“I’d like to start a day care for unwed mothers, like my daughter. “You must want something,” I probe, “something you’d like to do for you.” “I’ve been a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly for twenty years.” I repeat, “What do you want? For you? What secret dream do you have for yourself?” Her confused expression turns to one of surprise. At first, all I get in response is a quizzical look that suggests I need to reconsider my bid for higher office. We chat more about the worries she’s lived with all those years, our discussion turning to the crime and poverty in their community.
She got them through and has given them the tools to carve out better lives for themselves. They will succeed, she says, if they can afford to stay in school.Īs I look around the modest home, passed down through generations, I understand both the pride and the desperation tangled in her response. What can I do to help make lives like hers better? In her soft voice, she replies she just wants better options for financial aid for her children. I’ve come to their home as part of my campaign for governor, so I ask Valerie what she expects of someone like me. Yet in the next breath, she explains how college will be best for her and her child. Maya, the mother-to-be, wonders aloud how she’ll do so far away from home and her baby. Still, she is determined that both her children pursue degrees she never received. Valerie speaks matter-of-factly about the coming challenge: raising a new child just as hers leave the nest. Her intended school is more than three hours north of her home, so her mother will raise her newborn baby while she starts her freshman year. Both newly graduated from high school, Maya will give birth in mere weeks and begin college months later, an unwed teen mother. Maya, eighteen, her belly round with her first child, intends to become a middle school teacher. David, seventeen, plans to study criminology. Valerie beams with pride that both her children are headed to college in the fall. Politicians rarely visit their streets, which are nestled in a poorer community in south Georgia. Across from us, seated close together on a wide settee meant for one, are her two children, a son and a daughter. I am perched on the edge of the sofa next to Valerie, the home’s owner, a lovely black woman in her late forties. I sit in the living room, a cozy space, warm in the early summer.
0 kommentar(er)
