Coming Back
Houston, my father, and the things we inherit.
“What’s the Third Ward like? My dad grew up there.”
The African taxi driver’s eyes swept up to the rearview mirror to take a second look before he answered.
“It’s black. Predominantly black.”
“Huh”
But it couldn’t have been that way in the 50s and 60s when my white grandparents raised my dad there. A quick google search proved me wrong. A long history of being a mostly black community.
Like finding a missing piece from a puzzle, things clicked into place.
I saw my dad then.
The white boy who came up to Mom at a bar after playing “Who’s That Lady” on the jukebox talking ‘bout “say baby, what’s happening?” Who, only months later, married that black woman just five years after it was legal in the state of Ohio to do so.
Mom always said Dad’s parents were racist. And since they were estranged and I took Mom’s word as gospel back then, I believed it.
But as a memoirist I’ve grown in my awareness and appreciation for perspective - that shifting, illusory, word. Was it likely they were? Sure. But it’s interesting to picture them living in a mostly black community.
I texted my dad’s brother Matt. Turns out they grew up in a different neighborhood. So I remembered wrong. Or maybe he lied.
I don’t know. But being in Houston for the first time, in a way, made me feel like I visited Dad who has been dead for almost ten years.
My uncle verified that my grandfather was extremely racist. The city was segregated and they hardly saw anyone black, much less interacted with them.
My dad’s parents met during WW2. My grandfather had a family in New Jersey but after meeting my grandmother, changed his identity and they moved from Mansfield, Ohio to Houston.
My uncle said he and his brothers intensely feared their dad. That he ruined his two older brothers. I didn’t ask more, but Mom told me once that he sexually abused my dad.
Matt shared that Dad was fifteen the first time he was “sent away,” for stealing bicycles. When he returned, Dad teamed up with his older brother, and was sent away again. This time for armed robbery.
At eighteen, when he got out, he came to Mansfield where his mom, having left her husband, moved back to family.
Then he joined the army and went to Vietnam.
Four years later, he met mom and had me. And for 33 years he broke my heart.
I spent most of my adult life leaving. Leaving my family of origin in search of my future. Looking to fulfill my dreams. My destiny.
But after many years away from my family, over the last two years, work travel has now reunited me with my entire family - across three states. I saw my mom for the first time in eight years. And connected with my siblings - one of whom I hadn’t seen for over two decades.
In these visits, I’ve revisited my history. My identity now solidly my own, I can recognize and welcome the aspects of these people and these places that are a part of me, without letting them consume or define me.
The three dots on the text chat changed to words “My parents were renters.”
“Always? Or just when you were growing up?”
“Always”
Huh. I knew about Mom’s siblings who overcame and grasped that elusive American Dream. Yet I’d always assumed my white grandparents owned property. But here was my uncle on my dad’s side, the first and only one to own a home.
I’d inherited something special from both sides of my family, even the one I had less access to. The pattern of never quite owning the ground you stand on — literally and figuratively — until you decided to be the one who did.