Deny my father, deny myself?
THE
MORTUARY attendant says our father’s body is misplaced.
It’s
been three days since he died. My eldest sister and I are “chinning up,” trying
to organise everything without going into full-on grief mode. In that stasis
place of emotional suppression, it takes time before we can manage any sort of
reaction.
 |
| Parent and child; but some can't believe |
The
young, brown, Afro-Trinbagonian woman, literally wringing her hands, describes,
“It’s a little Indian man!”
At
which point my sis and I smile despite it all. We are returned to a place we
know, having faced it often, of being called upon to explain our father is our father. The world is normal for a
moment, and our Daddy’s sense of humour, passed on to us all, would appreciate
the mirth in this mix-up.
“Yes,
that’s our dad,” we say.
Miscegenation
makes a magic show out of genetics. To the point that, depending on which
parent you are seen with, people muse, silently or not, “How did that come out of there?”
It’s
like on TV’s Terra Nova, when a
critic found it unbelievable to think that such a son could have come from such
a mother. The mother character, Dr. Shannon, is played by Indian actress
Shelley Conn; the son by Caucasian Landon Liboiron.
Black and blended
There
are still people who have no clue what mixing genes can do. Look at US
President Barack Obama and his mother.
Persons
who do not themselves have mixed ancestry, or who do not have friends or
acquaintances who come from or have mixed families, find it hard to fathom that
real familial love can exist between kinfolk who look so different.
 |
| Family resemblance, the only license to love? |
They’ve
asked my eldest sister and me if we have the same father. She’s light and I’m
dark, and that somehow completely prevents some people from seeing we both look
like our mom, and have the signature “Stanley mouth” of my father’s father,
that gets us and our other siblings identified by people who knew him, even
without us saying a word.
Some
people have even tried to get me to deny my father, actually insisting I “must
put aside association” with my Indian-Spanish-Portuguese ancestry from my
father’s side … and basically pretend my father isn’t my father.
Well
I absolutely did that for about two years in my early twenties. I was on an
Afro-centric tip and heartily pushed aside any connection with my father’s
ancestor peoples and most of my mother’s as well. I couldn’t see that I wasn’t practicing
African pride in myself, but blatant racism and bigotry, even against my own
flesh and blood.
That,
according to some who spurred me on, was going to make me a better, more “whole”
person.
One
day, my gentle, sweet mother whispered, “You’re hurting your father.”
Yes.
I was. I was denying the good, loving man who had never denied me. So I stopped
doing that s**t!
 |
| So like my parents when they fell in love |
Much of it is formed by factors and forces in the world pulling us apart. When
we let in the dictates of people who do not love us, like up, respect us,
understand us, even accept us a human beings, of course we get, then act,
confused.
Much
of our ability to self-love comes from the kind of love we had from our family.
I was wholly loved, nurtured, encouraged to grow right and strong by two people
who loved each other, then loved their children.
My
parents, their love and their loving made me. And that is an undeniable fact.
No comments:
Post a Comment