I’ve been a Momma for a long time now but I wanted a Momma for a whole lot longer than I’ve been one. My first baby was born in a fever when I was still just twenty-one, boy golly, that’s young. She be twenty-three now, and I be so much older, and a whole lot wiser too. I didn’t know how to do too much when she came along, but I did know how to love her, I just didn’t know how to love me, that was on account of not being loved much, you see.
I wanted to be the Momma I wished I had, the one I never had, and right ’bouts now, I knows I’m a never gonna have neither. Ain’t that a something though. I sure tried and I sure failed, then I sure tried again. Facts of the matter is, I still be trying, and I’s a gonna die trying too. Trying to do better, trying to learn all the things I didn’t knows; all those useful things; all those needful things. Momma’s, they knows so much, and by the time they be done passing on all they knows, they just about be passing on themselves. That’s what Momma’s been doing since ages past and I suspect that they be doing that for ages to come. So one day a year we be saying Happy Momma’s Day.
Seems to me, we all had a Momma, whether we liked her not, whether she liked us er not — somebody done borned us. I tucked in my other youngens tonight. They be scheming on how to make it a good Momma’s Day tomorrow. I’m a thinking its just been good to be their Momma. They’s a done me proud, right proud. I knows them and they knows me. I done something good on account of they being someone good. That’s bout enough for most Momma’s. That’s bout enough for me.
By the way, Happy Momma’s Day.