You were “easy” babies, fabulous toddlers and terrific young children.
You were hilarious preteens and mostly cooperative teenagers.
Now, you are productive, employed, adults.
I have written to readers far and wide – often to severe resistance – my belief that parenting ends.
While I will always be your dad, you may have recognized that some years ago, wise or unwise on my part, believing I had imparted all that was necessary, I “pulled back” and gradually stopped parenting each of you. You have been making almost all your own decisions for years and have both been rather good at it.
Now, we are three men (mostly) enjoying our shared relationships and one of us happens to also be your dad.
As far as possible I will be available for you. I probably will “jump in” if I discern a dire need to do so, but generally I will resist any urge to impose my need to parent upon you.
I love you, I will seek your highest good and love all whom you love. Know this: each of you in your own way saved my life. You have made this dad really appreciate Father’s Day and I thank you.
Given that it is Father’s Day this Sunday I have to tell you my father was a David who faced his share of Goliaths. He had many come his way over many years.
I’d suggest being fatherless from birth was a Goliath of sorts.
Then, the Second World War must have been like a Goliath to much of the world and to a 15-year-old boy, my dad, going off to war before needing to shave.
Entering the Indian Ocean off a burning and sinking destroyer to find safety was certainly a frightening encounter. Floating in the ocean, protected from sharks by the oil that surfaced from the sinking ship hardly sounds like a safe option.
Floating for hours – about 30 in all – in oil and debri and being fried in the day in the scorching sun and freezing in the night while hoping for rescue may indeed qualify as a Goliath.
Dad said the men in the water sang “Nearer My God To Thee” and “From Sinking Sands He Lifted Me” and “Abide With Me” a lot.
But, he did it. He did it all.
My dad was a long way from perfect but I have noticed he was much more imperfect when I was younger than he is now.
Your dad may try to give the impression that Father’s Day doesn’t mean much. I’d suggest you ignore his resistance. Make a big deal out of it. It’s not the gift or the card that he receives from you that’s important to him, it’s that you phoned and chatted, you wrote, you remembered and recalled your lives together and recognized his commitment to you.
Your dad may try to brush off your attention at Father’s Day and tell you that he doesn’t need the focus and the attention but lavish him with it anyway. Neither of you will be around forever so make this one a good one, one to remember. Another shaving set or pair of socks will never be as treasured as a carefully composed letter recalling your best memories with your dad.
Fathering is a fragile journey for many men, many whose frames of reference were often lacking. Many of our dads fought unseen demons of ravished childhoods. Let the adult within you find grace for him —- if this be you — and celebrate your dad despite the struggles you too may have known.
Gut wrenching for the Smiths from a dozen angles while also displaying a vast array of flowers, tropical, indoor-outdoor whites, greens, shades of purple, yellows, sturdy, strong and luscious, endless developing beauty — reaching for sunlight, proclaiming life and charisma — even within our motherless home.
It’s the early 2000s and Mother’s Day: the boys wake, wander into my room, at least one son is aware of the day given the many things he had to draw, cut, glue and color at school for me, his dad-mom. He’s also performed in “Mother’s Day Bunny” where I was the only dad in attendance. The school’s admirable efforts to include us, or rather efforts to never exclude us, get a little ridiculous but I play along lest some real mother get whiff that my children be faced with the truth that they don’t know their mothers, a reality from which we, in the privacy of our home, have always openly addressed. Blanket strewn over his shoulders and with an inspiring attempt at positivity, he says, “Happy Mama-Day, Dadda,” and I embrace him and then his brother trailing dutifully behind and I leave it at that.
We meander through the morning, sometimes sluggishly, but with momentary caffeine-stirred urges to “make it memorable for the boys.”
At lunch the restaurant tables are packed with girls-and-boys-with-mothers and flowers and gifts piled high with color and sweetness. Octogenarian mothers swoop in to hug multiple generations vying for hug-inclusion as raucous laughter buzzes through the air.
Friends see us and platitudes flow as they do when people don’t know how to talk about loss or abandonment or death while attempting kindness to quell their glaring uneasiness.
“You’re in a better place.”
“God knew your dad could be both.”
“You know it’s extra special to be ‘chosen,’” a mother says to my son as if she’s the first to offer adoption this spin.
I’m uncertain. Should I laugh, cry or lead the boys out the door and flee the overload display of all my boys don’t have?
Instead, we’re three-strand strong, and face it as if nothing can touch the Smith-bulwark.
It’s Mother’s Day and about 2015: my first-born off-handedly reports he’s going to make a gift for his mom and, his car loaded with equipment, he leaves. Mid-afternoon he returns, buries himself in his room to emerge hours later with a 4-or-so minute movie that still blows my mind every time I watch it. I don’t know if his mother ever saw her gift on YouTube but within 24 hours he was interviewed on a local news station and his “letter” had traveled the world. I have a hunch his mother did see it but I know she did not respond. A few years later he reached out very directly to her to be firmly and gently rebuffed.
“Adoption is a very powerful tool,” I whispered into his ear as I tried to comfort my distraught son as he sobbed and sobbed.
“Thank you for the choice you made. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he wrote, time-stamped seconds after his biological mother expressed her wish not to hear from him again. The boy was ashen, disoriented, for days.
Yes. Adoption is a powerful tool.
Rest assured, my boys’ mothers, despite their physical absence, have been more than present in our lives. They are not sitting proud at our all-male out-of-the-way Mother’s Day table, but they are ever-present guests as we steel ourselves for life together.
Nate did not learn his gentleness from me. He did not get his unflappable nature from me. I’ve spent much of my life in a hurry, and, apart from when on sports fields or a basketball court, he’s never rushed a moment in his life, not even when chasing the dog. I didn’t teach him to anticipate when I’m not feeling well and to silently — late in the night — enter my bedroom and place ice water next to my bed in the event I may want it.
I like to think we as a family are generally kind people, but, I tell you, Thulani’s natural kindness cannot be taught, tutored or trained.
He was born kind.
Kindness tumbled down through generations of his kin despite the traumas and brutality they knew. Kindness flowed into my boy from unknown generations like the mother’s milk he never tasted.
My sons’ mothers may not be at the table with us on Mother’s Day but I meet them every day in the beauty with which each of the generous women stamped their claim on the lives of our shared, fabulous sons.
Had I an opportunity to reunite with my sons’ mothers I’d say a deep and welled up “thank you” for the gifts of two magnificent humans with whom I’ve shared the last 25 years. I’d say “thank you” for the bravery it took each woman to make her generous choice.
I salute you, your bravery, your untold story, your capacity to engage in enduring, long-distance and painful, love.
Pivotal moments; defining people, unexpected challenges, undiluted courage — identifying the moments of highest positive return in your life.
What experiences shaped your life in powerful, beneficial ways? Who are the people who turned you around, pointed you in a new and helpful direction? Who was the teacher or coach who restored your confidence when it was shaken?
Please, let me know.
Taking stock on your history and the people who shaped you and the moments that shifted your trajectory is usually a healthy and rewarding exercise.
Richard Morey (RIP) was my English teacher in high school. He took an essay I had written and put red lines through most of it with comments like, “you’re wasting my time” in the margins.
Near the end of my essay he circled a portion and in the margin he wrote: “Do more of this: this will make you a writer!” and so I did.
Frank Graham taught me Afrikaans and knew of my debilitating stutter which I tried most unsuccessfully to hide. While caring and kind, Mr. Graham never backed off, he offered me opportunities to speak like every other student and imparted the idea that I really had something to say.
Fifty countries later traveling as a writer and speaker I have much for which to thank these two fine men.
Things to try for a few days in the hopes will soon see they are life-style habits worthy of developing:
Plan your day.
Plan who you will seek to empower and encourage.
Write (using a pencil and paper) a few ideas as to how you will empower others no matter what your station in life.
Oddly, the more you plan, the more you will allow for a serendipitous life.
Besides, getting yourself ready for a great day will sharpen your eyes to recognize when great days come your way.
Plan your day as if planning a great day is in your power to do so.
Write a few notes to yourself about how much money you will spend, how much you will try to save.
Plan what and whom you will avoid because some things suck the life out of you.
As you plan your day, remind yourself that you are not all-powerful and that things happen to derail the best made plans. This does not mean a plan is not worth making.
Plan your responses to tough or challenging circumstances and situations so that you are unlikely to spend the day in a reactive mode with fight or flight as your defaults. Write a few notes to yourself about what you will or will not say and whom you will and will not engage.
Love is seeking another person’s highest good, every time, day in and day out. It’s holding nothing back if it’s in the highest interests of whomever you love.
Love is being willing to be unpopular because some truth is tough to hear and receive. It is being willing to be corrected by the people you love when they think you are wrong or need correction.
Love is finding legitimate ways to earn the extra money needed to protect and educate and serve the people whom you love.
Love is thousands of loads of laundry for the baby and then toddler and a young boy or girl and then it’s teaching young teenager to do his own.
Love is dealing with men and women who will tell you you are a bad parent for not giving rules and not checking phones or monitoring teenage behavior as if your teenage son or daughter cannot be trusted to exercise good judgment. Their unsolicited scoldings clearly mean they do not trust themselves or their own children.
Love is being committed to telling you the truth as lovingly and as efficiently as possibly.
Love is learning to love and embrace and fully accept the people whom your loved ones love.
“You are free to go,” the nurse said as she unswaddled the newborn Thulani, freed his arm, and with a snip of scissors removed the security bracelet off his wrist.
I took those words to heart, perhaps far beyond the meaning the nurse intended.
Now, 25 years later, in a few days I will attach a Uhaul to our car and T and I will head to South Harlem in New York City. We will unload all his possessions and move them into his apartment and I will head back to Nate and we will all three grow accustomed to the new constitution of our family.
The years have been fabulous and the years have been tough. The years have been dramatically beautiful and frequently brutal.
Thanks be to God.
Grace upon grace.
If you have known Thulani all of his life (perhaps you were at the house when he came home to “215”) or if you know him through Tabernacle Presbyterian Church, Saint Richard’s Episcopal School, Herron High School, or Butler, please send him a goodbye greeting in the comments beneath this posting – or via any other way you may already have to reach him.
Time does not permit the farewell party I really wanted for him but if you’d like to send him a gift it would be really appreciated.
I’d suggest you Venmo or CashApp me – the address is the same for both: “RodSmith9802” and in so doing buy him a meal or two or three to help him during his first few months in NYC.
I am deeply indebted to two men from Tab who went to NYC years ago and who have both provided Thulani with invaluable guidance as he makes this brave move – thank you, you know who you are.
I am further and deeply indebted to all who have helped and played parts in Thulani and Nate (Nate will be 21 in May) becoming the fine men they have become.
I hope I can hold onto myself when the I hug T on the South Harlem sidewalk and whisper, “You are free to go” into his ear and then set my GPS and head for Indy.”
I’m sure that you won’t have to look too far if you want to find people with courage. I run into men and women – and children – with remarkable courage for which they are apparently seldom lauded. I have noticed that the more I listen rather than talk, the more courage and love I encounter.
This week I met a woman who has two jobs and two high school children in her care. She is keeping track of it all with calm and good humor. I met a woman of courage.
I met a man who is facing a life-threatening illness while taking care to visit his wife daily. His wife is in a long-term care facility and has not known who he is for years. I met a man of courage and who knows about love.
A week ago I met a teenager who uses a ride service three times a week to spend time with her aged grandmother. She told me the visits also give her time to perfect her school work and time to apply for bursaries and scholarships to help her pay for the university she’d like to attend when she’s finished high school. I met a teenage girl who knows about courage and love and commitment.
The Mercury / Written and published with permission – I learned a long time ago NOT to write about immediate family (or even distant family) without permission.
On a personal note…
Almost every night I before I go to bed I reduce a handful of greens and fresh fruit into a delicious drink using a powerful juicer or liquidizer. I wash the jugs, clean the blades, and get it all ready for a similar ritual in the morning.
I know I leave the liquidizer plugged in the wall-socket.
Every morning — when the boys were teenagers —. I come downstairs it’s unplugged.
This very slight annoyance grew mostly because it made no sense and because both my sons were asleep when I faced this minor irritation and I’d forget to ask after the day got rolling and my attentions were focused elsewhere.
This week we have all been home in the mornings and so I asked.
Thulani (19) said that of course he unplugged the liquidizer every night as a “safety issue.”
He enlarged:
“Well dad, what if you walked in your sleep, came downstairs, put your hand into the liquidizer, turned it on and you lost your fingers? You won’t be able to play the piano anymore.”
I pointed out that none of us sleepwalks and that I never put my hands into the liquidizer even when awake. He agreed.
I asked if he’d be unplugging the dishwasher and washing machine in case I drowned and I think he said I was being ridiculous.
difficultrelationships.com 