If you blow the photograph up, you can see Glamis in the background (she is his dog and waits by the window for his return. If I say his name, she immediately leaps to see if he is coming home). What I love most is not the two of them together, but their separation on a beach, beside the waves with multiple footprints between.
Footprints, as metaphors, have a religious story behind them. They offer guidance to those who want to walk side by side with faith (usually Judeo-Christian in the storytelling), but that's not necessarily where my head lies.
My mind is with The Great Whatever.
Perhaps that is why there are so many imprints in the sand (there are a billion and one stories to be told, to be understood, to be read). So, I walk side by side with fate (my own faith) and allow what is to be delivered to simply come my way. The path has never been a singular, predictable, or mundane trajectory. Rather, it's what it is (and I'm thrilled by it all).
When I first arrived to Connecticut, I jumped into work with schools and quickly discovered Bassick, an urban environment, a high school, and a location that has been part of my blood for three decades. The first day at the school, I ran into a scrawny kid (with muscles - he was a football player, after all) who had dreads and a somewhat tough persona (that is the way one gets by...and he holds his own). I immediately recognized the features in this kid and asked if he was Congolese. He said he was, but his roots were in Zambia, and he didn't really want anything to do with me. I handed him my card and said, "Something tells me the two of us will work together one day."
For the years that followed, I kept running into this kid in classrooms, and noticed he was always focused on getting his work done. I re-handed him my card and/or checked in on him from time to time. I heard stories about a kid named Chitunga, but the face I knew at the school (this kid) was never associated with the name told to me by teachers, mentors, and friends. The name-to-face- association didn't occur until his junior year when I offered space for 5 kids from Bassick High School to enter my freshman English class (an initiative of a Dean who is now retired, and that caused a little 'aggravation' between different colleges at the campus). Five kids were selected for a 2nd year trial and I was chosen to host kids for a dual placement. Selections were made, but suddenly one - the valedictorian - dropped out, so I imagined I would go with 4 kids. Then two calls came to me suggesting I should consider one young man... a boy named Chitunga (the one I heard about) and I was told his g.p.a. was lower than the other 4, but that his first two years of high school were a struggle, but I shouldn't hold that against him (that story, in time, was shared with me by him). I agreed to meet.
When I came to the school, I walked into the room and saw that Chitunga was the actual kid I'd been watching over since I arrived to Bassick. After interviewing him, I recommended he should be the 5th student and this, as fates go, brought forward his enrollment - a senior in high school - into my freshman English class.
There are many ways I can tell our story from this point on, but he chose not to take a second semester with me (his football season, my demands, his senior year - it was all too much). Instead, that second semester he chose to write to me via Google Docs, independently, and to fill me in on his world and life. I kept encouraging him to write and write and write, and this eventually led to driving lessons and weekends meeting up for dinner and/or events, and eventually into his moving into my house. In short, he simply became a part of who I am (the story continues and will continue this way for the rest of our lives).
In a text message I wrote to Chitung yesterday, to say that June 3 was approaching - a day that became one for courts - he wrote back to say, "November, 1995. I like to imagine so," with a nod to the year he was born. The bond is for lifetime.
There are so many footsteps taken...so many paths...so many turns in the journey (and the ocean ebbs and flows, flows and ebbs, lapping to generations and generations to come). Five years later, the footsteps merged into family, and the worlds, nations, histories, memories, and dreams folded inward in bonded unification. A year ago today, it was made official. And today, he's in CNY driving his cousins to baseball and soccer games. It's been elephant shoes, shoes and elephants, and admiration and support ever since. Ubuntu. Neither of us wanted fanfare for the story as it unfolded. We just allowed everything to evolve at exactly the right time.
Waves wash in.
Waves wash out.
Boys deserve a dog - he got Glamis (I got a son).
And on the beach a few weeks ago, I captured this photo. As snapshots go, this image says everything - there are many prints in the sand that are part of this story, (it's not easy...but it is simple... it's a story...
...his-tory.
And that is why June 3rd, is Fathers and Sons Day. We are better men because of it. Because of each other.
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