#black dads

[jadiah]

[iluvjuicybooty]

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

[t-hiswifey]

[konanigari]

[luvmesumus]

[alexdrogers]

elon + ej photographed by @alexdrogers

[bruthablack]

Happy Father's day!

#happyfathersday #happyfathersday2024 #DAD #dadsoftiktok #fathers #Father'sday ##dancewithmyfather #dadjokes

[iamneosoul]

Dates with my dad so i know not to take sh!t from these ni$$as

[goodthingswithjah]

Inspired by Henry O Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson

[xtrablak674]

A Delayed Gift from My Father

You may not know but my father died in September of nineteen ninety-three, found dead and rotting in his apartment by his parents, an event that would haunt his mom until the day she died, well at least her memory of the event did. But this isn't a story about his death, this is the story about the kind of dad he was in the context of something he did for me, before I could even speak.

When you're an orphan you don't have a point of reference to get clarity on details about your life before your recorded memory, you have to do your best to be a detective and piece together the piece left behind to figure out the story, meaning and significance.

As a part of my Monday binge-watching I was partaking in the second half of the first season of Smallville, finally watching this early aught series about Kal-El, better known as Superman before he donned a cape and blue tights. In the episode in question the character Whitney's dad has just died and he had found his father's metals who like my dad was a Vietnam veteran.

Whitney was sharing the metals with his girlfriend Lana Lang. I actually had to pause the video because clearly the property team did an amazing job with accuracy, and one of the metals staring at me from the screen was the exact same metal that had been mysteriously returned to me a couple of years ago by a former co-worker of mines. We aren't going to get into why this friend had my father's medal, but it was odd enough to be noteworthy.

I was taken aback because I remembered this small corduroy yellow change purse with a bronze-coloured zipper from my childhood. I didn't recall the medal as much as I did the large liberty dollar coin from 1924, I think for a child a coin was more familiar than a trinket from a war no one really wanted. But the maize colored purse with the green stripes and the coin were indelible etched on my recollection.

Now this is where my age betrays me, because if my mom told me more about the strange trinkets I don't remember, and since she proceeded her alleged husband (I have yet to see an actual marriage certificate) by nine years its not like I can ask her to corroborate my piece-mail memory. I recollect she showed me the pieces near the closet to the front door of our apartment at 1101 Brown Street, yes where I lived, and my last name were the same, there were so many jokes I got about this in elementary school.

Memory is funny, I remember exactly where I was, to even the position in the room. I remember the colors, the weight of the coin because mom let me handle it, but the sounds of her voice and the words that she attached to these moments elude me. There was one thing that was undeniable to me now as an adult putting this together, this was a gift a loving father gave to his first born son probably as a baby, and left in care of the mother of his child to be given at a future date. Something out of a television movie or a book, and the kind of parental love you usually see given to whyte children. Black fathers loving their children wasn't something that was a regular part of my diet growing up as a dark-skinned child in America.

My father as I keep referring to him, because he had an odd relationship to the role, and never embraced it in any traditional way. I don't recollect a moment of calling him either dad or father. It was B.R. (his initials) or Khule (nickname) but usually nothing more than 'hey you'. This awkward dynamic spilled over into my relationship with his parents, not by their fault, but unintentionally by his. In formal conversations I would refer to his mom as my grandmother and his dad as my grandfather and together as my grandparents, but unlike calling my mom, well mom. I never used either honorific to refer to my father's parents.

He died with us being estranged, for reasons I don't want to taint this particular story with, which is a moment of me directly feeling his love for me, something I sometimes had trouble resolving because of his unforgettable words to me as a young teenager, he loved me but didn't like me!

I realize that my father's sardonic sense of humor was reflected in my own humor, but at this age I took these words as more hurtful than humorous. And this intensifies my judgement of him not always making the best parenting choices. During those years of puberty when so many things are changing in your body the one thing you want more than anything is to be liked, why doesn't my father like me? #RhetoricalQuestion

But at least one mystery has been solved this mysterious pouch and its metallic contents were an attempt at a new dad to show how proud he was of having progeny and his attempts to endow them with something of meaning and significance.

This was momentous as I would learn later about my dad, was that he loathed his service in the Vietnam war and the war itself and I don't recall ever seeing one memento of his service. His saving this sole medal and giving it to his first-born was a very loud and clear declaration of his love that took thirty years to be delivered.

[Photos by Brown Estate]

[negrolicity]

[loveblackculture]

[luvmesumus]

[thistleandwine]

My dad said he had the best beard in town.🤣🤣 #breakinngmyheart #beforean...

[spicy-apple-pie]

She got the part :) (the rat king)

Commission Info / Kofi

[negrolicity]

Benjamin Sisko is still in my estimation the best Black dad in television history