A phrase my family used, they called it “roots,” and they would always say, “So and so has a root on them.” I remember a cousin of mine was what my parents termed as “sick.” So, as a child, I had to ask the question: What’s wrong with her? Because we were only about two years apart in age. I just knew I did not want whatever it was she was sick with. When I saw her lying in that bed, not at her mother’s house, but at my aunt’s and uncle’s house, I was even more scared and wondering, “Am I going to get a root on me?” Then I overheard my parents say, “He really put that root on her. I doubt if she will ever get better.”
I also heard them say, “Reverend Canon is going to see her, so she’ll get better. There is nobody like Reverend Canon to get roots off people.” Reverend Canon was someone I heard about yet never met. He was a legend that I never saw, I just heard about in terms of getting roots off people. So, as life goes on, and through my studies as a social worker, I discovered roots were nothing but mental depression. Yet back then, I did not know, I was afraid of getting a root on me.
Leave a Reply