father-and-son_fist-bump

2. What Is Like To Love Unconditionally?

“If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons” ~James Baldwin

I’ve always believed that love was a choice. Love for me, isn’t so much something you feel as much as it’s something you decide to wake up every day and do. The kind of love folks say they feel is really just a smattering of emotions that come and go, changing – sometimes with the seasons. It’s not really love. I want to know what it’s like to be incapable of not loving someone. I want to know what it’s like to love someone from the moment you set your eyes on them. I think i’m going to feel that when my son comes. I hope I do.

1. I Am Afraid Of Dying.

“In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing more finely perceived or finely felt as injustice.” ~Charles Dickens

I’ve never been afraid of death. I realize that it’s pretty popular for black men to say they aren’t afraid of anything. We grow up hearing our favorite rappers say things like “I  fear no man but God,’ and naming their albums ‘Ready To Die’. Fear, in our community is loathsome – anti-masculine. But my lack of fear – as it relates to death – was not born out of some sort of unhealthy adolescent idolatry. I never feared death because I came to know it… intimately.  I’ve seen death, been as close to it without it actually being me as one possibly can and the thing that’s stuck with me most from being so close to it has always been its inevitability. We’re all going to die and there’s no way around that.  I’ve always had this feeling in the back of my mind, an inkling that my time on this Earth might not be too long. This preoccupation with death has never been severe enough to significantly alter how I approach living, but the thought has always been there, nagging. When I first got married I told my wife how I wanted my funeral and what to do with her life should I meet an unexpected but unsurprising end.

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Everything is different now. I’m afraid of dying – not for me, but for my son. So much of who I am has been constructed around what I’ve lost. And while I’ve always loved the me that has been wrought from the absences I’ve endured, I don’t want the foundation of my son’s personality to be based on him getting over me. I don’t want his pride to be built on how he survived. I don’t want him to wonder what unconditional love feels like. I want him to grow and reach his full emotional potential. And long after I’m gone, when the sun is setting at his back, I want him to look down at the gait of the shadow cast before him – see me – and smile. I want to live – for him – and that desire has created a fear in me that previously never existed. And you know what … I’m ok with that.

My son is on the way y’all. I’m going to be a father. Pray for me and also pray for the world because only lord knows whether or not it’s ready for Lil’ Sprads. With less than one month left to go till his arrival – I’m telling myself the same thing I’m always telling you …

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stay low and keep firing.

Mr.Spradley@singleblackmale.org | Twitter: @MrSpradley

Mr.Spradley@singleblackmale.org | Twitter: @MrSpradley

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