Don't Cry for Me

by Daniel Black

In some ways, he envied the life he had provided for his children. He, too, had wanted knowledge, travel, enlightenment, but such was laughable for a dark black boy in the 1940s.

Many of them were handed so little, yet we expected so much. They

Reading was something I could do alone, so I stuck with it.

Slavery did a number on black people. We haven’t survived it yet. The institution is over, but its aftereffects still linger.

You might’ve laughed at me for trying to read, after all these years, and the whole moment would’ve been ruined, so I hung up.

We were stoic and serious 90 percent of the time. Have you ever seen pictures of black people from the old days? They’re never smiling.

“Forgive me, God, for the way I’ve treated my son. I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing, but keep him safe, keep him in your care. He’s all I got.”

They arrive with they own personality, and ain’t nothin you can do about it—like it or not. We can beat ’em or try to make ’em change, but who they is is gon come out sooner or later.

People say God knows how much we can bear, but sometimes I’m not so sure.

Just remember that, although we were flawed, we were marvelous, too.

Blaming others is a waste of time. No one can make you happy if you’re determined to be miserable. And, for many years, I was.

If you get nothing else from this letter, understand that I never knew how to love. I dreamed of it, but I never experienced it. What I knew was pain. So that’s what I gave you.

Perhaps you’ll have a child one day, biological or otherwise, and you’ll see how easy it is to hurt the one you love.

Love doesn’t make us perfect; it makes us want to be. By the time you discover this, your imperfections have done their damage.

I’d tell him that every man chooses his own life, and that a parent’s job is to respect that choice.

Time waits for no man, Granddaddy used to say. And this is true.