Black Husband’s Day
by Eric Payne
Father’s Day has come and gone and it was a beautiful thing to see the outpouring of Daddy-love across the Internet in articles, blog posts, webcasts and video tributes. Personally, I didn’t let it get to my head. In my opinion there is absolutely nothing special about what I’m doing with and for my kids. I’m their father and the only thing I know is to love them. Maybe along this same vein there should be a Husband’s Day — or even better, a Black Husband’s Day.
As soon as I leave my house I’m faced with the world, one that doesn’t understand me and often attempts to size me up because of my permanent tan. On the train to work, the looks on the faces of my weekly tally of white women who stare at me would suggest I desire to rob them of everything they own. This happens regardless of how well I’m dressed or how much I’m minding my own business. On the flip, the occasional white man doesn’t even acknowledge my presence until they slam into me while walking and are taken aback that my body didn’t step aside as they barged into the space that contained me.
In the work place I’m an anomaly. I went to Cornell as an undergrad and I completed my Master’s Degree by the age of twenty-three, giving me plenty of years ahead of me to go back to school for more degrees. Because both my parents are educators, being able to put a sentence together was a requirement for residence in my home. Everywhere from work to my doctor’s office when my credentials have been laid out on the table or I’ve dropped an occasional ten-dollar word to make crystal clear points I’ve been told I’m exceptional in that most ridiculous and insulting way that is an invisible pat on the back that somehow I’m different and better than the “rest of them.”
From the beginning of the day until its end, being misunderstood is as common to the everyday African American male experience as is breathing. How do you fit in when you don’t fit in? How do you get people to “get” you when they are too busy trying to categorize you? How do you cope if you are accepted but others who look like you are not?
But it shouldn’t matter because men don’t…
- Have feelings…
- Have dreams…
- Have expectations…
- Have fears…
- Want love…
- Need an occasional hug…right?
Admittedly, men don’t exactly help matters by acting like we could care less. But beneath all that MAN, there is A man who has just as many wants and needs as the other sex. And because we are men and because of our occasional to frequent inability to open up, we are often just as easily misunderstood inside our own homes as we are out in the world. But we do need all of the above and more. Any man who says otherwise is probably lying to himself.
This isn’t an indictment of anyone or a charge against women. If you’re doing right by your man and he’s doing right by you, then God Bless You Both. This is simply my fictitious petition for a Black Husband’s Day because I was a man before I was a father. Taking a page from all the Daddy-love, maybe taking stock in the little, everyday things would help us all see our spouses and partners in a better and brighter light.
Check Eric out at MakesMeWannaHoller.com where he discusses family, fatherhood and everything in between. He is also the author of I See Through Eyes, a book of poetry and short stories.
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