Thursday 17 July 2008

A la Vivian Baxter

I remember the way I felt when i read this bit from Maya Angelou's phenomenal auto-biography......
so Maya had just been to see her mother, after i think a bit of time (and water) had passed under the bridge (you have to read the book)...Now Vivian Baxter, if we are to believe Ms Angelou about her own mother is no joke....tough cookie she was, even before we had to invent the phrase...she was the first person, i kind of like to think that cut the picture of the intelligent little old lady, full of wisdom and stories of old lovers, wore fur and gloves and hats, but could down mean martinis, and carried a pistol in her lamb skin evening purse ( vivian baxter actually did...)
They met in a bar (I think) and Maya filled her mother up about what had happened so far, in her life...Black civil rights movements in the 60's , raising her young son, fears about finances, Vivian had let her cry on her shoulder, and (here is where my story begins) when it was time to go, vivain said to her (or something like it...I lost my book)
"I'll just walk away, I hate to say goodbye to the people I love" and swaggered her hips out of the resturant...everyone of course watched the clssy little lady sashay out....
At 14 years i was at the time, I fell in love with my first virtual person; i kept thinking...what a bad ass....suddenly my grandmother, who is no less a phenomenom,( with stories for another day) seemed too tame and well...dull.....
i wondered If I wrote her to ask , would she adopt me?
I didnt, and Vivian died never knowing how long a little girl would hope that that kind of scenario would ever play itself ut with me in it just so i could say that....
Anyway, this is a close second....
I hate to explain absences to people i love, lets just get on with it...............,,,
thats me sashaying off the screen till the next (near) post.