Facebook Publication Date: 6/30/2019 15:06
This time last year, and again this year, I have and will take this time to celebrate and recognize the woman who has most shaped my journey to become the woman I am.
Catherine Debose was my Girl Scout Leader, my ‘second mother’, and my first true friend as an adult.
Everything that is admirable in me i cribbed from her.
From her commitment to social justice–she was Associate Director of Neighborhood House here in San Diego–to her commitment to community, to her formation of young girls like myself, to her emphasis on education–both formal and not–to her ability to lovingly and gently confront class barriers, to her unshakable faith, she was a woman I knew I wanted to emulate.
She and her musical Southern accent, which for the longest time I thought was an English accent (!) so foreign as it was to me, live in North Carolina now, her childhood home.
But she lives within me now.
What did she do that was so wonderful, you ask? She made time, and room, and eye contact to a girl finding her way. She made a faithful walk look effortless, yet mindful and intentional. She was elegant, with Afro puffs, and perfect, perfect skin. She was quiet so she really heard me, but when she spoke, it nestled deeply, fully decades later. She made social change commitments a given, not an elective, and she did it with quiet flair. She had a wall of books in her family room, where we had Troop meetings, and after meetings I would run my hand over them, medicine and sociology and english and black liberation, and just tried to inhale them all. She had a daughter, Carla Debose, another template, and a son, Chuckie, that gave me just the right amount of grief. She had snacks, and fruit trees, and a dog I pretended was my own. She had an elegant chin that rested on a slender palm when, as a young adult, I would pour out a stream of consciousness. She had eyes that shone with quiet delight when she saw me. Never was I an intrusion, never a bother.
In short, she did nothing. And everything.
I have conversations with her still. On my porch, upon which she stood when she declared my house a ‘good purchase’ and made me glow, we talk. We talk about you all in Lace on Race, and in my heart she gives me counsel. She reminds me to love when I am frustrated, to slow down when I want to cram everything in.
I say I am teaching you Relational Ethics. That’s true. But I am also teaching you Catherine’s Way. I am trying to pour into you how she poured into me.
Tomorrow is her birthday. We good Southern women don’t divulge ages, but just know that her love and wisdom and discernment transcends time and distance and place.
My formation has been simple. Be like Catherine. I hope I have made even tiny steps to get there.
Happy Birthday, Aunt Cathy. I raise my glass, and lift my heart to you.
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