Amena Brown:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of HER with Amena Brown and I'm so excited to have my grandma in the HER Living Room.
Amena Brown:
Grandma, welcome.
Grandma:
Thank you. I'm so blessed and excited.
Amena Brown:
Y'all, I'm so excited about this. I just realized recently, because I felt like sometimes my podcasts merge into one and I felt like that I had had you on this podcast, grandma, but then I remembered that you and I did an episode for my limited edition podcast, How To Fix A Broken Record, which was related to my book. And we did that episode because I dedicated the book to you and mom and my great grandma, which was your mom, right?
Grandma:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
And we had a wonderful time talking and we got all these questions that people wanted to ask. You actually had so many that we didn't get to cover them all. So we're going to do a little bit of an Ask Grandma situation where people can ask you questions and then I might ask some of my own as well.
Amena Brown:
Okay. So I wanted to start by asking someone had a really great question for you. They want to know what was your favorite childhood memory?
Grandma:
I have two distinctly. First is my bicycle. I love to ride the bicycle and I even think I could ride one today, but you all let me get on it, won't let me try out.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, that's right.
Grandma:
...to the beach. So I didn't try. But anyway, I only had in the family, but we only had in the family, my father's bicycle, my brother's bicycle. And of course, they were from men and boys. And so my daddy saw me one day and I almost fell on his cross bar. That's the difference between the male by itself and the female. And so he said, "Bird, I'm going to buy you a girl's bicycle." And I was so glad.
Grandma:
And at that time we were poor but we didn't know we were poor because we had everything everybody else had. And he came home one day with the bicycle. He said, I had it painted for you. It's secondhand. It didn't matter to me. It did the same job. And I could go to my grandma's house after my daddy came home at lunch time, my brother and I would get on the bicycle in the summertime and we'd go a couple blocks to my grandma's house and hid over there. We ate at our house with my dad and then we went to my grandmother's house and ate with her and her family. And she had a long table, a lot of them and when they would come in at lunchtime, then we eat there and then my brother brought it back home.
Amena Brown:
Oh.
Grandma:
And we just enjoyed it. I got lots of exercise. And the second childhood memory of what I love to do. I walked about five miles maybe, on the Saturday morning, a girlfriend and I, I wanted to take piano lessons. My mother and my grandfather played the organ. And for some reason, being with my mother in the choir and everything, I just decided I wanted to take piano lessons so I could play for the choir. Didn't even know a note. So my teacher at school was a music teacher and I asked her, would she teach me? And she said, yes.
Grandma:
She said, "But you'll have to come on down to where I live in the Southern part of town." And it was about five miles every Saturday there and every and five miles back.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Grandma:
And my girlfriend and I both went. Then she moved and went to another school and I had to find another teacher. So I got a teacher from the church. I was determined I was going to learn how to play the piano. So I learned the keyboard. And after that, God just filled me in with different things. I really can't play all that much. But after I get started, nobody cannot play me, whatever song I'm playing.
Amena Brown:
That's right.
Grandma:
And for 50 years I played for junior choirs, senior choirs, organized a mail course at my church in North Carolina. And then when I went to Texas, I played for the children's choir there and we just had fun and I've been satisfied. Whatever your dream is and your hope, just know that you can't acquire them with God's help. Just have to love the Lord and be patient.
Amena Brown:
That's right. See, I don't think I ever heard that story about you walking five miles each way to your piano lessons initially, because of course, by the time I came along, I was just going to the choir practice with you and going with you and you were playing for the choirs and y'all would I tell you, my grandma could bang that piano know honey, ooh. I mean, I have some little short videos on my social media of you playing our piano at our house now, but that's one of my favorite childhood memories of you is being in the choir stand with you. Any of you that are listening that grew up in churches that had a choir, you had a choir stand and so the piano in your church was up near where the choir stand was. So I would sit up there next to you and then the choir was there. So it's really wonderful to me to hear how determined you were to learn how to play. And then you learning how to play so young, you were able to play for the choirs when you were a teenager.
Grandma:
I was about 13.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Grandma:
And at that time there weren't too many young ladies or men playing. There was a few here and there. And now, I even went from Goldsboro, I went to Kingston, Snowhill and Rockmount and LaGrange and played for those people's junior choir. And the people bought handbooks for their children because I was limited with what I could play. But if I found somebody in the choir that really had a good voice, I would select songs for them to learn and I would teach them how to do. And we had the churches rocking.
Amena Brown:
I know you did, honey. I remember that. Wow, that was some good times right there, grandma. Okay. Someone wants to know what is the most embarrassing story that you can share about me?
Grandma:
The only, really I didn't have anything embarrassing. I had some things that I maybe couldn't cope with every night. You a reader. You love to read and I would take it to the library once a week and used to select a book for every day, seven books. And at that time you was in the first grade and they had a books club that if whoever read the highest amount of books would get a special gift, but it was a hundred book club that they wanted you all to belong to. And so, I took you and then whenever your cousins would come, I took them too, and that gave me a chance to look at all the magazines, fashion magazines, reading New York Times and the Washington Post that I couldn't afford to buy. And I would just sit there and stay as long as I needed to and you all read books while you were there, then you will select your seven that you going to take home and we take them home.
Grandma:
And the next week we bring them back to the library. You'd have to buy them. And now I have great grandchildren now whose our parents do the same thing for them. They take them to the library. They don't go and buy a whole lot of books. If they get one for a gift it's okay. But, and when I go to visit them, I sit in the library with them while their parents go and do whatever they need to do. And I just read all kinds of books and look at all the pictures that I want to look at while we are there.
Amena Brown:
I loved that. That's one of my favorite memories of reading with you. But I think the embarrassing part y'all that grandma was going to tell y'all is that when my grandma goes to bed at night and now that I'm older, I'm this way too. But when my grandma goes to bed at night, she don't want to see not a crack of light. It needs to be-
Grandma:
Dark.
Amena Brown:
...utter darkness. The darkness be before God made the world, dark. Okay? That's what my grandma needs it to be. So when I would visit you, or when I was living with you for that year of first grade, you would be like, "Listen, I love for you to read. You can read all the books you want, but if you going to read out loud with this light on you going to go sleep in another room."
Grandma:
And we had three bedrooms in our apartment.
Amena Brown:
You would tell me, "You going to go in one of those other rooms, because in here it's going to be no light."
Grandma:
You had a choice. You could go to the blue room. The, well the other one, the beige, wait, your mother loved. Well, she loved didn't cover. I think I said red. I don't remember now. But anyway, there was other one and it didn't matter to me which one you chose, but your mother and your uncle had already left high school and they were in college. And so you had a choice except for my room.
Amena Brown:
It wasn't going to be no choices in grandma's room. She lets you know, that's that. Okay, somebody wants to know grandma, looking back to your years of raising a teenager or teenagers or just raising children at all, what would you do the same? What would you do differently? What insight would you give to your younger mom-self?
Grandma:
I will let them know that education is next to godliness in our home. And I didn't want you to lie to me. I didn't want you to steal from me because whatever I had, if you wanted it just ask for it. And I took y'all to the library, to other trips and different things so you could experience, exposure is the best thing for children.
Grandma:
Exposure, I'd already made in my mind and asked God, let me be able to live to see my children grow up to finish high school and college and my grandchildren. Now I'm seeing my great-grand children go to college. Got one in college now that's 20 years old and the other four are small. Everybody has had a taste of college life so far. Most of them have got a degree from the BS to the PhD. And a law degree. So I'm just satisfied and God answered my prayer and our patience, but it was something you have to do. You have to motivate them. And let them know that you're serious and encourage them. And if they make a low mark, that's okay. You help them instead or give them your attention and they'll want to please you and you just make a lot over it.
Amena Brown:
Let's dig into some of these questions now. Somebody wants to know grandma, did you sing any special songs to your children or your grandchildren? And if so, what are they?
Grandma:
No, I didn't sing any special songs.
Amena Brown:
I don't remember any song. I remember learning some hymns with you.
Grandma:
Oh yeah. Well, I took you to choir rehearsal and you said that what I played for the choir and I sang those same songs on Sunday morning. Just So Sweet To Trust In Jesus and Working For The Lord Will Pay Off, I even played that in Texas when I went and taught the children there. And the people just fell in love with it. And today I can truly say working for the Lord will pay off after a while. Just have patience. Just have patience with your children and with God. You got to love God and you got to have patience with God. He promised never to leave us or forsake us. But he didn't promise to give us what we want every time we ask.
Amena Brown:
Right.
Grandma:
I know he hears our prayers and answer them. But he may not answer some of them until we are gone from this world. But he will answer them.
Amena Brown:
That's powerful grandma to have patience with God also. That's powerful, grandma. Okay, let's ask about this. You talked about your dreams and hopes for your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren. What were your dreams for yourself when you were a little girl or a young woman?
Grandma:
I wanted to play the piano. I was a mother of four children and I was busy and my husband liked to travel. So we traveled from North Carolina to Indiana to DC to Georgia. And we just exposed the kids to whatever we could expose them to. I never thought about working really. I was a mother and a housekeeper, but later on I did go to work and I worked with children at the mental hospital in Goldsboro for almost 30 years. I worked for 28 years there.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Grandma:
And I taught those children and I treated them with love. And I learned so much from them to know how to raise my kids. My two oldest boys were 10 and 12 when I started working for the state. And then my last two were five and seven. And working with those kids and I organized a choir at the hospital.
Amena Brown:
I don't think I knew that, Grandma.
Grandma:
Well, I don't know. I have to let you talk to some people that can tell you how we went places and sang at churches and on TV.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Grandma:
We were even on TV.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Grandma:
I just took the children whoever, when they went outside, I was the one that always wanted to go with the children to the football game or when they would learn how to pay tennis. I couldn't hardly run a whole lot, but I could hit that ball and get one of the other kids to run for me. And I got along fine with them.
Amena Brown:
I love that, Grandma. Okay, this question, to give a little background to everyone, when I perform on stage and any of you that have read my books, I think I've told this story about my great-grandmother which is, my grandma's mom and she used to have a phrase that she would say when it would storm or when it was raining, she would tell us that we had to be still and be quiet while God was doing his work.
Grandma:
That's right.
Amena Brown:
So someone wants to know, how do you be still and be quiet while God is working?
Grandma:
I do the same thing. If it's storming, I relax. Sometimes I go to sleep, close my door, pull the shades down or close the curtains and I be quiet. And I did that when the kids were in high school and I now do the same thing for my grandchildren when they come. And thank God where I live now, I don't have a lot of windows. And so, I have a inner closet that I, walk in closet, I can go in and there are no windows in there. And I can just pray and just wait until the God gets through doing his work of a storm. He does his work all the time with the sun shining and the moon shining.
Amena Brown:
Right.
Grandma:
They never go out.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. That's a good point too, that God is working even beyond when it's raining or storming. But it is an interesting point, grandma just hearing you say that even today, when it rains or storms that you might just go to your room and have some time to lay down to yourself because a lot of younger people are talking about what are the ways we can give ourselves more peace, more stillness, find these moments to have that quiet in our soul because our lives can be so noisy.
Amena Brown:
And when I was a child and grandma, who was your mom, when I would stay with her, when you would go to work at the hospital and I would stay with her, honey, if it rain, she was unplugging everything in that house, turned off all the lights and was like, "I don't care who's in here. Everybody in here is going to lay down until the storm's over. And now of course, as a child, I found that to be very annoying because I was in the middle of whatever I was doing playing, I didn't understand that. But now I'm thinking of myself, grandma, I might try to practice it too. I might not go as far as Grandma Sudi did. I might not unplug everything like she did.
Grandma:
I don't unplug everything.
Amena Brown:
But I might try sometimes when it's raining like that, just to give yourself a moment to be unplugged from things and give yourself some time of quiet. I think that's a really good-
Grandma:
And you could pray in and thank God for your life for today because you don't know what most tomorrow's going to bring.
Amena Brown:
That's right.
Grandma:
And there's always something to pray for. And there's always something to thank God for. That's what I did. And that's what I do now.
Amena Brown:
This is the question I have that I want to ask you to just give some clarity and some history for us. Okay, so you were growing up in the Pentecostal Holiness Church And in that time in the church that you were growing up in, women were not allowed to wear pants. Women were supposed to wear skirts. You were not supposed to be wearing makeup, listening to what would be considered secular music or worldly music.
Amena Brown:
You weren't supposed to go to the movies, you were supposed to really be for what the church had decided at that time, doing holy your things.
Grandma:
You are right.
Amena Brown:
Well, as I have talked to your children and then having been your granddaughter myself, you have had some moments in your life that you decided you could have your relationship with God, but you didn't have to always be in the box of what other people decided, they said everybody should be doing. So when I was a little girl, you were wearing pants.
Grandma:
Amen.
Amena Brown:
And a couple of your children told me, you let them go to the movies. Sometimes you would send them wherever downtown or wherever they would go. You would allow them to go to the movies. So can you discuss with us what made you decide to do those things?
Grandma:
Yes. When I started working for the children's unit at the hospital, the kids had record class, just like they were, if they were at home. They had a schedule and they had activities. We had music classes for them and so forth. So when they had to go outside, a lot of people wanted to stay inside, look at TV or listen to the radio or they had snacks and whatever. There were always some kids that couldn't go because maybe they had an injury or maybe because they might would've run away from the people that would take them outside. So I would always volunteer to take them outside. I was a healthcare technician too. And I went outside to let the other ones that would help care technicians one, let them know that nobody needed to be excluded. You could go and have fun with the children.
Grandma:
We took snacks and they could listen to music on the bus. And then I just liked getting away. But one day we had to have a baseball game on the campus of the hospital and I was out there and I was probably about, maybe I was 50 years old. Might not have quite been 50. Anyway, I decided, coming up as a child, I didn't play a lot of sports any kind of sports really. I didn't like football because it was too cold. I didn't like going to football games and my parents didn't go to any of them. My dad would listen to the boxers when, and the wrestling people when they'd be on the radio. But until I was 13, we didn't even have a TV in our home because they said that was the devil's music boss or whatever it was.
Grandma:
But later on we did get one, like everybody else had. So this day I went with the kids outside and they were playing ball and they said, "Ms. Lee come on, you can hit that ball." And one little child told me said, "If you hit it, I'll run for you." I said, "Okay." So I did hit the ball. I was pretty good, my eyesight was good and I could hit that ball and they would run for me. But this one time, oh, before they said they would run for me, I tried to run myself, but I fell down.
Amena Brown:
Oh.
Grandma:
Oh, I fell down and my dress came up and the cheers laughed at me.
Amena Brown:
Oh no.
Grandma:
Yes they did. Oh, most other ladies had on slacks. But I had on my dress right on and my jacket and whatever. And so I was determined that day that you were not laughing me again because you can see under my dress. I'm going to go and get me some pants.
Grandma:
So I went downtown and I bought me several pairs and I decided I would wear them to work, not changing when we had activity and wear them to the cafeteria and whatever. And some of my church members, maybe they didn't belong to my church, but they belong to some other church.
Grandma:
All they knew I belonged to the Holiness Church and they said I was being shameful.
Amena Brown:
Oh.
Grandma:
Not respecting the way the holdings people supposed to do. You been taught better than that. You all don't believe in wearing pants. She wasn't holding this person, but she was a minister and most times she wore dresses. But she didn't have to, that was up to her. And then I got thinking back that if I had kept riding the men bicycle, I would've had to go pass anyway. But having a girls bicycle, it didn't bother me. And so, right in the cafeteria one day, she came in and I had on pants. She had never seen her pants before. And when people see you doing things that you don't usually do, they haven't seen you do, they say you're back sliding.
Amena Brown:
Oh no! Back sliding, honey. No!
Grandma:
She said I was back sliding. And if you wore makeup and you hadn't been doing that, oh, you were back sliding. You being like the worldly people.
Amena Brown:
No. My my my.
Grandma:
And so, I just told her nicely that, that would be my wear from now on. From then on, when I chose, I would wear pants the work. And if I wanted to wear a dress, I would wear a dress. But if I didn't, I'd wear slacks. And so before I knew it, maybe few months later, and even maybe a few years later, the ministers were wearing pantsuits at work.
Amena Brown:
My, my.
Grandma:
I mean, at church, wearing pantsuits and a lot of the Christian ladies, instead of walking in the neighborhood to get exercise, they were riding bicycles. And so, I was just in the know.
Amena Brown:
Come on, now. And when you learn better, you have to do better, okay? Okay, it's not a lie, grandma. Come on, I was in the know. Yes. Yes, I mean, we love a little stunt of the people. Okay, let me do one last question here. This person wants to know, what is your advice for people in relationships? And you had a marriage to the father of your children, you were married to him until he passed away. And then you decided to live the rest of your life single. So tell us the things. What would you say as having been married yourself as well as having been single yourself, what advice would you give to people in their relationships?
Grandma:
Well, you choose for yourself. With me, my husband and I loved each other. And even though some of that time, he was in different, like I said, he loved to travel. So when he wanted to travel and stay to a place too long, maybe I would go back to North Carolina. If I saw he was having a hard time getting a job that he could support us. And I would go back home and put him in school. Then whenever he said, "Let's move again." I will move again. And when my girlfriend used to say, she had finished college and she used to say, "Bert, every time I come to Goldberg, you pregnant." But I had four children and he had a medical disability for the military. And so, my children and I had base privileges because he didn't want them to give him lump sum for his injury.
Grandma:
He was very smart and intelligent and he just wanted base privileges so we would never have to go to a private doctor until the kids were too old. And I even use it right on now, instead of my medicine costing, expensive medicine, I would get it for the less than half price.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Grandma:
And I like that. And then of course, I can get Medicaid and I retire from Children's Hospital and I moved my daughter and I don't have to buy anything. Before I can even look in the cupboard or the refrigerator, she's done already bought it most of the time. And if not, I let my grandchildren know, my children know that I would not have so and so and so, and before I know anything, they send it to me. Like a walking cane, my granddaughter in-law sent me a walking cane because she wanted to know what did I do for exercise.
Grandma:
And I told her that I walk a little bit but I don't walk too much because of the dogs. So she sent me a fold up walking cane, so I could use it being out the dogs. But I never did. I told her if a dog would come close to me, I'd probably run and maybe throw the stick at a dog. And they would, I don't know what I would do. But anyway, I got other interests. My grandson went to West Point, but before he did that, of course, he learned how to play basketball. I escorted him with his other grandmother and we went from city to city to take him. So there are a lot of things that you can get involved in without just not having anything to do. People ask me sometime, even now, are you bored? No, I'm not bored.
Grandma:
I talk to people in Texas, California. I'm still in relationship with people that I learned and met while I was on trip with you when you were doing conferences a lot. I would go with you and your husband. And so, and my daughter would go with us. There's so many things you can do, but you have to have a relationship with someone and an understanding. And you have to also be true to yourself and your God.
Amena Brown:
That's right.
Grandma:
You know you're not going to do everything because you're human. And God knew that when he made us that we weren't going to do everything. And of course, because for Adam and Eve, I won't go back there right now. But anyway, I know that people can have relationship and you have to respect other people and don't argue about the Word or money. Don't argue about those two things.
Grandma:
And you have to respect other people. And then you reach up to be with someone in a class, or that's trying to reach for a higher heights than you always try to reach up to someone. If you see that your friendship with anyone is not the kind that you need to be, that's going to help you improve things and have patience and have faith. Faith and hope are two things that we have to live by. Not for what we see always, for what we aspire to be.
Amena Brown:
Right.
Grandma:
And we can reach those goals.
Amena Brown:
Right.
Grandma:
But you have to be positive. You have to be positive, and you have to be around positive people.
Amena Brown:
That's right.
Grandma:
And whatever you desire, you can reach that goal.
Amena Brown:
Grandma, thank you so much. I love all these answers to these questions and y'all, maybe this won't be the last time we'll have grandma on the podcast answering things for us. But-
Grandma:
Thank you for considering me. I am blessed.
Speaker 3:
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.