At the tender age of 15, in 1990, Misha Waller was preparing to have her first-born child. Waller, a black woman who grew up in Portland, Ore., during the height of crack cocaine, watched addiction sweep through her neighborhood and stifle her mother’s household.
When she was growing up, Waller’s father had committed suicide and her mom was forced to raise three children on her own. Raising three kids in the crack-epedemic ’80s was a formula for hardship and pain. And Waller learned that the hardest way.
She, her mother and her two siblings moved from house to house, often getting evicted for not paying the bills. Even when they managed to stay in a house for a while, the lights were often turned off, and the kids would have to use candles at night to get to get around.
With such an upbringing, school was not on Waller’s mind — and how could it be? How could someone focus on their future when their present is so tarnished? How does a woman think about books, teachers and classrooms, when she doesn’t even know if she’ll have food to eat, light to keep her room lit while she’s doing homework or a place to rest her head at?
So, after 8th grade, Waller could no longer handle school. She needed to focus on simply getting by, and school just wasn’t putting food on her table, or a roof over her head.
She was 14 when she found out she had a bun in the oven.
Waller was at the bottom of the socioeconomic barrel — young, black, poor and pregnant; So when her son was born, it was safe to assume that he too would be cast into the same pit that Waller, her siblings and her son’s father were in.
The father of Waller’s son was a 17-year-old member of the Bloods. Psycho (his street name) was already an established figurehead in the streets, and a handful for the Portland Police Bureau. Although he wanted to be there for his child, his role in the gang, and his tendency to be in and out of jail, made that impossible.@@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Police_Bureau_%28Oregon%29@@
With no job or stable home, Waller knew she would be one of the millions of poor, single black mothers, and her son would be one of the millions of black children born out of wedlock.
An illegitimate bastard, so to speak.
Waller knew the odds were against her and her child, but she was willing to do whatever it took to give him a decent life. She didn’t want her son to go without electricity in his house, or to have to use cooking grease as a hair product or to grow up without an education like she did. Her upbringing showed her exactly what she didn’t want him to experience.
By the time her son was three, Waller taught him his ABCs, 123s, address and phone number. Although she herself had not received a quality education, Waller taught her son the value of knowledge early on.
When her son was five, his father was sentenced to 30 years in prison for various gang-related crimes. Her son doesn’t really remember much from his father outside of prison, nor does he recall an emotional response to his incarceration.
Her son was not the only black child born in 1990 that had an incarcerated father. In fact, 25 percent of black children born in 1990 had a father sent to prison (as opposed to 7 percent of white children). Strangely enough, though the ’90s is often associated with stone-washed jeans, Beavis and Butthead, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, it can be just as easily associated with the imprisonment of black fathers. This of course, was largely the aftermath of a combination of factors including the War on Drugs, former head of FBI J. Edgar Hoover, the Ronald Reagan administration, an increasing wealth distribution gap, and (the real) Ricky Ross.
Thanks, guys.
Waller was alarmed by the fact that her son wouldn’t get to see his father, but that didn’t stop her from giving her son everything she could. She continued teaching him and guiding him in the right direction, ensuring that her son was in the highest reading group, the highest math group (which he since has forgotten) and that he would excel on state tests.
And though Waller grew up with nothing, she made sure that her son was hip, well-dressed, and provided with whatever he needed to live a functional life. Even when Waller didn’t have much money, she would go without to provide him with a new pair of shoes or a nice shirt. Waller knew what it is like to be made fun of at school, and she would’ve rather gone without than watch her child feel that pressure.
He was clothed, educated and supported graciously by a mother who didn’t get further than middle school. Because she never let him know that they weren’t in the most comfortable economic stances, or that society expected children like him to be unintelligent, the boy did very well academically (though behaviorally, he was a class clown and a damn show-off).
By the time her son was in his senior year of high school, he was a 3.4 GPA student, a Black Student Union president and a newly accepted University of Oregon student — all because his mom didn’t let anything get in his way.
A woman like her deserves the highest reward society has to offer. A single mother, amid poverty and chaos, turning the tables and nurturing a small bundle of joy into a man with many aspirations.
Waller’s story is one that every single mother needs to hear and one that I am very proud of — because Misha Waller is the woman I call Mom and that small bundle of joy she raised is me.
To Misha Waller and all the single mothers around the nation, Happy Mother’s Day.