Good moms and bad moms

The Gantt Report

Good moms and bad moms

By Lucius Gantt

Happy Mother’s Day week to all of the good mothers around the world!

I will explain what I mean by “good mothers” later.

I loved my mother, who is celebrating this year’s holiday in The Land of Plenty, referred to as Heaven by Black community Christians.

Growing up in my hometown of Atlanta, Ga., many people called me “Thelma’s baby boy”. If you purchased and read my latest book, Beast Too: Dead Man Writing, you would know that I dedicated that book to my mom.

My good friend and Pastor Herman Haynes told mourners at Mom’s home going services that “the apple didn’t fall far from the tree”.

If you think I have a sharp pen and a sharp tongue, my mother was never afraid to say what she thought or whatever she wanted to say!

I can’t say that Thelma was the greatest Mom or the best wife but I can say she was perfect for me.

She was like the female version of Victor Newman, a character on The Young and the Restless television soap opera. She loved her family deeply and did everything she could for my sister Sheil, and I.

Mama was fair but firm! She was the queen of her house and her rules were absolute law.

She told her kids to “do the right things and stay out of trouble.” She said, “If you go to jail, I’m not coming to see you or get you out!”

Well, we did and she didn’t! How-ever, she would encourage Grandmother or Daddy to get her babies out of jail. Even when I was charged and arrested for felony assault on a law enforcement officer, she didn’t lift a finger to get me out of the jailhouse.

But during the trial, she did send her husband (my Dad was deceased) to Tallahassee and ordered him to go to court every day and to report to her every night about what happened in the court room.

I have written Gantt Reports for 30 years and two books of Gantt Report columns but my mother never read more than one or two paragraphs because she didn’t like for me to express myself so strongly when writing about equal rights and justice because she thought some deranged racist would kill me or at least try to.

But my mother never ever told me to stop writing. She knew it was my calling and my media talent was a gift from God that I had to use and share.

I will always love you Mama!

Now, every mother is not a good mother! Only God can judge moms but I can tell you what I don’t like about some mothers.

Every child deserves to know their mother and father and every child should honor their mother and father.

Some parents occasionally fuss and fight and disagree but children should love both parents anyway.

In my opinion, the worst thing a mother can do is turn children against their fathers that love them and want to be an integral part of their children’s lives.

The most despicable thing a mother can do is lie on a child’s father to impress a man they want to sleep with.

Most of the time, these kinds of lies happen when a man makes a “pimp move” and tells a woman trying to get out of a relationship that she will soon go back to her husband or baby daddy.

The bad mom will say husband or baby daddy, “is nothing but a junkie and a whore that will never be anything and never do anything” or make up some other lie to get the pimp to make her his “bottom “B”!  So many, good fathers can’t have a good relationship with their children because baby mamas don’t want them to and oftentimes it hurts the kids more than it hurts the parents, especially in the long run.

Don’t act like all mothers are angels! Wicked witches can give birth; Evilenes can give birth. Even Satan had a satanic mother somewhere at some time.

Before I end, I’d like to say thank you to Altermese Allen, Ruby Ellison, Juanita Gray, Julia Cherry and my other surrogate moms who took me under their wings and gave me the motherly love I needed when my mom went home to God. I love all of you.

And, OK, Happy Mother’s Day to all moms, good and bad! Enjoy your day!

(Buy Gantt’s latest book, Beast Too: Dead Man Writing on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net. And, if you want to, “Like” The Gantt Report page on Facebook.)