When I was a child, the designation "Big Mama" was one of great respect and affection. My best friend Joanne's grandmother was "Big Mama." She wasn't really big, actually.
She was a southern matriarch, however. She was a true Big Mama. That's a great thing.
In the South, to be called Big Mama means - at least in my mind - that you are seeing someone who is all about love, and all about being a fierce tiger mama. You hold your family together. You are a bible-reading, Sunday-School-going, fried-chicken cooking Epitome of Motherhood.
My aunt Myrtle asked her grandchildren to call her Big Mama. She asked my children to call her that. I so wish that before she passed away a few years ago I could've imparted to my children some of the love, awe, and respect that I felt for my aunt. She adored all children, and they knew it instantly. The first time she met my kids she hugged them.
In a deeper sense, Big Mama implies everything that - to me at least - is good about the South. There are so many negative things in the media about us. There is so much caricature out of Hollywood. Sometimes I just despair at ever seeing southern women portrayed fairly.
I have decided not to go and see August Osage County because that matriarch, portrayed by Meryl Streep [who is NOT on my Christmas list, at the moment] is supposed to be Southern, and she's a foul-mouthed pill-popping Satanic version of a Big Mama. [Just FYI, nobody in Georgia or Alabama or South Carolina considers Oklahoma the South. It's out west somewhere. We don't dislike it or anything, but it's just not Southern. It's a Broadway show with singing and dancing cowboys, in my mind.]
Also, Steel Magnolias and Gone With the Wind offer distorted versions of what it means to be Southern.
What Hollywood never captures is that to be a real Southern Lady has nothing whatsoever to do with money or class or race. It has to do with character.
My friend Cindy over at Big Mama Hollers is going through a lot of angst because of some very negative comments left on her blog. It burns me up to know that anyone would unfairly criticize Cindy. She has adopted 38 children, large Hispanic sibling groups that nobody else would adopt, many of the children with huge emotional issues. Most of her children are doing really well. A few have had some major issues, but Cindy has moved heaven and earth to get them the help they needed, at a great emotional cost to herself and the other children.
There's a special place in Heaven for Cindy, the brightest star among all the Big Mamas I have ever known.
I could never even aspire to her level of goodness, but I have tried really hard to be a good mother.
I had a long talk with a friend the other day, who had quite a bit to say to me about my relationship with my daughter and our recent head butting. He's a really close friend, much like a brother, and his criticism stung. I tried to explain to him my viewpoint, and he couldn't see it.
What is dang near impossible to explain to anyone who has never adopted a child is that there are NO GUIDEBOOKS to our kids.
I've had tons of well-meaning but utlimately useless advice from friends with kids who thought they knew best in telling me how to manage my kids. What is unfathomable to most folks is that my kids are NOT typical of any other kids in the universe.
Probably the most articulate among my other blogging friends is Cindy LaJoy, who speaks of her struggles with her 5 adopted children with incredible honesty and candor and grace. Although she is not southern, she is the ultimate Big Mama, in my book. She has children adopted as babies and some adopted as older kids. She writes so movingly about their struggles, her posts often leave me with a lot of food for thought. Sometimes they make me cry. (Sometimes they make me want to move to Colorado, where she lives.)
My two adoptve mom blogger-mentors, Cindy L and Cindy B, help me to keep going every day, even when I want to throw in the towel and take a Gown Day. Right now they are dealing with issues of 16 or so kids at home [between the two of them].I am dealing with 2.
Cindy L homeschools her kids. Cindy B grows most of her own food.
Those are Herculean tasks I'd never even attempt.
Our kids may not be the most gorgeous or the top grade-earners in school but they are all fortunate to be getting loved by Big Mamas. Cindy B called her blog Big Mama Hollers because it's her way of coping. Cindy L doesn't write as often, but her posts are always thoughtful and insightful.
Our kids are not like any others, and yet they are exactly like others.
What's so hard to explain about our kids is that there can be great intelligence and also great disabilities. Michael is making almost straight A's right now in school. He also can't remember the months of the year, or how many ounces are in a cup.
My daughter has incredible puzzle and problem-solving abilities, but managing her own life is very tough for her.
Loving our adopted kids means dealing with SO MUCH. No training on earth really prepared us.
I do not expect anyone to feel much sympathy for me and I am not asking for it. I chose this life, and I chose my kids. I felt strongly that God was guiding my decisions. (You don't have to agree with that, but I would appreciate simple respect.)
I have wondered what my future grandchildren will call me. My grandmother was always "Mamaw." My Mother likes to be called Granny, like her own grandmother. Having struggled with my weight all my life, would I be comfortable with Big Mama? I don't know. (At 5'4 most people don't see me as BIG; more like extra wide...)
Maybe I am, deep down, trying so hard to be a Big Mama that I should embrace that term. It encompasses Big Love and Big Sacrifice and Big Faith. So maybe we should all aspire to be Big Mamas.
my aunt Myrtle [in blue] with two of her children, plus Mother and Bruce [around 1960]
