He told them NO.
One of the great blessings of my life has been that from moment I took my first breath until the second he took his last, my father loved me completely and unconditionally – and I knew it.
But it wasn’t until after he died that the depth and profundity of that love has fully begun to dawn on me. It was only recently that I came to realize how all that love was embodied in one word he said early in my life: NO.
Daddy was always my hero. He was also always old. Always. He was like the train pulling my caboose – no matter where we were on the track of life, he was always 33 years ahead of me. Therefore, he was always old,, regardless his actual age. When he was 36 and I was three, he was old. When he turned 40 and I was 7, he was old (actually ancient – I was sure old age would take him out at any moment after he hit that milestone). When he was 80 and I was 47, he was old. When he was 93 and I was 60, he was old. He was just always old.
But after he died, that train unhitched and switched to another track. And while it stayed nearby and kept moving, it was no longer always and forever 33 years ahead of me. His age and persona began to travel back and forth, with his age no longer attached to mine. Where he was in relation to me depended only on what memory I had of him in the moment. Sometimes he’s older than I am, sometimes we’re the same age, and often he is younger, much younger.
This is most obvious when I look at photos of Daddy at different stages in his life. And looking at photographs of Daddy as a young, single father, I came to a startling realization.
From the time I could remember, I knew the story of how, after my mother’s death at her own hand, her parents and twin sister begged him to leave me with them to raise.
And I knew that despite their entreaties, he brought me back to Youngstown, Ohio where, with the help of his mother and sister, he raised me as a single father until he remarried five years later. I was happy and loved and well-cared for, surrounded by my attentive paternal and maternal grandparents, step-grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, and delighting in my special relationship with “my Daddy” as I usually referred to him to the annoyance of my cousins.
I knew it was a wonderful thing that he insisted on keeping me, despite their entreaties, when it might have been easier to turn over the responsibility to them. After all, in those days, it just wasn’t all that common for men to raise babies and no one would have thought ill of him if he’d left me in the care of his late wife’s family. I knew it wasn’t an easy choice, so I always appreciated and loved him for making it.
But looking at photos of him then has bounced me back into another time and place and made me see him in a new light.
When I look at these old photos, I don’t see Judge Jones or the general counsel of the NAACP or the erudite, wise father I knew as an adult.
Now I see a young man, who was born into poverty. A young man who, as a child, had few hopes of going beyond the Youngstown steel mills.
I see a young man who, as a teenager, idolized W.E.B. DuBois, never thinking that one day, he would marry the great man’s niece.
I see a young man who, as a 19-year-old Army private, sat in the balcony of Abyssinian Baptist Church listening to Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. preach, never conceiving that 15 years later, he would become a cherished member of the family of the man who hired Rev. Powell’s father to succeed him as the legendary church’s pastor.
I see a young man, the grandson of slaves, the first in his family to attend college, who had married into a family already into its fourth generation of college graduates.
I see a young man who was nothing like the light brown scions of other affluent Black bourgeoisie families who vied to marry my mother (and her family) only to have her choose Daddy instead.
And it occurred to me how overwhelmed and insecure he must have felt in the midst of this family, a stranger who had married their daughter and then whisked her off to a faraway land called Ohio.
Within a year she was back in Los Angeles, with a newborn baby and crippling postpartum depression that no one knew quite what to do about, so they thought it best for her to return to be nursed by her family for a time, and return to Youngstown when she’d recovered.
Only she didn’t recover and she never returned. Instead, within weeks of her arrival, the darkness overtook her and when she couldn’t find her way back, she swallowed the pills and slipped away.
After the funeral and my christening the following day, my father prepared to return to Youngstown with me. But my mother’s family had another plan.
“Nate, dear. You can’t possibly raise a baby alone. You need to move on with your life. Please leave Steffie here with us,” my grandmother beseeched him – over and over and over, backed by my grandfather and my mother’s identical twin who believed with all her heart that she should raise her sister’s baby as her own.
And my father – not Judge Jones, but a 33-year-old man whose life had just fallen apart and who was surely swimming in grief and guilt and uncertainty – summoned the courage to look them all in the eye and tell them “No.”
He said NO. To the Grahams.
How was this young widower able to stand up to his late wife’s family like this? Did he wonder if he was doing the right thing? What gave him the strength to defy them? How difficult was it for him not to just give in, put me in their arms, and run back to Youngstown alone, unencumbered by this strange little creature he barely knew?
I can think of only two things that gave him the ability: Courage and Love.
It turns out that Daddy was a badass who had the courage to push back against an elite and united family. And he loved me enough to fight for me. That love was strong and boundless and secure enough to do all this without bitterness or rancor, but to instead embrace my mother’s family and allow them to always be a part of my and his life. And to their credit, Nonnie and Pop Pop loved Daddy and me enough to let us get on that plane and fly away from them. But we never really left and, over the years, their love and admiration for Daddy grew and enriched us both.
Even after Daddy remarried twice, their bond with their son-in-law remained unbroken (to the consternation of my stepmothers, neither of whom was thrilled about having to explain to friends that these people who introduced themselves as her husband’s in-laws weren’t actually her parents).
Nonnie once told me that when they attended my college graduation, she saw Daddy watching me with tears streaming down his face. She put her arm around him and he turned to her and said, “Look at our little girl, Mother. We did it.”
When I later told Daddy what Nonnie had said, he scoffed and said, “Oh, your grandmother’s telling you a tale.” Which was Daddyspeak for “That’s exactly what happened but I’m not going to admit it.”
My grandfather told me more than once that, immediately upon meeting him, he knew Daddy was an exceptional young man who was more than worthy of his daughter. And that as disappointed as the family was that he took me with him, he also knew that his baby granddaughter would be just fine in this good man’s care.
As usual, Pop Pop was right.
When Daddy died two years ago today, he was mourned by presidents, friends, neighbors, colleagues and people he never even met. But perhaps more telling, he was also mourned by my late mother’s siblings and nieces and nephews, some of whom dropped everything and rushed across the country to say goodbye to their beloved Uncle Nate.
And of course, my sweet, courageous, remarkable father always was and always will be cherished and loved and appreciated by this baby girl he fought for in his darkest days and then never ever let go.