I’ve never had the pleasure of actually wishing my father happy father’s day wishes, considering the last time I seen the man I was two years old. How in the world do I remember that evening baffles me to this day, but I always think about it? The ironic thing about this father’s day is, I’ve recently been informed of my father passing away ,which was in 2006. Although he left my mother in 1967 with six children to raise alone as a result his alcoholism; I still couldn’t bring myself to hate him for abandoning us. Maybe because I’ve always desired something many of my childhood friend’s had [fatherly love]. Eventhough I lacked fatherly advice during my childhood, my mother done a wonderful job as a single parent? She did her best given the circumstances. As far as those who are blessed to have their fathers in their lives please, please never take dad’s love for granted, and never pass up on an opportunity to say, I LOVE YOU DAD! OR HAPPY FATHER’S DAY DAD, and to all the fathers of CADBI. Happy Fathers Day from the men of RIGHT TO REDEMPTION!
David Sheppard
Father’s Day is a special day, but only for the man that was real fathers. I’m not talking about the fly by night father who is only there now and then. The man who is there for there child or children, right or wrong. The man that puts his child or children first, that’s the father who suppose to be saluted. So enclosing, l would love to salute all the real fathers that are doing there job……………..Happy Father’s Day
Arthur Wyche
Happy Father’s Day to all of the real Dad’s out there!!! Any Man can be a Father, every Man can’t be a Dad! Today when you see a Father who is truly a Dad… Salute them, Shake their hands, Embrace them and Thank them for not perpetuating the stereotype that has forever plagued our communities. Encourage them to continue to lead by example and show the next generations what raising your children really looks like! #RealDad’sStandup!
Saadiq
The Wall of my Fear from Incarceration of Tears:
A Journey of Transformation and Redemption (p. 59-65)
There’s a ghost in my life that’s been around for as long as I can remember. Whenever I look into the mirror, he’s there. I can see him in the shape of my eyes, the tone of my skin, the color of my hair and the way I smile. I can hear him when I speak, as his words become my words. This ghost is my father. When he was alive, he was barely around, so to me he was like a spirit, his presence hovering just outside my consciousness.
My earliest memory of being aware that I had a father was when I was about ufie years old. He lived in Washington D.C. while my mother and I lived in Philly. I can remember looking in my mother’s soft brown eyes and asking her, “Mommy, where’s my father?” I can’t remember my mother’s response, but I do recall the time I met him, when the ghostly image of the man became flesh and bone: tall, dark, with brown eyes just like my own, a warm and endearing smile and strong arms that picked me up and held me close. But what stands out to me more than anything else about that day was this feeling of apprehension that made me shy away. I was afraid of this man whose blood pumps through my veins and whose face I inherited. But, why? Maybe it was because he was a stranger and I reacted the same way that most children do when they encounter people they don’t know. For most children, that kind of fear lasts for only a short period of time, while mine was a presence that haunted me for decades. Maybe it was because I was used to my mother and he was a man– strong, intimidating, his voice deep, like a distant thunderclap. Whatever the reason, I was torn between wanting to love him and behind afraid of him.
Throughout my life, I only spent brief periods with my father. This built a wall between us. And the estrangement was the mortar that held the wall together. Every year that passed and the older I got, the more bricks were added. There was no schedule of visits that I could look forward to, like every summer or every other weekend. They were sporadic, unexpected and most times unwanted, like the time he popped up at my mother’s house on a quick stop-over as he traveled back to DC from Newark, New Jersey.
I was twelve years old. It was a late Sunday afternoon and I was just about to head out to the corner store with a pocket full of quarters. I was excited. It was time for my daily battle defending the earth, playing my favorite game, Space Invaders. The front door to my mother’s house opened and my father strolled in as if he owned it. I was surprised to see him and a little upset because my afternoon plans were ruined. As soon as my father saw me, a smile lit his face, his teeth ivory white, contrasted sharply with hsi dark skin tone. As he opened his arms wide and embraced me, the scent of him immediately drifted up my nose– cigarette smoke mingled with cheap cologne. Oh, how I hated that smell. I crinkled my nose and began to breathe through my mouth. My father then took a seat on the couch. He patted the spot next to him and I reluctantly sat down. There was an awkward silence, followed by that old parental cliche.
“So son, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
I thought I would impress him when I replied, “I want to fly fighter jets.”
My father looked at me and I watched full of disappointment, as his smile evaporated.
“Terrell, why would you want to kill other black people?”
At the time, I knew nothing of racial politics or American Imperialism– its obsession to dominate the world and its resources at the expense of poor people’s lives. All I knew was that I wanted to be an American hero, to protect the world from the hordes of space invaders…and my father was disappointed with my choice. Tears threatened to leak from my eyes as I withdrew from him even more. I treated further behind my wall. From that one rejection, I felt like nothing I chose as a career path would be good enough. My dreams of the future became deferred that day as I resigned myself to thinking only of the present.
It would be a few more years before I saw my father again. I was fifteen and too much for my mother to handle. I wanted to stay out late, smoke weed, drink alcohol and syrup, and pop pills. I was already a father, and school became just a place to pick up girls. My mother was fed up, so she decided to send me to stay with him one summer in hopes he would straighten me out.
Phyllis Hyman’s angelic voice singing about a meeting on the moon flowed softly through my father’s car speakers. We were at a red light. Sunlight peeked through the tree canopy on New Hampshire Avenue in Northwest Washington, DC, slicing through the shade and creating small spotlights on the black asphalt. I could feel his eyes burning a hole through the side of my head right before he spoke.
“Terrell, you see those young brothers standing on the corner?”
I peeked into the eyes of this older version of myself and quickly turned away. My apprehension wouldn’t allow me to hold his gaze. I nodded my head in response, but kept my eyes glued in front of me.
“Well, you can leave this town and come back twenty years from now and those brothers will still be on that same corner doing the same stuff.”
“Come on, Dad, how do you know that? What, you can tell the future now?”
“I don’t have to read the future to predict how their lives with turn out. You see, a lot of black men get to a certain age –about seventeen– and they stop growing mentally. So, what you have as a result of that are men with the mental capacity of children. They’re stuck, stagnant in their development. That’s why those brothers will always be on that corner, stuck at seventeen, doing what seventeen-year-olds do.”
I was quietly listening to what my father said, but at the same time thinking, damn, here he go with this lecturing shit. I was a fifteen-year-old man child who knew everything about nothing, and the last person I wanted to have a conversation with was my father.
Almost two decades later, bombs dropped over Iraq and Afghanistan as fighter jets with the stars and stripes painted on their wings roared overhead. Hundreds of thousand of men, women, and children’s lives were snuffed out as American flexed its muscle. I felt saddened as I watched my television screen fill up with the grainy, eerie, and green of night vision cameras, thousands of tracer rounds and bright explosions that lit up the skies like fireworks.
My father’s words echoed in my mind. I thought of the lesson he was trying to teach me all those years ago when he killed my dreams of flying fighter jets. I finally understood. There were no space invaders, just the slaughter of innocents, and there is no heroism in that. If not for my father expressing his disappointment in my career choice, that could’ve been me piloting those flying machines of death, soaking my hands in the blood of thousands. I was grateful, but I couldn’t thank him because I had retreated behind a wall that had become too high to climb.
I didn’t appreciate what my father said during that car ride until years later. I found myself stuck behind a real wall surrounded by men who dreamt of being rap stars. The problem was that they were in their forties. It was frustrating for me because I couldn’t escape and I was engulfed by conversations that never went beyond sports, sex, fashionable clothing, expensive jewelry, and fly cars. I felt stifled by the acceptance of ignorance as cool. I was surrounded by people who had no aspirations to be more than thugs, drug dealers, or killers, and I couldn’t understand why.
But then one day, Phyllis Hyman’s Meet Me On The Moon came on the radio and it took me back to that car ride. It was then that I finally understood what my father was trying to tell me all those years ago. What he said then, was true at that moment and I could see it all around me. I wished I could tell him how right he was, but he had already passed on.
My father has been gone now for over ten years. He passed away just when the wall fo my fear began to crumble. As the cloud of dust settles, I’m left standing among the stones of regret with the last brick of apprehension in my hand. Tears leave trails through the dust that covered my face as I think about the cruelty of it all. All my life I’ve been afraid of this man and as soon as I was able to conquer that fear– he was gone. Grief fills my soul as memories of him flow through my mind.
I love my father, and this love has always been with me, even when I was afraid. While he was alive, this feeling was the ghost haunting the edges of my consciousness. It kept him with me even though he was absent most of the time. After my father passed on this love became the spirit breathing life back into my past, keeping his words with me to guide me as I continue along the path of my life.
Terrell Carter
Father’s Day for me holds mixed feelings. I can talk about the abusive father, who was in name only, but then how hypocritical I would be to want a Mother’s Day card when my children still struggle to understand. THE FATHER: who has lifted me up off of bending scraped knees from years of pressure and abuse I inflicted upon myself. A father whose unconditional love lets me know that I’m worthy and not condemned. A father who has forgiven all my past mistakes and has opened up new doors filled with abundant life. A father who picks me up when I fall and sets straight my steps again.
He is my father full of glory and splendor. He is my father unto whom I surrender. I will always be his child, his mighty hands guide my way. I love you Father, I can’t wait to be in heaven with you someday!
Sarita Miller
I CAN’T DANCE A LICK! I’m positive that I would’ve made my daughter the laughingstock of any Daddy/Daughter Dance. But I still wish I could’ve tried to make her proud.
I have been in jail my daughter’s entire life, being incarcerated a month before she was born. I haven’t been physically present for not one of her many life-altering moments. I continually think of what I have deprived my daughter of. And for some reason, most of all, I continue to wish I could’ve been there for that Daddy/Daughter Dance.
A few weeks ago, I asked my daughter what did she lose by me not being there with her for her entire life. She said, without hesitation, “Nothing, Dad, you were there for me.” I’m still stunned by her unflinching response. At first I just thought she was just trying to make me feel good, but her demeanor sort of intimated that she truly meant what she had said.
Again, I realize that Father’s Day is not for me to be honored; it’s meant for me to be extremely thankful that I can be called a father—and especially be thankful for a daughter that sees me in such a positive light when others display me in a negative one. Thank you, Kyla!
Vernon Robinson
Father’s Day is a special day, but only for the man that was real fathers. I’m not talking about the fly by night father who is only there now and then. The man who is there for there child or children, right or wrong. The man that puts his child or children first, that’s the father who suppose to be saluted. So enclosing, l would love to salute all the real fathers that are doing there job……………..Happy Father’s Day
Arthur Wyche
RIGHT TO REDEMPTION 