📷| Colleen O'Connell Smyth / Humans of Saint Lewis
“I used to weigh 322 pounds and, as of today, I weigh 208. Dr. Gurav was one of the people who helped me get here. At age 62, I ended up in the hospital having a quadruple bypass surgery. I had just decided to go back to school for an associate’s degree in business administration. My grandson asked, ‘Why are you going to school at your age? You can’t do that.’ I told him, ‘I can do whatever I want.’
For the first semester, I would sit at the dining room table every evening to study. It was stressful, but I was determined, like, ‘Who’s this boy telling me I can’t do it?’ And I made straight As. Well, I was partway through my second term preparing for finals and the stress was getting to me. I had a few people at my house for my birthday. We were going to hang out and have some cake and ice cream. I was sitting in my spot at the table and noticed my legs were swelling up. That had never happened before, so I knew I needed to go to the hospital.
They told me I had 10 blockages in my fingers and I thought I was out of this world, I really did. But the Lord brought me through. I stayed at the hospital for a week and a half, recovering. My daughter is a nurse, so she helped care for me afterward. She would change my bandages and just be around in case I needed something. I was told I needed a stent put in my heart, but it would be difficult. Dr. Gurav told me, ‘Don’t worry about that right now. Just lose weight and your heart will get better.’ And it did.”
“I’ve been a caretaker my whole life and I don’t like being dependent on people. I have two daughters, six grandkids, three great-grandkids, and nine other kids who call me Granny. I was a single mother at age 15, but I loved my childhood. I was belligerent often and had some black eyes, but sometimes I had to fight. In my family, there were five girls and one boy. As girls, we had to keep people away. There were boys who liked us and didn’t know how to tell us, so they would pick on us. I’d be like, ‘Come at me. Just try.’ And then some families were just bullies, like the Valentines and the Codys. This Valentine girl hit me in the eye in 5th grade. People think when you get a black eye it means you lost, but I gave her a good whopping.
I grew up in the ghetto. Zip code 63106 near Vashon High School. Ain’t nothing like the hood when you grew up in the hood. So many good memories. We had a swimming pool at our grade school. We didn’t get to use it though. Instead of filling it in, they covered it up with wood. So we invented this game called ‘The Stomp.’ We would hold somebody’s hand and swing them around in a circle. Once we sped up enough and they got some elevation, their feet would lift off the ground. Then we would let them go. We used to do it on top of that old swimming pool. I loved it.”
“I was never without a boyfriend. There was one, named Slugger. We would sit on the front steps watching people, sucking on our fingers, and holding our other hands together. Then every once and a while we’d look at each other, kiss, and pop our fingers right back in our mouths. We weren’t bothering nobody. Slugger technically wasn’t my first boyfriend because, in the second grade, I had a boyfriend named Handy Lee Lance Jr. Handy would write me little love notes and I’d put them in my shoe under the flap. I don’t know how she found them, but my momma sensed everything. The next thing I knew she was holding a note and asking me, ‘Brenda, what are you doing with this right here?’ I told her, ‘Handy wrote me that note.’ She had prayer services at the house on Friday nights and told everyone. It didn’t embarrass me. Wasn’t nothing but a note. But I think they got a kick out of it.”
“By 10, I didn’t look my age. One time my dad and his best friend were sitting across the street on the steps. I had borrowed a dress from my momma’s best friend. She was my Godmother and always helped keep me nice, neat, and pretty. Well, I ran outside down the block wearing that dress and my dad’s friend said to him, ‘Look at that one right there.’ He responded, ‘Man, that’s my daughter!’
From that time on, my momma made me wear a girdle. She didn’t want me around there jiggling. It got to the point that everyone knew I wore a girdle. It even had a nickname. In 8th grade, my teacher would be talking in front of the class and I’d be sitting at my seat, messing with the stays. I’d work one of the wooden pieces out and put it in the groove on the top of my desk. Then I’d work on another one. The boys would pick them up, bend them back in one hand and they’d go flying across the room. They’d say, ‘That came from Myrtle. Myrtle, Brenda’s girdle.’ I wore one ’til right before I got out of high school. My God, I had so many girdles.
Six years later when I found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t scared. I just thought, ‘I’m going to have a baby and my mom is going to watch it while I’m at school.’ That’s exactly what happened. I was in the kitchen cleaning and my sister Rosie was there with me. She and I were cool, so I told her, ‘Sit down, I’ve got something to tell you. I’m going to stay home from school tomorrow to tell Mom I’m pregnant.’ All she said was, ‘You’re kidding me!’ When I swore I wasn’t joking, she said ‘Oooh, I don’t want to be there.’
So I stayed home and told my mom the next day. She asked me, ‘Are you going to marry somebody?’ I told her, ‘No way.’ That I was going to school. My daughter was born a week after my 16th birthday. And I continued with school. I would call home and ask about her. Everyone pitched in, so I had a lot of support. I finished high school and then went on to take night classes in business at Vashon. My best friend had a baby after I did later, hours apart. My crazy sister told me, ‘You and her must have been holding hands when you were doing it!’ She was something else.”
