Our Affirming Black and Brown Fatherhood Seriesconcludes this weekend, with some final reflections on Father’s Day. We couldn’t be happier with the responses we’ve published from our featured fathers and the feedback we’ve received from our readers.…

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joshunda:

Wounds need air to heal. Time, though, is the master.

I am used to cheap ways of telling time. Where is the sun in the sky? Have I slept for two hours and it’s still the middle of the night? Have I slept for 12 hours and it’s still just before dawn?

There was a time when it didn’t matter.

I did not understand my father until after he died, but I loved him, even though he made me mad. I didn’t like him a lot of the time, but I loved him, I respected him.

I demanded Victors’s presence in my life in a way I never asked for anything else in my life. He ignored my first introductory letter but I persisted, ever the dogged journalist, begging him to let me see him, to get to know me. I would win him over. I was never flashy, but I had been told that I was charming like my Mom, so I believed I could convince him I was worthy of being his daughter.

We met 18 years too late, but that was still something. A life raft.

Maybe I was motherless, but not fatherless. I knew my Dad! I could count on one hand how many of my homegirls could say the same. It was better than winning the lottery.

“Are you bringing me a graduation gift?” I asked on the phone from Emma Willard. It was a payphone on my dorm hall with a loveseat that sagged like it had been installed below that phone since the place was founded in 1814.

“What kind of gift do you want?”

“Earrings. Or a bracelet.” What is it about city girls that we like the gold hoops and the bracelets and all the shiny things? I had never shined like a star, had never dared to be dazzling. I had doorknockers once, flattened at Skate Key, but still — beauty, a bit of luxury attached to me somehow motivated me to remember. I was not worthless, despite my waves of depression and self-hatred.

Also, I had never had someone ask me what I wanted and deliver. Why not get outrageous?

The day we met in 1996, he showed to my high school graduation and greeted me alongside my Mom and my sister and my niece and the whole crew. My dress was a $10 fake lace situation. I’d left stray Kanekalon hair all over the gray rug of my dorm room for a full 20 hours before, braiding long Fly Girl braids into my hair, like I was going to prom.

High school had shaped me, had made me less afraid of life and taught me that while I was rough around the edges, the resilience of my heart and the breadth of my intention were enough to survive. It was the first indication to me that being a writer was a real possibility, even when my chaotic home life suggested that it would always be out of reach. I didn’t dismiss the power of words — they kept saving me, like, every day — but I didn’t think anyone related to me (other than my sister) would ever care much about anything I wrote.

Victor, for one, was unaffected. I met Victor in his taupe suit with the crimson red handkerchief in the breast pocket. Curly ‘fro fade, mouth in a line. Boxes that looked expensive. Inside: beautiful, thick gold hoops and a chain-link bracelet. “I got you what you wanted,” he said, his way of saying hello.

“I love you. Thank you,” I said. I went to hug him. He was stiff as a tree. I was delighted. Overjoyed. I had parents, plural. Not just one. But not really.

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