Forgive So You Can Have A Better Future

My parents should have never been parents. While I am thankful they got together and had me, this is about as far as I will go in my praise of them. I am not going to spend the length of this column disparaging them. I will offer that my mother valued her string of boyfriends over her son, but suffered under their multiple right-hooks. I met my father a handful of times and the final time I saw him, we got into a fistfight. He wanted to see “what kind of man” my “silly country girl” mother was raising. 

It's kind of a tough admission to publicly declare, but what others perceive as my being a ‘great parent’ is motivated by fear. I'm afraid that I'll be the parent my parents were.

It would be terribly easy to list the horrible events that comprise my memories of childhood. Anger, fear, lack of attachment, loneliness, violence and uncertainty swirled around me like seductive phantoms, inviting me to embrace and normalize the despair. But the bad events are not nearly as important as how I eventually responded to them. I distinctly remember being in a couch cushion fort, praying to a God I was not too sure existed at the time, and promising that I would raise my kids better than my parents did. “God, if I have kids, I promise you that I will always love them. They will always have enough to eat, and they will always be able to go on field trips at school.” 

At first, everything I did was in reaction to how I was raised. I’d force myself to do the opposite of what my parents did, and what I imagined they would do. But you cannot live a life; have a life, based on anger-fueled reactions. The only thing that I accomplished was burning myself out. Being angry while allowing negative thoughts to constantly occupy your mind is not only exhausting, but it is deleterious to your future relationships. The shift in this mode of thinking came when I did something that I thought I would never do—I forgave my parents.

When my daughter came along, I was still in my reaction phase. I made concrete plans, plans to not make the same mistakes that my parents did. Parenting is not a concrete activity. If you cannot be flexible in your parenting style, you run the risk of making similar mistakes to the ones that you are so ardently trying to avoid. The more steadfast I was in my ways, the further and further I pushed my wife away. I pushed her so far away that we were about a half-inch from divorcing not more than two years prior to this writing. 

The turning point came when I did a kind of review of my life and took the time to actually look at the good things that have happened, instead of magnifying the bad: I worked hard to get all kinds of alphabet behind my name; the house is nice and livable, the cars are nice, the refrigerator is stocked, the daughter is in gymnastics, Capoeira, and other classes, and I have a decent job. I had never done this before, and it is truly bothersome that it took the near-implosion of my marriage to realize that I had it pretty good—although something continued to stifle my ability to truly (and without judgment or qualification) appreciate what I had, and what I had to offer. Some kind of weight was still holding me down. 

I wish I could tell a beautiful story about how I had some kind of cosmic epiphany, heard God’s own chimes, or was visited in the night by an angel who gave me the wisdom needed to be the better person I was supposed to be. It was a bit more boring than that. 

I thought about the abuse, the absences, and all the rest and came to terms with the idea that my parents weren’t perfect, I had no right to expect them to be, and I was on an upward trajectory, despite my past. I thought about the future that I wanted with my wife and child, and forgave my parents. Simple, yet powerful. Weight lifted. 

While I am still attacked by childhood memories that coax me into becoming angry, I now have the presence of mind to see them for what they are: Recollections of a past life that I am no longer living. 

I smile at them, wave, forgive my parents (yet again) and keep it moving into a brighter future. 

Forgiveness Is A [Necessary] B!t$h

My parents should have never been parents. While I am thankful they got together and made me, this is about as far as I will go in my praise of them. I am not going to spend the length of this column disparaging them. I will offer that my mother valued her string of boyfriends over her son, but suffered under their multiple right-hooks. I met my father a handful of times and the final time I saw him, we got into a fistfight. He wanted to see “what kind of man” my “silly country girl” mother was raising.

It's kind of a tough admission to publicly declare, but what others perceive as my being a ‘great parent’ is motivated by fear. I'm afraid that I'll be the parent my parents were. Event this far into the game.

It would be terribly easy to list the horrible events that comprise my memories of childhood. Anger, fear, lack of attachment, loneliness, violence and uncertainty swirled around me like seductive phantoms, inviting me to embrace and normalize the despair. But the bad events are not nearly as important as how I eventually responded to them. I distinctly remember being in a couch cushion fort, praying to a God I was not too sure existed at the time, and promising that I would raise my kids better than my parents did. “God, if I have kids, I promise you that I will always love them. They will always have enough to eat, they will always get the toys hey want, and they will always be able to go on field trips at school.”

At first, everything I did was in reaction to how I was raised. I’d force myself to do the opposite of what my parents did, and what I imagined they would do. But you cannot live a life; have a life, based on anger-fueled reactions. The only thing that I accomplished was burning myself out. Being angry while allowing negative thoughts to constantly occupy your mind is not only exhausting, but it is deleterious to your future relationships. The shift in this mode of thinking came when I did something that I thought I would never do—I forgave my parents.

When my daughter came along, I was still in my reaction phase. I made concrete plans, plans to not make the same mistakes that my parents did. Parenting is not a concrete activity. If you cannot be flexible in your parenting style, you run the risk of making similar mistakes to the ones that you are so ardently trying to avoid. The more steadfast I was in my ways, the further and further I pushed my wife away. I pushed her so far away that we were about a half-inch from divorcing not more than two years prior to this writing.

The turning point came when I did a kind of review of my life and took the time to actually look at the good things that have happened, instead of magnifying the bad: I worked hard to get all kinds of educational alphabet behind my name; the house is nice and livable, the cars are nice, the refrigerator is stocked, the daughter can pursue any interest she has, and I have a decent job. I had never done this before, and it is truly bothersome that it took the near-implosion of my marriage to realize that I had it pretty good—although something continued to stifle my ability to truly (and without judgment or qualification) appreciate what I had, and what I had to offer. Some kind of weight was still holding me down.

I wish I could tell a beautiful story about how I had some kind of cosmic epiphany, heard God’s own chimes, or was visited in the night by an angel who gave me the wisdom needed to be the better person I was meant to be. It was a bit more boring than that.

I thought about the abuse, the absences, and all the rest and came to terms with the idea that my parents weren’t perfect, I had no right to expect them to be, and I was on an upward trajectory, despite my past. I thought about the future that I wanted with my wife and child, and forgave my parents. Simple, yet powerful. Weight lifted.

While I am still attacked by childhood memories that coax me into becoming angry, I now have the presence of mind to see them for what they are: Recollections of a past life that I am no longer living.

I smile at them, wave, forgive my parents (yet again) and keep it moving into a brighter future.

My family deserves it.

Yours does, too.

Do It For Yourself. You Deserve it.

It is so easy to lose who you were before you became a dad. If you lost being an asshole, that’s cool. But if you lost the part of you that was adventurous, exciting, etc—you have to get back to that. F’real.

My grandfather (RIP) did not talk much. But when he did, I made sure that I listened—even if I had to eavesdrop. To this day, his words about finding a woman and being a father are my foundation. His words and delivery were simple, but were twin icebergs: a little on the top, a whole lot more beneath the surface. 

On finding the right woman: “She should make your insides smile. The nice hair, bosom, hips and legs are great…until they aren’t. If your penis smiles before your heart does, you won’t be together for long. If you are together for a long time, it won’t be quality. You have to look at her and the heat starts in your chest and moves through the rest of your body. Not lustfully, but you want to lay with her and watch her sleep.”

On parenting: “You cannot be around each other all the time. If you’re up under each other every day, what are you going to talk about? How are you going to surprise each other? You even need to be away from your kids. The time we spend together should make sense. I want it to mean something. The only way for this to happen is if I get the hell away from all of you, just for a little while. Then, when we are together, we can be interesting to each other. Why do you think I fish so much?”

This second point was appropriate and useful when I met this young couple, about to have their first child. 

The way this young brother looked toward his very pregnant girlfriend was beautiful. As she waddled into the restaurant his eyes followed her, a smile on his face.  Easy to imagine he was trying to will his love into her and the baby she carried. He turned to look at my daughter and I as we giggled and drank hot chocolate and his smile got even bigger. He asked me, “Anything I need to know before mine comes? Any rules?” 

When most parents speak to new or soon-to-be parents, they always point out the negatives, “You’ll lose sleep,” or, “You won’t believe how much money you will spend.” These things can be true, but there is so much more to being a parent than the minor discomforts that so many magnify into gigantic problems. 

I shared with him what my grandfather told me, and then explained that there were very few rules for being both a good partner and being a good father:

-       Be honest

-       Be attentive

-       Be curious

-       Be faithful

-       Be loving

 The one ‘Be’ that is never emphasized (in the way that I feel it should be) is: “Be Yourself.” 

You are never just a father or a partner or a husband, I told him. It is always you ‘and’. You and your baby, and you and your wife. You and your job, and you and the million and one daily responsibilities you have to attend to. In the midst of all of this, it is remarkably easy to lose the core of yourself—lose the reason why your wife/partner fell in love with you in the first place.

When I saw his smile creep southward, I clarified what I meant. 

Whatever you did before starting a family, find a way to continue doing it. If you wrote, you have to continue writing. If you played an instrument, keep playing. It may seem that the time is not there, but it is. You just have to make some sacrifices. And the primary sacrifice you have to make is time with your family. This may seem antithetical to family life, but it is the very thing that will make you a more effective parent and partner.

I acknowledged that what I was saying was contradictory, but necessary. So much of the anti-black male propaganda routinely disparages our abilities to raise children or be effective partners. So, to combat this, many of us overcompensate by being around all the time. We allow no space between our families, and us and then we begin to resent our families for not allowing us to ‘do us’. The problem is that we are holding ourselves back. We are the barriers to engaging in the activities we enjoyed before our lives changed in this monumental way. 

 You have to steal the time to keep that special part of you alive. Whether you get up earlier, or stay up later, you have to continue to ‘do you’ (as long as it doesn’t reflect negatively on your family). If not, as my grandfather said, your time with your family won’t mean anything. 

The Legacy of Poverty

(From my COVID diaries)

Poverty is traumatic. I was violently poor for half my life. I’m talking about the homeless, living in random basements, rats chewing on my arm (still have a scar) type of poverty. The type of poverty where you cannot see any hope or worth in yourself or your family, but an unexpected Skor bar was as if Jesus himself crafted a meal for you. As with most traumas, I was able to develop some coping skills (some maladaptive, some still useful) that helped me to survive; that are helping me to survive in our new and collective pandemic reality. My daughter has none of these skills—and I think I’m doing her a disservice. We’ll get to that. 

My wife and I grew up in pretty rough circumstances. My daughter’s life has been fantastically privileged. 

My wife is an orphan. By all accounts, her parents were loving and engaged people with ties to a larger community. So, when her parents passed, she was able to cobble together a semblance of normalcy by floating from family to friends to family to friends to teachers who loved her to university to graduate school. I’m not saying this wasn’t hard for her, it was, but she had a particular kind of resilience, certain skills that I see my daughter exhibiting: there’s a goal, I have resources, let me use those resources to make it happen for myself. I wasn’t so lucky. 

I grew up in a violent single-parent household. My mom’s boyfriends would beat her and me. One time we were beaten so badly that both of us wound up in the hospital at the same time. My mother was also very abusive to me, physically and emotionally. She never helped with homework, never let me go on field trips. She wasn’t religious, but used the religion of her mother as justification for her abusiveness. We never shared a hug. There was never any money for things I needed, so I became a thief at a very early age. The handful of things she did that could be considered loving, that I can remember, is that she came to my high school graduation, one of my choral concerts in 9th grade, introduced me to comic books (by giving me a stack to read and then disappearing with one of her boyfriends for a week, over the Christmas break), and letting me crash on her floor when I needed. It hurts me that I can identify specific actions, and that love and kindness and support weren’t her baseline operating system. 

I met my father 7 times in my life. The last time we saw each other, we got into a major fistfight. Broken bones were involved. 

My childhood forced me to develop survival skills that are perfect for this time. Out of context, they aren’t healthy: I’m able to be by myself for long periods of time, doing absolutely nothing. I can make a small amount of food stretch for an entire day. I can make meals from what others toss out. I can and will hold firm (sometimes violent) boundaries. I can be profoundly pessimistic so all of the bad news of new #COVID19 cases and deaths from the disease don’t hurt or scare me every single time I hear the numbers. I can take an unusual amount of pain and abuse and alchemy it into something normal and expected, mundane and routine. I’m trying not to fall back into or utilize these unless I have to, but with all the misinformation and mishandling of our shared crisis, I’m (as usual) preparing for the worst. And my daughter has no idea what ‘worst’ is.

My daughter knows nothing about survival. She’s only known thriving. My wife and I made sure that she wouldn’t ever have to struggle like we did. My daughter opens the fridge and the light comes on and there is always food in there. There’s food and snacks in the cupboard. She turns the faucet and water always comes gushing out—just put it through the Brita filter before drinking it. She has the clothes she needs and sometimes wants. We’ve advocated for her when her schools were coming up short. She is hugged, kissed, and told ‘I love you’ every single day of her life. She’s been on every fieldtrip she’s wanted to attend. She’s traveled. She understands and appreciates all the ‘do nothing, but chill’ time we carve out for her. And she’s a happy kid. She is the brightest most compassionate light. She will defend herself, if necessary, but she will always try to find the most compassionate and loving solution to any kind of conflict. I don’t want her to be as ruthless as I can be, but I feel that things are going to get way worse before they get better and I want to make sure that she can weather what may happen in the near future. Part of this ‘way worse’ is the reality that, when all of this is as over as it can be, we just might find ourselves in poverty. I don’t think we’ve prepared her for this. 

My wife and I have done without, for a good portion of our lives. We’ve made do, separately, and early on as a couple. But now we have a child, and the world looks and feels different. Of course, if Universe forbid, we do fall (back) into poverty, we’ll do all we can to ensure that our daughter has what she needs, that she’s affected the least. Her physical needs will be met as much as we can meet them. I’m afraid that I won’t be there for her emotionally and that it will break her. I’m not sure how her brand of resilience will hold up if one of her anchors isn’t available to her. Survival is a brutal and ugly thing. You have to make compromises—sometimes those compromises will directly challenge your values. Sometimes you have to behave in ways that even those who know and love you might not recognize you—or want to know you. 

Maybe the premise of this entire missive is wrong. After writing it all out, I realize that I’m not afraid that my daughter doesn’t have the skills for what’s to come. I’m afraid that I still do—that those skills are razor sharp, just waiting to be used. I’m afraid of who I am when I’m in poverty, when I’m in survival mode. I’m afraid of what I’ll pull out when I reach into my trauma bag. I’m afraid of the compromises and behaviors that my poverty consciousness engenders. I’m still traumatized by living in poverty for so many years and #ParentingInTheTimeOfCovid is one huge trigger. 

Hearing about 3 million people applying for unemployment, personally knowing people who’ve had to lay off their entire staff and close their hard fought for businesses freaks me out. My (financial stability) anxiety is through the roof. I’ve made some small investments and put away some savings to weather a little storm. But if this gets any worse, I will do what I have to do. I just hope that it doesn’t take me too far away from the good man I’ve become. 

Nature…Now I Get It aka 4 Ways Nature Informs my Parenting

Shawn amongst the California wildflowers

(From my COVID diaries)

I’m a city dude. Born in a major city, lived in major cities all my life. When my wife and I found out she was pregnant, we got a little place in the pseudo-suburbs so we could have a yard (which I’ve never had in my life) and just more living space, with no shared walls. At first, I was lonely. We live in a quiet neighborhood, on an even quieter block. People are friendly, but they don’t really kick it. There’s 10-20 feet between each house, trees line the boulevard; some houses have little library nooks in front (and not a one has been vandalized), and people seem to be more relaxed than our neighbors in the city. Every yard has trees, bushes, all type of flowers…sometimes it stresses me out. I’m used to hustle and bustle, EMS sirens blaring at all hours of the night, the rumble of the train in the background like a comfortable white noise companion.

In my current neighborhood, the ice cream man will stop in front of every house and wait until the kids come out to get something. When I was a kid, change would be wrapped in a scarf or tin foil and tossed out of windows where our eager little hands plucked them from the sky, and then we’d have to chase the ice cream truck for a block or more. It feels so alien. Still. After 12 years of living here.

Those past days, those previous neighborhoods, were energy: danger, love, excitement, and terror all at the same time, played out on concrete, steel, and glass. Now it’s some terror (my family is one of the few chocolate chips on a very large cookie, and there are tons of animals around: deer, possum, raccoons, a mountain lion once in a while, and birds. All the damn birds there ever was, chirping all day) and sneezing. Lots and lots of sneezing. All this blooming greenery and flowers unfolding wreaks havoc on my allergies. Never experienced any allergies until I moved out to the pseudoburbs.

When I tell people where I live, almost uniformly, the excited responses mention how close I am to the Bay and all the parks I can hike in. Many express lighthearted jealously that I’m so close to all that nature. During one conversation, I told someone that I’d never been to any of the parks they mentioned. They looked at me like I violated some sacred trust.

I heard something rustling, back there.

Flash forward a year, and we’re in the middle of a government mandated shelter-in-place order due to COVID-19 (the Corona virus). Everything is shut down and there isn’t (for a guy like me) anything to do. So, fueled by boredom and the desire to not put more weight on an already taxed frames, I decided to explore the Bay and all those magnificent parks folks crowed about.

I am transformed.

Only twice before—seeing Prince in concert and witnessing my daughter being birthed—have I felt something like a transcendent religious experience. While being fully immersed in nature still makes me a little nervous, I finally understand why so many people get their entire lives by being in it. I’ve been walking in various parks and shorelines for five weeks, close to 140 miles of walking in nature. Gives a man time to think. My walks have done for me what all those years in undergrad and grad school philosophy and religious studies courses couldn’t—an incredible sense of wonder and how I have a duty to protect and share that wonder.

Here are four things I’ve learned from walking in nature, four to five miles every single day, and how these things have informed my parenting.

1-We are all radically interconnected. As if COVID hasn’t already shown us this. But I’ll go another way. I was walking on a path near the shore on Monday when I felt a crunch. I’d killed a snail that was out after the rain we had. For some reason, I was overwhelmed with guilt. My not paying attention caused me to hurt (kill) something. A hard lesson, but being mindful and intentional about how we move through the world is important. Most of us are on autopilot and when we aren’t challenged about our actions and intent; we go about things business as usual. Causing damage along the way. I want my daughter to be more mindful how she negotiates our shared world. I want her to know to adjust her steps before killing the snail.

2-Slow down. Never had to drive until I moved to California. Now I’m in the car all the damn time, rushing from place to place. Sheltering-in-Place has forced me to slow way down. I’ve noticed things in the past five weeks that I’ve never noticed before, even though I’ve been by these things hundreds of times. I hope I can teach my daughter to take her time. Not be too methodical, but to allow herself the luxury of really getting to know and understand something, know and understand people, instead if just rushing, trying to get to the next thing. See the thing or the person for what is, not as an obstacle you have to overcome to get to the next. This will come in handy with her homework. She rushes, trying to get to the next assignment. I want her to slow down and see homework as a privilege and not as some kind of adversary barrier to overcome, only to reach another barrier to overcome.

3-Beauty matters. Nature is gorgeous, my G. I have a form of colorblindness where I can see colors, but have a really difficult time discerning different shades/tones of the same color. But nature gives me so much visual, auditory, and tactile information that I don’t think I’m missing out on anything. It’s overwhelming, but in a good way. Beauty matters. It can take your breath away as well as give you life. I was walking near the ocean (see photo below) and I saw a cigarette butt and got angry. What kind of moron would spoil this beautiful scene by throwing their filthy chemical-filled garbage on the ground? I picked it up and tossed it in a trashcan later that day. Never in the history of ever have I picked up some strange mouth-touched garbage and tossed it in the appropriate trash receptacle. Nature’s beauty is worth it. My kid knows this because after witnessing me pick up the nasty thing, she nodded and mouthed ‘thank you’. As parents, one of our jobs is to make sure our kids have a healthy and clean world to grow into—that they are able to experience the beauty of nature like we’ve been able to…despite some of us understanding this late in life.

4-It ain’t about the money. I grew up violently poor. Once I got some money, I spent the hell out if it. I never saved. I wanted to know what it felt like to walk into a  place and buy what I wanted instead of stealing it, or crying that I couldn’t have it. For a long while I had an unhealthy relationship with spending. I had to have all the books, all the DVDs, all the records and CDs. I had to see every movie on opening night, go to as many concerts as I could, but before I went to the concerts I had to have the newest and flyest clothing. When I got married, I had the same mentality. When we had our daughter, same thing. My kid had everything—but I was working so damn much that we didn't really spend as much time together. She’s never told me how much she liked something I bought her. But she can’t stop talking about the four baby deer we saw on our walk. We saw those deer three weeks ago and she’s still bugging out. Money is great. It provides access, stability, and security. I’m very lucky to have a house and a car and health insurance and money in the bank. But they are necessities. They don’t give me that Marie Kondo that nature has been giving me. Spending time > spending money.

Will I be the same nature dude after the shelter in place? I hope so. If I can’t be fully immersed, like I have been, I have to make sure that nature is part of my living practice. Journal, meditate, read, get my black ass in nature. I’m getting the vibe that so much of the future well-being of me and my family depends on our relationship with nature. Looking forward to seeing how this will play out.

Sometime You Just Want To Smack Some Responsibility Into Them

Family, I got heated a while back Let me set the scene for you: Several times per week, I meet a few guys at a café to talk. We talk about any and everything; nothing is off limits. There have been major disagreements, but very little out-and-out hostility. That is, until that day. Normally, the crew stays the same: the same five professionals, enjoying coffee and conversation, before we shuffle off to the trenches of our chosen professions. That morning, however, a dude was there who was unfamiliar to me, but was a good friend of a friend, so I labeled him crew by association. We’ll call this new dude, “AJ”.

AJ was asked, ‘Whatever happened to [a former lover of his]’? After taking a long swig of coffee, he shook his head and stated in an exasperated chuckle, “That bitch lied about being on the pill and tried to trap me with a baby.” I had several strong reactions to this. I found his entire statement offensive, but I’ll break it down for you why I was ready to smack him.

1. I’m not a real big fan of misogyny. He already put me off by calling this woman a ‘bitch’. I’m not one to police words or emotions, and I will defend the First Amendment with my dying breath, but for real? ‘Bitch’ is a word that I have worked to purge from my vocabulary. There is no place for describing women like this, especially when it pours forth from a privileged male mouth. [Dude is very rich]

1. This former lover of his “lied” about being on the pill. Let’s get one thing straight: When you have male-to-female vaginal intercourse, there is implicit consent to a possible pregnancy. If you have sex, without contraception, you are pretty much agreeing to a baby. Calculus it ain’t; biology it is. Men, if you don’t want your lover to become pregnant, wrap it up. If you complain that ‘it doesn’t feel good’ then you are not in the emotional space to have responsible sex, and should abstain. Sex with a condom may not feel as good as unprotected sex, but having a baby that you made no plans for, and don’t want—I guarantee you that this will feel a whole lot worse, especially for the child.

1. “Trap me with a baby.” Granted, I have known several women who have attempted to get impregnated by a rapper or ballplayer or a wealthy dude so they can have an eighteen-year revenue stream. These women exist. But I feel this is more indicative of how damaging to women’s and girl’s esteem this society can be—telling them that they have no worth, other than bearing babies and collecting checks—rather than some inherent female guile. In regards to babies: Babies aren’t a net that can be tossed on someone to trap them. They aren’t little spike-filled holes in the ground that you stumble into when traipsing through unfamiliar jungles. They are human beings deserving of respect. And if you do not want the enormous responsibility of raising a tiny human, please refer to point 1 above.

I voiced my unease at his statement, giving him a more brief and passionate response than I detailed here. He had the nerve to look at me and say, “Why does the man always have to be the villain?” I called BS.

In the past, I have gone completely out of my way to intellectualize the reasons for men acting beneath themselves. I’d point to systemic racism, inter and intra-generational trauma, socialization (or lack thereof), and a whole host of social ills aimed at men. But this is the worst kind of paternalism, and it disallows for male agency. By absolving so many of our men from responsible behavior, we endorse then being irresponsible. This isn’t to say that the system doesn’t impact men in negative ways. But we do not have to succumb to the obvious jagged paths that certain societal forces are attempting to trick us into following. We do not have to be the same character in the same story. We are in charge. If AJ wasn’t as educationally, gendered, and financially privileged, I might have been able to reach back into my very deep bag of excuses and chalk up his words and behavior to ignorance. But he did not have a single valid excuse, other than his obvious self-elevation over this woman.

AJ, brother, men do not always have to be the villain. It is up to you to chose not to be.

20th Century Dad Raising a 21st Century Kid

I’m old. While I look younger than my actual age (black don’t crack), and I’m getting my mid-30’s body back, and I see the majority of the world through a young lens—I feel myself sliding into that type of old where I’m in a race and the starting pistol went off while I was asleep. Bang! All of the other racers are a quarter of the way around the track and I just woke up, clearing my eyes, shaking the cobwebs out of my head, and seeing nothing but elbows and butts disappear in the distance. But instead of rushing to catch up, I lie back down, take out a newspaper, and read about the results of the race—comfortable with where I am and who I am. I am in no mood to compete. Ever. And it is my kid’s fault.

We were driving the other day, Spotify on shuffle, and the following songs came on in a row: Lauryn Hill’s “Lost Ones”, Black Sheep’s “The Choice is Yours”, and then Lenny Kravitz’s “Fields of Joy.” Being the music nerd that I am, my mind immediately went to when those songs were on were released: 1998 for Ms. Hill, and 1991 for the other two. My kid asks, “Can we listen to Hayley Williams?”

Was this a lightweight diss in regards to the music I loved? Kinda heartbroken, I put on what she wanted to listen to. This incident should not have registered on my life’s radar, but I was struck by my too-strong reaction to my high school senior not enjoying the music I loved. What triggered that feeling? I had to admit to myself that I was a twentieth-century father raising a twenty-first century child.

This isn’t to say that I am a relic, but the older my child becomes, the more nostalgia injects its useless behind into my parenting. Nostalgia is the enemy of progress. It acts as a leash, tethering me to moments in time that are difficult to get past, not unlike trauma. Nostalgia influences me to try and expose my daughter to things that I love under the guise of wanting her to have a healthy cultural diet. My rationale is that I am adamant that she eats healthy foods, why shouldn’t I be just as mindful of the (popular) culture she consumes? But the hard admission is that I’m doing it because I am trying to erect boundaries. I’m trying to control her environment, not expand it. Which is not fair to her because our upbringings are vastly different.

The year that my daughter was born, Barack Hussein Obama was voted into office. The next election, he won again. Despite the very legitimate concerns that I have about some of the actions he took during his time in office, every time my daughter thinks about the face of the most powerful nation on earth, she will envision a black man and his black family. She will envision a black mother and father who publicly show affection, and two young girls who are scandal free. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that.

She watched Gabby Douglas become the first black woman to win the all-around gold medal in gymnastics at the 2012 London Olympic Games. The Williams sisters are a regular (and dominating) factor in tennis, and she knows who Charles F. Bolden is. She was born into a world where she perceives no limits based on gender or skin color. Quite a bit of the apprehensions I have about limits and barriers are self-generated. They come from my baggage, and it is unfair and irresponsible to put all of that on her.

Of course I want to instill values in my daughter, along with wanting her to follow the rules and expectations that my wife and I deem important. We also role model how we want her to treat others, and how she should expect to be treated. But outside of this, I (cannot speak for my wife) need to allow my daughter to grow in her own way, at her own speed, within her own context.

Parenting is not a lead from the front kind of thing. I can’t show her the world when I’m out in front, blocking her view. It is my job to walk alongside her, pointing out the things that I find useful and amazing; guiding, but not dictating her life. My past should never interfere with her future. At this age, my primary job is to walk alongside her and have her guide me, show me what she finds interesting, what she’s curious about, and never judge when the invites me into her world.

That Hayley Williams is incredible.

Requiem For Despair

Despair is a bitch because it is so damn sneaky. It approaches you as “being cautious” and settles at the base of your neck. It gives you new eyes and ears to see and hear with; issuing warnings; ‘danger, danger. is everywhere.’

You gain superpowers from despair—a Spidey-sense. You start thinking that you can perceive danger before it happens—also (foolishly) believing that you can do something about said danger. Slowly, you begin to rationalize your ‘being cautious’ by only focusing on the horrors you either hear about, or see on television, or read in blogs.

“It’s just not safe to…(fill in the blank)” becomes your operating system. Danger can lurk any and everywhere. The beauty of darkness becomes an insidious enemy. Strangers are greeted by your ocular threat-assessment. You’re only being cautious, you continually con yourself into believing. Your worldview becomes a series of pre-emptive self-defense strategies. Now that despair has you, it can make itself known.

Slowly, despair sheds its stolen skin and extends tendrils to the base of your spine and it envelops your heart. You’re trapped. Paralyzed by the fear that despair has introduced to you. You can no longer act, only lament. Your throat is tight—heart constricted. You hold your loved ones close and pray—something you haven’t done in years—that nothing of the oh-so-prevailing horrors even touches their periphery.

As I look in my daughter’s eyes, see her smile, despair gets nervous and I feel its tendrils loosen. If I can’t act, how can I be a good father? I inhale the smiles, the beauty, and the laughter—those snaky tendrils loosen further. My daughter hugs me and I feel despair tremble.

I’m ready.