My epiphany

Far be it for me to judge anyone. I was once a pretty rough dude; carried a gun for ten years, was out of the house at 15 you see. I had no one to really guide me in the ways of the world and how to survive a broken heart. The rejection, and then, ejection from my family of nine siblings after my dad’s breakdown, my banishment had left me ill-prepared for the outside and its vices. Sure, I sold drugs and did many of them, shot a few people, ran a crew. Many of the things a bright mind might get into living outside the boundaries of family structure or strict scholastic influences.

The streets are not friendly to a kid.
 
It has been decades of growth for me since my epiphany. It seems so long ago. Lying on my couch mid-day, when I should have been gainfully employed; my broken arm in a shoulder-to-hand cast from where I had blocked the second blow to my head from a baseball hat, the first one having knocked me down and nearly out from behind; indeed, nurturing still the collapsed lung and hole through my chest where I had been subsequently shot by a cross bow and pinned to the cupboard door in a drug dealer’s kitchen while crack was being cooked on the stove. Laying there, thinking of all this, I spotted my son crawl into the room.
 
This beautiful little boy, all blue eyes and blond-haired perfection, saw me in my abandoned position and trundled over with enthusiasm on all fours to take up his usual spot. He clumsily stood on two unsteady feet, and gripping my shirt to gain traction pulled himself up onto my belly. There he turned himself around and sat perched on his daddy. He watched TV with me, sucking his thumb.

I looked at him in a moment of reflection and really noticed him. I came to realize, while watching his profile, how wisps of blond curls framed his white skin and chubby pink cheeks: he had no enemies. It somehow also came to me that he was the only person I knew that had none. He had never harmed anyone; owed no debt to the world and wanted nothing but to be loved by his parents.

It dawned on me that I would have to be a pretty callous and unfeeling individual to leave this little dependent creature to the mercies of single motherhood; of a fatherless existence of possible despair and longing; of sequential suitors using his mom and subjecting him to the unknown in the pursuit of her body. Whilst I would surely be languishing in jail, largely forgotten by his childhood existence. And I was such a person. But suddenly, the consequences of my life were counterbalanced by the effects they would have on him. The scales tipped mightily to one side that day.

Who did I think I was to do this to this little boy, this innocent who depended on me for protection?   

Everyone knew I would retaliate. That it would be done with a finality borne of my position as a thug, as a fearless antisocial that lived by a code. For I was a fool honouring a system of retribution understood and enabled only by the street.

It seemed like the whole of the city knew I was coming: the cops, my adversaries and all those hangers-on who speculated on the when and how. The heat was on this story and there was little likelihood of pulling it off surreptitiously. I had the know how, the wherewithal, the coldness of heart. I just couldn’t figure out the escape.

My head said wait; my hate said now.  

My mind circled hopelessly. I would have to sacrifice it all as if it were a preordained act, a foregone conclusion awaited gleefully by the man who would relish putting me away. I was boxed into a destiny that trapped me in only one way forward.

But, that afternoon, looking at my little boy, his purity and unspoiled perfection so plain to see, his need to be loved by only me so great and obvious at just that moment in particular, I blinked.

Yes, I did; for once, I checked myself. 

Subsequently, I questioned deeply my reactionary lifestyle. My life hadn’t turned out anything like I thought it might; it was a tale of waste, of potential gone horribly wrong. All of my hopes and aspirations had been compromised in the years since I had left home. My promise had been betrayed.

Somehow, at that moment, I made my first good decision, perhaps not as a man but as a father.

That afternoon, it was if a light had been beamed down upon me and my little boy while I lay there prone and injured; illuminating the two of us as  an inseparable pair with all the cosmic forces of the ages being brought to bear on our bond of blood, providing clarity where there had only been darkness.

I decided then that if all my life amounted to in its totality was to be a successful dad to this little man, then that is the way it had to be.

The asshole that shot me would have to wait until another day to die.
 
I never looked back. I remember the decision imbued me with vigour and even excitement. It was the light at the end of the tunnel of darkness. I looked at my little boy and knew he’d be safe. I would take him away from those who threatened to harm him. He’d no longer be in a crossfire created by my shit life. Suddenly, I had purpose, bringing all of my strengths to bear on protecting the only evidence of love in my existence.

Lenny Rousseau was gunned down in a pool hall on Gladstone Avenue some two years later. The guy just walked him, shot him, and walked out. He had threatened to kill the man’s family if he didn’t kill one of his rivals, just as he had implied he would kill mine. Only that person had decided that he must act.

He got life. I was free.

I went on to school, graduated first in my class, later moving my family several times across the country as I worked and provided for them. Here I am, intact, happy and relatively successful. Alas, my marriage did not last, but fatherhood defined me. Corrie is now a grown man and turned out fine. In fact, he works with me here in Canada. 
 
Around his 18th birthday, I was busting my son’s balls a bit, as has been my lifelong habit, telling him I was going to forego the estimated hundred grand it cost me to raise him. I added, however, that my duty to him as a parent was over; moreover, that whatever help he received from me going forward would be based on our relationship and not from a sense of duty to care for him materialistically any longer. I wanted him to know this milestone was important to both of us, but for different reasons.  

He smiled and responded: “Listen, mom gave me clothes to wear, made me great food and drove me to school and stuff. But everything I know, I mean, everything I have learned about myself and life, about happiness and people, I have learned from you. So thanks Dad, I love you”.  

And my boy hugged and kissed me.
 
Forgetaboutit!
 
🙂

Christopher K Wallace

2012. All rights reserved.