Yesterday, I was chatting with a good friend of mine by the name of DJ Wiz of the rap group Kid & Play. The conversation was pretty much about life and how getting old can be a bitch. He told me his parents have been together for over 62 years. After the conversation I realized that at times I’m envious of people like Wiz who were lucky enough to have been raised in a two-parent household. But then again, not having my father around was probably a blessing.

See, I am the product of what happens too often in the black community. My mother gave birth to me at the age of 18 and soon after my birth, my father was nowhere to be found. I didn’t meet him until I was seven years old. I remember the first time meeting him; I was living with my maternal great-grandmother in the Bronx. He walked in the door carrying a large trash bag full of gifts. Just like a typical child, I wasn’t concerned with meeting him; I was too busy trying to figure out what was in the bag.

My parents decided to rekindle their childhood relationship and felt that the three of us living together was the best thing for our family. We ended up moving into my paternal great-grandmother’s apartment and lived there for almost two years. During this period, he was verbally and physically abusive towards my mother and me.

Things had gotten so bad that one night when the news of his abuse reached my mother’s side of the family, they rescued us in the middle of the night and escorted us back to my maternal great-grandmother’s apartment where we belonged. But he wasn’t too far behind. Moments after we had arrived, he showed up and started banging on the door trying to break in. When that didn’t work, he decided to go outside and wait for us to leave the apartment. I remember standing in the second floor window looking down at him. He smiled, picked up a brick, ran towards the building and threw the brick, shattering the window and barely missing me. My aunt and uncle chased him down the street and knocked his ass out! He never bothered us again.