Making Good
by Eric Payne
In a week it will be Thanksgiving. Family will either arrive in town or you will pack up your own family, hit the road, train station or airport headed for the agreed upon turkey destination.
The holidays are here. They are a time for celebration and a time for reflection. During these times I tend to get warm and fuzzy about family — mine and everyone else’s. But like everything, the holidays pass just as the seasons do. Once they’re gone I’ll still have my wife and kids. But will the good feelings remain?
No matter how private a person I am, the second someone notices my ring, I am not only a man, but I am a husband. I also represent for the fatherhood clique. What is up for debate is whether or not I’m a poster child for or against marriage in the eyes of all the unmarried folk who observe my wife and I with much more scrutiny than we observe them. In my daily walk I sometimes wonder if I am setting the proper example? Am I doing the right thing or enough of it?
Best believe these questions are not driven by any desire to look good for others. I live for no one but God and family. But if I truly do live for no one but God and family would I even have to wonder what kind of example I set as a spouse or a parent? Would any of us?
Recently there has been a rash of tragic incidents in the news. Most notably, the devastating discovery of Shaniya Davis’ body alongside a North Carolina road. Our children are paying the price for our misdeeds, our broken communities, our fractured relationships, our fatherlessness, our not giving a you know what about much beyond our immediate selves.
365 days ago, most of us were still basking in the disbelief and afterglow of the election of President Barack Obama. We were united, we were focused on the big picture, we took charge of ourselves and we made history. As people Black and Married With Kids we have power over our own lives and the lives of those in our communities. We have the power to make a difference by volunteering time, if not money, to community centers. We can do more than just go to church on Sundays. We have the ability to carve out bits and pieces of our time to be coaches, teachers, mentors, advocates for marriage and fatherhood, or simply speak at an occasional career day at a school. During the holidays before we gather around our own dinner tables we can drop off and/or serve food to those less fortunate than us. Little moments of charity we might not put much stock into or may even consider a chore might mean everything to someone, a child or even an adult who’s lost his or her way, or who lives without hope and maybe even love.
Be thankful, and while you’re at it, please put your blessings to work. Lamar and Ronnie do this everyday here at BMWK, tirelessly promoting positive images and truths of black love and black families. If you haven’t already, please find a way in your own way to make good with the good that you have at your disposal. In the long run, if not the short, our children, families and communities will be so much richer for it.
Follow Eric on Twitter. He tackles married life and fatherhood as it happens to him at MakesMeWannaHoller.com. Check out his restaurant reviews and NYC tourism articles at NYMetropolista.com. He also reviews autos and writes human interest pieces for Atlanta-based J’Adore Magazine.
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