There was a moment in time when I witnessed my father vulnerable. He had rented a car and parked it outside my apartment in Brooklyn. He was not feeling well and had asked to stay with me and my then boyfriend, Eric. He slept for days on end and I really don't have any recollection of talking to him while he was with us. This is important to this narrative because I have always lamented the fact that I seem to have spent relatively little time with my father. I have snapshot memories of being with him - here and there, here and there.
I am a teenager and he drives me into San Francisco, hands me money while he waits in the car, and I go in and buy some shoes. There are the times we drove the few blocks necessary to get to Baskin Robbins for ice cream over on University Avenue a few blocks up from his home in Palo Alto. There were lots of family reunions but I don't have any memories of being alone with my father, having a conversation or discussing anything. He did however call me regularly and sent postcards wherever he might have been on his travels. The postcards were written always with the same phrase: Thinking of you. When we talked on the phone there was always lots of laughter but in person I felt he adopted a measure of distance that suggested: I am busy, I am important. Those phone conversations and the sentiments of the numerous postcards were never replicated in person. I therefore hold them dear.
The car which he had rented had been broken into and because it was a rental a police report was necessary. In the elevator, on the way down with the policeman, I began to make idle chatter with the officer who happened to be white. I noticed my fathers demeanor. His body language was one of subservience; his head hung down and he seemed nervous. I can't recall exactly what the policeman asked me but he wanted to know who I was in relation to my father and for a fleeting moment I could see that he didn't believe it. This prompted him to begin asking me, since I was the chatterbox, a few more questions about me rather than about the car for which he was there. He wanted to know if I live there, how long, and why was my father renting a car. All the time the officer is asking these questions the four of us, me, my boyfriend, my father and the policemen are confined in a 6 person elevator. The entire time my father never utters a word or even attempts to answer any of the questions. I suddenly ask the officer: Why are you asking me all these question, I'm not the one with the robbery? He immediately stops asking and ends it all by laughing and stating: You're the only one talking… (Honestly, what I think the policeman really couldn't figure out was how that dark skinned man could be my father and what we were all doing living in such a nice place and why weren't we behaving like that cartoon in his head?) Once the officer had left us and we are safely ensconced back in the apartment my father and my boyfriend rip apart the encounter from their perspective, the perspective of African American men and inform me that the police can not be trusted and that the policeman had been grilling me in an attempt to understand them as Black men. My father even went so far as to say: I've never heard anyone talk to a policemen like that. They as Black men were cautious, me as my father's daughter was more inclined to be myself, genuine and feel no need whatsoever to explain my existence.
In my father's youth: He'd seen strange fruit dangling from the sycamore trees. Once while trying to learn watch repair, he had been stopped over by the West Side piers in NYC, by a policeman who informed my father that he had two choices: Jump in the water or hand over his tools. My father handed over the tools. My father couldn't swim.
My grandmother, my father's mother was a housekeeper for white families in the Hopkinsville, Kentucky area where my father is from. She often asked her employers if she could take home magazines that had been read and finished by her employers. She brought them home to her eldest, my father Thomas. Schools were segregated back then and teachers and principles were all African Americans who taught little black children how to read and write. My father excelled and was "good with numbers" and the principle of the school told my grandmother that Thomas should skip ahead a grade because he was smarter than the rest. This happened twice and it would have happened thrice but my grandmother worried that he would then be in classes with kids too old for him. When it came time for high school graduation the principle told my grandmother to send Thomas out of Kentucky, go up north, and continue his education. He continued his education at Columbia University where he received a degree in mathematics. I am not sure if he got in on scholarship or a GI Bill or what avenue, but he went and he never went back to Hopkinsville until his later years for family reunions and to introduce Kentucky to his children.
Both my parents are a mystery to me. My father shared his roots with his family whereas my mother erased her roots from her children. My father shared his African American heritage with his children and speaking for my own self, I am glad he did. My father was extremely well read and when I was getting my undergraduate degree, I learned just how well read he was in African American literature and pretty much all things pan African. I feel lucky to have had in-depth conversations with him where he shared his insight to the African American literature I was in the throes of delving into during my school years.
My father was a dichotomy. On the one hand he relished and engaged in all things African and on the other hand he married only white women and lived for over 40 years as practically the only African American man in Palo Alto. Yet his mistress was a childhood friend of African American descent. The art he chose to decorate his home with was all African inspired. For years he toured Sweden, Germany, Japan and many other countries as manager and promoter of The Mississippi Delta Blues Band which he recorded on his own label, TJ Records.
On almost all the albums he placed pictures of his family: nieces, nephews, sons, sisters, as well as his very own children. I don't know if he ceased touring because it wasn't lucrative, or what the reason was, but now when one searches the internet, many articles can be found reviewing these long forgotten records of The Delta Blues that my dad published. Alzheimer's took his faculties before he even saw Obama in office and I am sad that he isn't here to see how much his efforts and legacy means to so many collector's and blues enthusiasts around the world. They are there though.
I see my father's legacy as an imbuing in me not simply a pride of my Blackness but perhaps more importantly an understanding and assuredness of how important it is to be a coloured presence in the world. I see and feel my beauty and my knowledge as a gift. It was a gift from him and I share it with the world.
Sometimes, not often, but sometimes I have met other children who are bi-racial and there is a split amongst the children. Some of the siblings feel a tear within themselves; a pressure to identify with one parent or the other. Sometimes this comes about because one of the children may physically look like one parent more than another, and living in the world we know at present, the pressure to make sense to others, (and I write others because this is not a pressure that stems from self), is strong. In order to make life easier for themselves, one sometimes chooses to identify with the race that they resemble most. For example: I know of a family of three bi-racial children. Two look African American (a false social construct) and the third one has blond hair and blue eyes. How difficult it would be for this third child to insist upon be referred to as African American. I mention this too because my friend Michele, who's known my family since we were wee, once made the comment that she thought it unusual that we five, my siblings and I, all looked the same and how wonderful that was. On the surface I thought the comment amusing because immediately I simply thought: of course we all look alike; we're related!
But then I began to think about Sandra Laing whose existence under Apartheid just messed with everyone's mind. From parents, to the judiciary system. And I thought about how the word 'tragic' seems to be too frequently used when describing mixed children, (when you Google Ms. Laing notice how often that word or something equally disheartening is used to describe her story). (With the article I have included above notice the use of the word 'strange' in the paragraph heading). I know what they're thinking, but I am not thinking it. And my word is the one that matters here.
I am not a tragedy and unless you walk in my shoes… Well, unless you walk in my shoes you really don't know what you are talking about. The concept of a mixed race child being a 'tragedy' is your notion about race. Does anyone really imagine that mixed race children think this way about themselves? I think the tragedy is the insistence that anything other than sticking with one's own race is somehow a thing to be avoided.
For the record:
tragedy |ˈtrajidē|noun ( pl. tragedies )1 an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe: a tragedy that killed 95 people | his life had been plagued by tragedy.2 a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, esp. one concerning the downfall of the main character.• the dramatic genre represented by such plays: Greek tragedy. Compare with comedy.ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French tragedie, via Latin fromGreek tragōidia, apparently from tragos ‘goat’ (the reason remains unexplained) + ōidē ‘song, ode.’ Compare with tragic.If I used the word 'tragedy' to describe anyone not currently on stage performing La Traviata, it would be insulting. If I said: It must be difficult, hard (fill in with your own choice of words), to describe what your life must be like, based upon your race, you'd imagine me insensitive and a racist. For example: It must be a tragedy to be Chinese because your Epicanthic fold is not like 'normal' eyes. The word 'normal' is too often used to describe the Asian fold versus the non-Asian fold. We stopped using the word 'Mongoloid' to describe people with Down Syndrome but in literature this Asian fold is often used in the same sentence as those with Down Syndrome. OK. I digress, but hopefully you get the point.My daddy didn't make no tragedies. I miss my father. During his life when he was 'with it' I couldn't get him to go to a movie with me. I couldn't get him to come to my house for a visit. I couldn't get him to do anything I wanted to do with him. He was busy. He was busy being a success. He was busy taking full advantage of the laws that got changed because of the Civil Rights Movement. He was busy…The last time I saw my father he didn't know my name and was unable to pick me out of a photograph. He didn't know if I was his wife, his daughter or some lady he met in 1972. But he remembered me enough that when I came for this last visit he met me at the door knowing I was special somehow. He knew deep inside, so deep science can't say yet, that I was familiar and not to be met with a scowl. I took advantage of that loss in him to do all the things I had the power to get him to do. I rented a car and shoved him in it and drove him to the Santa Cruz carnival at the beach and then shoved him into a photo booth where I sat on his lap and got our pictures taken. We took two strips and in the first one he looks like he's been kidnapped, and then, I began to tickle him and in the second strip he is smiling. Later I re-shoved him into the car and took him off to a movie. He didn't seem to like the darkness of the theatre but a bag of popcorn seemed to put him at ease. And instead of sleeping upstairs I slept on the couch in his office outside his bedroom and whenever he got up to use the restroom I said: Hello and smiled. When the caretaker was dressing him after his bath I sat on the floor and rubbed lotion into his feet with a massage. He grinned some more. And then, a few years later, we put him in a pine box and said a final goodbye. My aunts where upset that it was a pine box (and one we had to assemble because even the glue was biodegradable). The undertaker, a truly lovely man, when I asked him to show me what other people got buried in, he led me to the casket room where I immediately burst into laughter. These were Southern Folk who thought the final exit should be one of pomp and circumstance with only the best to send off a loved one. That casket room was filled with stuff to send off Elvis. That wasn't my dad. My aunt and I scrounged through her closets and picked out two or three of the handmade quilts he so loved and lined the box with the quilts. I wanted him to be snug and comfy for his last journey, not trying to figure out where the hell he was on the other side… If I had had my way I'd have buried him in Levi 501 button down jeans and a button down blue shirt with a Mont Blanc ink pen in his breast pocket. That is the way I remember him. Instead he was buried in an ill-fitting blue suit, which if truth be told, at the time made him look like an old southern black man, a sharecropper if you will. It is only now, as I write this, do I see that my father Thomas, the son of a sharecropper, is right where he should be; laid to rest in the place of his birth to spend eternity with his mother, his sister and his brother before him. He was looking exactly like he should have looked. At home.
An entire album for a listen.
I am a teenager and he drives me into San Francisco, hands me money while he waits in the car, and I go in and buy some shoes. There are the times we drove the few blocks necessary to get to Baskin Robbins for ice cream over on University Avenue a few blocks up from his home in Palo Alto. There were lots of family reunions but I don't have any memories of being alone with my father, having a conversation or discussing anything. He did however call me regularly and sent postcards wherever he might have been on his travels. The postcards were written always with the same phrase: Thinking of you. When we talked on the phone there was always lots of laughter but in person I felt he adopted a measure of distance that suggested: I am busy, I am important. Those phone conversations and the sentiments of the numerous postcards were never replicated in person. I therefore hold them dear.
The car which he had rented had been broken into and because it was a rental a police report was necessary. In the elevator, on the way down with the policeman, I began to make idle chatter with the officer who happened to be white. I noticed my fathers demeanor. His body language was one of subservience; his head hung down and he seemed nervous. I can't recall exactly what the policeman asked me but he wanted to know who I was in relation to my father and for a fleeting moment I could see that he didn't believe it. This prompted him to begin asking me, since I was the chatterbox, a few more questions about me rather than about the car for which he was there. He wanted to know if I live there, how long, and why was my father renting a car. All the time the officer is asking these questions the four of us, me, my boyfriend, my father and the policemen are confined in a 6 person elevator. The entire time my father never utters a word or even attempts to answer any of the questions. I suddenly ask the officer: Why are you asking me all these question, I'm not the one with the robbery? He immediately stops asking and ends it all by laughing and stating: You're the only one talking… (Honestly, what I think the policeman really couldn't figure out was how that dark skinned man could be my father and what we were all doing living in such a nice place and why weren't we behaving like that cartoon in his head?) Once the officer had left us and we are safely ensconced back in the apartment my father and my boyfriend rip apart the encounter from their perspective, the perspective of African American men and inform me that the police can not be trusted and that the policeman had been grilling me in an attempt to understand them as Black men. My father even went so far as to say: I've never heard anyone talk to a policemen like that. They as Black men were cautious, me as my father's daughter was more inclined to be myself, genuine and feel no need whatsoever to explain my existence.
In my father's youth: He'd seen strange fruit dangling from the sycamore trees. Once while trying to learn watch repair, he had been stopped over by the West Side piers in NYC, by a policeman who informed my father that he had two choices: Jump in the water or hand over his tools. My father handed over the tools. My father couldn't swim.
My grandmother, my father's mother was a housekeeper for white families in the Hopkinsville, Kentucky area where my father is from. She often asked her employers if she could take home magazines that had been read and finished by her employers. She brought them home to her eldest, my father Thomas. Schools were segregated back then and teachers and principles were all African Americans who taught little black children how to read and write. My father excelled and was "good with numbers" and the principle of the school told my grandmother that Thomas should skip ahead a grade because he was smarter than the rest. This happened twice and it would have happened thrice but my grandmother worried that he would then be in classes with kids too old for him. When it came time for high school graduation the principle told my grandmother to send Thomas out of Kentucky, go up north, and continue his education. He continued his education at Columbia University where he received a degree in mathematics. I am not sure if he got in on scholarship or a GI Bill or what avenue, but he went and he never went back to Hopkinsville until his later years for family reunions and to introduce Kentucky to his children.
Both my parents are a mystery to me. My father shared his roots with his family whereas my mother erased her roots from her children. My father shared his African American heritage with his children and speaking for my own self, I am glad he did. My father was extremely well read and when I was getting my undergraduate degree, I learned just how well read he was in African American literature and pretty much all things pan African. I feel lucky to have had in-depth conversations with him where he shared his insight to the African American literature I was in the throes of delving into during my school years.
My father was a dichotomy. On the one hand he relished and engaged in all things African and on the other hand he married only white women and lived for over 40 years as practically the only African American man in Palo Alto. Yet his mistress was a childhood friend of African American descent. The art he chose to decorate his home with was all African inspired. For years he toured Sweden, Germany, Japan and many other countries as manager and promoter of The Mississippi Delta Blues Band which he recorded on his own label, TJ Records.
On almost all the albums he placed pictures of his family: nieces, nephews, sons, sisters, as well as his very own children. I don't know if he ceased touring because it wasn't lucrative, or what the reason was, but now when one searches the internet, many articles can be found reviewing these long forgotten records of The Delta Blues that my dad published. Alzheimer's took his faculties before he even saw Obama in office and I am sad that he isn't here to see how much his efforts and legacy means to so many collector's and blues enthusiasts around the world. They are there though.
I see my father's legacy as an imbuing in me not simply a pride of my Blackness but perhaps more importantly an understanding and assuredness of how important it is to be a coloured presence in the world. I see and feel my beauty and my knowledge as a gift. It was a gift from him and I share it with the world.
Sometimes, not often, but sometimes I have met other children who are bi-racial and there is a split amongst the children. Some of the siblings feel a tear within themselves; a pressure to identify with one parent or the other. Sometimes this comes about because one of the children may physically look like one parent more than another, and living in the world we know at present, the pressure to make sense to others, (and I write others because this is not a pressure that stems from self), is strong. In order to make life easier for themselves, one sometimes chooses to identify with the race that they resemble most. For example: I know of a family of three bi-racial children. Two look African American (a false social construct) and the third one has blond hair and blue eyes. How difficult it would be for this third child to insist upon be referred to as African American. I mention this too because my friend Michele, who's known my family since we were wee, once made the comment that she thought it unusual that we five, my siblings and I, all looked the same and how wonderful that was. On the surface I thought the comment amusing because immediately I simply thought: of course we all look alike; we're related!
But then I began to think about Sandra Laing whose existence under Apartheid just messed with everyone's mind. From parents, to the judiciary system. And I thought about how the word 'tragic' seems to be too frequently used when describing mixed children, (when you Google Ms. Laing notice how often that word or something equally disheartening is used to describe her story). (With the article I have included above notice the use of the word 'strange' in the paragraph heading). I know what they're thinking, but I am not thinking it. And my word is the one that matters here.
I am not a tragedy and unless you walk in my shoes… Well, unless you walk in my shoes you really don't know what you are talking about. The concept of a mixed race child being a 'tragedy' is your notion about race. Does anyone really imagine that mixed race children think this way about themselves? I think the tragedy is the insistence that anything other than sticking with one's own race is somehow a thing to be avoided.
For the record:
An entire album for a listen.
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