Sprouting Seeds

I sat at my great- grandmother’s kitchen table, helping her prepare for our 69th annual family reunion. Lots of relatives were traveling from all over the country to visit Mama Cora in Atlanta, yet I was the first great- grand- daughter to fly from Philly.  I had just changed out of my business attire and threw on my cut-off denim shorts and wife beater. Mama Cora wore her pink, floral smock, and both of us were bare-footed. We sat at her cherry oak kitchen table carved by one of my uncles with his bare hands and broke up uncooked green beans. The weather outside was the typical hot and humid of the south in summertime, but indoors was cool thanks to the A/C. The scent of fresh, baked peach cobbler permeated the cool air throughout the house.

            “Mama Cora, tell me what it was like for you back in the day, I chirped as I grabbed another handful of green beans. I loved her stories ever since I was a kid, when she used to tell me tales of how her great aunts had passed down longtime family herbal remedies and voodoo spells to her.

I particularly loved hearing back then of the fascinating accounts of how Mama Cora joined her grandmother and aunts on missions to herbally treat ill families. They would travel to different homes in the community, carrying their medical bags filled with juices, berries, Aloe plants, and cream, and bandages to mend wounds and ailments. Mama Cora even said her grandmother and aunts sometimes carried bags that contained “magic” elements like; voodoo dolls, face paints, powders, and feathers, to help ward off evil from peoples’ homes.  

She once told me her grandmother and aunts would occasionally meet in a forest for a séance. Their belief was to provide an open channel for good spirits to enter the physical world, to help with supernatural sources, basically. At my tender age at the time, Mama Cora simply explained that séances were to help prevent evil and poor health. Now that I was 24, however, I had a feeling I was in for a more “grown up” story this time around.

            She sat back in her chair with a small smile and pulled out a pipe. Mama Cora always had to smoke her tobacco pipe before she told a story. It was her way of relaxing. Once it was filled enough to her satisfaction, she inhaled deeply, then exhaled, and suddenly threw out a boisterous laugh.

            “Honey, I was younger than you when it all started.”