I wrote about my impressions of the final primaries on the Minnesota Public Radio Station website last night. This morning, I was greeted with a request from Linda Fantin, one of their associate producers, for a picture of the family altar I mentioned in my post on MPR. They want to post it.

This is a photo of the Amos-Borden family altar, where we put pictures and keepsakes of those who have gone on. Here, you can see my Great Aunt Adelaide's teacup and saucer; my mother's wedding ring, watch and bracelet; a framed picture of my father-in-law's mother, father and brothers (most of whom are all gone); a picture of my in-laws just before Lillian died; the funeral bookmark I got at Uncle Chuck's home-going (it's a Black folk thing--most keep this bookmark in their Bibles) and pictures of my mother and grandmother flanking the Senator Obama.

Momma Dot was unable to vote unmolested for over one-half of her life, coming from the South and having lived under American apartheid, Jim Crow. Voting rights for women bypassed her completely as the white Suffragettes were unable to muster that extra ounce of courage to demand that their dusky sisters gain the same rights as they. She has advanced Alzheimer's disease and is unaware of the election or of her surroundings. Though she can't remember the current world, those who have passed whisper to her of joys gone by. She doesn't remember that her daughter, my mother, is dead, but she tells of conversations she's had with her. She asks "When will Doedi come see me?"

My own Momma died just a few years ago. She didn't live long enough to know that Senator Obama was even considering a run for the biggest Big House on this, the American Plantation (I've visited plantations, which to me are hauntingly beautiful with a majestic and terrible past). A rape survivor, she took her fierce dignity, her ample wits and the baby she was left with and created an extraordinary life. She found love and trust, had other children and created a seamless family with that little girl such that decades later when she was told of her origins and adoption by the man she knew as her father, it seemed completely impossible that she could have been anything of than the blood of them both. I thank her daily for the life she chisled out for me.

Thank you, Momma.

When I vote, I vote for them--these women and men who shaped me and love me still. I vote for Uncle Chuck and his brothers, who all served in the military and gave selflessly to this country--a country that was blind to their contributions of service. I vote for Lillian, my sweet mother-in-law, who wouldn't enter into a partisan conversation for all the hot water cornbread in Missisippi but would never miss an opportunity to cast a ballot.

I remember them at the voting booth. Come November, I know I'll feel my mother's hand on my shoulder and the whispers of them all saying "that's the way, little one."

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