother. I am also thankful and grateful for them making me a grandmother of six.
The life lessons I have learned from all of them has made me a better person than I would have been without them. My great-grandmother was a kind and gentle woman. She was beautiful beyond measure. She married again late in life I to a Deacon in our church. I think she was 77 when she got married the second time around.
My grandmother and grandfather were married until death did them part. I loved my grandfather tremendously. He was a kind and gentle soul. He let my grandmother rule with an iron fist and he always had her back.
My parents were for the most part absentee parents physically and I was reared mainly by my grandparents. My parents taught me a lot about life and how to pursue my destiny. I am very impressed at all they were able to accomplish on their own merits. They showed me strength and endurance is the real way of winning. They literally made more back in the day than I make right now. They were true troopers. They worked hard and both were and were able to enjoy their retirement. My mother is still alive but my father passed in 2008. My daddy was a great provider any time my mother needed anything for us he was only a phone call away. My parents were the type who didn't want their children to want for anything. My iron fist grandmother was the reason why we lived her instead of my parents. My Grandmother would whip anyone's behind to get her way.
I am thankful they taught me the good fight. I cannot be just thankful for my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, I also am very thankful for the men who were very supportive of them and uplifted them in being their better half which made life better for me.
The sayings like always fight the good fight, keep your head up, you can do it, there is no such word as can't, be careful who you trust, everyone ain't your friend, if you make your bed you're going to have to lay in it, you're creating a monster, you give them kids too much one day they're going to make you cry, don't take stuff for granted, you can hate me now but you'll thank me later, always do the best you can do, never settle for less than what you know you're worth, and so much more play over and over in my mind. We can go through life and go to the best schools, get the best lessons, attend the most rigorous training programs, be inspired by the world leaders but it is the lessons we learn right at home which stay and manifest in heart the most.
I am thankful and grateful for how my ancestors inspired me. They are definitely a tough act to follow. But as they always told me don't be a follower be a leader. Put me first in all I do because I can't be of help to no one else if I can't help myself.
A day like today reminds me of how my mothers used to get up and start cooking in the wee hours of the morning. They would cook a big country breakfast while they were preparing and putting the finishing touches on the Sunday dinner. They would be cooking all types of meats, vegetables, cakes, pies, and the whole bit. They were turning things up in the kitchen. There was always plenty of food for family, friends, guests, and unexpected guests. Family time was soul time. How we lost our way from days like that I don't know. It seems as if there came a time when my grandmother decided she would rather the girls of the future be sophisticated versus domesticated. She didn't even allow me near the stove. She would always tell me go sit down I didn't even know how to boil water when I asked to help cook. I could help to no end prepping the items to be cooked like cutting up potatoes for the homemade potato salad, chopping onions, cleaning collard greens, snapping green beans, peeling the casing off beans, pealing peas, shucking corn, placing the dinner rolls on the tray and covering them with wax paper to rise, peeling and cutting up the sweet potatoes, make the sauce for with brown sugar and butter and cover the sweet potatoes for candied yams and leaving them sitting on top of the stove, cutting up the cabbage but I couldn't cook.
To me it is reminiscent of being able to make all the preparation in the world but not being able to deliver. My delivery as my grandmother saw it was in the books. I could go read a book or go study once I finished all the preparation.
I am thankful now she supported my A type personality. I got a lot of "A" whippings in the process. We hardly ever agreed on anything. Now I agree with her on everything. I didn't see back in the day my ever loving her. She would tell me you can hate me now but you will love me later. It's later I love that woman to pieces. She taught me being a mother is not about winning a popularity contest. You have to do what you have to do. Some people will not like you for the decisions you have to make. Always fight the good fight. Don't take no stuff and don't dish none either. Don't start what you can't finish.
It's women like her who had the fiber to run a Fortune 500 Company to the top but instead worked a job way below her expertise. She didn't have any corporate stock she took stock in people. She could read someone up one side and down the other. She didn't have a large bank account but she never wanted for anything. She didn't have a college degree but she had gone through enough degrees in life and was well learned. She was President of the Usher's Council at the Church she attended. That was one of her crowning glories.
She always supported her children and grandchildren right, wrong, good, bad, or indifferent. My ex hated that she took up for me even when I was wrong. I still laugh at the thought of him always calling her "Lois Collins" he never did say her name right. She was so pissed with him when we got married. There was only one man she ever approved of and she used to cook for him, me and my kids every Sunday. She couldn't understand why I didn't marry him. I knew, he didn't have any children and I wasn't about to have any more.
My mother was a beautiful woman and things came easy for her. She has a hard time understanding why things don't come as easy for other women. If I were to post a photo of her from her glory days you would see why she never had to ask a man for a thing and why men were constantly throwing things at her to get her attention. She was and still is a beautiful woman.
My great grandmother was beautiful too. I think she was the most beautiful of all the women in our family. She was half Cherokee Indian. Her skin and hair were very fine. Everyone liked her. She was quiet in stature. She didn't get upset unless you messed with one of her offspring. Then she would go to blows. She taught us to keep our own close. To only watch our own and not let outsiders watch our children.
It would take volumes upon volumes to write how much they women did for me. How they never grew tired of doing for me and family. How they gave 100% all the time. God knows I am so blessed not only because they fed me but because they taught me how to fish. I always say I want to be just 10% of the woman they raised me to be. They were just that awesome.
Happy Mother's Day to three incredible women who motivated, inspired, and encouraged me: my Mother, Maxine DeLois Ruffin; my grandmother, Lois Louise Valentine Cowan (RIP), and my Great-Grandmother, Gussie Mae Joyner Valentine Walton (RIP). In honor and remembrance of you, one red rose and two white roses.
