I’m 32. I’m still trying to figure out how 32 is supposed to feel. We are often encouraged to have a business or a family or a managerial position (or all three) by the time we hit 30. We should have it figured out, and if we happen to get married in our 20s, we should have at least one kid to validate our marriage and adult status. Or so we're told.

This morning I thought about my mom and myself, and I wondered how she felt when she was 32. I remember my impression of her when she was 32. My family and I lived in Germany at the time, I 12, my younger sister 3, and my parents working and raising two children away from the comforts and norms of U.S. living. My mom is an educator and decided to finish the school year at our schools in New Jersey before we moved across the pond to be with my dad in Germany. We were separated for a good 6 months, which is why I often say that I lived in Germany for 2.5 years.

My mother was always bawse to me. She reminded me of Claire Huxtable, dressed sharp as a tack with her pants or skirt suite and jaw length hair. And when she cut her hair, a la Halle Berry, well clutched the pearls and stopped the record. Mama was fierce. She was, and remains, an amazing balance of Type A ambitious with that “for the people, by the people,” humanity. She’s been a teacher since I came into this world, beyond teaching me about life and Faith, she served as my pre-school teacher one year when we lived in Savannah, GA. And I happened to be the star student of the class that year, no bias on part, I say it was all me. Mama didn’t play when it came to education and she didn’t let me cut corners, I earned every A.

She provided balance and always seemed so sure of herself. Maybe she had doubts and wondered what would happen at this crossroads or after that decision, but quit and give up weren’t in her vocabulary. I get a lot of my hustle hard mentality from her. When we arrived in Germany, she worked a few jobs selling Crystal dishes and pieces and whatever else she could do before officially being offered a position as a teacher in the Department of Defense Education System. She still managed to work at the crystal shop on the weekends and then landed a singing gig with a traveling Gospel choir. Y’all, my mama can’t sing. That was a miracle that they ever said yes to her audition. But there she was, a professional singer because she got paid for every gig and I believe they cut a C.D. #WontHeDoIt #MiraclesEveryDay #SheBelievedSheCouldSoSheDid

She has a great sense of humor and always found ways to ruffle my feathers as a teenager, reminded me to “live a little, and lighten up.” I was always what she would call, “prim and proper,” so anything that would throw me off my A game would tickle her purple, cause you know, brown black folks don’t get pink.

At 32, my husband and I are among the only people in our group of married peers that don’t have children. I don’t lament this fact, I state this observation because I’m curious to know how our life would be if, like our respective parents, we had started a family of our own at 20 or 25. I am at peace with our decision, especially given the fact that most of my friends don’t have children of their own, or are just starting their families in their 30s. There is this expectation that by your 30s, you should come to a full or better state of self awareness, speaking up, not mincing words or holding back, but fully walking into your own and expecting others around you to acknowledge your autonomy and even authority. Kids or no kids, your 30s are a time of making stuff happen and no turning back.

But I’m trying to figure out where we get this idea. Does it come from the realization that life is short and the older we get, the less time we have on earth and the closer we are to death? Is it media-based or just experience from the ups and downs of life, the heartache and hearty laughter and everything in between? Who determined that a woman's worth is synonymous with the number of children she has?

At 25, I realized I was old enough to be someone’s mom. At 18, I fought the strange stares of folks who assumed my sister was my daughter, but at 25 my awareness of being a woman of childbearing age was confirmed when a little girl assumed that two of my male cousins were my sons. I remember the little debate, laughing at her for thinking my pre-teenand teenage cousins could be my sons and laughing at myself for letting a 10 year old’s judgement get under my skin. I even asked my cousin, “do I look like I’m old enough to be your mother?” to which he replied, “no.” But at 25, my mother had a 5 year old, me. And at 30, my mother had an 8 year old and a new born. And at 32, my mother, father, sister and I were living in Germany.

I was the same age as my mom, when she first lived in Germany with her family and here I am living in Spain with my husband.

And I credit my mom and The Almighty for the example that she provided. Because of her, I knew that a woman could be professional. Because of her, I knew that a woman had the sheer strength to maintain stability while her husband was away in a foreign land fighting another man’s war, and of course well before technology and cell phones could help us stay in touch. Because of her, I knew that ambitious and woman could be used interchangeably and that a vocal and woke woman was not a curse to be shunned but a trait to be celebrated. I marvel at the women who do it. The women who raise daughters and sons to be socially conscious global citizens with self awareness and fearless determination. I’m grateful for the women in my life, my grandmothers, aunties and cousins who chose to be greater than the sum of societies limits and equations. I'm grateful for the rule breakers and the norm shakers who never knew they couldn’t be at the table, in the board room, at the White House or the equivalent of their country’s political decision making space.

This is not my mother, though she is a teacher

Dia de las Madres (Spanish Mother's Day 2018)