Ah, let's see.
Oh, there was another little section of Generations
I want to read.
I want to read this--
I wasn't going to read it, but I want
to read it because I want to honor my mother, who dropped
dead when she was 44 years old.
She was a marvelous-- everybody's mother was a saint,
but, as it happens, mine really was.
And I think this little section says something
about what she was like.
My father used to my father used to always tell me
that I could do anything I wanted to because I was
from Dahomey women, and about my mother, he would always say,
she was not a Dahomey woman, but she was the mother of one.
Both my parents were epileptic.
My mother had grand mal seizures.
My father had petit mal, and both my parents
had brain tumors.
And they used to fight all the time.
My brother tells me I should never write about such things,
but I think that he has some--
mistaken idea about love.
Since love is really-- love isn't like that.
Love is sort of like that.
And anyway this is something about-- this
is the kind of woman my mama was.
"I never knew what to do.
One time, they were arguing about something,
and he was going to hit her.
And my sister Pumpkin who had a different mother,
she ran, and got the broom, and kept shouting, if you hit mama,
I'll kill you at daddy.
My brother and I didn't do anything but stand there.
And it was our mama, but we didn't do anything
because we didn't know what to do.
Another time, they were arguing, and I was
in the kitchen washing dishes.
And all of a sudden, I heard my mama start screaming
and fall down on the floor.
And I ran into the room, and she was rolling on the floor.
And daddy hadn't touched her.
She had just started screaming and rolling on the floor.
What have you done to her, I hollered,
and then what should I do?
What should I do?
And daddy said, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know she's crazy.
The last time, ever I saw her alive.
She had been undergoing tests to find out
what caused her epilepsy.
And I leaned over to kiss her, and she looked at me and said,
the doctors took a test, and they say, I'm not crazy.
Tell your daddy.
[APPLAUSE]
I haven't read these poems in a while.
I've written a lot about being the daughter of my mother,
but I turned around one day and discovered that I
was the mother of adult women.
And I had to learn how to do that, and these are some--
well, here's a poem about my daughters.
And then for some reason, I want to read one
about my son-in-law, and I've never read it before.
Anyway--
"Here is another bone to pick with you, oh, mother,
whose bones I worry for scraps.
Nobody warned me about daughters,
how they bewitch you into believing you have thrown off
a pot that is yourself.
Then one night, when you creep into their rooms,
their faces have hardened into odd flowers,
their voices are choosing in foreign elections,
and their legs are open to strange and unwieldy men."