fidelity to Uncle Sam. I didn’t think that his patriotism might have been a choice, something he adhered to out of intrinsic belief rather than duty, yet I can see now how a black man of his age—a man who had been raised in the segregated South and who’d lived to witness the victories of the Civil Rights Movement—might hold tight to the conviction that American democracy truly was remarkable. Still, the very freedoms—to self-criticism, to dissent—that allow democracy to thrive seemed to unsettle him after a point.
I never thought about the anxiety he might have felt leaving the only professional world he’d ever known for one full of people who had, for the most part, only ever known something else. I’m nearly the same age now that he was then, and I’d wager that his discipline and intelligence, like his patriotism, were not traits he acquired in the military but the natural characteristics that had led him to enlist in the first place. The air force must have appealed to his innate love of order and to his belief in hard work. “You just have to apply yourself,” he’d always say, slicing the air with his hand. It was his way of encouraging us or chastening us; his version of our mother’s constant “You can do anything you set your mindto.” Even for a man like him—someone methodical, meticulous, and always reading, learning, bettering himself—there must have been times when the task of keeping a family of our size afloat threatened to overwhelm him. But he never showed it. He stood at the prow of our household, steering us through season after season, year after year. Any worries and any fears were kept from our view. “Your job is to go to school,” he’d tell us sometimes. “Mine is to take care of everything else.” He did it so well, and so invisibly, that it never occurred to me he might have done so at any personal cost, though now I think of him as a young black man coming of age during an era when it was necessary, in so many ways, to fight for his rights. That’s no unique feat; thousands have done it, and yet my father emerged on the other side not wearing the kind of brittle dignity that is an act of the will or a mask covering a spirit that has been beaten down enough times to be broken. He came out on the other side intact, ever convinced of his self-worth.
A few weeks into his new job, when the daily drive back and forth to Sunnyvale got to be too much, Dad decided to rent an apartment in neighboring Mountain View. It was a simple one-bedroom on the second floor of a bare-bones apartment complex, the kind with exterior stairways leading to the apartments and a covered carport instead of a yard. He drove there on Monday mornings and drove back home to us after work on Fridays. It wasn’t new for Mom to be lonely for her husband. He’d traveled plenty during his years in the service, though now that she was no longer part of a community of air force wives, being apart from her husband must have felt different—but not insurmountable.
In the weeks before my school year started, Mom would sometimes drive down to spend a few nights with Dad during the middle of the week, taking me with her. I got used to the quiet of the car, listening to FM radio together, watching all the landmarks gopast: the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog off to the west as we crossed over the bay; the Coca-Cola sign lit up on the northbound side of the highway with lights that flashed off and on like effervescent soda bubbles once we hit Interstate 101; the It’s-It ice-cream factory beckoning deliciously out beyond the San Francisco airport. We’d leave in the early afternoon and make it to Mountain View just before the commuters came out, bottlenecking the road with their cars and their impatience to be home.
While Dad was at work, Mom and I took walks in his neighborhood. Sometimes, we’d stop by a nearby playground in the afternoon so I could jump rope or climb up on the big tire swing. There
I never thought about the anxiety he might have felt leaving the only professional world he’d ever known for one full of people who had, for the most part, only ever known something else. I’m nearly the same age now that he was then, and I’d wager that his discipline and intelligence, like his patriotism, were not traits he acquired in the military but the natural characteristics that had led him to enlist in the first place. The air force must have appealed to his innate love of order and to his belief in hard work. “You just have to apply yourself,” he’d always say, slicing the air with his hand. It was his way of encouraging us or chastening us; his version of our mother’s constant “You can do anything you set your mindto.” Even for a man like him—someone methodical, meticulous, and always reading, learning, bettering himself—there must have been times when the task of keeping a family of our size afloat threatened to overwhelm him. But he never showed it. He stood at the prow of our household, steering us through season after season, year after year. Any worries and any fears were kept from our view. “Your job is to go to school,” he’d tell us sometimes. “Mine is to take care of everything else.” He did it so well, and so invisibly, that it never occurred to me he might have done so at any personal cost, though now I think of him as a young black man coming of age during an era when it was necessary, in so many ways, to fight for his rights. That’s no unique feat; thousands have done it, and yet my father emerged on the other side not wearing the kind of brittle dignity that is an act of the will or a mask covering a spirit that has been beaten down enough times to be broken. He came out on the other side intact, ever convinced of his self-worth.
A few weeks into his new job, when the daily drive back and forth to Sunnyvale got to be too much, Dad decided to rent an apartment in neighboring Mountain View. It was a simple one-bedroom on the second floor of a bare-bones apartment complex, the kind with exterior stairways leading to the apartments and a covered carport instead of a yard. He drove there on Monday mornings and drove back home to us after work on Fridays. It wasn’t new for Mom to be lonely for her husband. He’d traveled plenty during his years in the service, though now that she was no longer part of a community of air force wives, being apart from her husband must have felt different—but not insurmountable.
In the weeks before my school year started, Mom would sometimes drive down to spend a few nights with Dad during the middle of the week, taking me with her. I got used to the quiet of the car, listening to FM radio together, watching all the landmarks gopast: the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog off to the west as we crossed over the bay; the Coca-Cola sign lit up on the northbound side of the highway with lights that flashed off and on like effervescent soda bubbles once we hit Interstate 101; the It’s-It ice-cream factory beckoning deliciously out beyond the San Francisco airport. We’d leave in the early afternoon and make it to Mountain View just before the commuters came out, bottlenecking the road with their cars and their impatience to be home.
While Dad was at work, Mom and I took walks in his neighborhood. Sometimes, we’d stop by a nearby playground in the afternoon so I could jump rope or climb up on the big tire swing. There
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