I come from a family of storytellers. I wasn’t aware of the depth of our storytelling potential until I sat down with my stepchildren and my two brothers. We are a complicated and complex blend of relationships and backgrounds. Initially I may have assumed that I was the linchpin connecting us together, but I’ve come to appreciate the many and quite disparate narrative strands that we all carry, which when woven together, create an unbreakable bond.

Families rarely, if ever, truly sit down to share their stories and their feelings about their interconnected relationships. Sometimes, there is a keeper and/or documentarian of the family line or an elder who assumes the role of griot, to make sure knowledge of the line doesn’t fade away. But, more often than not, no one takes on these responsibilities, at least not formally and as older generations pass on, too much gets lost.

I recently submitted a DNA sample to 23&Me. Delving into the known (and accepted) stories from my family convinced me that it was time to explore the deeply buried roots of what I always thought was a rather paltry family tree. Part of the information I added to my profile was a list of names from our line that might be useful in making comparisons and forging connections with new discoveries which resulted from second and third diasporic pathways upon our arrival in this new world.

I’m taking a bit of inspiration from that process with this essay. The stories that will emerge here come from the Clinkscales / Stern-Enzi / Adams / Burgin family. So, settle in a remixed sample of stories that hint at a lifetime of love.

STEP ONE

James Blake – Radio Silence

            I can’t believe that you don’t want to see me / There’s a radio silence going on / I can’t believe that you don’t want to see me / I don’t know how you feel

Mic Adams is my stepson. Mic was seven years old when I married his mother. At the time, Mic presented as female, but we all remember conversations and situations that let us know there was more to Mic than what was present and presented to the world. He’s a musician – the drummer for The Ophelias and making his own music under the moniker Stay Mad – and a passionate advocate for unhoused and inadequately housed people as well as kids struggling with transitioning. He’s an amazing person who I appreciate having in my life.

Our conversation dives right into the deepest of waters: Mic’s relationship with his father. Throughout my time as a stepparent, I’ve avoided the subject of my kids’ father. Unlike my own, he was actively involved in their lives early on, before dreaded complications demanded breaks in the connection, a severing that remains largely in effect.

So where do things currently stand?

            He texts me things now that he wouldn’t have sent me as a girl. (And in a way) I’m almost glad he doesn’t know me as Mic, because he already affected my view of masculinity, even before I was presenting as a guy and I feel like he would have leaned into it even more. I feel like I avoided these weird toxic masculinity initiations, because he didn’t think he had to do that with me. I’m almost glad that I avoided that.

            I feel like when I was first presenting as a guy, I had to pull from any example of masculinity that I had, which was him from my childhood and you and then random celebrity figures. And the toxic stuff was coming from him. When I was first presenting, all of this ingrained misogyny, which everybody has (been exposed to), becomes surface level. It’s not deep-seated anymore. I had to confront some weird ideologies I had about gender and about masculinity. I feel like thinking about him made me wonder if that was what being masculine was about. But I think having you was a counterexample of what masculinity is.

Hearing this made me think about how I found people to help sculpt what masculinity meant to me? Outside the few older uncles I had in my life, who were not a regular part of my everyday life, I suppose I relied on the fathers of my friends; the most prominent being my buddy Dave’s Dad. From the time I turned 11 and fell in with my crew, Dave’s house was like a second home. This was back in the 1980s and Dave’s family had cable and a VCR. His house was big enough to accommodate a gaggle of geeky pre-teen/teenage boys who wanted to play games (everything from Dungeons & Dragons to Risk and Monopoly) and watch movies.

Dave’s Dad introduced us to what felt like the most random assortment of films – I watched my first of many Woody Allen films at Casa Chernomas – but I kept my eyes on Mr. Chernomas. From dinners with the family to summer hikes along the Blue Ridge Parkway, he wasn’t always available for gatherings, but because the crew spent so much time hanging around, there weren’t many days we didn’t see Mr. Chernomas.

He wasn’t the kind of parent I was used to; their family was more boisterous and allowed the children to challenge parental authority more than how I was raised, but their lives together, outside the crew, felt like the kind of story that would make for a raucous sit-com in today’s landscape. Nothing, of course, that would play back in the day.

Mr. Chernomas, as a father, was quirky, more so than playful, in a way that just didn’t quite compute for me.

            I think, as a kid, everyone made a big deal about you using women’s lotion (Bath & Body Works). And I was like, ‘why does anyone care what lotion he’s using?’  But you didn’t care and it seemed like a fun thing. I had never seen a guy do that before. My dad never did that. He didn’t use lotion as far as I knew, so it began as little things like that. It was like, ‘he’s playful with gender,’ but as I got older it became bigger things. Like you aren’t aggressive. I mean you can be assertive, and you can be very sincere and it’s not like you can’t be an imposing presence, but I feel like you don’t try to make the space yours.

            A lot of toxic masculinity is about coming in a space and trying to control it. You are just a very reflective guy and you contribute when it’s appropriate. I think that was really important for me. I mean you can be an annoying person, like why is this guy talking so much. (Usually when chastising the kids when they were young.) And you played with us physically too. You would tie Lily to chairs for fun, but we knew that we were playing with you. It wasn’t something that happened to us. And it was the adult thing like you want to be able to play with someone, but you also want to know you can rely on this person. And it was noticing your presence in a group setting. You don’t have to be overbearing to be masculine.

Right from the beginning of my relationship with Al Burgin, my stepfather, I felt the same way about him. He didn’t push or overly assert himself. He let me take the lead, which was different because I was an adult when he came into my life. I was 19 when my mother introduced me to him and 20 when they got married. I was in college, painting the house I was living in with my five roommate the day of their wedding. I didn’t come to Cincinnati for it, but at the anointed time, my roommates and I stopped what we were doing and quietly celebrated the moment. Our break probably included a beer toast before we got back to work.

One of the first things I remember about him was how he allowed me to figure out what I wanted to call him. Being raised by Southern Black women, there was no way I was going to call him by his first name. ‘Mr. Burgin’ felt too formal and ‘Dad’ wasn’t right either. I was too old to start calling someone ‘Dad’ like that. But he reminded me of Pops Staples. He had a big open, smiling face and an engaging musicality to how he talked and related to people. He was the ultimate people person. It felt like he had time for everyone.

            Masculinity is about respect and showing respect to other people. You made it about your relations to other people.

The Southern gentlemanly way of walking on the outside when with women. I learned that from my grandmother and sort of passed it down to Mic. It was a lesson in masculinity from the women in my life, but I saw it in Pops too. And there was also a sense of caring and expressing emotion that I never directly linked to Pops in the beginning. I remember him crying, not often, but enough to recognize he wasn’t afraid of being vulnerable.

The kids, both of them, were with me when I lost both my best friend Rich and Pops and they cared for me when I cried. When I got the news about Rich, I had a couple of days when a thought or a song would remind me of him and that would trigger the waterworks. I remember sitting on the couch, on the verge of another crying spell, and Mic came over, plopped down next to me, and just threw an arm around me. I’m not sure if it made me cry more, but I felt protected in that moment.

Years later, Lily did the same thing for me when Pops died. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, tears starting to stream out of me, and Lily wrapped me up in the sweetest embrace. I felt loved.

            I feel like, with my dad, I saw him cry a lot more, but it was manipulative. He would cry in situations where he wanted me to feel bad for him. So that was a weird relationship to crying. It was like crying was being used to get me to do something and I could sense that. It was placing significance on moments when men cry. But with you, it was just crying.

Crying and affection go hand-in-hand. I didn’t know what to do the first time Pops hugged and kissed me. It wasn’t that it felt wrong, just unfamiliar. My mother, my grandmother, and all of my aunties always hugged and kissed me. I knew they loved me. I’m not sure I ever thought about needing, wanting, or getting this kind of love from men.

            I feel that way about everyone (when it comes to affection). I don’t kiss Mom or Grandma. I don’t kiss anyone. But I grew up with people kissing me. It was a thing that I didn’t particularly enjoy. They’re gonna do the thing. I place this weird significance on affection and its tied to emotions. I do think it’s important to cross that emotional/physical barrier when it’s not dramatic.

There’s a life lesson to pass along to Mic. Cancer has forced me to be intentional. I practice a new thing – the long hug with Jess. We try, each day, to give each other these long (30 second) hugs. The time matters because at a certain point, it’s about being completely in the moment with someone. You should recognize that need for contact and do it with those important people in your life. I see and experience a similar feeling when I fist-bumping the guys before playing basketball during my regular game every Wednesday.

            That’s such a masculine thing. Women don’t do that. It’s this weird physical/emotional boundary that’s tied up with respect. Women don’t have to be conscious of it. I wish I was more affectionate. It feels like something I’m compelled to do.

It was easier to hug Lily. I always sensed a little divide with Mic. I could respect that boundary for Mic and it plays out now as we’re in this conversation, but nothing should be implied about people and relationships. Make the implicit explicit.

Meshell Ndegeocello – Make Me Wanna Holler

            My child will one day ask me / What will I be? / As a child I promised myself / I’d never be / Like my mother or my father / I would ask myself / ‘Did he feel so much pain / That it would make him wanna hurt another?’

Lily Adams was four years old when I married Jess. We have a running joke in our family that Mic is his mother’s child and Lily is mine. There’s a bond that didn’t even need time to grow. It was immediate. Lily would have fit in perfectly with my crew from back in the day. Games provided a seemingly infinite landscape for us to wander around and explore like the intrepid warriors we are. Lily’s the most competitive person I know (along with being a horribly sore loser). That’s a character trait I love (only in Lily though).

What does a child that young remember?

            Probably Ghost Tag. Probably you babysitting us. You tying me up in my own clothes.

Wrestling with Lily, that’s what comes to mind for me. Right away, there was this sense that this kid never wanted to lose. I would playfully pin them down or tie them up and whenever I was ready to ease up, to let them go (thinking the game was won), Lily would pop right back up, ready for more. Always.

            I remember being at Guardian Angels (the Catholic Church and school that was, in effect, in our backyard in Mt. Washington) and I had done something bad. You were lecturing me. I remember after basketball, going to get green tea lemonade. Coffee Emporium. Definitely Big Apple Bagels.

That was during the bat mitzvah phase, when Lily – the family rebel – decided they wanted to embrace their Jewish identity, which was a challenge considering their mother’s family are non-religious cultural Jews. Finding a temple with a more universalist perspective (less focused on God and religion) led to a commitment on Lily’s part to studying and preparing for the ceremony, which fed into Lily’s indominable spirit. Once a challenge has been accepted, there was no quit. Ever.

Most of the time, during the week, I picked Lily up from school and drove them to temple for study. Along the way, we either stopped at Big Apple Bagels for a snack or we popped into the closest Starbucks for green tea lemonades.

            The father-daughter dance. That was dramatic; I remember. A lot of it revolves around food.

This list of memories from Lily is so much more than a simple recitation of events. Each one is a lifetime’s worth of stories, demanding to be told. As much as I want to claim these moments for myself, I know they belong to them more. They are dishes laid out before us and I’m glad to be at this table, sharing them with Lily.

Unfortunately, someone’s missing from this gathering and I ask about him.

            High school graduation (the last time Lily talked to their father). I don’t talk to that man anymore. I don’t need him. He never served me.

I don’t want to include the bad memories here. Both for Lily and, in some ways, for their father. This isn’t supposed to be his story, but sadly he factors into a lot of negativity for the kids. And Lily has the much stronger, more definitive approach to dealing with him. Just cutting him off and out of their life.

That is a choice that feels powerful to me. I didn’t choose to exclude my father from my life. I didn’t actively seek someone else to replace him. But Lily has done that, in ways that far exceed even Mic. That’s just who Lily is and it seems to serve them well. The use of the word ‘serve’ hits like a tight fist in an aged leather glove. It bruises the surface and breaks the bone underneath. I sometimes wish I could be as decisive. I believe I am, but with Lily, it feels like a superpower.

Despite wanting to maintain a degree of separation, Lily’s story feels more like my story.

            Dealing with the mental health stuff recently. I realize this comes from him.

I know that Lily’s not interested in talking about their father. That’s why the responses are concise, with the snap, again of a punch. That’s how I looked at my father, especially when it came to our underlying health issues. The prostate concerns come from him. You can’t change it. There’s no reason to be mad about it. You take what you’ve got and try to be better about it.

Will that change for them, one day? Will their father become ‘embraceable’ again?

            It’s been funny, meeting on all these dates and revealing my last name, ‘it’s Adams,’ and then I talk about how you guys last name is Stern-Enzi and each one of my dates wonders why that’s not my last name. And I’m like, good question.

Is Stern-Enzi the name that Lily should carry forth? Being intentional is what matters more. We would be happy to have a third Stern-Enzi in the world, but I have never wanted them to erase their father from their line.

And yet, that’s what I did when I married Jess. Clinkscales to Stern-Enzi.

            I’ve always said (you’re) my dad. I’ve never explained that you’re Black. I let people figure it out. When they see you, and then look at me, I can tell they’re trying to see if I’m mixed. I just let them figure it out, because it’s not that hard. I feel like we have to say that (that you’re my stepdad) to not have people be confused. But it’s not that hard to piece it together.

            I think it’s funny that I liked you as soon as you came into our lives and Mic had trouble, but I just remember being excited because you were fun. Like dancing at the wedding. And I remember Mom being happy, so of course I liked you.

Jess’s approach to life was different because she had children. I liked that she was focused on her children. It meant waiting to be introduced, being intentional. The timing had to be right, but I looked forward to meeting them both. Jess and my mom were single mothers.

            Do you think it would have been different if she didn’t have us?

What do you think, Pops?

STEP TWO

Sade – You’re Not the Man

            He was everything you see / He made me believe in me / Said he’d always, always, always be here

Kwasi Solomon Zhandli Burgin is my baby brother. I am 29 years older than him, which places him in-between my children (he’s six month younger than Mic). He’s part of the reason I moved to Cincinnati in the first place. I was supposed to be his legal guardian, in case anything happened to our parents. He had a number of health issues as a baby and I’m grateful I was able to be around to help our parents during that phase. I also wanted him to see and know me, despite the huge age gap, as nothing more than his brother.

His memories intrigue me. Before now, I’ve never asked him much about what he remembers. I dig deep right away, asking him not about me or Pops, but Wilbur Jackson, our (step)grandfather who was still alive when he was a baby.

            I faintly remember going to his house on Sundays. I would sit in his lap and play with his snow globes. Other than that Sunday family time, I don’t remember much more.

My favorite memory from this time involves the three of us (me, Kwasi and Pops) going over to visit Wilbur and watching golf one Sunday afternoon. It was during a major tournament and Tiger Woods was on his way to claiming another title. We sat in Wilbur’s bedroom – Kwasi definitely was on Wilbur’s lap – watching the final hole, the sunken putt and the fist pump. Four generations of Black men experiencing something that some of us never imagined would ever happen. Kwasi would live through even more moments like this. Wilbur, sadly, would not.

            One of my earliest memories of Dad…There’s kind of two versions of Dad. It’s pre-stroke and post-stroke for me. My first memories of him, pre-stroke, would be him taking me on drives. He would be at work the majority of the day, I would get back from school and he would be coming home from work, maybe an hour later, and always would take me out for a drive. Either he had time or had somewhere to go, but he would take me along. A lot of times we wouldn’t even go anywhere. He would drive around the block, just driving and talking. That’s one of my first earliest memories of him.

            And then there’s the post-stroke memories too. I guess my first memories of him post-stroke, because that’s really the Dad I remember the most, was him always attempting to be present with me. Sometimes he was bedridden, he wouldn’t feel like getting out of bed, but if I came in and wanted to play something, he would try his best. I remember playing baseball with him in his room. I would make a ball with paper and tape, then get some paper towel rolls, put two of them together and make a makeshift bat and we would play baseball.

I remember doing this as a kid by myself. Of course, being careful to not knock anything over or break anything that my mother and grandmother would see and get on me about, but that’s such a strong touchstone for me. I love that Kwasi did this with Pops.

            Pre-stroke or post-stroke, if he saw somebody on the side of the road, he was going to talk to them. If you were in his proximity, he was going to try to have a conversation with you. It didn’t matter who you were, if you stopped, he was going to talk to you. That’s what I saw (him do) while growing up. I would ask him who that was and he would say, I don’t know. I just wanted to talk to them, so I did.

Pops used to visit me when I lived in Philly. He would sit in front of my building in a director’s chair and greet people on the street, anybody and everybody. There were no strangers to that man. None. Weeks after his visits, people would come up to me and ask me about him. How’s your Dad? When’s he coming back? People from all walks of life. It didn’t matter.

But there was something deeper to his interactions with others. One time, early in my Cincinnati years while I was still living with my parents, I went with Pops to vote in the primaries. We stood in a long line, bantering back and forth about nothing too important, but we heard a guy behind us start making homophobic comments. Right off, Pops and I locked eyes. It was one of those moments where I felt myself getting riled up, but I couldn’t figure out what to say to either cut the comments off or step up in a more aggressive way. We’ve all found ourselves in situations like this, where you want to be able to make the right pithy comment that defuses the tension and scores a decisive win, in terms of putting the person in their place over the issue.

While I was rummaging around through my writer’s brain for the perfect line, Pops turned around and calmly told the guy to stop talking such foolishness. He let him know it was rude and folks around him weren’t interested in hearing it. The thing is though he didn’t do it in a demeaning way. He was as polite and respectful as could be, so much so that he convinced this guy to apologize to everyone within earshot.

            Pre-stroke, post-stroke, he always tried to listen to any crazy thing or idea that came out of my mouth. And he would validate it. He would validate my feelings in the moment. He would make me feel at ease, as a parent and I think that’s definitely one thing I will try to carry over if I ever have kids. Not to give them passes or be easy on them, but just to listen and hear them out. To get their side of the story. Really validate their feelings, even if they’re wrong. ‘I hear you, I know what’s going on. That’s your side. That’s how you feel.’

            And then just effort. I had a really great relationship with Dad, but not out doing things. Post-stroke he couldn’t do a lot of things, but he always tried. That’s the one thing that I saw and always commended him for. For my generation, I always heard, you don’t have a daddy, but (for me) he was there. He was present. And he would try. Lots of (my friends’) parents wouldn’t give as much effort as him post-stroke, in my opinion. Raising my own kids, I’m going to give as much effort as I can to make them holistic people who are able to go out and do something in the world.

It is fascinating how close Kwasi and I are, despite the 29 years between us. I felt exactly the same way, especially as a kid growing up in the late-1970s/early 1980s. This was always a huge topic of discussion on the news (pre-social media).

The nightly network newscasts seemingly talked on a weekly basis about the pathetic state of affairs for the Black family and young Black men, in particular. We were considered both societal problems and (albeit still quite guilty) victims of a world we weren’t prepared to enter in civilized and successful ways.

I was told in the most blunt and specific means that I was racing to enter the criminal justice system (complete with long-term incarceration as the prize) or lining up for a prime piece of real estate six feet under. There was no point in thinking about life on the outside after 25.

I was nowhere near that kind of outcome, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t carrying the burden of those expectations. I was that young Black man being raised by a single mother who had never even met his father. Nothing else I did would overcompensate for the deficits I faced from the onset of the game.

Why was I surprised that nothing about those expectations had changed in the time between us? I remember my mother and my grandmother having ‘the talk’ with me, about how to conduct myself around the police and other authorities to protect my life, this life and these stories I’m able to share now. My mother, of course, had the same conversation with Kwasi when he came of age.

Right or wrong, I made a point of having that conversation with Mic (pre-transition) when we, as a family, were watching the non-stop news coverage of Trayvon Martin. I wanted both Mic and Lily to understand how close this reality was to them, even if it would never directly impact them in the same way. I hammered home the idea that my mother was talking to Kwasi about this, about how he would need to handle himself in order to give himself the chance to walk away from a situation like this, just as she had done with me.

I realized too that I was in some ways preparing them for the possibility that I, even at my advanced age, could be lost in a situation like this. After Trayvon, we watched the escalation of these narratives as they claimed the lives of not just 17–25-year-old Black boys and men, but Black men of all ages.

I didn’t want to just be a symbol or a role model in their lives; I wanted to be in their lives and I wanted them to understand the daily struggle to do so.

            I don’t have models for fatherhood (in the media) besides Dad. I didn’t have a TV dad or anything like that, as a Black father. I watched shows, but never felt a fatherly connection with any of them. Growing up, it was just Dad. Maybe it was because I never tried looking too hard for it. I had my father. My generation’s version of this was probably Fresh Prince with Uncle Phil. He was a model of a Black dad, but I didn’t see him that way.

What were my first memories of Pops?

This came up both here and when I talked to Lily. How was it that the two youngest members of our family didn’t know how Pops met my mom. That was the meet-cute of all meet-cutes that would never end up on anyone else’s big screen.

Pops and my mom saw each other during the summer of 1988 in Asheville. It was during the annual Goombay street festival, which celebrated the African diaspora and its multi-faceted cultural richness. My mom worked and/or volunteered each year. It was part of the fabric of downtown summer life, although it wasn’t as recognized as a truly unifying citywide event. It belonged to the Black community on Eagle Street, which was our space.

That first year, the two of them saw each other, but didn’t speak. Whatever happened when their eyes locked as enough to inspire them to ask around for details about the other, but the Goombay came and went with no real follow-up.

The next year, at the very same time, they found themselves back together in Asheville. The difference this year was that I was around, hobbled after my subway accident – having suffered a couple of breaks in my jawbone, my left wrist and my left ankle. Somewhere along the way, Pops and my mom met, and then she introduced me to him. It was quick and casual. He joked about the state I was in, in a good-natured way and seemingly that was that.

It wasn’t until my mother was driving me back to Philadelphia for the start of my junior year at Penn that I realized there was more to Al Burgin. He was with us during that car ride and he’s still here now, in eternal syndication.

Toni Childs – I Met a Man

            I heard a music in me / I heard a sound inside / I heard a man remind me / Of what lives inside

Marsalis Burgin is my stepbrother, Pops’ son from a previous relationship before he met and married my mother. Of all the relationships documented here, ours is the most complex. He’s been in my life almost as long as Pops, yet not really. If being a grown man when Pops came into my life defined our relationship, then being grown while Marsalis was just a kid meant there was a greater divide, along with him living with his mother.

Pops (and by extension, all of us) was involved in Marsalis’s life. Pops saw him often. Pops’ parents, Katherine and Wilbur spent time with him, as grandparents would, especially during the summers. My mother has always been a presence in his life too.

But, early on, I only saw Marsalis when I came home to visit and Pops would take me to his games. He played every sport, so whatever season was in play, he was always busy, on a field or court. As soon as Pops would ask, I found myself sliding into the passenger seat next to him, on my way to see Marsalis.

I’m not sure what I thought about our connection. All that seemed to matter was that Pops was his father.

            Fatherhood is…everything to me. It’s who I am. I’m becoming better at it every day. I don’t get it right all the time. It’s my motivation. The important part is…to be open to it. Fathers apologize later in life, saying I didn’t get it right, so I’m sorry or wait, let me make sure to get it right. A lot of the things I do with my kids are very thought out; everything is thought out. I think about it in silence, to myself, because I understand that the representation is not just to me.

Fatherhood is not about us as fathers. It’s about our kids and what we mean (or might come to mean) to them. Early in my marriage to Jess, we agreed that she would be the disciplinarian, the hammer. It made sense in a lot of ways. Not only because Mic and Lily were her children, but we came from such different family and cultural backgrounds. We would need to figure out how to meld our approaches into a new meaningful whole that belonged to us.

Each child needs and requires a different approach and in my case, I needed to appreciate that just because I would eventually have the opportunity to swing the hammer, I had to realize that not everything is a nail, right?

That’s part of fatherhood.

            I love it. I love the challenge of it. I know the reward in the end. I can see it. I don’t know the in-between. I constantly talk to them about their future, about where they’re going and what they want to do. My job is to steer them in that direction. I didn’t have that from my dad and it’s such an important piece.

            Because I didn’t know him, at this age, my dad had me in his late 50s/early 60s. I’ll be a totally different person at that age. I’ll be enjoying life much differently than I am right now. In my twenties, I started thinking about my father, wondering who he was, because I was thinking about who I was. I remember riding around with him (as a child) and he was a cool guy.

Everybody loved him. He was smooth. He was happy. Everybody talked to him. Sharp dresser. He had the gift of gab, a real talker. He was, all around, just the guy. I saw a picture of him in his twenties and it was so eye-opening for me, because he looked like me and I had never seen that before. That was the start of me wanting to figure out who he was. People who had their parents together in the house, they take that for granted. My mom, yeah, our features, yeah. But that male figure, I hadn’t seen it. 

I see Pops in him all the time now. It weirds me out. We play basketball together most weeks on Wednesdays. I convinced him to join the weekly game while we were all helping my mom take care of Pops towards the end of his life. We were spending time with Pops, but along the way, Kwasi, Marsalis and I began to get together on our own.

And when we would convene for a meal around birthdays or Father’s Day, with all of us there, Pops seemed stronger among us. That remains now that he’s gone. On the court, I catch a fleeting glimpse of him in the smile on Marsalis’s face after he sinks a three-pointer or the look in his eye when we’re waiting for the guys to finish arguing about a call. I’m drawn to him and his demeanor because that’s where Pops lives and breathes.

            As I got older, I realized he didn’t have a lot of care. Not in a bad way. There’s freedom in that. Him and older people like him, they live longer without caring too much. He did what he wanted to do.

Lots of our memories of Pops start with being in the car with him. I got a full-on road trip with him early on. After my accident, I got a little settlement money, so I came home and bought a car. I was still rehabbing my body and eager to get back to playing intramural basketball. My mom wasn’t sure I was ready to push myself like that. Pops offered to drive back to Philly with me, so I took advantage of the opening to strike up a deal. Pops could come to my first intramural game to evaluate me and report back to my mom.

Not only was it time in the car, which was funny because he drove the entire way. It was what he did for a living and the ride was easy and so smooth, just like him. Besides the ride, I remember feeling like I was playing for him. I had never had a man who was part of my life watch me play a sport. My mother, a lifelong basketball fan, had never seen me play. I played well, more than enough to convince my mother it was alright for me to resume what would turn out to be a new normal in my collegiate life.

I used to wonder if Marsalis felt that way when we came to his games, starting just a few years later. I asked him and was confounded when he admitted to not remembering us being there at all. He said maybe one game, when he was in elementary school. And that was just Pops.

How strange. What did he see and remember?

            In my twenties, and him being in his 60s, but more mobile. Me being able to see myself in him. It was that role model. When you’re growing up, in school and we would get asked questions about who you wanted to be, mine was somebody on TV. Now if you ask my son who he wants to be, he’s going to say me. He says it all the time. He calls me ‘twin.’ I wish I had that relationship with my father. I didn’t have that.

Kwasi had a different relationship with Pops. The one Marsalis and I wish we had.

            It’s a disconnect. It wasn’t every day. I remember holidays. I would go over to see him in the mornings and then back to my mom for the rest of the day. I never faulted him for it, nothing like that, because he was around. It was just a disconnect in terms of knowing me and who I was. I have a lot of celebrities that I looked up to.

Like who? (Asks the film critic.)

            My parenting hero, the one I quoted, if you know me, it played a major part in my life, it was The Cosby Show. Cliff Huxtable was that. I wanted that. Fathers had to be stern, but he reminded me of Dad. You could be direct and make a lot of sense, but not hard. You could be an example, being the best version of yourself. I have the whole series on DVD. I know it all like the back of my hand.

I have such a complex relationship with the idea of Bill Cosby. Back in the day, after I graduated from college, I ended up going through several contestant qualification rounds before earning the chance to appear on You Bet Your Life, Cosby’s remake/update of the Groucho Marx game show. I was an Employment Training Specialist, supporting people with disabilities. Cosby saw that mentioned on the bio card his staff had prepared for me and asked me what it meant. I told him I would learn a job, then serve as a coach for a person with a disability as I taught them to do said job. He was intrigued enough to start the show over and let me be him, as if I were going to train someone to take over his role as host of the game show. I took full advantage of the opportunity to be Bill Cosby for a few minutes.

I rarely get to talk about that experience now, because of what Bill Cosby has become. Yet, even now, writing this down, none of what we know about him matters to me. When I think of him and that time onstage, I think of Pops. Marsalis will probably do this too. Kwasi didn’t have celebrity figures as role models. He had Pops.

I think Pops would be happy with all three of us. I don’t know that for a fact, but I believe it. I feel like he told each of us, in whatever ways we needed to hear it.

            I think so, one hundred percent. You know, I asked him that, because I yearned and searched for it for so long. It was my whole being. I want to be a great dad and I want to be a great son too. I appreciate everybody in my life who helped me, guided me. My mom and dad, my brothers, my aunts, my uncles, my stepparents. I want to make them all proud. But yeah, I asked him. I have those moments with my son, a lot, because he’s younger and it’s so important for him to know that he makes me proud. My mom told me all the time. But I asked him, just to know. And he had his own way of saying it, but some people need to know more directly. You may think you’re getting that across, but if the person doesn’t take it that way then…so it’s important to say it plain. That’s huge.

            When we were spending that time with him (near the end), you know sitting and talking. I thought about that with him (Pops). He didn’t have a father either. So how did he figure it out?

THE THIRD (MISSING) STEP

Bobby McFerrin – Freedom is a Voice

            Freedom is a voice / Freedom is a song / Freedom is a spirit / For the people who are strong

            Freedom is a city / Freedom is a land / Freedom is the courage / To take another hand

There are two steps here that are clearly defined; at least as clear as the stories we were able to articulate. Pops and I stepped into the lives of others and have done the best we could to embody something about being a father (when my biological…you know the rest, right? If not, check out They Reminisce Over You) and far more impactfully, about being men.

Two Black men. But there was a third. Wilbur Jackson was there for Pops and now he and Pops are no longer among the living, but through those of us who remain, those who have memories (or at the very least, impressions) of Wilbur and those who never met him, maybe we know more than we could ever articulate about Wilbur.

Because he stepped in too.

Stepping In (To Fatherhood) received one of ArtsWave’s 2024 Black and Brown Artist project grants, with support from the City of Cincinnati, Duke Energy, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Fifth Third Bank, Greater Cincinnati Foundation, Macy’s, Walter C. Frank, and Peter and Betsy Niehoff.