This Thanksgiving was a pensive and contemplative time for me. 

After I had penned what I thought would be my only Thanksgiving greeting to you all at Lace on Race, I sat here on the couch, eyes closed, remembering Thanksgivings past with my mother, Bobbye Jean. I remember the ones around her dining room, then later after her stroke  in 1991, which became, especially near the end, dinners at friend’s houses or in restaurants. I remembered the flaky biscuits, and the cranberry sauce that made the unmistakable sound when it came from the can. I remembered first the turkeys, then the turkey roll mama decided was big enough for our small family. I remember sweet potato pie; sometimes even bean pies from the bow tied Nation of Islam men who always had them on the corner in Mountain View. 

The first Thanksgiving after her stroke, when she had left the hospital after almost three months, was memorable. Dad cooked, I helped. I had brought sides and desserts. It was only the three of us. It was a late meal, and a long meal. 

___________________________

I still don’t know quite why, but the unfortunate shaving job that the good people at Naval Hospital, who cared far more about survival than they did aesthetics, resulted in shaving only half of her head when they clipped the aneurysm she endured that July, so she was left with one side bald, but the other full afro. Her head stayed very tender, and it would be a while before her hair could be picked out. There were soft caps she could wear but not soft enough; they irritated her. So half bald she stayed, till dad could give her a buzz cut. 

I am sure the technique has improved in 31 years, but in 1991, emergency brain surgery was a brutal affair. When we finally got to see her after the first surgery, she looked like she had lost a title fight. Eyes swollen shut. Face bruised to actual black. Unartful stitches and staples and drips and shunts. Her chest partially exposed in the Navy Hospital gown so the nurses could get to her easily ; an insult on the modest woman she always had been. Bobbye Jean lived in well tailored polyester pants and silky shirts and cardigans thrown around her shoulders. The same maker for years. I wanted to run to her closet and dress her like I had always seen her; instead I saw her exposed and begged for another gown to cover her; they could move it when they needed to, but please keep her identity, and her dignity and her humanity intact. 

 It would be nearly a year before her aphasia lessened; nearly a year before she could form sentences. Her receptive language recovered before her expressive did, but we still had her face, expressive even before the stroke, became even more so. 

When there is no speech, one has to guess. Did she want stuffing? Did she want her greens cut? Did she want a roll, or corn bread? Did she want help with the fork? Would a spoon be better? Should I hold the cup? Maybe she needs a straw. 

Mom’s expressions ran the gamut. Alternately happy to be there, grateful to be in the familiarity of her house, still she was frustrated when she couldn’t be understood, being fed a major meal she used to make, being in pajamas at the dinner table. 

And I, in my late twenties, doing a job I had neither expected nor applied for, doing my very flawed but level best. Watching a proud and even a bit vain woman who would rather die than be without earrings or that Revlon lipstick she always wore who was now so diminished was wrenching. 

Watching the tremor in her fist as she ate with a spoon. Watching to see if she choked. I don’t know why. She had been eating regular food for a while; somewhat modified. But it was so different. Not a plate on a tray in the family room, but at the dining table. 

Dad left the table quickly, and became immersed in what was left of football games. So it was just me and mama. I don’t remember the words of that one-sided conversation but I tried to be entertaining. You could tell she was trying so very hard to stay with me; her eyes did her best to track my own, but she didn’t understand everything, and couldn’t respond, and she was getting so tired. But she ate what she could, and she and I stayed at the table for a pretty long time. 

In the couple of months since she came home, there was hope that she would bounce back to normal, or close to normal. That she would inhabit her classroom again. That she would drive the dark brown Toyota Cressida again. That she would sing along to Gladys Knight again. That she would yell at dad for minor infractions again. That she would load the still newish dishwasher–her pride–again. 

But that was not to be. Not all of it. And certainly not right away.

So, as I put away the leftovers, after mama had settled back into her chair in the family room, after I surveyed a kitchen which had always been her domain, feeling like an interloper, I had to fully acknowledge that the Bobbye Jean who went for that last shopping trip alone in July, arriving home from driving from Plaza Bonita mere minutes before the aneurysm popped, was gone. The Bobbye who became my friend as much as my mother in the few years before this assault, this Bobbye who had lost weight, and (almost) quit smoking, who asked me good questions about my choice to go into social services, who was playful and sometimes profane, but more often profound.

 I was going to have to learn to love this new Bobbye. The Bobbye who was still bruised from the life saving brutality of brain surgery. The Bobbye whose eyes welled up with tears and she couldn’t tell me why. The Bobbye who would never wear high heels again. The Bobbye who was encased in a body, and a brain, that cruelly failed and betrayed her. 

Not just love in a general sense. In a dutiful daughter sense. 

No. I would have to learn to fully love and embrace the woman in front of me–well, actually in the recliner in the family room by then. I would have to learn to sing Gladys Knight. If she never progressed past this, could I love her fully, just as is?

As it happens, I could. 

______________________________

I forgot it a lot then, and in the intervening 30years often forgot it again, but Bobbye Jean Watkins was a miracle. 

Driving home in a car on a freeway for 15 minutes before it all happened was a miracle. Dad hearing her fall, waking from sleep, was a miracle. The fast and deft work of the doctors at Naval Hospital was a miracle. The semi-experimental surgery they recommended to dad was a miracle. The fact that the Navy paid for it all–another miracle. 

Bobbye could write before she could speak in ways we could reliably understand, and eventually she wrote, with at first shaky penmanship that got stronger and stronger, eventually she wrote everyone who had come to see her, first in the hospital and then when she came home. She wrote to her sister and brothers who could not come. She began collecting cards, and remembered absolutely everyone–including the painfully many who stopped coming; who fell away; she remembered and wrote to them for years and years. 

She remembered them all. Her long term memory was locked in; she remembered Disneyland in  1973; buying the Buick Wildcat the year I entered kindergarten. She remembered her first classrooms. She remembered when we went shopping for boots that would fit my calves, and comforting me when no shop could. She remembered the few times she saw me onstage. 

And, cruelly, she remembered Plaza Bonita. Kindly, she didn’t remember falling and hitting her head on the living room sofa table. 

Later, she would ask dad to tell her the story. Again and again, because she forgot. And he told her. 

And she remembered me. Not my name at first, and then she had to learn how to say ‘Jan’, my nickname. But she never forgot me. For another 30 years she never forgot me. 

Another miracle. 

_____________________

Mom got slightly better after that first Thanksgiving, then a lot better. She never graced a classroom again or drove, but most of her faculties came back. She became immersed in computers. Bobbye Jean, computer geek. She could take apart and put back together first an Apple IIE, then later more and more complicated Mac machines. She could troubleshoot. Eventually she took her kitchen back. And it stayed that way for almost two decades. She was saltier than she used to be, and, to a casual observer, perhaps a bit more self absorbed–understandable. Her body was now her job. Less of a filter; no more code switching so as not to scare white colleagues in the teacher’s lounge. She was both harder and easier on me, which made her in turns both harder and easier to manage. But the love never wavered. 

That was not to hold forever. Mini strokes took their toll; so did isolation and depression. She lost her ability to read easily, and her dexterity lessened; so went her computer hobby. Her language–expressive and receptive, regressed too. 

And she knew it. She knew she was diminishing. 

And she fought it. Until she didn’t. Until she let go. And I totally understand how and why she did. The last 5 years of her life were a series of diminishments and indignities. Memories of her own mother Lacie Mae, who had died not four months before her aneurysm, became less of a comfort and more of a curse. It was hard to watch.

Still a miracle. 

____________________

There were 29 more Thanksgivings after that first one when Bobbye Jean, both diminished and enduring, ate chopped up turkey roast with a trembling spoon. 

Every subsequent Thanksgiving chronicled her getting better and better, and then worse and worse. 

Her last Thanksgiving, in 2021, was either in hospital or at the nursing home; I can’t completely remember. It certainly wasn’t at her dining table from Sears, purchased in 1975, the year she bought her house.

But this Thanksgiving, I tell myself that Bobbye Jean and Lacie Mae and my Big Daddy Luttrie, and her sister Gloria, and her brothers James and Al, are all sitting in Lacie’s kitchen with a laden table, after Bobbye shelled peas and Gloria shucked corn, and Lacie Mae made not one, but two chickens that Luttrie and the boys cleaned and dressed. 

Mama is home. 

And her daughter remembers. 

So far, I am seven years older than Bobbye was that Thanksgiving of 1991. Seven years of a mouth that can still speak, hands that can still write. Sometimes it feels like borrowed time. Most times though, it feels like I can feel them both–Bobbye Jean and Lacie Mae, dictating to me, and I can feel Bobbye bidding me to type as fast as she could. I cut out most of the cuss words. But they both cover me like one of Big Mama’s quilts, I smell Lacie’s snuff, and Bobbye Jean’s Virginia Slims, and the blackest of black coffee and full flavor Pepsi. And Youth Dew. And legacy. And then I open my laptop and fulfill my duty of love.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend.