“Once upon a time a beautiful young lady and a very handsome young man fell in love and got married. They were a wonderful, compatible couple, and God blessed their marriage with a fine baby boy.”
- From Duke Ellington’s Autobiography “Music Is My Mistress”-
Duke Ellington liked to bend the truth about his life because he was the original Instafluencer. I try hard to be honest with myself and with you, but I always reserve the poet’s license to dazzle you with words jammed up together and this is another joint I’m passing you on Father’s Day which is also Juneteenth this year.
I was not born wealthy, and I do not consider myself wealthy now. I don’t have that in me, though it may be true.
None of my success in this life was predestined. I was raised in a city dying around me. Below, this was my house for much of my childhood, and we were happy here, even though this house would barely hold my record collection now. Space is not a relative measure of happiness, though it is an element of it.
In 1980s Central Illinois, the wrath of God came in the form of tornados. Whirlwinds could strike you down in your sleep without even the respect of a warning.
My first father is charming, handsome, funny, brilliant, and loyal. Unfortunately, my mother and father divorced before I was a year old, which I know sounds like it negates that “loyal” part, but I have come to view all of life as an unfolding. My first father learned lessons from his first marriage (and second and third marriages) that would carry him into his fourth marriage and true new life, which has seen him happily married and raising two beautiful children for over thirty years now. So loyalty is the right word.
My second father was a man my Mother dated for a long time after she and my first father divorced. They never got married but came damn close to Common Law. We lived together for what seemed like a long time back then.
He loved listening to music, drinking alcohol, and smoking cannabis. His friends were numinous figures floating in and out of my childhood landscape. What a cast of characters and what an education I received from watching them all! And they loved to watch me, too. I learned to perform in front of these wonderful people and I learned to enjoy their undivided attention. I’ve been begging for that from the world, ever since I was this young.
In my earliest memories, I recall lying on the floor and playing with my Star Wars toys while these incredibly cool adults passed around this fascinating and horrifying object that was a wooden base with a taxidermied Cobra wrapped around a water pipe, fighting with a taxidermied mongoose. And man alive, those people loved music, especially The Beatles.
I learned a love of vinyl records back then, each of them a two-sided blessing of good music to highlight the joys of living life on a small scale with little means. At this age, I learned to appreciate films, art, and music, and this set me up to find my calling as a writer and reader of great books and stories.
A few years ago, I came across this photo that captures what I’m talking about here with these small joys. Here they are, eight beers on the table, cigarettes, lighters, water pipe, a few dollars, and change. Two good friends are getting drunk and stoned, smoking cigarettes, playing electronic bowling on an ancient video game, and listening to great music.
If you can become satisfied with a small company of friends, you can own happiness in this world for a little bit.
Look at these handsome young men. Their fathers made it through the Great Depression and likely served during World War II. But, like so many others their age, these young men went to work for the weekend and they were only immortal for a limited time.
My second father died about ten years ago of a horrible complication following surgery. I think he battled alcoholism and depression his whole life, and he died of sepsis in great agony. It makes me very sad to think about that.
The last time I saw him was after my Mom and I moved to Ohio with my third father. I went back for a week during the Summer, and he came and picked me up. We had lunch, and he introduced me to his new wife and baby son. I was only 14 years old then, but I knew it was the last time we’d ever see each other. I told him I thought he was a good Dad to me for as long as he could be. It was the only gift I ever had to give him and he cried, hugged me, and told me he loved me. I gave that love right back to him because that’s what we feed each other with inside our small tribes and their tributaries.
When I brought home Michael Jackson’s Thriller album in 1982, my family all indulged me. I grew up during a tremendous social integration between cultures and races in the Poor and Middle Classes of 1980s MidWestern America. I didn’t understand racism was a thing until it happened to me as a small child attending a diverse Elementary School and Day Care system.1
When I brought LL Cool J’s Bigger and Deffer home in ‘87, none of my family would have called that music. But it spoke to me on a molecular level. The Hip Hop coming out of New York resonated with that love of music I already had inside me. These rappers were talking about what I saw happening around me with my eyes in this dying and muted MidWestern city. I learned at an early age that dignity could be found in a state of poverty, though I came to know that the dignity that can also be found in wealth is the better experience.
My third father was my Mom’s bosses boss at work. My Mom fell in love with the Big Fish, and they were an unlikely match but a strong one. He was so successful in his profession but fell apart in his family. Like my Dad, he needed the first try, though he nailed it on the second, while my Dad required two more. Everyone’s story is different but equally rich in love if they do it correctly.
We all moved in together just after his first marriage ended in divorce. He had two teenage sons, and guess how happy they were to see their Mother move out of the big house and have another woman and her weird son move in? It was a bizarre situation for us all, but we made it through and became a strong family. I stopped using the “step” in brother and father long ago. I call them Dad and Brother now and nearly cry from the gratitude when I do it; I love them so dearly.
My Stepfather taught me how to work hard towards a goal, make a plan and make it work, and pay the bills and taxes. He worked two jobs, went to graduate school, and ate candy bars for lunch at 2 AM for years until he got his MBA. My first father earned his MBA in Education and became a teacher for a few years before he went back to public service.
Invest in yourself through education. Work hard. Pay your taxes. Do your part and no more. I was raised in the shadow of the Protestant Work Ethic to view these behaviors as those of good citizens. For the most part, I still believe this is fundamental to living a moral and happy life in America.
But I wasn’t raised to be charitable. It’s not easy to admit, but we’re all friends here; this is a safe space. So I’ve tried to improve as I move into the Autumn of my years.
And my fourth father came by way of marriage. He raised a brilliant, kind, and headstrong daughter who has made me a better human being. I can’t even begin to imagine my life without my wife; her father’s love and wisdom helped shape her the way my fathers helped shape me. We are each a blade cutting into the future. But, unfortunately, far too many of our edges are dull because they were not sharpened by our parents in our youth when it matters most.
These days, I’m into gratitude. I’m thankful for what I have. More importantly, I’m grateful for what I don’t have. That last part is the key to gratitude as far as I’m concerned.
All our holidays are constructed calendar squares of gratitude for universal purposes that appeal to the goodwill of all human beings. Holidays are bookmarks of gratitude and humility. Holidays are where we pump the wells of our hearts to find a little more dignity to give away.
Juneteenth represents a small step forward in America as we continue to come to grips with the horror that our country and the culture that formed it was established through the enslavement of other human beings. But unfortunately, some white people read that sentence, and those wells in their hearts pump so deep that it cuts into a vein of pure shame that erupts outward in a geyser of stink and rage.
Like it’s possible to find dignity in poverty, we can also find forgiveness in rage. It’s just another emotion that will pass if we let it.
We must each identify and hold close to the joys we’ve had in our lives. We must become sensitive to pleasure, aware of it in the living moment through the friendly conversations we have over beers and a bong and the Caleco Bowlatronic tabletop arcade game.
We must be grateful to live in a society that can choose to move forward if we collectively find the strength and humility to see it through.
Father’s Day is a great reason to tell your fathers how much they’ve meant to you in this life. Or maybe your Dad wasn't around, and you’ve struggled to be the father he never was. If so, I’m sorry and proud of you for crawling up that mountain. No one gets to choose the numbers on the dice they roll in good faith, but we can lean on the power of our ancestors in their best moments.
Modern science teaches that energy never dies and is never created, merely repurposed. And people are like this, too. So every day is another shot at redemption. Sometimes, we have to set fire to the rules to get to the finish line, and the finish line is where everyone gets to win the game a little bit.
In the 2020s, God’s Wrath comes in the form of much more than tornados, and we must learn to lean on our families, friends, and neighbors if we are to weather the greater storms still to come.
I never wanted for anything as a child. Instead, I was cared for, protected, encouraged, loved, and tolerated, and this may be the secret to raising children to become good citizens and happy human beings. Give children the freedom to run the yard, pick them up when they fall, and forgive them with instruction when they harm others without forethought or compassion.
My parents had their own lives. They had to work full-time jobs and deal, and I was given free rein to grow in whatever direction time and circumstance blew me. Every human being deserves this experience if we want as many as possible to grow into better people. Raising people is a form of farming, tilling the earth of their hearts, and fertilizing the fields of their minds.
Any farmer will tell you that some shit smells worse than others and usually makes the best fertilizer.
Happy Juneteenth and Father’s Day, friends. This song was co-written by one of my favorite writers and someone I would like to call a friend. It made me cry the first time I heard this song in his movie. I didn’t have my gratitude for my fathers back then, and that’s why I think the music affected me so much twenty-plus years ago when I heard it. It’s short and significant. Please give it a listen:
May your gratitude shine as I’ve attempted to show mine here.
Someday, I’ll write more about this experience of growing up attending a working-class and poor kids Day Care and Public School, which I consider part of the bedrock of my worldview.
This is a lovely story and I appreciate you sharing it.