Becoming a Father

On January 4, 1999—two years to the date after I arrived on my college campus—my son was born.

I was young. I was still a student. I was still trying to understand how to take care of myself.

Now I was responsible for someone else.

I traveled to Atlanta as soon as I could and remember seeing my son at the hospital, staring at him with a mixture of pride, disbelief, and shock. I signed his birth certificate. I was his father, and I intended to be present.

For a period, his mother worked while I stayed home with him. I quickly discovered that caring for an infant is considerably more complicated than the rotation I had imagined: feed him, burp him, change him, repeat.

Sometimes he cried and I had absolutely no idea why.

I cooked. I gained weight. I learned. I worried. I tried.

We attempted to build a family while we were both still very young. At one point, an unexpected eviction left our belongings on the street and left me homeless again. I lost almost everything I owned.

I returned to Tallahassee and, through fortunate timing and help from the university, managed to secure on-campus housing and resume my education.

Later, my son came to live with me.

A Child on a College Campus

Some of my happiest memories from those years involve having my son with me on campus.

He came to games. He was around students. He became, in my mind at least, something of a campus mascot. When I worked to establish a chapter of Sigma Lambda Beta at Florida A&M University, he was part of my life there too.

Our circumstances were far from perfect. His mother and I struggled. We separated and reunited at different points, sometimes making decisions primarily because we believed they would provide him with greater stability.

We were two young parents with limited resources and limited guidance trying to figure out how to keep a child healthy, safe, and loved.

We made mistakes.

But we also made sacrifices.

I wanted my son to grow up seeing college as an ordinary place—a place where he belonged. I wanted him to have a relationship with education that began with familiarity rather than fear.

Perhaps I was trying to give him something I had spent my own childhood searching for: the expectation that there was a future waiting for him.