Why Daddy Mattered: A Father’s Day Ode to the Commish
My daddy mattered as
more than a symbol or memory. He was so
there for me in ways that guided me through heady challenges and gave his
unyielding support to make it possible for me to claim some of my life’s major
victories. By the time I was seven-years-old,
I really understood the power of words, language and the ability to communicate
with others. It turned into a behavioral
problem though, when in second grade, I just could not stop talking. I talked to strangers (and still do),
imaginary friends, classmates and my brothers who were younger than me and
still grappling with forming words and ideas into language. But my second grade teacher was not
interested in the power of my words and as a real “Queenie Meany,” she struck
holy terror in the classroom with a scowl and yard stick that ruled supreme;
but obviously not supremely enough for me to shut my mouth.
As responsible teachers
did at that time, she placed a call to our home requesting that my parents come
up to the school and conquer my speak out demons. Daddy came and called me out in front of the
entire class for lacking the ability to obey Ms. Hughes imperious command to
shut up. Under my breath and in between
my clinched teeth, I was saying all kind of defiant things, while being issued
a cease and desist order to stop talking in class. Recently, my mom told me my
dad was kicked out of Masons for being loquacious and challenging their
practices.
That visit to my class would be the beginning
of a series of visits my dad would make over the decades to speak with my
teachers about my errant behavior and achievements as well. I would later find out that while he was
growing up, he was rather challenging in his own right taking on my switch
whuppin’ grandmother Johnny Clyde Muse, who would beat all up on you without
batting an eye or issuing one iota of empathy.
As her favored child, he was spared many a switch waging moment and her
unyielding brutality.
One fire fly filled DC summer evening when
I was all of twelve, Daddy called me to the porch front steps to deliver a very
poignant biology lesson. As I sat on our
front steps listening, he was instructing me on my pending womanhood. Three weeks later, my period showed up while I
was riding my brother Fletcher’s bike. As an adult, he would give a similar set
of instructions about pursuing a healthy sexual life, when in the course of a
conversation we were having about my one college boyfriend; he realized that at
twenty-two I was still a virgin.
Throughout my schooling
he intervened to put me on a corrective course when I strayed morally or
academically. In sixth grade, I stole a
bag of potato chips, which fell from under my coat. The store owner reported the theft to my
teacher and not the cops, thus preventing me from entering a school to prison
pipeline. My teacher called the house to
report the incident and the discovery of a journal he found which clearly
detailed joining a girls’ gang. Mr. Brown
was adamant that becoming a juvenile delinquent was not in my stars, as he
guided me towards my passion for geography and cartography, both of which also
were encouraged by my father through subscriptions to National Geographic, maps
he brought home for his job and a globe that I kept in the room I shared with
one of my brothers. Mr. Brown made it
clear that prison was not in my future.
My father showed up to gather the details and address the matters. He was furious with me and pointed out that I
wasn’t a competent thief, nor was the gang life on my path.
In junior high he put
the Algebra teacher on notice regarding her inability to teach me the subject
comprehensively, because previous indicators through grades and tests indicated
that I had solid math skills. He hired Mr. Guthrie, a graduate student at
Howard University, to tutor me. Holding down two jobs, Dad was a clerk at the
Defense Department by day and a private butler at night and on the weekends,
serving parties in embassies, private clubs, museums and homes along the
Eastern Seaboard. I now know he must
have had to take on extra work to afford those fees. While my dad couldn’t make the plays I was
in, my induction into the Honor Society or track meets, when called up to the
school on matters of urgency, he was there. After telling him that my high
school chemistry teacher “hit on me” (old school terms for sexual harassment),
my father marched up to the school to meet with and inform him that he would
put the Bunsen Burner up his ass, if that thought even entered his mind. I felt
so protected by my dad.
In 1962 as I went off to Fisk
University to go to college, my dad drove me from DC to Nashville. It was the road trip of a life time, for I
had him all to myself as we navigated the treacherous unlit and especially
racially inconvenient roads of the South.
When I had to leave school for a year, because the scholarship promised in
writing was given to someone else, he got me job as a maid with a family for
whom he worked. After my mother
expressed indignation and outrage at her daughter working as a maid, he called
in another chit and I got very interesting job working at the C&P Telephone
Company running IBM main frame computers for the telephone company. That job enabled me to save enough money in a
year to complete my remaining two years of college.
When I graduated from
college and stated I did not want to march, he was adamant that if he had to
walk me across the stage himself he would.
I was incensed that our speaker was some major or general in the army
and refused to keep my mouth shut about it. But I marched, on my father’s
orders. As I matured into an adult, my
father stood with me during many a crisis.
When I got my first apartment he was dumbfounded that I insisted on getting
a single bed. Often slow on the social
uptake, I couldn’t quite understand why I wouldn’t, until I got a boyfriend.
When I became a single
parent at age twenty-six, we almost parted ways. He proclaimed he could have dealt with this
if it had happened when I was fifteen. I
doubt that, seriously. He stood with me
at my wedding and couldn’t stop laughing when I told him I was about to marry a
Mississippi born white boy. After all, I
was still reeling through the headiness of the times I spent as a Black
Nationalist. He came to cherish my
husband and in-laws dearly and prepared a series of sumptuous dishes, including
his legendary potato salad, for Art and Margaret’s 50th wedding
anniversary in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He
said he would have come to California more often, but always thought it would
fall in the ocean. He also had a major disdain
for Ronald Reagan, who was governor during some of times he and mom visited.
During an especially
heady period where my parenting skills and daughter’s life were in real turmoil,
he stood with me firmly and clearly demonstrated how he truly believed in me. Though not an affectionate man, he knew how
to comfort me. His wit, worldliness and
intellect served as reassuring stepping stones out of many an emotional
quagmire.
When my parents moved from Washington, DC back
to rural Georgia in 1980, dad got involved in local politics and became a
county commissioner. We bestowed the
title of “The Commish” upon him, as he challenged white folk hell bent on keeping
the good ol’ boys club at full membership and took on black people who refused
to challenge policies dismembering their humanity. He unnerved many a white man and upset too
many colored people who just wanted to remain locked down in fear. The protocol
that most often “filtered” his public tongue earlier in life, because of the
work he did as a civil servant and private butler, was dismissed completely and
the stark forthrightness of his manner reigned supreme, as he became a seasoned
elder.
Witty, intellectually crisp and at times
scandalous, I witnessed and understood his flaws and watched him navigate moral
breeches that brought us to the brink of falling out, but never severing our
ties. I’ve spent the last fifteen years,
communicating with him through photographs, dreams and memories; some brutal
and others endearing. Whatever his flaws and failures may have been, he taught
me to address mine head on and helped shape my character is ways for which I am
eternally grateful. He protected me in a
Papa Bear kind of way and stood with me through so many of my life’s butt
bruising, soul-crushing and spirit tossing lessons. I am partly the woman I am, because “Daddy
Really Mattered.”
Daphne
Muse is a writer, social commentator and poet.
She spent more than thirty years in higher education, serving on the
faculty at UC Berkeley and Mills College and as an administrator. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post,
This Week in Palestine and in several curriculum projects including Breaking
Barriers for the Commission on Major League Baseball. She blogs at
www.daphnemuse.blogspot.com.
©Daphne Muse 2013,
Oakland, CA
