From Retirement to retirement
The message above is a text exchange from last Friday between my cousin and me. It made me feel so good because I aint even know that he read the MML. Then he hits me with a quote from last Dec [Dec 23rd, 2019 to be exact], AND a quote from Rob Hill Sr. I mean damn, this pierced me on so many levels. But what made this exchange even more special was that Friday was also his dad’s birthday, my favorite uncle...
Uncle Allan is the first child for Grandma Rosie. He is the first boy and the first of eleven. My mom, my north star, is the first girl, and the second of eleven. They have an inseparable bond. My mom raised me as a single mother, and as such Uncle Allan was also the first real father figure in my life. And Al, or Albert as Uncle Allan affectionately calls him, is six months older than me. We too have an inseparable bond. He’s essentially a big brother.
I called Uncle Allan on Saturday to wish him a happy birthday, he turned sixty-nine. He’d just gotten back from a trip to Jamaica. He opined on his fears traveling during a pandemic and how people in Jamaica are dealing with Covid. He articulated that it was nice spending time with Grandma, Mas Dad, and his siblings. He told me that Grandma turns eighty something this December and though Mas Dad is blind, he still tends to his garden daily—the simple pleasures in life enough to keep him sustained.
He then revealed that we were supposed to have a family reunion this year—the first I’d heard that. Yet, that’s what compelled me to write. I remember my mom calling me out in high school (and even college) as there were times she thought that I was embarrassed of my family. I was. It was a struggle attending affluent institutions like Hackley and Amherst, feeling imposter syndrome, and fearing, that I would be exposed as an outsider, who didn’t belong. I felt like that line in Hamilton, “I asked about his family, did you see his answer? His hands started fidgeting, he looked askance. He’s penniless, he’s flying by the seat of his pants...” There were times where holidays were tough because my friends were taking cool trips, and I was going home...
And looking back, I think it was a confluence of people: Bob G (an incredible man), my therapist at Amherst (I can’t remember her name), and some of the best friends in the world that truly helped me love myself. I could go on all day about the teachers and “mentors” that saw something in me that I didn’t, which gave me a chance and even allowed me to fail (as we all do), but that’s a blog post for another time...
The truth remains that my family has had unconditional love for me, and Uncle Allan, in particular, has always been a rock. Uncle Allan, Al, and that blue house on Upper Croton, were such massive parts of my formative years, my upbringing, and helped me become the man that I am. I’ve taken that “embarrassment” I once felt about my family and our history (a history that I am still discovering) and shifted the narrative to ensure that we get to tell our own story.
So much of why Uncle Allan and my mom worked as hard as they did to provide for me, and my cousins, is because growing up in Jamaica shit was different. Those stories that some parents joke about, walking miles to school with no shoes on their feet—that’s real life in my family. My Uncle Allan had to teach himself to read—he could tell you all there is to know about Alton Ellis and Muhammad Ali. My Uncle Allan came to the US and sent money home to Jamaica to ensure that four of his five kids could come “a foreign” for an opportunity at a better life. My Uncle Allan had to learn about masculinity and being a man on his own.
My Grandma Rosie, who I adore, is illiterate, and in 2020 still doesn’t have running water. But again, that’s why I wanted to write this. My family is who I am. My family is what has allowed me to grind and stay focused on whom I’m building for. Don’t get me wrong, I like accolades, I like attention, I like making money, but that’s not what I’m chasing. Those are signposts along the journey because I truly realize that as Ernest Hemingway wrote, “We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in.” But it’s talking to older folk, and in this case Uncle Allan, who helped me realize what I’m really playing for.
This could be a novel, but I’m trying to keep it a blog post, ha! Listening to Uncle Allan tell stories of years past in Jamaica has always been one of my favorite pastimes. And this was made stronger contextually as Al texted me about the MML on Friday. The MML is truly cathartic, it helps me change my perspective and stay focused. Given the responses I’ve received over the years, I’m happy others are moved by the quotes, and I pray some will be moved positively by my own words.
As I was editing the penultimate draft, Jamaica Kincaid’s words (from an interview with Marilyn Snell) popped into my head, “For me, writing isn’t a way of being public or private; it’s just a way of being. The process is always full of pain, but I like that. It’s a reality, and I just accept it as something not to be avoided. This is the life I have. This is the life I write about.” Writing, to me, has been about mending, what my brother told me, “requires acknowledgement and humbleness, but most of all forgiveness.”
Now Albert has a beautiful baby girl, Ari. And I’m excited to see how he and Amy raise her, sharing lessons we were all taught from Uncle Allan. Don’t worry Grandma, we got you. We got us.
For context the full Rob Hill Sr. quote...
“As you grow, the way you relate to those you love may evolve. Not everybody is built to handle the rough times with you, few people understand what it means to really be there for somebody...And that’s the unsettling part about being on a journey...You always have to move forward, but you don’t always get to choose who goes with you. People make promises when the sun is shining and make excuses when the storm comes. That’s why I’m always thankful for the rain, it washes away the unnecessary. Time has a way of changing even the strongest of feelings, especially when you choose to see the truth for all the it is.”