Author: yemayahwriter

Who is your daddy?

Where is your daddy? Did you leave him? Did he leave you? What happened?

Today is my dad’s birthday. 

The first man in my life, the Leo Lion impressing and forming and shaping me providing the seed for my mother’s womb.  I am indeed the Prodigal Daughter and I think of him often and how lucky I was to have him in my life.

Given the options and possibilities of what it meant to be a black man, a father and a husband and a son, our lives together was remarkable and affected me and shaped the mother I am today. My journey with him and without him deeply influenced the development of my family.  who I looked for as a husband and a father.

I am also still getting to know him. He died in 1982. He was born the same year, my grandmother’s father disappeared from her life in 1916. He shows more of himself to me as I get older and indeed especially on his birthday. Not coming to me as often as my mother to visit, but coming nevertheless and asking me to search and take a closer look and to honor him.  He watches over us. Our sons and our daughters… He asks me to wonder what makes us leave, what makes us stay and what might have happened when we could not be together.

  This is the first season that I recognize this date on the calendar in cycles redolent of the moon and the sun. As I circle back to the season of his birth, the brilliant summer sun, moon, and stars occur during the opening portal of the Lions gate. 

 I get to look at my father the Leo Lion and my mother the Taurus Bull and see what sparked the connection:seeds sown and planted.  I also get to look at the lines and lineage of being HIS daughter and HIS line and things about his father and his father and see the touchpoints of the patriarchy and seek balance and understanding and compassion for things that I don’t fully understand and could never know because I wasn’t there, and he didn’t tell me.  

I can tell you though that this celebration of his birth asks me to consider different questions and to ask of other women, the daughters of their fathers and the mothers of sons to be willing to take a look at what our part is, what we have created.  

 If I share this post on my space for honoring the maternal experience of breastfeeding, I may tend to focus more on the maternal relationship that is in right relationship for the restoration of healing for the mother with her own father. 

If I place it elsewhere, may I allow myself a wider berth to play with connections and just acknowledge the list of what comes up for me and how might I understand both him and  me /myself better and not worry so much about the audience.

I continue to be disturbed about the violence and intense control directed at women, directed at children, directed at men. Managing hard emotions, without addressing conflict within families prevents healing. This pain and loss is always an invitation to the open heart. Faith can replace Fear. Loving with an open heart is our solution. Searching for our fathers is part of our journey.

In search of our mothers’ gardens… do we settle for God the father, a heavenly father LORD of the manor to substitute for the man we do not know or worst for the man we think we know and who hurt us and who we have not forgiven. Nor can we forgive ourselves for wanting more.

This morning I felt my father move in closer, or it was perhaps I that listened in and looked for him more closely and found him everywhere. It felt like his birth signaled me to see things that I hadn’t noticed before in my immediate surroundings simply because it was his birthday.

This morning I picked up an old journal/scrapbook that I thought was full and hadn’t looked at or for in a long while. I opened the page to jot something down and the last entry was curiously dated April 11, 2015 the date I had left California driving East with my dog Snow.

I had a new fast car The Fiat 500C 2014 and the heading was the Prodigal Daughter returns. Citing scripture and the issues that called me home… my return to the East Coast and to my Daughter, and grandchildren. I also was challenged by the thought I was returning home and felt my parents calling I had no idea what I might uncover on my return and what I might be willing to expose myself to….

I also was forewarned that my grandchildren were calling and that I was stepping in to being an Elder and that I would indeed think I was traveling alone but I would not at any point be alone. I would be surrounded by angels, and ancestors and I would be part of an ancient migration. 

 I was curious, frightened, in awe of what I might find, but there was no turning back.   For the drive, I would not allow myself much of a glance in the rear view mirror.  Now did my dad show me that revelation early this morning. Talking in deep conversation to dead people is not something I would admit to, but he offered me an openness today for whatever reason.  

I listened to a meditation offered by an indigenous person from Hawaii; how our path may have crossed is another story for another time, but I had never been to Hawaii and have had no desire to go but I recalled that my father had and my brother when I was newly married with a nursing baby.  I was not invited for the family trip, and I remember feeling excluded because I now had a husband and a baby boy and was no longer my father’s child. I belonged to another man.  My brother initially said he had never gone to Hawaii; then changed his story. 

My father, JoAnne, my sister, and my dad’s girlfriend Suzanne all went together. My brother said he did not remember, and it had been a long time ago. He said he remembered little about the trip being unimportant to him. They stayed in a big hotel and that it was an Omega trip (my dad’s fraternity) and I remember them saying they didn’t like the poi, the food was disappointing, but the islands were incredibly beautiful. The conversation was quickly over, I was curious and had more questions, but we were done.  I pushed further did he want to be a Q after the trip had they extended an invitation, maybe that was the purpose of the trip.  He laughed and said he was queer and not a Q and that was the end of it. No more questions. I was probing and pressuring and received all he had.

 I realized the story for me was not my brother’s story, it was mine and it was for me and my dad and revisiting the Prodigal Daughter’s return.

I went back to the last April 11, 2015 entry and re-read the scripture today August 5^th 2023 as a part of the celebration ofmy father’s birth. Hawaii and the meditation of balance between feminine and masculine and my father and my mother and what it meant to me to be the Elder in the room. I was no longer included.  It was not my trip, another way I could cut the cord and forgive and let go of what I no longer needed and pass the baton.

Luke 15. 30.  24

I am going where I have never been before!

How do I prepare for the journey home?

Your baby is not your daddy, neither is your baby’s father.

What might your daddy think about you nursing your little one for 365 days?

How do you feel about that?

Things To Do

Things To Pack

People To See

Waiting ON

What did the son do that made him leave? 

What makes you return home? Home free to your heart!

Running Away vs. GOING TO something you desire.

My father was born on August 5, 1916 in Harlem in New York, New York; the second son of Julia and Jonathan. Born at home on 113^th street likely with midwives who I came to know and likely came to be my teachers. I know my father well because he spent time with me and because I was the second daughter of the second wife and because I was the first daughter and I think he saw in me something that was growing in himself at the same time and because of his relationship with me as his daughter. 

Who is your daddy?  

Where is your daddy? 

What did your daddy do?

As you ask those questions for yourself. 

The door widens on where to go next… and who you are. Not everyone wants to know who their father is and whether they have a “right” to know or whether they might benefit from knowing is another story.

If not knowing the “answers” to those questions or if even having those questions may be in fact an issue for you is quite intriguing.

YOUR daddy may not be your biological father?

There were several things that came for me to do for my father’s birthday

Collect the photos of my dad.

What lessons had he taught me about gender, about love, about being a father; about relationships; about himself?

How did he parent me differently than his other two children my siblings

Were there other children, other siblings that I didn’t know about.

Who stood in the gap when my father was not there?

When did I first miss him?

How did he treat my mother, mistreat her, value her love her did he love me in ways that made me choose him over my mother?

 Did I betray my mother by loving him…

 I am reading a wonderful book of reflections about daughters and their fathers.

Happiest of Birthdays …. and Thank you for coming home!