A 6 foot 3 inch Black Woman

When I was younger and people asked me "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I'd reply with: "A 6 foot 3 inch black woman basketball player."

 

And my mom never told me I couldn't be one.

 

Thus began all the things I did and didn't and want to be in life--All of which were based on my mom.

I don't recall my mom or my dad ever asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. It wasn't a discussion. It mattered, but they were more set on my good grades and going to college and letting me decide. I actually didn't declare a major until the end of my sophomore year: teaching and coaching.

But as a college basketball player, one thing for sure had never changed since I was little: I still wanted to be a 6-3 black basketball player. Why? Mom and I watched basketball and Final Fours for hours on end each year. I wanted to be Pat Summitt and Chamique Holdsclaw and Cynthia Cooper and dunk like Lisa Leslie. I was 5 foot 6 and pasty white. OF COURSE I wanted to be these women! They owned the court.

 

I was super athletic and found out as a kid that sports weren't exactly my mom's thing. She's relatively tiny (5-1), liked walking, and for a while, aerobics at the Y, and she owned one of those slimming aerobic outfits that was completely skin tight and was completed with a headband and leg warmers and rivaled anything Suzanne Somers wore. 

 

Yet mom was at all of our sporting events and let me go to any basketball camp I wanted. She let me sign up to be on the all-boys YMCA teams when I was in both elementary and high school. "Beat those boys!" she would say. And then in the stands she would tell the other moms to get their sons to pass me the ball. At home, her favorite thing to yell at my dad was "GO PLAY BALL WITH YOUR DAUGHTER!" when I was out there all by myself.

 

Mom is a writer, and I wanted to be one as well. My dad wanted me to go into the military after high school. Mom thought that was an absurd idea. I had no real opinion, but in hindsight, I would have thrived in the National Guard. So I was pushed to then try to get academic and/or athletic scholarships to pay for college. Mom spent endless hours with me, editing my essays and applications. I had more than enough money for college after it was all said and done thanks to her. Mom didn't finish college, but you would never know based on her handwriting, grammar, and knack for editing my writing.

 

Mom grew up in Madison, Wisconsin in the 50s-70s, and her best friend was a black girl. "We used to walk down the hallways of our high school singing 'Ebony and Ivory,'" she recounted. How fun was that? I grew up thinking that someday I'd have black best friends too, albeit, not where I grew up. I couldn't wait to get out of my whitewashed small town and meet new friends from around the world and with different upbringings and cultures than mine.

 

Mom traveled to Mexico once on her own and knew a little Spanish. Traveling alone? So cool! Learning a language? I wanted to try it. I don't need to tell you what these inspired me to do.

Mom is a firm believer in if you don't wear a dress to church God might be sending you straight to Hell by the end of the church service. Okay, so that's an exaggeration, but what isn't is the fact that I had friends I went to church with in my teenage years who said they'd never seen my mom wear the same dress twice... I, on the other hand, could live my entire life without wearing another dress. Mom was Dillards and Macy's and Nordstrom and I was Eddie Bauer and Title Nine.

 

Mom LOVES sewing and crafting. I have a difficult time wondering how one human could sit still for so many hours in a row and would rather pay someone to fix the holes in my jeans.

 

Mom is a master cook and baker. I enjoy those, as well, but I like veering from a recipe. Mom believes you MUST follow it to a T. Where's the fun in that? I still drive her absolutely bonkers when I cook.

 

Mom likes Jesus. I do too, but I cuss a little.

 

Mom hates alcohol. I say, give me a marg and a beach, please!

 

She travels without too many plans. I want the days filled.

 

She saves everything because "You never know!!!" I think less is more and tell her both "It's not the Great Depression," and "Someday I'll toss or give away all the things in the house you never used like extra cardboard boxes and ribbon."

 

She wants to go to Switzerland and has talked about it for years. I go places almost the same year I think of them.

 

She has short hair, but thinks mine is wayyy too short. If she only knew how easy it was...

She is her own person, very much so, and so am I, which she reminds me of constantly. That, and that I am basically my Grandma Sampson reincarnated as an unmarried 40 something year old woman.

 

So of all the things I am and I am not, I became because of my mom.

Except a 6-3 black woman... 

 

but my mom still hasn't told me I can't be one.