Day 579: 5 Minute Freewrite: Wednesday - Prompt: perfect nanny

100 years. Wow...

Mrs. Roberta Bolling could scarcely believe it herself, as she was going to her own 100th birthday party.

Yet she was clear enough of mind to recall all that she had seen... growing up in an impoverished family in Virginia, sharecropping on land her grandparents had once worked as slaves... her family seeking a better life in the big city of Richmond, only to find Jim Crow had been there sixty years already and was firmly in command. The discrimination was different, but just as deadly.

She had come to womanhood with her job opportunities in the big city being only hairdressing, washing clothes, housekeeping, or being a nanny... pretty much the same options her grandmother had during slavery days, proper.

However, young Miss Roberta loved children, and had helped her mother not only with her own 14 younger siblings, but had helped other mothers with their children. So, she decided to become a nanny, and, without realizing, put about 20 years into that, helping to raise children and grandchildren of other people.

She also taught Sunday School at her church, B.T. Washington Memorial of Richmond, and, during the civil rights period, had the unhappy honor of being a real hero when the local KKK had torched the church in 1964 while service was in progress. Sis. Roberta had kept the children calm and gotten them out alive.

It was that that time she had quit being a nanny.

"If y'all refuse to respect the children I could have had, then I'm NOT going to work to help you with yours any more. Y'all know who is doing these things, and ain't nobody saying nothing. Y'all keep your money. Let it burn with y'all if y'all ain't gon' stand up for the right."

Sis. Roberta wrote that in an open letter to all of Richmond's papers, explaining why she wasn't going to be a nanny any more. She then took what little she had amassed in all her years of working and fled the area, knowing from the stories of her parents and grandparents that she had cashed it all out in Virginia by saying publicly what she had said. Most of the Black people she knew also scattered to the four winds.

SO, aged Sis. Roberta was very surprised to find that the birthday party her great-niece put on for her had 1,000 people of all colors attending -- in a gymnasium, there were so many.

"You were my Sunday School teacher, Sis. Roberta..."

"You raised me while my parents were busy being high society people in Richmond, Aunt Roberta..."

"You're the reason my children and I aren't racists, Miss Roberta..."

"You're the reason I learned how to love my enemies, Miss Roberta -- love them enough to tell them the whole truth, so they can be saved before it is too late for them..."

"You're the reason I kept going when everybody was telling me I was ignorant and inferior, Sis. Roberta..."

"You're the reason I graduated high school and college, Miss Roberta..."

"You're the reason I didn't commit suicide, Miss Roberta..."

On and on it went, until they had to stop because Sis. Roberta was crying so hard.

"I just did what the Lord told me to do -- I give Him all the praise, for letting me be something of a mother to all y'all."

"Something?" said one middle-aged man. "You were the only REAL mother a lot of us had!"

"I ain't been perfect to y'all or nothing like."

"You were perfect for us," another young woman said. "You were just what God knew we needed, Sis. Roberta -- just perfect for us!"

Graphic designed by Deeann D. Mathews, the author