This story took place when I was 8 but when I was a teenager, Mama, Baby Sister and I lived at 313 W. 47th , in Manhattan, (Hell’s Kitchen in NYC) in a railroad apartment and the rent was $125 a month. There were rats and roaches and no heat at times and lots of other amenities that the apartment probably doesn’t have now.
Mamas Song by Bobbee Pennington, 2019
Mama taught me to live poetry
She taught me to sing and to dream
She created refuge from poverty
Mama was a woman of means.
We lived in a tenement apartment
With rats and roaches and dingy halls,
Yet in Dresden Blue trimmed in white,
Mama repainted the walls.
Ethereal piano music of baby-song,
Composed by sister sparrow
Flowed through halls of dance, painting and dreams,
Against a canvas of city sorrow.
Mama taught me to live poetry
She taught me to sing and to dream
She created refuge from poverty
Mama was a woman of means.
Sometimes our dignity would threaten
To tear at the seams,
Then Mama would quickly retreat to the plan
For the house of our dreams.
A country home with no falling plaster,
No rats in the walls,
With French doors and windows in every room,
And brilliant, sunlit halls.
Mama kept giving us dreams
Though so many of hers were broken,
And when her loneliness was bitter,
Mama’s complaints were left unspoken.
Mama taught me to live poetry
She taught me to sing and to dream
She created refuge from poverty
Mama was a woman of means.
Mama was a woman of dreams…
Grandma Bobbee 