photo by Alex Lear
BLESSED
This morning I woke up at a very happy moment.
I was a much younger me, and as usual, I was returning home from some trip.
I wasn’t thinking about where I had been or how the air travel had gone. Instead, I was walking thru the airport talking with a young woman I knew. I paused to look at something in a window, probably a magazine. She kept walking. I scurried to catch up. She arrived at the large, glass exit doors well before me and rushed through towards the people waiting for her just outside.
I was going to say goodbye or something, and as I looked past where she was bending to fold herself into the waiting vehicle, I spotted my welcome home committee, the five Salaam siblings. Two of them had signs. Tayari was standing patiently to the rear of them. The youngest, Tiaji, rushed forward into the traffic lane. Tayari called out. Tiaji stopped, her little arms uplifted. I was laughing. Proud of how happy they were to see me, proud of Tiaji rushing forward, proud that Tiaji listened and halted her forward motion even as she uplifted a wide smile in anticipation of me picking her up into my arms—that was the moment I woke up.
This week on March 24th I will mark sixty-four years. This past week at various times I have been thinking of Asante, Mtume, Kiini, Tutashinda, and Tiaji. They are all adults now. Except for Asante, they all are parents.
Children are a major measure of adults. Not wealth or fame, nor even accomplishments in arts or politics. Children. Have we been able to rear healthy children—emotionally healthy, socially healthy? Children with whom we would be both proud and happy to exchange identities.
I have taken a number of pictures of the five Salaams at different stages as they grew. But this one in my mind contains the fiercest beauty, the youngest rushing forward—I assume Kiini was one of the ones holding a sign. I’ve always called her the president of my fan club, even as it has been Asante and Mtume with whom I worked the closest on different projects. Asante turning me on to Mac computers. Mtume being a writing partner in BoL, our music website.
I’ve never been as close to Tutashinda as I probably should have been. I say probably because who knows what should be in human relations, how close, what is the optimal distance between parent/child. Tutashinda is an engineer by day and a sports referee as an avocation. I never attended any of his high school football games. His ball playing years came at a period of intense activity compounded by emotional upheaval. Divorce.
Many years afterwards, Tiaji asked me about why I didn’t come round so much. It’s hard to tell your youngest child—and especially hard for an old-ass father to tell his youngest daughter—because I was too pig-headed and too caught up in my own angst to realize what gifts I could have given to them had I been more aware at that time of how giving makes us human.
My father had tried to tell me but it took me decades to fully understand the depth of what Big Val meant by “you don’t get no credit for what you do for you, you get credit for what you do for others.”
Tuta has been an exemplary family man and a real friend to his friends (Tuta donated a kidney to save the life of his high school best buddy). Tuta is not without his own blemishes and shortcomings I’m sure, but as we used to say when we made a critical analysis: in summing up, Tuta’s life has been very, very positive.
The five of them wrote Tayari and me an email a few weeks back, praising and thanking their parents. They remain in awe of what we were able to accomplish back in the day, the seventies and early eighties when we were on our chosen path to take over our world, which we took to mean, take over the running of our own lives.
As I exited the airport, I pushed open the door and grinned when I saw them assembled some twenty or so yards ahead of me. One sign was held high, another sign was waving back and forth. I did not even see what the placards read. Could have been “baba likes beets.” Anything. What really mattered is that the messages were in their handwriting, expressing their feelings about me.
Although most people are not born in nor live through such heady times, real time self-determination as daily practice rather than as some social ideal is the optimal state of being.
Most humans just go along with whatever—we were fortunate. We lived in a time of activist motion, a time when working together in social and political formations was the norm, a time when we manifested our beauty by making things go, actually creating our own society: our own diet, our own dress, teaching our children, fighting our enemies, and loving each other every step of the way. But it was hard, very hard to sustain. We held on for over a decade and half, long enough to usher our children into adulthood. I realize now how special those years were.
As I sat up on the side of the bed I was overwhelmed, rushed by bliss, the joy of a great accomplishment.
I’ve never before written a love letter to my children that is as direct as this.
I’ve written a whole book of essays and poems dedicated to them, but What Is Life was really about me, written so they would know who I am and some of not just my ideas but also my motivations and experiences. And, I suppose on the deepest level, this too is about me, about me waking up and realizing how fortunate I have been to help rear five children who always smile when they see me.
I’m having a truly blessed birthday.
—kalamu ya salaam (march 2011)