My Father's Day

Father's Day...

That's always a weird day for me. I think it's a great holiday and all fathers -- not single mothers -- should have their day to be celebrated.  I know some great fathers -- both of my brothers, my brother-in-law, cousins, friends, etc. -- but honestly I never had that as part of my own daily life.  I guess that's why it is such a strange time for me.

See, my own father, Add Seymour Sr., died not too long after I turned 22.  And in the ten years before then, I only saw him twice -- on a corner in downtown Nashville with some other guys looking at women and in his coffin after he passed.

I'm not angry or hate my father or anything like that.  In fact, I celebrate him now.  I didnt for many years though when I was angry.

My dad came from Memphis to Nashville to attend Tennessee State and even play baseball there.  He met my mom and the two soon had me.  Not long afterwards, they were married.  Eleven months later my first brother came and then my second brother followed.  All that meant he had to go to work.

He worked hard.  Very hard.  I remember him as a waiter at the S&S Cafeteria that was in downtown Nashville at the time.  He'd come in late at night, dead tired.  Often he'd bring Shoney's Big-Boy burgers for my brothers and I.  We'd clamor around him as he sat in the chair in the living room of our East Nashville apartment in the projects.  The projects then weren't the get-over place that a lot of young people claim as their own today.  It was a place to attempt to try and get up and build your life.

He worked hard, but times were tough then for a young black man who was trying to lead a family of three boys and a wife.  He and my mom had a tough time making stretch that salary and tip money I remember them counting out on the kitchen table.  My mom went to school and back to work, but my father had already began giving in to what many black men find themselves succumbing to -- the pressure and the seeming hopelessness.

He started drinking heavily, using marijuana.  And the drinking got even heavier.  I saw him as giving up and giving in.  My mother finally couldn't take it, so when I was 11, she took us to live with my grandmother across town.  And that was it.

Those years from 11 to 22, I wished I had a big brother.  I needed a father.  I grew up sorta poor, but the thing I wanted and needed most was a father.  I wanted him to be there when I pitched in baseball games (he was a huge baseball fan).  I wanted him to watch and listen to TSU football games with me. Before the family split, there were many times as a child that I'd sit with him and listen to TSU football coach Big John Merritt's radio show on WVOL-AM radio in Nashville.  He loved TSU sports and I did too. I wanted him at my high school graduation or when I went off to the University of Tennessee as a freshman.  He wasn't there.

And I was angry over it.

But at 22, something hit me.  I realized that some black men work as hard as they can but they just can't turn the corner.  The stars never line up for them the way they do for others.  And they just give up and give in to some vice.  They lose control.  They lose hope.

I think that's what happened to my father.  I don't really know because we never had that big conversation as I grew to become a man.

Anyway, I decided it was time for me to truly understand what he had gone through.  He loved us all. He just couldn't make that love tangible.  And it crumbled him.

He had returned to Memphis to live with his parents, my grandparents.  I dont know much about his final years with them because I didnt hear much from them, which bothered me then and does now.  But I knew if anyone would be able to patch up things with my father, I would have to go to Memphis and tell him "I understand and I love you."  I decided that's what I'd do.

But I also made an immature decision.  I decided to wait for a good time to go.  That time never came.  Not a day after I decided to myself when I'd go down to see him, my mother told me that he had died.

So we never had that big conversation.

It bothered me for years after he died.  I hated that it took me so long to figure things out.  I hated that I waited to tell him that I figured things out.  I hated not having a father to teach me how to tie a tie, deal with girls, throw a curve ball or even just sit and talk to me.  So I hated myself by not being a better son in the end.

I'm pretty much over that now.  But on this Father's Day, I remember Add Seymour Sr. and my lessons from his life and his fall and my dealings with that.  Black men all over suffer from a world totally against them.  And while many think they just dont care (and, yes, many need a kick in their ass or to be in imprisoned or to be ashamed), most do.  They try and try and try only to have every wall seemingly thrown up against them.  It's tough being a black man in this world.

But know this: the vast majority of black men do try and some do well.  Many others fall victim to a hard world.  Love them anyway.  Please.

Happy Father's Day.  I love my daddy.