Our March of Dimes

Stumbling with embarrassing frequency, I followed behind my mother, eyes down, following her polished Sunday shoes. She decided our path, her shoes helping me discern the tripping hazards ahead. It was 1966, and my six-year-old stick arms and legs lacked the coordination that seemed natural to other people. Dressed in a short-sleeved fitted light yellow shift, pocketbook swinging in the crook of her left arm, and a beige brimmed cloche hat tilted slightly to the left, she walked somberly and purposefully, with the tin collection can in one hand, holding my 4-year-old sister's hand in the other. I remember longing to hold her hand when we walked, but she had no time for me, especially my incessant questions and stumbling. Instead, she'd look back to remind me, "I told you to hold your sister's hand," a task easier said than done, as my twin sister pulled away and punched me often. We hated holding each other’s hands, and she also had no patience for me or my stumbling.

We turned into the postage-stamp front yard of another two-story two-family house, a growing collection of curious and dusty friends from houses along our street following quietly at a respectable distance behind. We climbed the stairs to Mama's whispered, "Remember, be quiet. Stand still." She'd knock, say a few words to the lady who opened the door, and we would wait until we heard a coin dropping into that tin can, Mama's "Thank you," and move on to the next house in our inner-city world. This scene, including the four of us in our Sunday best, and Mama with that tin can, walking through 3-square blocks of our neighborhood, repeated for two or three days every year until I was about eleven or twelve. Other than knowing we'd get the butt whippin' of our lives if we dared touch that tin can, we never talked about those walks or why she did it. It was just something we did. And then, at some point, we didn't.

Mama never answered my questions. Childhood memories of that tin can and those walks faded until they were resurrected and explained by two events, decades later, and more than a decade apart.

I was 31 years old when I learned from my youngest sister that I was not my mother's firstborn, that she had given birth to a boy before me. When I asked Mama about my brother, we were alone in a small hotel room on a trip to Paris, France, where I had saved a year to take her on a trip to celebrate completing my doctoral degree. I didn't learn any more than “he died shortly after he was born.” The first trip abroad for both of us. Questions tumbled out of my stumbling stick-figure of a 6-year-old self, wrapped in the body of a confident and competent 31-year-old. When was he born? What was his name? What happened? Why did he die? How did everybody in our family keep this a secret? Was this why he punished you? Why did our father constantly rage about wanting a son, a boy, when he was lashing out drunk?

The door to learning the answers to these questions slammed shut as quickly as it had opened. My father long since dead, my sisters didn't know any more than I did. Aunts and uncles told us to talk to our mother. Mama is gone now, along with the story of my brother.

A decade later, standing at the checkout line in a Walgreens, I observed dozens of balloon-shaped March of Dimes donation stickers taped to the window behind the cashier, each balloon with handwritten names of donors on it. A poster about the annual March of Dimes drive to help fight against birth defects jogged the memory of my Mom's tin can full of coins. I blurted out, “Dimes! That tin can! My mother was collecting for the March of Dimes because my brother died when he was a baby!” The cashier shared her condolences and asked if I was donating. “Oh, my God, yes, I am donating. It’s my first time, I think.” I don’t remember if I was ever asked to or volunteered a coin for Mama’s tin can. Still, with the image so clear in my mind of the four of us marching for dimes through our neighborhood years ago, I proudly and somberly donated and signed my name on a balloon that day.

After that, I sat in my car for a long time. The passing of my brother had caused enough pain to silence what appeared to me an unsilenceable family, on both sides.

My mother wouldn’t, or couldn’t, talk about her loss, but she joined the March of Mothers. She was the only mother I ever saw making that walk for donations during my childhood. I cried. I remembered the times as a child when I thought my mother was passive and weak for putting up with my father’s alcoholic rage. So much I didn’t know.

I remember that day when the proverbial dime dropped for me, and I saw my mother as a strong woman.

I couldn’t learn more about my brother, but I could learn more about our four-person March for Dimes effort. I began to read and discovered that between 1958 and 1960, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, later (in 1976) named the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, intentionally reached into poor African American communities, like ours, to address disparities faced by Black mothers in rates of preterm birth and infant mortality compared to white mothers. Someone with that agency loosened a rock-solid family secret to support my mother in her grief and loss enough to spur her to take control and to take action.

There are 500 dimes in a 50-dollar donation. That was my most recent online donation to the March of Dimes. I don’t know how many doors my mother knocked on in any given year, but I’d like to think that my donation, which would’ve been 205 two-family house doors, puts us over her annual goal. I can see her clearly in my mind’s eye, preparing for our yearly march, adjusting her Sunday hat in the hall mirror, pocketbook settled in the crook of her left arm, shoes polished, the tin collection can in one hand, grabbing my youngest sister's hand in the other.

I still long to hold her hand, happy that she had eventually developed patience for me. I can see her looking back to remind me, "Look up. Stop looking down. If you stumble, pick yourself back up. I’ve already charted the path we’re taking."