Remembering Nonie

This beautifully made baby was once a stage prop for the traveling show, Ragtime. She can be found at Heights Station Antiques. She reminds me of a time when I thought I was Nonie's.

There are a few mysteries in my life and Nonie is one of them. My memories of this woman with a warm, ample lap are so vivid that I can quietly inhale and recapture her fragrance...soap, the sachet that she put between her breasts where she cradled my head; the smell of her lovely food simmering in large pots on the stove. When I really need to feel loved, I remember Nonie's nurturing.

Nonie is my first memory...for me, all life began in her arms. So when I found myself being pulled along a street by the hand, wearing clothes that didn't seem to be mine, it's no wonder that I balked and demanded, "Where is Nonie?" Implicit in that question was, "And who are you?" Those two questions, spoken and implied, brought a threatening reprimand from the stranger gripping my hand. This is my first memory of my mother.

Over the years, though fearing to ask, I persisted in trying to find Nonie. Sometimes it was suggested that I had imagined Nonie, made her up out of thin air. Other times I was promised an answer, "When you're old enough." As a grown woman, I asked my mother about Nonie and she told me that Nonie had been our maid. (Here I should mention that my mother frequently constructs her own truth.) I refuted with, "Nonsense! We weren't well off enough to have had a maid." It was then that I resigned myself to never knowing who Nonie was.

The last time I remember Nonie, she was holding me in her lap while sitting in her rocker on the front porch one summer afternoon. An old neighbor man approached, asking, "Where did you get that white kid?"

I sat up abruptly, looking around for the white kid. Nonie threw her head back in laughter, "Baby, you can be black if you want to be." It had never occurred to me that Nonie and I were different in any way.

So, wherever you are Nonie, thank you for the memories. Over my long life, taking sanctuary in the memory of your love has given me strength, courage, a sense of self, and...most of all... a capacity for boundless love...just like you!