"Coffee with Nana," A Poetry Post

When I was fifteen,

my Nana and I would

drink coffee late nights while

I did Calculus. 

Calculus was my Moby Dick and

Nana was my muse; after all,

what else could one do but suffer through

difficulties in order to be

victorious?

It was she who was the first picture of 

victory in our family.

A survivor of two World Wars and a

depression,

a businesswoman,

a mother,

a scorned woman whose 

once young husband 

returned from the war shell-shocked and 

rocked in so many ways.

A peacemaker who tried to soothe the ills 

of the family's hustlers and 

unfit mothers.

At the end of the day

she would have had to 

sit down and have 

coffee.

And me, three generations later,

the daughter of two parents who

could not agree,

the sister of brothers and sisters who

had three fathers and

four mothers among them, 

the peer of hundreds of children who were

counted out on the corridor that

politicians and moviemakers named

SHAME...

Here I was,

alive. 

I can't tell you!

How did I thrive

in the absence of my mother and father?

Why...

how did I thrive knowing

my family was strewn all over the

east coast, never knowing who they were?

Why...

how did I thrive knowing that

people were labeling me

empty and needy and laden with poverty?

How did I survive that?

Surely God has granted me favor.

Surely God has blessed me to live through it.

Surely God has taught my hands to war, yet

I say it has something to do with 

Nana and I having

coffee 

late in the night

while I cried over

Mathematics I did 

not understand. 

She could have told me to 

turn out the light and

go to bed and 

try tomorrow.

She could have told me to

take it easy and

find something else I was good at.

She could have

consoled me and told me,

"Don't worry, pretty girl,

you don't need Math to make it in this world," but

she didn't!

She fixed me a cup of coffee and a

slice of cake and she

sat there,

all night,

looking at Math she 

never understood until

one day

I just

got it.  

Together we learned how to suffer well.

She, with her lifetime of experience in suffering.

Me at fifteen struggling to find my real self.

We sitting, at the table, with coffees.

And that is why you know me now.

By God's grace,

that is why you know me now.

-T. D. James-Moss