POWER OF LOVE: PART II

by with One Comment CultureFeaturedSports

Dribble, spin, hook shot, rebound.

Again.

Dribble, spin, hook shot, rebound.

He’s neva’ gonna come see you play, he doesn’t love you.

Dribble, spin, hook shot, rebound.

You’re not good enough for him to come see.

I was alone at Monsignor King Hall before practice one morning, working on my footwork.

The neckline of my green t-shirt was soaked in sweat. I was in the gym working my eleven year old love handles off to perfect my patented “drop step to the baseline” spin move.

The sound of the basketball bouncing off the kelly green floor and the squeaking of my sneakers were like music to my ears.

The season before I had fallen in love with basketball as a ball boy for the Monsignor King tournament. I had to be close to the action for the LaSalle high school game to witness one the nation’s top prospects, Ron Artest, play in the championship game.

My first teammates at St. Thomas Aquinas (STA) were a group of special kids: Izzy Bauta, Mike Blake, P.J. Marshall, Joey Romano, Nick Russo, and myself. We were coached by local mailmen, Joe Romano Sr., who was Joey’s dad, and John Browning.

Our team was good. Like, legendarily good. Our first season together we made a splash in Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) with an outstanding record. We’d easily score about 60 points a game. Any given game each of the starting five players could score 12-14 points each. I am still waiting for the local Catholic newspaper, The Tablet, to do a documentary on our successful run. We were unstoppaBULL. Get my drift? It was 1997 and who didn’t wanna be like Michael Jordan? Chicago was on fire that year, and so were we.

That year, people started to talk about how historically dominant we could become if we continued to play together throughout the summer.

And that’s saying somethin’. NBA Hall of Famer, Chris Mullen, used to workout on that floor and rumors have it that he once broke the backboards at Monsignor King Hall while practicing for the Dream Team before the ‘92 Olympics.

Yeah, so you could say that we were almost NBA Hall of Fame, Dream Team level nice, ok?

Anyway, that spring, we had won our first championship on a corner buzzer-beater against St. Rose. We had tasted the sweetness of victory and I wanted to improve my basketball skills over the summer.

But inside our apartment on 2525 Bedford Avenue, my world was crumbling. Dad was never home and the only time I’d hear from him was when he played music on Sunday’s. Sometimes he’d be so into his records that it felt like I was invisible to him.

With the hurt and anger towards my father growing, basketball was a much welcome distraction to muddle the chaos going on in my home and in my young mind. I had asked Mom if I could join karate to blow off steam but my mom felt that I might have been too much of a brute and injure the other kids my age. Not to mention that she just did not have the time to take me to practice with all that was going on in her life.

So when I came home from school energetically rambling about my desire to want to play on the basketball team, my mom initially rejected the idea. But she saw how excited I was and she finally relented with a little persuasion from another parent who offered to take me to weekly practices twice a week.

The turbulence when my dad would come home and the size of our cramped apartment felt like flying through rough air in a small airplane. The uneasiness from the tension created a cagey atmosphere that left me suffocating with resentment from how he had treated my mom and me.

Basketball was an escape to another dimension where I could be free to release the stress of my emotions. The more I poured my energy into the game, the more it gave me the fulfillment I was desperately searching for.

(Silverback’s Note: Read Power of Love Part: I, here. Remember, click on the section hyperlinks to listen to the tunes.)

OLÉ COLTRANE.

Inside Monsignor King Hall, her voice rumbles across the court.

“LET’S, GO, GREEN! LET’S, GO, GREEN!”

My mother, sitting in the wooden bleachers, leans back, takes a deeper inhale and continues to bellow. I can hear mom’s voice from the center circle.

Just like her prayer time every morning, that voice got louder, and louder, and louder.

I adjusted my yellow Rec Spec goggles as the referee was giving our team’s final instruction. I can’t even hear him.

“LET’S, GO, GREEN!” “LET’S, GO, GREEN!”

Soon it’s the only voice that everyone can hear in the gym. There’s six minutes on the game clock to begin the first quarter and the scoreboard is buzzing with electric current. Adrenaline is running through my veins. The referee toots his whistle and lobs the ball into the air.

I won the tip-off, and Mom switched to a more provocative cheer.

“YOU. CAN’T. BEAT THE GREEN, YOU CAN’T BEAT THE GREEN!,” she shouts as we got into our positions to run our first play of the game.

Looking back, her volume was a somewhat obnoxious level of support considering that our team was about to dismantle our opponents during the first few minutes of the basketball game.

Monsignor King Hall was the home court to one of the most ferocious boys junior high school basketball teams in the history of Brooklyn CYO sports.

From 1996 to 1998, the STA boys’ basketball team would rack up 149 wins and 1 loss. We didn’t have a team mascot or a nickname so our fans would cheer for us using the color of our green cotton t-shirts. Our loudest super fan was my mom, Madeline Louison. At 330 pounds, she was also our largest and most gangster, cheerleader as well.

I can feel her fierce love and undying support with every echo of her voice that rang through the gymnasium. It’s that same voice that I can still hear in the echoes of my mind, passionately encouraging me to push myself to be better to this day.

She’s still cheering me on and is the driving force behind my competitive passion. She’s still in my corner encouraging me to strive for more through the power of her love.

You see, Madi has always been the personification of the Bible. She embodies the ruthless ferocity described in the battles of the Christian Old Testament combined with the warm loving narrative of the redemption story told in the Christian New Testament. That’s how I described her to my therapist, anyway.

“You know I am an atheist, right?” Dr. Brown says to me in one of our early sessions.

“Yeah, that’s cool,” I respond as I am sitting across from him at a wooden table inside his apartment office.

“Tell me about your mother but with less Biblical references so I can understand,” he says with a slight grin that accentuates the shine in his brown skin.

I had just completed unpacking my father’s story of origin to my therapist and it was time to discuss my mother. I found myself in the therapist chair because I was experiencing an emotional block in 2014.

The woundedness of my father’s absence during my childhood and the effects of two colossally failed romantic relationships as a young adult had left me broken and searching for healing. I was struggling with emotionally connecting with humans – I felt unable to love.

“My mom and I have a really close bond,” I respond. “We’ve had to be there a lot for each other through the years…”

TAKEOVER.

My goggles were foggy from the perspiration. It was scorching outside and I could feel the heat rising off the gravel courts in the Coney Island public housing complex.

Our Dream Team was playing in our first summer tournament. We had made it to the championship of the 2nd Annual Stephon Marbury Basketball Classic.

Our team had not played hard enough in the first half to be competitive. It was halftime and Coach Romano was red in the face.

“Get your heads outta’ your asses and focus!” Coach Romano growled at halftime. He usually didn’t cuss at us but when he did his Brooklyn-Italian accent really came out.

Izzy and I plop our dense 180-pound frames into the lawn chairs. We both stood about 5’8 and our knees were protruding off the edge of the nylon seats. I cross my arms in frustration.

The PA announcer had been talking nonstop during the first half and it was good to finally hear some music blaring from the speakers set up near the courts. Jay-Z’s debut album, Reasonable Doubt, was playing during a break in the action.

Our team was not accustomed with losing and we began allowing the unfamiliar territory to disrupt our flow.

One of the parents passed around a bag of frozen orange slices to cool us down.

“Put those orange slices down and focus, Andy!” my teammate P.J. shouted. “You’re not boxing out!”

Focus, I thought.

How could I focus when all I wanted was for my Pops to come watch me play ball? I had so much heaviness on my heart. All of my teammates’ dads were there to watch them play. Even the ones that didn’t get much playing time.

Why doesn’t he want to hang out with me? I got game.

It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate my mom being there. It was just that she didn’t know much about sports and I just wanted my dad’s guidance like all the other boys. Some of my teammates wondered if I even had a dad at home.

Basketball apparently was a “waste of time,” according to him but the game I loved had already given me more than he ever had.

“Pick your head up!” my mother commands. “Get your head in the game. You’re letting those little guys get the rebound over you!”

We were playing in a rough neighborhood against a gritty team of all Black players from Coney Island. I was the only Black kid on our team and you could tell that my White teammates or their parents had never played in such a lively environment. Matter fact, they were the only White people participating in the tournament, the only White people on the basketball courts, and most likely the only White people for a few blocks.

Far away from our home court and in strange surroundings we were down by 15 points. We had been down before but not by this large of a margin. The pressure of the deficit and the exuberance of the crowd was becoming increasingly stressful.

Maybe we weren’t as good as we thought?

The horn sounded to start the second half. I looked on as all of my teammates’ fathers assured their sons and provided final instruction.

At that moment, something switched inside of me. The separation from my own father felt more pronounced. I felt so alone, so unprotected, so wounded. In order to protect the vulnerability of my feelings, a menacing ball of anger ignited inside me.

Enough.

We inbound the ball and I beeline to my spot on the post and call for the ball with gusto. I wanted to get a bucket.

The shot went up and I found a body to crash into as the ball was in the air. I boxed out, snatched the offensive rebound out of the air and scored on the put back layup.

“Oh he’s a beast on the inside!” the color commentator says to start the second half commentary.

Damn right I am a beast! I’ll ball out without my Pops.

The sound of male validation sparked such a self-confident feeling inside of me that I began to chase it by playing harder.

“Great rebound, Andy!” shouted one of the White dads.

Keep rebounding, they can’t stop you.

We score on a few back to back possessions and cut into the lead going into the final quarter.

Every time I glanced over to the stands and remembered that my father was not there I felt my blood boil hotter and hotter. I wanted every damn rebound. I wanted every freakin’ loose ball. I wanted to squeeze every pebble on the basketball’s leather skin.

Who needs a Pops anyway?

I was on a roll and our opponents didn’t seem to have anyone on their bench to match my ferocity in the paint.

I began mouthing off at the referee after he called a loose ball foul on me. I was being too aggressive positioning for the rebound, he said.

“I didn’t even touch him!” I lashed out.

Okay… so I elbowed the kid. But I had no capacity to care even if I was playing on their turf.

“Callate la boca,” my mom shouts. I am chewing on my jersey to keep from erupting and I softly whisper into my jersey, “That’s such a bullshit foul call.”

Well, at least I thought I whispered it, as the referee whistles me for a technical foul.

Coach Romano is besides himself and Coach Browning has to hold him back from yanking me off the court by the strap of my goggles.

He decided he can’t take me out of the game, we had the momentum and we needed a big body in the paint for rebounds.

Coach Romano found his composure and Joey huddled up our players at the center circle.

“Keep your head in the game big guy,” my teammate Joey said, slapping me on the head. “We need you in the game to win this.”

With Joey’s pep talk, I regained my composure and got back to dominating in the paint.

The game was back and forth as we entered into the final minute of the championship. We had clawed back to take the lead by one point with 42 seconds remaining on the game clock.

Just then, out of nowhere, a rainstorm soaked the court. Everyone scattered for shelter ending the game with mere seconds left.

When we all returned the following week to play, we had found our winning confidence. With NBA rookie sensation, Stephon Marbury, watching court side, we walloped their asses for the remaining 42 seconds left in the contest.

Marbury, A Kid From Coney Island housing projects, had just completed his rookie season for the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves as a member of the now iconic 1996 NBA rookie draft class that featured future all-time greats Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant.

It was an odd way to end such a hard-fought game but we were going to meet an NBA player and take home a giant trophy. I couldn’t contain my excitement. I didn’t care much for Marbury at the time, other than that I could brag to my friends that I was somehow closer to Michael Jordan.

I can still hear mom as we victoriously left the basketball court that day.

“YOU. CAN’T. BEAT THE GREEN, YOU CAN’T BEAT THE GREEN!”

My mom and I were in a joyous mood on that drive home in the minivan. Boy, did we need that victory to lift our spirits. Winning gave us something to celebrate. I still wanted my dad to be there, but it was great to look up from the passenger seat and not see her tears.

Mom switched on the ignition of the minivan to pull off. The choir picks up mid track where the song had left off earlier in the day. This time the choir sounds so angelic, so sweet.

“Jehovah Rapha” the choir croons.

“You’re my healer…” mom and I triumphantly join in unison as we try to hit the high notes of the songs crescendo. We both sound terrible.

It was in Coney Island that I began to understand what the lyrics of that gospel song really meant.

Basketball had provided a space to set my pent up emotions free. Jehovah Jireh.

The game had supplied me with the confidence and male validation that I was craving in my father’s absence. Jehovah Shamma.

All undergirded by the support and the healing love that my little heart so needed. Jehovah Rapha.

In addition to my teammates, Mom and I have always been a team. I consoled her through the sting of her tears and she soothed the intensity of my rage. Our wounds shared a common source but the power of our love was more than enough to bring us through any challenge we faced together.

When I reflect on that era of our lives together, one of the tracks on my favorite album by Jay-Z comes to mind. The lyrics on Blueprint (Mama Loves Me) remind me of the things I asked God for in my nightly prayers as a child.

“Mama loved me, Pop left me…” Jay begins. “Mama raised me; Pop I miss you. God, help me forgive him; I got some issues…”

Thanks for always being more than enough for me, Mom. You’ve always been the answer to my prayers.

Power of Love, to be continued…

Similar Read: POWER OF LOVE: PART I

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MUSIC IS LIFE

by with 2 Comments CultureFeatured

The bell inside the front door of apartment A1 at 2525 Bedford Avenue would ring loudly when the door was slammed shut.

I know this because — in a very Pavlovian way — I can still hear that bell ringing in my darkest moments.

I’ll never forget the days when I was 6 years old. It was 1992 and there I stood on that dark red carpet in front of the front door. My mom, dad, brother, and I lived in a roach-infested, two-bedroom apartment in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn.

My father had just sprayed cologne on his neck to leave the apartment. The way he carried himself, he had so much swagger and confidence.

“Dad, can I go with you, please?”

Often my mom would chime in to advocate on my behalf, “Jordache just take him with you for a little while, while I take care of Jeremy.”

“No, Madi. I’m just going up the road to come back,” he replied.

“Just let the record play and then switch off the power, when the record is finished,” he continued.

The heavy metal door would then slam shut behind him, causing the bell inside the door to ring loudly for a few seconds. Although he was leaving, the sound of the reggae music that was still pouring out from the industrial-size speakers in our living room was not leaving with him.

I remember going to my room to be alone and deal with my sadness. This pattern went on for many more years and the continued rejection gradually became too much to bear. The sound of him leaving had happened so often that I no longer heard the bell. Instead, a question ringing in my mind.

Why doesn’t he want to hang out with me? 

‘ROUND MIDNIGHT

Neville Louison Sr. is a quiet man; his movements however, are loud.

He steps around the apartment so quietly that I am always startled by the sound of his deep voice, but his impact on my life has and will continue to reverberate well into the remaining years of my life.

It has taken me three decades to heal from the emotional abandonment of him leaving me again and again. It has taken me just as much time to fully grasp the impact of the greatest gift that he has ever given me.

My father has this cool confidence. Cool like a pleasant breeze on a summer night. It’s this cool confidence that gave him the courage to leave his small island of Grand Roy, Grenada, one of the least populated islands in the Western hemisphere. In the 1970s, millions of people had immigrated from the Caribbean islands to NYC. My father was one of them, and like many, he made a home for himself in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn.

It wasn’t long after that that my dad met my mom: a beautiful olive-skinned Puerto Rican woman named, Madeline Silva. It’s A classic Brooklyn love story — like something you might see in a Spike Lee film.

My mother had spent most of her formative years in Brooklyn and then a few more years on the island of Puerto Rico until my grandparents divorced when she was a teen.

By the early 1980s, my mother had made her way back to Brooklyn where she was attending Stony Brook University on Long Island.

His quiet confident cool draws my mothers gaze from across the room. Reggae music sizzles out of the stereo in a way that makes your hips sway, gyrate, and dip.

My mother leaned towards her best friend, Judy.

“Who is that cute guy with the black corduroy pants, moving his hips so nice in the corner by himself?”

“I call him Jordache because I always see him around the neighborhood wearing the Jordache Jeans brand,” Judy laughed. “Don’t worry Mads,” Judy continued. “I’ll introduce you to him if you behave yourself.”

Taking a swig of his beer, he asks her to dance.

Maybe it was the way his dark skin shone, the fluidity of his hips, the attraction of their African blood, or the rhythm of the music, but it was at that moment that their love story began.

After 3 years of dating, my father proposed to my mother in my grandmother’s living room.

He didn’t drop to one knee or make a grandiose proposal or anything like that. He just simply stated, “Madi, we must get married.”

My mother did not hesitate to commit to the guy she had gushed to Judy about all those years prior.

“Ok, Jordache.”

Every time they tell me that story, I can hear Beres Hammond begin to croon, “what one dance can do…” – that is one of their favorite reggae tunes.

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If you have ever lived with or in the vicinity of my father, you’ve likely been jolted out of your sleep by the buzzing of the amplifier being switched on.

By the mid-90s, our family had expanded to four children: Andy, Jeremy, David, and Sarah. My parents and their four children lived on the first floor above the building’s garbage room. As a result of the trash below us, our apartment was terribly roach-infested, but the cheap rent enabled my parents to save money for a house. We were poor but we were rich in love.

Our block felt like the Carribean United Nations. There were folks from each of the thirteen sovereign island nations and twelve dependent territories. Each island having their own unique sound, flavor, and style.

My mom was the Puerto Rican ambassador. Since she was the only Borinqueña on the block, folks would call my mom, “the Puerto Rican lady with the four kids.” She kept us close to her at all times. We were inextricably bound together.

There was a strong sense of community on our block. Everyone called my father the mayor. Mainly because he was the unofficial disc jockey. DJ South as he is known locally built his own sound system in my bedroom — the one I shared with my two other brothers.

One closet had his DJ booth which included black turntables, grey amplifiers, black headphones, and a red extension cord. Everything connected to the two large speakers in the living room. Somehow he still found a way to neatly organize all of his clothes and belongings.

This was the stereo that woke my Black ass up. Every. Single. Weekend. At 7 am.

“Early to bed and early to rise, does make a Black man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” my father would say. My brothers and I would roll around, grumbling in our bunk bed. I’d be rubbing crust out my eyes, scorn stitched into my brow, while my dad fired up the speakers. It was surreal every time because I usually wouldn’t see him for the entire week. And yet, all of a sudden, there he appeared before us. Crouched down, calmly strumming through his records.

When did he even get home? 

“I go play that record,” he’d say when he finally found the record. He was always rummaging for the same record anyway: Bob Marley & The Wailers’ 1979 record, Survival.

As the needle dropped on the record in the closet, the record begins to scratch as the sound blasts from the living room. The raspy soulfulness of Robert Nester Marley’s voice welcomes you to the album.

“Little more drums,” Bob says.

DJ South’s set usually began with the Bunny Wailers “one drop” drumbeat blaring from our living room windows.

Bob’s voice returned to the track to lament, “So much trouble in the world…”

“Remember son, life is about survival,” Dad chimed in as he increased the volume to an even more obscene level.

“Survival,” he said. “Survival.”

Boy, did I want him to shut up. But no matter how much I tried to drown out the sound, he just kept on doing his thing. Eventually, I just lay there silent and angry, staring at the ceiling.

“So much trouble in the world…” Bob sings.

SURVIVAL

As a thirtieth birthday gift to myself in 2015, I decided that it was time to learn more about my Grenadian roots. It was a season of healing for me and the island was calling me, so I booked my flight.

When I landed on Grenadian soil for the first time, it had been four decades since my grandfather’s untimely death and my father’s escape to survive.

Grandpa, as I would have called him, didn’t live long enough for me to meet him. Lewis Pierre was murdered at the age of 44 in St. George Grenada in September 1977. The body was never recovered.

My father was working on a cruise ship on the nearby island of Trinidad & Tobago on that day. He was nineteen.

He was selling oranges for five cents in Grenada and that hustle was no longer sufficiently providing for the family. As the eldest of his mother’s children, he had left his home two years prior in search for work.

My grandmother and grandfather were effectively neighbors in the late 1950s. He was a Fishermen and in his 44 years of life, he fathered at least six children. Four of them with his wife and the other two children with my grandmother. My father and his brother, Joseph Cadore.

My grandmother’s family was growing and she would move to the nearby village of Grand Roy, where she raised her children, a stone’s throw away from the sea. My grandmother and her three children lived in a small two-room abode.

My uncle Joseph, who we call Uncle Wayne, is one of my favorite human beings. Since I was a child, he would always drop by to infuse his fun, rebel energy into our apartment. The moments with him were short but we loved to roughhouse with our strapping uncle. What I love about him most is that he chose to be around.

Uncle Wayne is different from my father. He is broad-shouldered, gregarious, talkative, and bald. Despite their noticeable differences, I’ve always admired their close bond.

Always up for an adventure, Uncle Wayne had accepted my invite to accompany me to Grenada. He was beaming with pride to show me around his hometown.

Uncle Wayne picked me up in a beat-up grey 4×4 vehicle with a barely functioning CD-player. That was our mode of transportation for the week.

With a joint hanging from his lip, Uncle Wayne drove us to every corner of the island. A man of the people, he stops to talk to everyone, either greeting them with a boisterous “Hello/Hey/Something” or by the double toot of his horn. I am convinced he knows most of the 100,000 people that live on the island — if not all of them.

During one tour of the island, we stopped at the home that my grandfather, Lewis Pierre, had lived. The yellow two-story home that he built with his own two hands was still standing on the mountain roadside.

My aunt Jenny, who I had never met previously, was living in the home. As I was inquiring about the family history, Aunt Jenny brought out her father’s documentation in a blue tin cookie canister.

I slowly opened the blue canister of his life and pull out the contents. 

I gave the documents a quick glance to begin to put together a timeline of his life.

I read the words, “Lewis Pierre born March 18, 1932, to Camilla and Joseph Pierre,” on his birth certificate.

My great-grandparents have names, I thought to myself.

My senses were alive. I was looking at my grandfather’s face for the first time in my life.

“Wow, I look just like him!”

The questions in my mind begin to swirl like water beneath a geyser. However, I remain focused on listening to Aunt Jenny’s every word. 

After sitting with the documents for a time and asking a few more poignant questions, I returned the tin canister to Aunt Jenny. I almost don’t want to let the canister go. It held so much information about my life that I may never learn more about.

We said our goodbyes and I began walking back to the car with my mind continuing to swirl with questions.

As we pulled away from my grandfather’s home, Uncle Wayne turned up the volume on the music in the car. The questions in my mind are now rumbling even more loudly as Love African Style by The Mighty Sparrow plays in the background.

“I love to see when Black people make love,” Sparrow sings.

We slowly make our descent down the curvy mountain road. With the sun beating down on the gravel road beneath our tires.

“Now I’ll take you to where me and your father lived,” Uncle Wayne says.

“Wait, you didn’t live there with your father?” I asked. “I thought you guys were neighbors?”

“No. We’d have to walk for hours to get a piece of small change from him, every now and again.”

The geyser of questions in my mind have now erupted and are shooting into the sky. I can only imagine the jagged rocks pressing into their bare feet, the sun beating down on their little heads, and the sweat soaking into their clothing. I wondered what they were talking about. I wondered how they were feeling on their long journey to their father’s house.

Why didn’t he want to hang out with me?

Suddenly, I was transported back to 1992, grappling with my own brokenness behind slammed doors. Except now it feels as if there are two little boys on that dark red carpet. Me and my dad grappling together. I can hear that bell ringing again. I wanted to reach out to my inner child. He needed an explanation.

“Neville,” I said. “He didn’t know how to be a Dad and hang out with you because he never had a Dad himself to hang out with him.”

I was then reminded of this unfortunate truth: broken men tend to produce broken men in the absence of healing.

I see those two Black boys, my Dad and me, much differently now. I’m deeply overcome with sadness to understand we both have experienced this deep pain at the neglect of our fathers.

Immediately one of my Dad’s favorite records by Jimmy Cliff comes to mind, and the words begin to make more sense to me. It’s like I’m hearing them for the first time.

Many rivers to cross…

I felt more connected to my Dad and found my brokenness in his brokenness.

Many rivers to cross

And it’s only my will that keeps me alive

I’ve been licked, washed up for years

And I merely survive because of my pride

“No wonder he played this record so much,” I thought to myself.

The song defines his journey.

MANY RIVERS TO CROSS

The details of my grandfathers final moments in Grenada are limited to his official documents and hearsay accounts.

The death certificate issued ten months later in July 1978 mysteriously states, “Lewis Pierre came to his death by drowning in the parish of St. George and that no person or persons are liable for prosecution.” The hearsay version is that Lewis was thrown off a cliff by a man who was defending his step-daughter from him. Both the official documents and the hearsay accounts leave me with enough hesitation to no longer pursue any additional details of the life and times of Lewis Pierre.

In 1986, less than a decade after “no person or persons” were held to account for my grandfather’s murder, my father would have his first child.

Like many men of his time, my Dad was not overly engaged in my mom’s pregnancy. But he did request that his first-born son carry on his name, Neville. On a Wednesday morning in late January at 5:29 am, I was born — the first-generation American male of my ancestors lineage.

There were many rivers to cross in those early years for my mom and me. Dad didn’t know how to be a father, a husband, or an American – three roles that he had zero experience with. I guess we were all trying to find our way in those days.

Most nights after mom and I did homework together, I would wake up to her sniffles. She was crying. At some point, mom and I had learned that my father had fathered two children with another woman. He lived with his other family just a few blocks away. This tore my mother apart as she was dealing with her own responsibilities. While my dad was an outstanding financial provider, Mom was raising four children without help from her husband. She was a full-time NYC public school teacher and getting her Masters degree in English at Brooklyn College.

When my father did come around, they would argue constantly. I wished for years that he would leave for good so that I could no longer see my mom suffer through their relationship.

I now feel as if I suffered the consequences of my grandfather’s decisions. Neville was emulating Lewis’ behavior, leaving yet another Black boy yearning for time with a Dad who didn’t have the tools to deliver.

As I went through puberty and I grew into my adult years, my anger for my father also matured. I falsely believed that this anger had fueled my success, but in actuality, it was widening the gaping hole in me that my father’s absence had left behind.

The brokenness that had been birthed on that dark red carpet had hardened. I was no longer a boy. Instead, I was the “strong,” “resilient” man that had found his way in America without his father. I made a vow to myself when I was thirteen that this generational cycle of fatherlessness would end with me.

In my father’s absence, I developed my own criteria on what I believe it means to be a man. I would lose myself in books, magazines, mentors, coaches, and closely observed the good men my mom had placed in my life to help guide me. None of those books or people could replace my Dad’s quiet calm cool but they helped provide me with a solid foundation to build on.

At the age of 28, the same age that my father had me, we began to reconcile our relationship. On a quiet Sunday at my parents’ home, we both found ourselves at the dining table eating corn porridge. Mom had just left for church and there was no music playing yet. We both found ourselves quietly eating at the same time that morning. The table was silent except for the sound of our spoons clanging against the bowls. After years of silence on the topic, I muster up the courage.

“How are your sons?” I asked.

Not understating my question, he asked if I was asking about my siblings.

“No, your other two sons,” I sheepishly retorted back.

After taking a moment to gather himself, he stood up to take a walk to his liquor cabinet, and came back to crack open a bottle.

We sat at that dining room table for hours. Just two broken men named Neville exposing their hearts, wounds, and lack of understanding to the other. It was Sunday filled with words that had been previously unspoken and that I’ll cherish forever.

Later on that evening, my Dad asked me to help him fix a doorknob that was in slight disrepair. As he took a knee to unscrew the doorknob, he looked up at me with the glossy eyes of an aging man who had a few drinks.

“Son,” he said. “After today’s conversation… your daddy can now die a happy man.”

These were the words I thought I’d never hear as a little boy. Through his slurred speech, I could hear the sound of a Dad’s tender love for his son.

It’s a moment not many men get the opportunity to have with their fathers.

When I reflect on that moment, one of my Dad’s favorite records Tender Love by Beres Hammond comes to mind.

“First let me welcome you to my little world that was so torn apart. In case you don’t know, I’ve gotta tell you this. That all along I thought this world had no heart…” Beres sings softly.

The two little Nevilles together at last. This is our song now, in a musical language we both can understand.

You’ve been guiding me through the music all along, Dad. 

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