MoreThanMine

No movies were ever done about her.
No history books will ever hold her name.
But I know her story like I know my own hand,
And I will sing her story just the same.

In ’28 when all the folks were laughin’ ,
Thinking ’bout the money that they’d made,
At twelve years old, in dresses made of patches
Arnesia picked the cotton while she played.

And she helped her mother raise two orphaned cousins
’Cause that’s the way they did it in those days.
Not much older than the children that she cared for,
That is how Arnesia learned a mother’s ways.

In ’34 when all the folks were crying,
over all the money that they’d lost,
Arnesia was all alone and trying ,
To understand what love, too young, could cost.

’Cause she’d had two children for him out of wedlock
Back when bastards were a mark of shame.
And though she didn’t wear it in her own life
She raised her children with their father’s name.

No movies were ever done about her.
No history books will ever hold her name.
But I know her story like I know my own hand,
And I will sing her story just the same.

In ’49 Arnesia left for Detroit,
To find the poor man’s fabled promise land.
’Sold whiskey, in the Bottoms, to the workers,
And she left her problems all in Jesus hands.

Detroit was not the same as Alabama,
And she had to learn to face to the cold grey morn,
And that rags around your feet can keep you walking,
And that newsprint ’round your legs can keep you warm.

In ’56 when Civil Rights was marching,
Her daughter had a baby of her own.
She found out what Arnesia had long known,
That its hard to raise a baby on your own.

But these women worked to raise the boy together.
And they tried their best to give him everything.
When I think about the way those women raised me,
I am sure that I was born to be a king.

By the ’60s Arnesia’s son had married,
And had found success in the mechanic’s trade.
Eight children helped to bring his mother pleasure,
While ’round her feet all nine grandchildren played.

And we all grew in the joy that was around her,
And somehow we cut out the “middle moms”.
And a neighborhood of children called her “Mother,”
And she wiped away our tears with calloused palms.

No movies were ever done about her.
No history books will ever hold her name.
But I know her story like I know my own hand,
And I will sing her story just the same.

But in the 80’s while the world was busy spending,
Arnesia did the best that she could do.
Her only son was killed at 37,
And her only daughter died at 52.

And the turns of life had taken all her children
And nearly all the joy that had remained
But, in my son’s eyes she met four generations,
And, she knew her life had not been lived in vain.

In ’90 in the month that she was born in,
Arnesia of Evergreen went home.
But in ’91 my wife came in to bless me,
With another little Arnesia of my own.