My Father's Son...Pt. 2

As promised...

Pt. II

So I spent most of my socially-formative years without any real male influence in my life. I had my liming pardners, Kory and my uncles. I finished Fatima, worked for a bit and then went to Morehouse. But I realized a funny thing growing up. A lot of my tastes just didn’t mesh with my peers. I would quicker read a book, than play sports. And all the men in my family are athletically inclined. I mean, I have some natural talent when it comes to sports, but they never really interested me beyond watching on TV. I would listen to dancehall and rap, but I loved jazz, soul and classical. And I didn’t get it from mom, cuz she would quicker listen to talk radio in the car, than music stations. And we didn’t have many old records lying about. I liked visual arts, both classical and modern. And this was in secondary school. In forms 2 and 3. Which frigging 13 year old did you know listened to Beethoven and Nina Simone? I could be both out-going and withdrawn, often in a matter of hours. Then it really started getting weird.

My first real girlfriend and my mom had a special friendship. She would run to my mom for advice before she went to her mom, or even her older sister. Even after we broke up and I moved to Atlanta, she would be at my house on weekends for hours, just talking to my mother. Anyway, I came back home one Christmas, and we got into a huge fight. And true to form, rather than deal with the issue to the end, I shut down and went into my infamous “lock-off” mode. And, true to form, she went running to my mother. So, I’m overhearing their conversation, and in the middle of it, I hear my mom say:

“Child, his father is the exact same way. He got it from him.”

Wha???? Excuse me????

(Let me explain my “lock-off” mode. Other people’s “lock-off” mode entails ignoring you so that you know you may or may not know you are being ignored. Not here. I’m special. I will talk to you and address you. But that’s it. And if I think you are pushing it, I will hit you a “you still talking, dread?” Yea, I’m special like that.)

Oh yea, and I will go into my own little world where no-one, especially you, exists. Think of it as a targeted media blackout. Only now, I was finding out that it wasn’t my little quirk. I had a predecessor. And that predecessor was the one person on planet Earth who I wanted to have nothing common with. Needless to say, I was pissed. After my girlfriend left, I blew my lid at my mother. I ranted and raved about her talking to my girlfriend behind my back. I continued for a good 10 mins, and then she got the lock-off for the rest of the week. I was livid. But I wasn’t mad her. I was mad/scared of the fact that I might share more in common with my dad than just looks, tone of voice, or a possible blood type. I mean was it true? Did I share more in common with my dad that just my “mother’s milk” cheeks? It’s not like he had been around, so that I picked up his traits. But, what if it was true?

My Father's Son... Pt. 1

This one is long. So I split it up into 3 parts to make for better/easier reading. I'll post Part 1 today, and Parts 2&3 tomorrow, and Wednesday. And don't worry, unlike my other multi-parters, this one is all finished already. :p

My Father's Son...

The title of this post feels strange to me. For quite awhile now I’ve wanted to write a post on the person who I have ever held dearest to me, the person who I strive most to be like, the model I try to follow so desperately. I always figured the first post I would ever write about either of my parents, would logically be about my mother. Yet, here I find myself addressing my father. Why is this strange? Well, the simple fact is that my father and I never had any kind of relationship past roughly my turning the age of 5 (or is it 6 or 7), years old. In my mind, he simply disappeared. I had my mother. My father figure(s), were my uncles, and my mother cousins. Yet I feel compelled to write this because the more I hear about my father from my aunts, and the more I learn about him from my step-mom and my sisters, I am realizing that I am just what the title of this post says. I am his son.




Let me give a little history. To use Trini vernacular, I am a horn-chile. My father has 2 daughters with his wife, and me. I am the youngest of his children. I have very vague memories of him coming over to see my mom and me when I was very little, and even vaguer memories of being packed into the car, and my mother and I driving over to his house. But we never went inside. We would stay outside, he would come to the car to talk to my mother, he would go back inside and we would leave. I saw what seemed to be the silhouette of two young girls inside his house, but never knew who they were. Then one day, he stopped showing up, and we stopped going over. At the age of 5 you have no idea what these things mean. Even now, I don’t know what happened for him to stop seeing us, and I have never asked. All I know is that the strange man who my mother said was my “father” and who I called “Daddy” had just disappeared.



And it didn’t bother me. I had my mom, Ena (my great-aunt), Steve (my uncle), and Fitzroy and Tony (my mom’s cousins). If this concept seems strange let me explain it like this: my very good friend’s wife has a son from a previous relationship. He was about 2 when my friend started dating his mom. His mom always insisted that he called my friend by his first name. Yet when you hear him running around yelling “Nigel”, you fully understand who he is referring to, and in what capacity. In his mind he doesn’t have a daddy; he has a “Nigel”. Personally, I do not see anything wrong with that. I actually wish there was a way for him to go through life just knowing his “Nigel”, not having to deal with the reality that Nigel is not his biological dad. But I know that day will come, and I pray for them that that situation will pass smoothly. But I digress.



Anyway, my father did stay in touch for awhile. But the calls started coming with longer and longer lapses in between. He would call; I would ask when he was coming over to see me. He would promise soon. And he would not show up. The final straw was my 12th birthday. He called me. He promised me we would spend time for my birthday. We would go, us alone, pick up my gift, and spend quality time like we had not done in years. I got excited, even got dressed up. And he never showed up. Didn’t even call back. And neither did I. I wrote him off. In my mind, I did not have a father. My mom was the Virgin Mary Redux, and I was the product of immaculate conception. The only evidence that I had a living, breathing, sperm-donor, was the fact that I had 2 sisters. Other than that, fuck him (and yes I was already cussing at age 12). He didn’t care about me, so I damn sure didn’t care about him. And I continued my life like that for 10 years.

Big Day on Friday...

Retake of my MM exam. Wish me luck.

Can it really be that simple???

Now, I don't necessarily agree with this, but I thought it would be interesting food for discussion...

Nobel what???

This was supposed to be short and quick, which is why it has the intro that it currently carries. But then I realised I had a lot more to say about the topic than I first thought. So now it's a 2-parter:


So, I’m not fully up to speed with my writing yet, but it’s simply a matter of ekeing out time. I have been trying to get back up to speed with work, life and everything else that I have missed while my head was buried in a book. Combine that with the fact that I came home Sunday morning to meet my house flooded out, and my PC shorted out as a result, and you get the general picture. I’m currently typing this on a loaned laptop. I hate laptops. Anyway, I figured I would be a good and committed blogger and at least do a quick post on a topic that seems to be relatively news-worthy, if only for the reason that it was hilarious when the announcement was made. Yep, the second black president of the United States won the Nobel Peace prize.


So Barack Obama won the Nobel. Whoopee-fucking-doo. Somebody please show me to the nearest Boardwalk so that I can do a little jig in celebration. And in case you didn’t notice, there was a heavy dose of sarcasm in those last two sentences. No really, take a minute and look. Now before anyone jumps down my throat about why am I hating, really I’m not. I’m glad the man has a nice Peace Prize to put on his mantle. More power to him. Now if someone can please tell me what Barack did to deserve this prize, I will very happily shut up. Because this award reeks so much of racial patronage, that I swore I passed it on the Beetham when I was driving by sometime recently. Hell, I think I can still smell it from here. (The award, not the Beetham. The Beetham hasn’t been so bad recently).

Why do I think his being awarded the Prize is patronage? Well, let look at certain inalienable facts. Firstly, let’s look at what he won the prize for. According to the press release, he has “fostered an atmosphere of peace, and cooperation in world”. (Not an exact quote, but close enough.) Hmmm, last time I checked, the US was still stuck balls deep in Afghanistan, and Uncle Hugo still didn’t like their ass. He isn’t even that well liked in his own country. He is the most polarising president in US history. Voters in the US simply would have preferred to have been hung by their nipples and dipped in hot oil rather than deal with another 4 years of the Republicans. Don’t get me wrong, the man has charima out the ass, and he deserved to win. But the Nobel Peace Prize? Ummm…

Secondly, let’s look at the timing of his nomination. Barack was in office for only 2 weeks when the deadline for nominations closed. Two weeks. Really? He did enough in two weeks, to merit winning what some people take a lifetime to achieve? Really? He brought about an atmosphere conducive to world peace, in just 2 weeks? Damn. And I thought Santa worked fast. Then again, I guess when you compare him to Bush… Look, I’m not being a hater. I’m just asking the question of where are the tangible achievements that merited Barack winning this prize? Does anyone have the answer? Somebody? Anybody? Thought so.

This leads to my next point. The only reason Barack won the Nobel, is because he is black. To be more specific, he won it because he is the first African-American President of the United States. (Sorry, Clinton was as black as they come, he just didn’t have the skin tone, hence the differentiation between black and African-American). And I know the response that is coming: so what? What’s the big problem? We should be happy… Well, without simplify and trivialising the overall gist of my argument, here is my overall problem. Black people need to stop taking handouts. Especially handouts that serve the trivialise or make mockery of moments or accomplishments, that need no further embellishment to legitimise them. No matter how auspicious, well-respected or well-intentioned that handout may be.

I love this site...

And no cussbud, I did not get it from you, tho I see you follow it... :p

Ok, we're almost back...

Just 3 more weeks till we're back in business. Till then, I'm loving this ;)