In The Hand I Fan With by Tina McElroy Ansa, the main character Lena starts off as a woman with a packed schedule and a powerful presence. She’s sharp, successful, and always doing for others. Fanning the whole community. But when she meets Herman—a soft-spoken, grounded man with an old soul—something shifts.
He doesn’t ask her to change. But his pace, his reverence for the land… it pulls something forward in her that’s ancient and quiet.
Lena begins to unplug and slow down. She starts walking her property, noticing the breeze through the trees, the curve of the river, the spirits lingering in the stones. And through that stillness, she reconnects with her man, herself, and her late mama’s voice.
That silence birthed clarity: she didn’t have to be the hand that fanned everybody else anymore. She could rest. She could receive.
I think about that a lot when I reflect on my years unschooling my children. We’d unplug and walk nature trails or canoe bayous together. Not rushing. Not consuming. Just being. And that time was so good for us. It felt light. It felt holy. Also felt that way, Morgan, when me, you, and Ayo walked the marsh together.
This excerpt from The Hand I Fan With beautifully intertwines the sacred with the power of foremothers:
“So, just as often as Lena said, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen,” she prayed, “In the name of the Mother and of the Son, Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
She said it just as innocently. She didn’t make a big deal of it and try to drown out the person sitting next to her with her version.
She told her friend named Sister, “It just makes sense that if Jesus was conceived in Mary’s body and God was the essential father, then Mary with her womb, her egg, sure as shooting was the essential mother.” And in Lena’s mind, that made Mary divine, too. Worthy of prayer and adoration.
“It seems to me, Sister, that women—Mary, Ruth, Esther, Elizabeth, the women disciples at the foot of the cross—were the only ones in the Bible who were obedient to God,” she told her friend one Sunday as they strolled back from her mother’s altar where Lena had celebrated Mass. “And they don’t get no credit.”
The altars and grottoes and retreats Lena had erected around her property emerged from that belief. First, she and Renfroe made a little grotto to Mary… Then, she asked Whit, the family’s old carpenter, to build a cypress altar to Oshun… Then, while she was out riding her horses, she thought of Yemaya, and she got Renfroe and Whit to help her erect a shrine to her, too. Then, one May 5th, [her late mother Nellie’s] birthday, she decided to erect an altar to her mother, her grandmama, Mother Hale, Mother Theresa and all mothers.”
[End Quote]
While out on walks with my children, CJ and Kobe, I’d challenge them to memorize the names of our ancestors as far back as I knew, then tell them how they were like the great-grandparents they never met. Over time, those names became people. Personalities. Stories.
And I’ve adopted so many grandparents over the years. My children have built bonds with them too. That’s family. Because blood kin ain’t always an option, for a list of reasons. But that doesn’t mean we go without. We construct. We complement. We extend.
Ilyasah Shabazz said it best during Vanessa’s interview of her in 2020. After praising her mother, Betty Shabazz’s love and generosity, she pointed out that “If we have an estranged relationship with our parents, it takes a village to raise a child. There are other people that we can look to for that tutelage.”
I grew up getting a lot of that tutelage from my mother’s bookshelf: Tina McElroy Ansa, Terry McMillan, Bernice McFadden, so many, from about 9 years old on up. Fortunately, I was able to meet Ms. Tina before she passed last year, and build a relationship with her. She’s one of my foremothers, part of the spiritual village I’ve reimaginedcreated for myself—as is Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison and her homegirl Toni Cade Bambara, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Lorraine Hansberry, Margaret Walker, Nikki Giovanni, and so many others, including the characters they created in their stories!
Like Vanessa said earlier, your lineage also includes those who inspired you. With all that healthy guidance, baby, you can’t lose!