Happy birthday, Daniel…I know I’m a day late with it but,
believe me, I thought about you a lot yesterday. I’ve had to take a few days to really absorb your stance on not being contacted by us. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to take the news…Should I be angry? Should I be hurt? Should I be surprised? Should I be offended? Should I be sad? Should I just chalk it up to your youth and selfishness…or should I be mentally reviewing your childhood, looking for my own faults and failures?
All of the above…
Then I realized…you are twenty-eight now. That’s not youth, but I’ll leave the selfishness in there. I wonder what you must tell the people around you about your childhood. You know, this whole Thug Mentality that you carry around, a victim of your upbringing, well…it’s a big load of crap! You are officially more than five years older than we were when we took custody of you and your brother…You are officially the exact age we were when we had our third child and then took custody of your remaining sisters and brothers. Can you do the math? That’s ten kids…so I can officially say that the selfishness I speak of does not pertain to either your oldest brother (my husband) or myself.
When we were raising you, and doing our very best with what we were entrusted with, you didn’t have that ATL accent. You went to a good high school in the Couve, surrounded by friends who seemed to want your success more than you did. You had the athletic potential that others only dream about, being the first black varsity quarterback in our district. You had a woman and a man (I know there’s never a complete substitute for your own mama and daddy but that wasn’t our fault, so why don’t you take that resentment somewhere else?) who made sure you had a roof over your head, food on that table every night, school clothes, school supplies, Christmas presents, birthday presents (and birthday banana cream pies since you didn’t want cake), Halloween costumes (mostly home-made cuz we were broke) and trick-or-treating, Thanksgiving feasts, Easter baskets, help with those late night-last minute school projects, haircuts (home-made again, still broke), clean laundry, a warm home, homecoming & prom & everything that goes along with those…corsages for your dates, pictures, money for dinner, and a nice suit to wear (even if it did have to come out of Tony’s closet cuz we couldn’t afford a new one)…fans in the stands of your games, or I’ll do you one better…a big brother who actually came out to coach the team you and played for. Man, I could go on and on. Even after you sort of pooped on us, once you got into a junior college and seemed to be getting back on track, we sent our hard earned (and even harder saved) money to pay for half of your car…Hmmmm, where is that car anyway?!
The tattoos…those came after us too. It’s not like I want you to put my name on your skin…but I’m still confused by whose names you did put on you. I mean, the one name, ok…she is your mama and God used her to give you life. I can’t really argue that…I guess. Their are others who made it to your Skin Name Hall of Fame tattoos…a niece (although neither of the nieces you actually grew up loving, you know, the ones you knew since the day they were born? One of whom you actually named?). Like I said, confusing…and then the others, well, I won’t even get into that but…WOW.
Soooo, we didn’t contact you while you were incarcerated…again. I should have written a letter, letting you know I was thinking about you. That is true. I am sorry. I’m sure that’s what you’re upset about since every logical part of my brain tells me you couldn’t possibly have expected us to take from our five children to send you money, right? It took so long to finally hear from you after you cut us off the first (or second) time, we had just barely begun to renew relationships. Wait, I take that back…we did have enough time for you to make all kinds of promises about all the great things you were planning on sending to the kids. Those things never came…surprise, surprise. I would have thought that after all the years you heard empty promises (not from us BTW) that you’d know better. But we did you wrong, right?
The stealing, the lying, the joy-rides in our only (un-insured cuz, you know, we were broke) vehicle that resulted in wheels with no tires and cut up rims, constant groundings for not even trying with your schoolwork, the weed smoking, the poor decision making that has landed you in a hole (with bars) on several occasions.
Your youth isn’t the only one that’s gone…Tony and I will be forty this year. Our youths were spent taking care of kids that we thought needed us. It wasn’t easy but I can tell you this…The value in what we did would certainly be a lot clearer if I didn’t have to hear it from a third party that you don’t want us to have your phone number. Just sayin’.
Happy birthday, Daniel…
