Under the baobab: Standing on a hill, reflect on the moments that matter with a father

Sunday is Father’s Day.

I was holding my youngest daughter’s son. I was the first man in my family to ever cradle my first-born grandson. A scarcity of children and the ravages of war, crime, separation and white supremacy had denied our family that minimal rite of continuity. The revelation made me sob.

My dad and mom had fallen in love as teenagers. I was conceived on the evening of her 16th birthday on the shore of Lake Michigan. They planned to marry but Dad’s mother would not consent. Their passion and patience were overcome by World War II. Dad went to the army to fight fascism. My mom was left to fend for herself in the factories.

After postwar confusions had been sorted out, Dad had met and married someone else. He had four daughters. He made a career of the army. Mom also married and spent the next 50 years with her husband. Later in life she confessed that her real true love was her first. I grew up listening to love stories.

Unlike Mom I did not love my father. I felt abandoned and resentful. I joined the civil rights and antiwar movement of the ‘60s. I was at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 when Martin Luther King, Jr. made his “I Have A Dream” speech. I was also there when he stood up against the Vietnam War in 1965.

During a trip to California, I stayed with Dad and his family. It was our first opportunity to talk man-to-man. I saw it as my chance to ask all of my questions. He had no ready answers. We fought. We yelled and screamed about everything, especially the Vietnam War. I wondered why I had ever bothered.

I got married and had daughters. Years later my oldest half-sister called to tell me her sister had passed. I went to visit. My father and I stood on a hill at her gravesite. His daughter’s death had broken his heart.

“You are not suppose to bury your children,” he told me. I only half understood. He had retired from the army and told me he had come around to my way of thinking. “The war was wrong,” he said.

The shared grief opened a new relationship between us. He began telling me stories about his life. I began to listen. His journey had been strangely similar to mine. He, too, had been filled with the wanderlust that curses and blesses Black men in America. He had left the South after seeing his best friend lynched. He helped me see why he had to go to war to fight fascism as I had left home to fight racism. We had both, sorrowfully, left sons behind, yet another curse of our bloodline.

A few years later Dad’s Uncle Willie died of diabetes. Dad, as the oldest male in the family, was responsible for the arrangements. I was at his side, his son, the oldest child. It gave me practice to assist in the preparations for Dad’s passing on to the ancestors a short time later.

Now I stand on the hill, the oldest male in the family, testing my blood three times a day for glucose, having buried my oldest daughter. I hold the miracle known as my grandson. It is not time for tears. I remember my dad on a similar hill. I have come to understand that what matters is that it is not the quantity of moments that you spend with your father. Rather it is the quality of those moments shared in love, compassion and patience. I offer this grandchild in gratitude to the spirit of my father and our ancestors. Neither one of us would be here without his struggles and his journey.

I love you, Dad. Happy Father’s Day.