Shak Shaks From The Motherland

There are sights, smells, and sounds that are tied so closely with memories, that I can't experience one without the other. With the smell of Perry Ellis perfume, I'm sitting in my post Hurricane Ivan bedroom staring at my molding carpet that's been soaked from the rain and pulled up into a pile. My mother isn't there with me, but there's no electricity, so I'm hoping she comes back in before the sun finally disappears and sinks me in darkness. The room, the house, my island feels different. It smells different. So I spray the last of my perfume on myself to forget that everything has changed, and that the smell of molding carpet is now my new life.

When I heard the chak chak sound in church yesterday, my ears moved a little bit, and, suddenly, I disappeared down a worm hole through time and space. Within a single moment, I was a shadow looking at my younger self holding a tambourine for the first time. 

It was a big moment for me. All I kept thinking as I touched the tiny cymbals on this beautiful wooden instrument was the woman who sat next to Pastor Baker for years. She was medium height but bent over a little, making her look stout and so strong. With each praise song, she'd stand with her tambourine. I'd watch her listen for the beat and pull up her tambourine to her chest and make that first momentous hit against her palm. Most times, she'd close her eyes a little, block out the sounds of the piano, drums, bass, and singers, and play to her God. Just her and Him, in perfect harmony—Him reaching down and her lifting her sound in adoration to His goodness and kindness. She never got it wrong; never shook her instrument off beat and always had a melody to match the sobriety or joyfulness of each song.

Even though she never had to learn any musical scales or chords to play her tambourine, I respected her above all other musicians.

She wasn't just submitting her gifts for God's glory. For me, she was a symbol of womanhood.

Only the maturity of life and age could give someone the talent and apparent wisdom she had. Only a woman who's lived through the complexities of life could understand how important it was to respect such a loud instrument. This wasn't something she could play quietly—the only way to play a ring of cymbals was to do so with incredible confidence, humility, and skill. Because no one can stand to hear such a loud thing rendered with disrespect and nonchalance. Everyone has a mouth they can run to the ground and back. But there's a reason that only she was trusted to introduce the tambourine to our worship.

Every time I heard her play, I felt connected with my ancestors. Women with large families and even larger pride in their heritage. Women who were raised to be trustworthy with much and who took shak shaks from off the earth's floor and made much of them. I imagined them celebrating a village or family milestone with the kind of dancing that made the ground shake beneath them. Hips swung into other hips; mouths open wide in jubilee. I can smell the sweat thickening the air among them as they danced harder, sang louder, shook their shaks shaks harder. I can't hear their song, but I can see their tambourines moving back and forth in their hands. 

So when I held my first tambourine, I felt scared, thrilled, and much too young. 

I was maybe 6 at the time, and hesitant to touch its sensitive little cymbals. So I handed it back to my old friends in church and watched them try their best to make a beat, not quite getting it right, but trying with confidence. 

Now, I am older. I can't remember when I quite got it right, but I remember years of trying. Of having access to tambourines only during Sunday school, and struggling to play with the beat of the pianist playing in the corner. It was years of shaking and beating it against my hand incorrectly before I stopped making a fool of myself.

Now, I am older, and I haven't seen or touched a tambourine in years. I am a woman now, but I don't think about my age, or the life I've been able to build. I think about the small but mighty markers of my womanhood. Of them, I remember the lessons I learned from that little instrument. I learned to worship God with all the instruments and tools I had at my disposal. I learned to avoid being loud when I knew I was coming from a place of deep immaturity. I taught other women how to play and find their own style. And I embraced an unchanging sense of respect for things that ground me to my earthly identity, even the loud, sometimes uncomfortable and hard-to-manage elements of who I am in this world.