Children--little girls and little boys--should never lose their mommies or daddies, neither to death nor distance. However, when it does happen, it's a day, a moment most of us will never forget. For me, it was April 12, 1970. I wasn't even in double digits when one of life's most transforming experiences happened--the day my daddy died.
In his memoir, Dreams From My Father, U.S. Senator Barack Obama, memories of his father were quite dim. The Senator's father left when his young son was 2. Originally written in 1994 when he was elected the first Black President of The Harvard Law Review, DREAMS was updated and republished last year following the stirring Keynote Address at the Democratic National Convention by the presumptive first Black Man to represent the state of Illinois in the United States Senate.
The elder Barack, born in Kenya, was the first of the wave of African students attending American colleges and universities. The Senator's mother, Stanley Ann, a white woman born in Kansas, moved with her parents during childhood to Hawaii. It was at the University there that she met, fell in love, married and had a child with the African scholar. Young Barack, called Barry, by family and friends, relied upon the stories of told by his mother and her parents, Grandpa and Toot, for any information about his father.
"What I heard from my mother that day, speaking about my father, was something I suspect most Americans will never hear from the lips of those of another race, and so cannot be expected to believe might exist between black and white: the love of someone who knows your life in the round, a love that will survive disappointment. She saw my father as everyone hopes at least one other person might see him; she had tried to help the child who never knew him see him in the same way."
Senator Obama has crafted, and very well I might add, what many of us have failed to do: The story of our being--how each of us came to be--physically, emotionally and spiritually. With a deft hand and an engaging style, Obama tells of his family histories, black and white, Kenyan and American.
In his search for his father, through memories of one visit long ago and conversations with other family members, including half-siblings he met as adults, Mr. Obama gives the reader a picture of a complex Black Man. A man of great intellect, pride, frustration and disappointment--a life of the highest highs and the lowest lows.
"Did Marcus know where he belonged? Did any of us? Where were the fathers, the uncles and grandfathers, who could help explain this gash in our hearts? Where were the healers who might help us rescue meaning from defeat? They were gone, vanished, swallowed up by time. Only their cloudy images remained, and their once-a-year letters full of dime store advice...."
I often wonder how different my life would have been if my daddy had not died on that sunny April day so many years ago. More importantly, how different would his life been? What about my mother's life, my dad's sisters, my brothers lives? What would my father have told me as a young woman about his relationships with his father and mother, his sisters, wives and others that he didn't tell me as a child? Would they have been the same stories told by my mom and my aunts years later? We will never know, those of us who lost our daddies at an early age.
My original intention was to recommend Dreams From My Father as the book of the month for June as a gift for Father's Day. But to be fair, this book should be a present for fathers and sons, mothers and daughters to read, inspire conversations and thus begin the search for the dreams within all of us.
