I think of your grandmother calling me and noting how you were growing tall and would one day try to “test me.” And I said to her that I would regard that day, should it come, as the total failure of fatherhood because if all I had over you were my hands, then I really had nothing at all.

I am wounded. I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.

Anyone can make a baby, but it takes a man to be a father.

Dad called it "enlightenment" but to me, it just felt lonely.

I knew then that I must survive for something more than survival's sake. I must survive for you.

I wanted you to know that the world in its entirety could never be found in the schools, alone, nor the streets, alone, nor in the trophy case. I wanted you to claim the whole world, as it is.