Family Reunion

Well, so much for any plans to take in the sights and sounds of my first Houston Pride event since 2001.

Got more important business. My family reunion.

My mom's side of the family since 1998 has a now yearly reunion that rotates between the Florida, Mississippi, Ohio, NW Indiana-Chicago, and Dallas and Houston, Texas branches of the family.

Through a happy circumstance I got back here just in time for the Houston branch of our family to play hosts for the event and get the pleasure of attending one for the first time in a long time.

It's going to be an interesting situation for me as well. Some of my extended relative know about my transition, especially if they are on Facebook or have perused this blog, while others don't.

All I'm looking for is a nice and relatively quiet weekend with a minimum level of drama. But if static gets started, I will not hesitate to deal with it.

Live From Houston-It's Moni!

Hey TransGriot readers!
I'm sitting in the den of my childhood home at my sister's computer. Immediately to my left is the family Christmas tree and the sun is shining brightly.

The weather was sunny and a balmy 70 degrees when I got here, but the cold front is coming.

So yeah, it's all good right now.

Bus trip was interesting and calls out for its own blog post. The Shreveport-Houston leg was an hour late getting me here after doing the tour of East Texas. I did get to knock off one of the things on the Moni H-town To Do List, which was ride the METRORail. I did it in order to make it easier on Mom who picked me up at the Fannin South terminus of the line and it was surprisingly inexpensive at $1.25 (for now). Parking around the bus station was always problematic, and now that the Red Line runs down the middle of Main Street it's even worse.

Seems like I'm not the only person in the family that came back to Houston for the holiday. My cousin Trey is in the Navy and decided to do so with his family. My Aunt Gwen and cousin Zoya who is in the Army got here Monday. Cuz looks good after going through Uncle Sam's Health Club, AKA basic training.

They all hit the house last night along with my cousin Ebonie, who lives in Fort Bend County.

So I chilled at the house with my sis Latoya, Mom and my niece Chanty, who is going to be tall like her aunt Monica. She'll be 10 in a few weeks and is already standing a little over 4 feet. Will pop over to see my dad sometime during the Moni Returns To H-town Holiday Tour.

Of course, getting spoiled by Mom already and started the process of catching up with my H-town peeps and relatives.

On that note, Merry Christmas 'errbody'. Getting ready visit some peeps and I'm counting down until I can start tearing into my mom's legendary German Chocolate pound cake.

May 2006 TransGriot Column

I'll Always Love My Mama
Copyright 2006, THE LETTER


There’s a classic 1973 Intruders song that expresses how I feel about my mother back in H-Town. The chorus goes:

I’ll always love my mama
She’s my favorite girl.
I’ll always love my mama
She brought me in this world

Yep, Mable Roberts did a fantastic job of raising me and my brothers and sisters. She did it while juggling a teaching career, service to her church and to her sorority. I deeply appreciated the times she had to play mom and dad to us when my father was out of town. I was the one she used to roust out of bed on Saturday mornings to play chauffeur to various shopping malls.

Truth is, I enjoyed those trips as much as she and my grandmothers because of the quality time I got to spend with them.

One of the many things that I admire about my mother is her intelligence. She graduated cum laude with a degree in history while caring for a husband, a two year old toddler (the future TransGriot) and my newborn brother. When she started working on her masters she was pregnant with my sister. Mom is an even-tempered woman who instilled in my siblings and me our love of books, history, education and politics and is to this day a voracious reader with wide ranging tastes.

I marvel at Mom’s sense of style and how she did it on a budget. I jokingly call her ‘Imelda Marcos’ because of her sizable shoe collection. My sister Latoya gleefully gets to take advantage of it because they wear the same size. Speaking of sizes, she still cuts a shapely figure in a size 8 dress. (I’m jealous since I wear a size 16) She downplays her beauty, but I remember one Parent-Teacher conference day in fifth grade when she visited my classroom. My fifth grade teacher was a stunning looking sistah herself, but all the fellas said to me after she left “Your mama is finer than Ms. Ware.”

While mom and I are fairly close because I was her first born child, there are days when I wish I could’ve been her daughter from birth. I would’ve rather been in my sister’s position. While she was in college Latoya joined my mother’s sorority and Mom got the opportunity to pin her when she went over. I had to settle for the frustration while I was at UH of enviously watching the smartly dressed pledges walk around campus in skirted suits and heels in the sorority’s colors or being on the periphery when I DJed her sorority chapter’s Christmas party.

My Aunt Gwen along with a host of other relatives always told me that temperament wise I was more like her. That’s become more pronounced as I’ve gotten older. I inherited Mom’s sense of style and sense of humor. I can wield sarcasm with Ninja like precision just like her. In 1997 I ate Christmas dinner with the family for the first time since I transitioned. When I walked into the door of my grandmother’s house with my then roommate Vanity, mom quipped as she hugged me, “People always said when you were growing up that you looked like me. Now you REALLY look like me.” But don’t sleep on her. She’s tough as nails when she has to be. People that tried to take her kindness for weakness found out quickly that she wasn’t to be played with.

I have been living as a woman for over a decade now and I hope and pray that I am living up to the sterling example of African-American womanhood my mother embodies.

I love you Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.