Black fatherhood

A few weeks ago I realized how serious my passion for Black families is.

A woman came into my job, with her son, and I could tell they had come to meet up with his father. I counted how many times the young boy's mother told him his father probably wouldn't show up.

He probably won't come.

Your Daddy is no good.

Your Daddy is always saying he's gonna do something but he won't.

You had better hope you don't turn our like your Daddy.

I wrote them down on a napkin, while those words penetrated his mind. How many negative things can you tell a young boy about his father before it begins to affect him.

How many times do your hear fathers credit their love for wanting to be a father stemming from their absent father. Although I don't see this as a problem, it frustrates me because how many men will be good fathers because it's their reasonable service to their children.

I believe she was explaining to her son how to be a bad father at that moment. She made it okay. She was influencing what her grandchildren would experience without even recognizing it.

She never said anything to her son about how she met his father or even acknowledged the fact that she actually loved that man enough to lay down with him.

My frustration with her meant nothing to her son, unless I said something.

I did. I told her everything I felt.

She yelled at me. She got snappy.

But if any word that I said to her, it was worth every word she said to me.

Graduation

In that moment you are at a loss for words.

The only thing that seems sure is the smile on your face and the nervous shake in your leg. Will I trip across the stage? Will they say my name wrong?

Take another step.

The loud eruption for the girl who sat in the row in front of you begins; the noises from her family are drowned out by the loud beatings of your heart. You don’t remember who is not there; you only know that you are there.

Take another step.

The day you could not even fathom four years ago in your freshman dormitory with your weird roommate is here.

Take another step.

The feeling of the stage hits you on your left foot, the cool rail hits your right hand.

Take another step.

Shirley Ann Bolden, they have called your name. You at this moment become the essence of unlived potential. No one writes the story from here on out except for you. With a fake diploma in your hand you have made it.

Before you take another step, know that this one is different. You now take this step with the backing of education, potential, adulthood as the foundation below you.

Imagine what can be built above this foundation, anything, everything. This was the most important brick; everything else is at liberty of the designer.