My Mother's Bastard Son

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I, I am told, entered this world like most newborns: once extracted, we are held by our ankles, head precariously hanging down while being introduced to our initial encounter of violence. We were exposed to what is common practice by those delivering babies: the first “handshake” that was somewhat mis-positioned. As we endured that world-famous smack on the buttocks by a hand that could literally engulf our entire bodies, we began our journey on this earth.

As the first independent breath that we take it puts in motion this stimulus that sends oxygen cascading throughout our virgin lungs, we immediately begin kicking and squalling at the very top of our lungs.

My experience began on a Monday afternoon, just 16 hours after Mother’s Day, May 11, 1953, at 4:00 p.m., weighing in at 7.25 pounds. My birth certificate list my name, it identifies me as “colored,” it lists the date, time, and place of my birth. Also located on this document is a line that is reserved for the placement of the father’s name; my certificate indicates, “father unknown.”

My previously divorced teen mother—my “shero”—was anxiously awaiting the arrival of her second daughter, only to be gravely disappointed when the doctor announced to her, “It’s a boy.”

Later in my life, my mother would state in our many conversations “I wanted another girl, oh…. child, I didn’t want no hard-headed boy, with all of that wrestln’ and tusslin’, breaking stuff in the house, no chil’, I didn’t want no hard-headed boy.” She would always end it with hardy laughter and a smile and continued by stating, “But you the best child I got.” She proudly and continually shares with her friends about all of the joy and support that I brought and bring into her life.

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She speaks of my persistence, perseverance, trustworthiness, and dependability she goes on further to explain that as a child, I was “never a baby,” always trying to do what the “big kids did.”

I was always a precocious child and extremely inquisitive, I would often ask questions about my father and his glaring absence. Like moms will do, she always had a way of deflecting my questions in the directions that she wanted them to go.

She labored extremely hard to rear me and my three siblings. To say her life, like many, was a challenge would be a gross misrepresentation of her struggles.

She worked two and sometimes three jobs to provide for my siblings and me. She continually stressed the importance of getting in her words “a proper education,” admonished us not to spend all of our earnings frivolously, and to save something for what she would call “unexpected times.”

According to the world, there was one very serious problem with me being my mother’s son: According to the world, I was born a “bastard.” The world gave me and millions of others this title for its own comfort.

The dictionary describes a bastard as;

A person born to parents not married to each other.
An unpleasant or despicable person.
An illegitimate child, something that is spurious, irregular, inferior or of questionable origin.

My acquired knowledge tells me that fertilization is a process in sexual reproduction that involves the union of male (sperm) and female (ovum) gametes (each with a single, haploid set of chromosomes) to produce a diploid zygote.

What does all of that mean? Impregnation takes place and there is never a discussion by these chromosomes, as to whether or not they should do what they were designed to do.

The “geniuses” that embraced and embraces the thought of human beings being categorized as spurious, irregular, and all of the other, adjectives that they feel so inclined to attach to a person were then and to this day attempt to hide their misdeeds while casting aspersions on women and children.

The child had absolutely no participation in this scientific process known as human fertilization.

Am I my mother’s son or my father’s mistake?

Mothers are to be revered. They are expected to successfully navigate and to endure life’s obstacles no matter what the circumstances are or may have been.

The admiration and respect that I have for my mother is unparalleled. I understand only too well that, as flawed and as imperfect as she appeared to be and is, she never once stopped loving and encouraging me to aspire to be something and someone greater than what my physical environment was offering.

I grew up understanding that my physical environment does not describe my intellectual environment.