Happy Birthday B

10 years old
12:57 AM, Tuesday Jan 18 1997

I spent the 18 hours I labored with Brandon watching MLK day celebrations on the TV. I never said a word but felt like my son was destined to be something special.



I was a child when I gave birth. The year after I had B, we attended the same pediatrician and I grew a half inch. We were growing up together. I was learning to be an adult and trying to teach him to be a person at the same time. He inspired me. Made me want to be a better person for him. I finished my degree with him in tow. He learned how to use a big boy potty while I learned Political Theory and Constitutional Law. I read him Locke and Moore and Paine when he needed a story and I was studying. And every year, we celebrated his birthday on campus at the MLK day symposium. Brandon met Jesse Jackson the year he turned four. He listened to Nikki Giovanni read poems the year he turned 3. He rode on the shoulders of a Cass Tech football player through a march downtown Ann Arbor. He spent his days off of school, when I had to drop off a paper, running through the art museum to avoid the cold. He learned that he was not a fan of Picasso but really loved the Japanese art exhibit at the ripe old age of 3. And he celebrated Indigenous People's day with the Tree Town Drummers rather than Columbus Day.
He is ten today. And though he doesn't remember all the early things, he is already a better person than me. I am in awe of his ability to be fair and just and moral. He knows two wrongs don't make a right and no matter how angry we are an eye for an eye is not the way to go. He was punished for vocally opposing the war in Iraq in first grade. And this year he gave his class a lecture on how Columbus should not be considered a hero as he was as evil to the native people as Hitler was to the Jews. I'd like to think I had something to do with it, but I really believe he was born a lover of people and a man with a peaceful heart.