about your father,” Mom says. “He put family first. And he never wanted a handout from anyone. He worked hard. He saved his money. He liked nice things, but only if he felt that he’d earned them. And he wasn’t ashamed of being black. And he was not afraid of black women.” She pauses for effect, then says: “As long as they did what he said.” We both fall over laughing—the kind of knowing laughter I now share with my husband, Broderick. The sudsy giggles I enjoy with my children and closest girlfriends.
I am grateful for this gift from my parents, who could not make a go of their marriage but still managed to teach me the importance of love. And the importance of grace, for it would have been easy for my father to nurse anger at the woman who abandoned her home and her child. Easy for him to have tried to influence me to partake in his umbrage. Instead, he kept a place for her at our table, so to speak, even as she lived under a different roof. I learned from both Mom and Dad that everything in life is enriched by sharing it with someone. I gleaned that from the years they spent together and the years they decided to be together cheering me on, while living eight blocks apart.
When Mom left, Dad slunk deeper into himself. He picked up the slack without complaining, but he also read all the time. I would come downstairs at night and find him immersed in Kahlil Gibran or the plays of George Bernard Shaw. Now that his wife was gone, he and I rarely ate at the dining room table. The two of us would have dinner at the kitchen counter, a portable TV in the corner nook. The setting had changed, but the rituals continued, for the most part. There was always food in the fridge and hot meals for supper. Dad now cooked most ofour meals, and I took on the rest. No takeout. Little or no fast food.
Mom helped out some, but she and Dad tried to keep their distance during these tenuous times. They also held their tongues. It would be thirty years before I would have a hint as to why my mother had simply said “enough” and bolted from our house to purchase her own. Dad and I did okay around the house, but ironing stumped us both. My mother had had her own technique to put a certain snap in Dad’s postal uniform, placing damp shirts in the freezer for fifteen minutes before smoothing them out with a hot iron. When Dad asked me to do the same, I refused, sputtering something awful like “I’m just a kid, not a wife!” I did my household chores, but the presumptuous independence that comes with adolescence provoked me to draw the line at ironing. I was a confused teenager testing how far I could go. He had every right to slap me. He didn’t. Eventually, I gave in, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t match my mom’s skill at nailing down the collar and smoothing out the postal patches without completely flattening the embroidery. Still, it was the trying that counted.
The yard that had been our childhood playground became my private retreat as I grew older. My friends and I used to sit in plaid lounge chairs, slather ourselves with Hawaiian Tropic oil, and bask in the sun for hours, passing around Fresca and
Seventeen
magazines. My father never said as much, but he must have thought me ridiculous: lounging was a patent waste of time; suntan oil, a waste of good money. He must have found it all confounding; he’d grown up at a time when black newspaper ads promoted skin-lightening creams and “Negro” girls were told to stay out of the sun! Sometimes I would stretch out by myself in the yard, arms and legs spread as if making a snow angel. I’d look up at the clouds and listen to distant car radios, or I’d close my eyes, better to hear the buzz of insects, the fizz of my soda’s carbonation, the hiss of the wind. I still love thesound of shimmering leaves, as relaxing as a cool drink after a long day’s work. Back when I spent hours sunning and daydreaming, if I had truly centered myself and listened even
I am grateful for this gift from my parents, who could not make a go of their marriage but still managed to teach me the importance of love. And the importance of grace, for it would have been easy for my father to nurse anger at the woman who abandoned her home and her child. Easy for him to have tried to influence me to partake in his umbrage. Instead, he kept a place for her at our table, so to speak, even as she lived under a different roof. I learned from both Mom and Dad that everything in life is enriched by sharing it with someone. I gleaned that from the years they spent together and the years they decided to be together cheering me on, while living eight blocks apart.
When Mom left, Dad slunk deeper into himself. He picked up the slack without complaining, but he also read all the time. I would come downstairs at night and find him immersed in Kahlil Gibran or the plays of George Bernard Shaw. Now that his wife was gone, he and I rarely ate at the dining room table. The two of us would have dinner at the kitchen counter, a portable TV in the corner nook. The setting had changed, but the rituals continued, for the most part. There was always food in the fridge and hot meals for supper. Dad now cooked most ofour meals, and I took on the rest. No takeout. Little or no fast food.
Mom helped out some, but she and Dad tried to keep their distance during these tenuous times. They also held their tongues. It would be thirty years before I would have a hint as to why my mother had simply said “enough” and bolted from our house to purchase her own. Dad and I did okay around the house, but ironing stumped us both. My mother had had her own technique to put a certain snap in Dad’s postal uniform, placing damp shirts in the freezer for fifteen minutes before smoothing them out with a hot iron. When Dad asked me to do the same, I refused, sputtering something awful like “I’m just a kid, not a wife!” I did my household chores, but the presumptuous independence that comes with adolescence provoked me to draw the line at ironing. I was a confused teenager testing how far I could go. He had every right to slap me. He didn’t. Eventually, I gave in, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t match my mom’s skill at nailing down the collar and smoothing out the postal patches without completely flattening the embroidery. Still, it was the trying that counted.
The yard that had been our childhood playground became my private retreat as I grew older. My friends and I used to sit in plaid lounge chairs, slather ourselves with Hawaiian Tropic oil, and bask in the sun for hours, passing around Fresca and
Seventeen
magazines. My father never said as much, but he must have thought me ridiculous: lounging was a patent waste of time; suntan oil, a waste of good money. He must have found it all confounding; he’d grown up at a time when black newspaper ads promoted skin-lightening creams and “Negro” girls were told to stay out of the sun! Sometimes I would stretch out by myself in the yard, arms and legs spread as if making a snow angel. I’d look up at the clouds and listen to distant car radios, or I’d close my eyes, better to hear the buzz of insects, the fizz of my soda’s carbonation, the hiss of the wind. I still love thesound of shimmering leaves, as relaxing as a cool drink after a long day’s work. Back when I spent hours sunning and daydreaming, if I had truly centered myself and listened even
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