On Speaking Truth

“There’s an old saying: only little children and old folks tell the truth. When you get real old, you just lay it on the table.” ~Bessie Delany


Why is that? My ninety year old grandmother has suddenly become this funny vocal expression of truth and courage. Having grown up one step away from slavery in a rural southern religious patriarchal society she married a sharecropper and they had ten children. My grandfather was not the easiest man in the world to get along with and my understanding is that he was much worst when my mom and her siblings were growing up at home. Although I loved him dearly I still remember his demanding inpatience toward my grandmother and women in general. While I’m sure he too was a product of his time and his environment. I have no proof partly because I belong to a people that loves to keep secrets. However, it was no secret that my grandfather was at the very least verbally abusive to my grandmother and his children. In his defense later in life he became the elder deacon of his local Pentecostal church and this transformation mellowed him considerably but reminiscent flickers of his past carnal nature often came through. I remember one such incident when he and my grandmother had come into town to visit us and bring some goodies from the farm, and they were leaving. My grandfather was out in the truck honking and bellowing for my grandmother to hurry up and come on. My grandmother had no sooner made it to the truck, had one leg in and was about to lift the other when granddaddy took off down the drive with granny’s other leg and her door flapping in the wind. It infuriated my mom to no end. She was so angry that she called her father and basically gave him what for and forbidding, no daring, him to treat her mother that way again. He never did, at least in our presence. In contrast, my grandmother was a quite soft spoken homemaker and obedient wife. I never heard her raise her voice or say anything in her own defense when granddaddy behaved unseemingly. Ok I said all that to paint the backdrop to my quote for today. Fast forward twenty years, and my grandmother is now this vocal little 4’9” bundle of spunk. She doesn’t take any disrespect from anyone especially her kids. Recently, my aunt and grandmother were in the kitchen preparing some dish when my aunt began to tell my grandmother what and how she should do things with little regard to how granny felt about it. My grandmother reminded her oldest daughter, who is a lot like her father, that she endured thirty something years of abuse from her late husband--her father and now that he’d been dead for twenty years , she wasn’t about to be bossed around by anyone else, especially her children. It was because of her children that she had stayed. As she laments today, “where was she going to go with ten children?” My grandmother told my aunt she could leave if she didn’t abide by her wishes. And there are many, frequent such instances where my grandmother speaks her mind with boldness and without hesitation these days.
I choose to explore and express my truths now. Who knows if I’ll make it to ninety. By then I’m sure I’ll have new truths to express or at the very least, an opinionated daugther to keep in check.