Foreword to “I Remember Your Smile”
Here's the foreword I wrote for my mom's new book, “I Remember Your Smile: The Hope of a Little Girl, the Courage of Her Mother”
As a boy, I remember stumbling across my mother’s writings. I was fascinated with her knack for telling stories and recreating life so that the mundane became adventurous. One of the fruits of poverty is the development of imagination as one trains the mind to see beyond the walls of confinement. Mom has always had that gift. Indeed, her children caught from her a passion for writing. Most of her recollections back then were about Deshia, her first daughter and my sister. Deshia and my cousin Kiashia were tragically killed by a driver in a pickup truck in 1988 when I was only four years old. That was a devastating year for my mom, because later that year she also lost her mom and dad to cancer. Aside from vague memories of my grandma feeding all the cousins her infamous gumbo, I never got to know her, until now.
In the past I didn’t understand why my mother wrote so much. But now I see that her pen was the scalpel she used to operate on her heart; she wrote for healing. Never did I expect her writing to provide as much healing to me as it has. This book has given me something we all long for, a sense of where we come from. I am excited for it to do likewise for the rest of the McKee family, including my sister Necole.
It’s not cliché to say there is a little girl or boy inside of us all. Unfortunately, most of us are not as courageous as my mom to delve into our childhood, swim around, and examine the remains with open eyes. It can be unnerving to relive the experiences of a child with the awareness of an adult, but also freeing. In this work, my mom has demonstrated the same toughness which anyone who knows her has witnessed. She has always been a fighter, in the best sense of the word. For example, thirty years ago she made a commitment to graduate from college. After years of juggling baby formula, then bill statements, then folks who couldn’t understand why she was going to night classes when others her age were going to night clubs, we both graduated from college the same weekend. Her college degree is her championship belt, a real life Rocky Balboa.
There are different categories of history. Most history exists merely to record data or to pass on factual information about selected events or people. This type of textbook history is history at its most elementary form. On the other hand, there is another category of history which is concerned not only with information, but also with the grander purpose of tracing the hand of God in the lives of an individual or community. This type of history can scope an entire nation, such as Israel in the Old Testament narratives, or a unit as small as a family. My mom’s story is concerned with the latter category of history. As you read, witness Yahweh who subtly meets a lonely girl wandering down the street, Yahweh who inspires the smell of southern pancakes on a summer day in Lubbock, and Yahweh who glues a family together with joy in the furnace of turmoil. Far from merely showing the versatility of the McKee family, this book also displays the versatility of our God—Who is as present in a homely kitchen, as He was on Mount Carmel.
Our world needs more literature of this sort. For although America has “progressed” into a people fixated on what’s bigger, better, and sexier, in our pursuit we have lost the art of simplicity. Hence our country must learn the very lesson which only long-sufferers such as the characters in these pages can teach, namely, the ability to derive extraordinary happiness from ordinary life. In this sense, then, the next stage of progression for America may actually be a step backwards toward embracing old-school values.
Catherine McKee is old-school. So it is no surprise that in this book she has sung an ol’ spiritual that reverberates upward like that of a blues artist humming in a dark, cold Harlem alleyway. The song is about freedom. And the song sings in unison with the legacy of Mary McKee and in harmony with her beautiful African American, Cherokee, and French ancestry.
Mom, the love that we have for you grew richer with every turn of the page. Second to your heart, this book is the greatest gift you have ever given to us. Praise be to Jesus for turning your ashes into a beautiful crown!
Singin’ with you,
Anthony