Felicia Jones was a shy girl, the bookish sort.

        Curious about the world around her, open to new ideas and cultures, she was always reading books and magazines.

        She liked science and dreamed of becoming a scientist, or maybe a science teacher or some kind of researcher.

        Felicia was a real Catholic, a peacemaker who would break up her sister's fights by getting between the battlers and quoting the Bible: “"Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord!”

        At 15, she fell in love. She became pregnant with my oldest sister and married my father, Wilson Smith.
       

Fading dreams

        Six more children, myself included, followed in nearly annual succession.

        My mom says now she barely noticed when her dreams of college and a career in science faded. The daily struggles for survival gained priority:

        Feed the seven young mouths. Clothe the many little limbs. Teach the young minds to prize education and to reach for your dreams.

        She faced prejudice from inside and outside the black community. Fair-skinned and blue-eyed, she endured almost daily people asking her “what” she was. Those who assumed she was white wanted to know why she was living in a predominantly black neighborhood. Those who knew she was black assumed she was trying to “pass” for white.

        I learned from her to never mind other people's prejudices, to judge others with the heart, and to stand up for who you are at all costs.

        Neither she nor my father had high school diplomas. They both worked menial jobs — my father often worked two at a time — to keep our family out of public housing projects and in Catholic schools. Those were two tickets, they figured, to a chance at success.

        Felicia worked in my school's library and was a teacher's aide and an official substitute to help with tuition. She never bought herself new clothes; the image of her teaching my seventh-grade class in a dress with a gaping seam still evokes feelings of bitterness and pride in me.

        Out of our earshot, she cried brokenhearted tears when a doctor informed her that Lee, my youngest brother, was born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a disease that slowly attacks the body's muscles.

        He was in a wheelchair only a few years after learning to walk. He died before he could graduate from high school.
       

A strong heart

        Felicia often would stare off in space, with a forlorn, faraway look, but she never told her inquiring children what sad thoughts were really on her mind.

        My father was a sometime alcoholic who was often unfaithful, often confrontational and violent on rare occasions. My mother hid most of that, too.

        Through their 17 years of marriage, he had failed to wear down Felicia's gentle, generous nature, though he did help inject some iron into her spine. When she'd had enough of his trouble, she stood up to him and ordered him out of the house.

        But she never said a negative word about him to her children. She'd encourage us, sometimes urge us, to remain involved in his life.

        In her mid-40s, when I was a teen, she suffered heart failure. Doctors said she had a defective heart valve; they performed risky open-heart surgery.

        Felicia pulled through. All she could think, she said later, was that she needed to be home with her children.

        She knew we needed her. We still do, even when she's 60 and 600 miles away.

        Mom, happy Mother's Day. I still want to be like you when I grow up.

        Contact Denise Smith Amos by phone: 768-8395; e-mail: damos@enquirer.com.

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