To Mom With Love on Father’s Day

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Dear Mom:

As God cradles you in His arms I reminisce on my early childhood days growing up on Madison Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant section in Brooklyn when I rode up and down the street with my Big Wheel between Nostrand and Marcy Avenues, and played in the old Boy’s High School yard next to our building with neighborhood kids.

When you weren’t home, I hated when Grandma chastised me for running too far in the street while my cousin Mark and some friends used a vegetable can opener on both ends, and held it against the flowing water from the Johnny Pump in the summer to give ‘showers’ to anyone who would jump in. Despite her sternness that seemed isolated toward me, because I did not fall victim to crime or drug addiction like some of our family members did, I surmised Granny’s discipline for fondness of her baby daughter out of nine children and the lessons that you aimed to instill in me, because as I learned into adulthood, I was different.

For us kids in the ghetto that was our free pool, which also alternated as a free car wash. No matter what time of the day it was I would always sit on the stoop looking westbound for a tall Black woman with an Angela Davis afro, bell bottoms, and a brisk walk as she held her pocketbook with her left hand. Sometimes you wore a turban, a decorative scarf, or a perm with a ponytail, but regardless of your attire when I saw you coming, my day was complete because unlike most of our family members, you always greeted me with a smile and a hug and told me “I love you.”

Though you were only 5’ 5” with a gorgeous face that defied the tests of time, even when I surpassed your height in my teens, you were always a giant that I looked up to. Even though I knew of my father and saw him on sporadic occasions, because he was not an active part of my life, I never really knew him until I was in my twenties after God called you into protective custody at 40 years of age. Up until that point, you were the one who taught me how to read and write at a young age and consistently reminded me of my intelligence, even when I didn’t use it to my advantage.

When I trembled in fear as a 7-year old, as you suffered domestic violence for two years at the hands of a controlling ex-boyfriend, in a world of hyper-machismo you still had the fortitude to remind me that a man can also be a victim which I was at one point and encouraged me to defend myself against anyone, even a female.

You listened painfully, but patiently when at 15-years old I revealed that the man that you entrusted as my basketball coach molested me when I was 11 and with the little resources that we had, sent me to a psychologist.

You were the one who attended parent-teacher night to monitor my progress (and failures) in grade school. You were the one who stood up to bullies, even those who were half my size and twice your size when I was too afraid to stand up for myself. When I got jumped by a group of racist White thugs while walking home alone in Sheepshead Bay in the summer of ’83, with knives blazing after midnight, you assembled a one-woman army to rescue me from the diner on Nostrand and Avenue Z where I hid for safety.

You demonstrated the importance of knowing my rights by being a steadfast landlord-tenant rights advocate when we were homeless and living in a welfare hotel. It still amazes me recalling when NYPD Midtown South officers showed up at our doorstep of the Holland Hotel trying to illegally evict us from our room at the behest of hotel management. Due to your staunch activism without flinching you stood toe to toe in an argument with rogue White cops showing them laws that prohibited them from such an action and even demanded that their superiors come to the hotel, only to discover that they didn’t have a leg to stand on. You were the furthest thing from a gangster, but since the gangsters and drug dealers in the building rarely messed with you, in a way I believe that you silently earned street cred.

At 19 when I served one-and-one-half years in prison for a robbery that I did not commit, you fought tooth and nail to ensure that I was being treated fairly in a system where I endured harassment from inmates and neglect by prison staff, even at the risk of me being retaliated against because of your complaints, simply because you believed in truth. Even when the odds were clearly against you, sometimes with profanity-laced hot-tempered tirades that you instructed me not to use, you spoke in a tone that commanded respect and had facts to support what you had to say. Whether people liked it or not they listened and obeyed because of the power of your presence.

As an adolescent, I substituted my birth name for yours as an alter-ego on my road to self-discovery. I’m glad that you delayed the process in changing it legally until I was 17, because my anger at my father made me ashamed of his name and his genes at a time I sought to become someone other than myself. Retrospectively, some of that shame was unconsciously induced by your own scornful words about him and Black men in general which should have been vented to someone else.

Since Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror aired in 1987, the year that I legally became a man, if you allowed me to do it earlier I predict that his lyrics would bear a different meaning for me in the long run because akin to Mike who rests with you, I probably would have fallen victim to the self-depreciation scalpel. Though you were all woman, in your own way your example of determination made me proud of my Blackness and manhood which is why in tribute to your selfless commitment, I bear your last name with pride.

I often questioned what lied beneath the ferocity that I grew to admire when I recalled the days when you took me to Aqueduct as I rode the front of the A-train as a kid that I occasionally operated as an adult, or the Belmont Special on the Long Island Railroad. You had many winning days when you played on the weekends (and even some weekdays,) but when you lost, you always went back.

Like many of your relationships, you were constantly chasing a dream that would never be fulfilled as you traveled on a road to despair. I naively ignored the day when I opened the door to your job office and you hid what you were drinking until you realized that it was me. Even when I questioned your motive when you could have clearly got in trouble, you told me it was not big deal and I believed it because you said it. Toward your last days, you took the same gamble and washed down the pain with shots of 80 Proof to ignore what was apparently killing you on the inside.

I thank you for being the vessel to heal my pain and giving value to my life when I thought it wasn’t worth living, even though you never revealed the source of your own sorrow. Since your life was forcibly stolen from us in January 1991, at 21 years old I had to forcibly accept the reality that you can never be replaced when I unconsciously searched for you in my earlier relationships. Sometimes, I imagine an invention to reverse the hands of time so you could heed the words you spoke and perhaps, enable me to experience more of what you had to offer.

Despite the impossible, whenever I’m feeling down I remember your comforting words and the invaluable lessons that you taught me about life. You will always be my First Lady, my Superwoman, and my ride or die, especially in your untimely demise because your everlasting legacy as Head of Household (even on the 1040 Form) taught me how to lead my own in the future. As a woman who embraces those titles with grace, I recognize that even the greatest single Black mothers who work around the clock raising young Black boys can never instill masculine rites of passage. Though the latter was eventually fulfilled by my father in my adult years, your lessons in responsibility, sensitivity, intuition, and relentless diligence completed the puzzle of my manhood.

Miss Barbara Carol Dancy, on this Fathers’ Day and those to follow, I wish you a Happy Mothers’ Day again for the priceless amount of double-time you committed to my early life. Your reward is the intelligent, responsible, and loving man and husband that I have become, and trust me, there’s more to come. #dontbelievemejustwatch

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