My mother taught me to follow my father's example

While living in Indonesia, there was a time when I was worried about my safety. I remember coming home after dark one day to find a large search party of neighbors gathered in our yard. My mother did not look pleased, but she was relieved to see me, and only a few minutes later did she notice a damp sock, smeared with dirt, wrapped around my forearm.

"What's the matter?

"What?"

"Why are you wrapping your arms in socks?"

'I didn't care and got scratched.'

'Let me see.'

"It's not serious at all."

"Let me see."

I untied my sock. A long gash ran from my wrist to my elbow, narrowly missing my vein. It was deep. Trying to calm her down, I explained what had happened: a friend and I had run to their farm, and it was raining, and the farm is a very mudslide-prone place, and it was scary, and it was surrounded by razor wire, and...

A neighbor with a car took us to the hospital, where most of the lights were out when we arrived and no one was in sight; Finally, in a small room in the back, she found two young men playing dominoes. When she asked them where the doctors were, they cheerfully replied "We are the doctors" and continued their game. Only after the game did they put their pants on, gave me 20 stitches, and left me with an ugly scar. Through it all, the mother's overwhelming feeling was that her child's life could have passed without her seeing it and that everyone around her was too busy trying to survive to notice it.

I realize now that those issues were not as tangible as school books or nursing treatments, but the intangibles were at the heart of her education. "If you want to be a real person," she told me, "you need to have some values."

Honesty -- When tax officials come to collect taxes, you shouldn't hide the refrigerator in the pantry, even if anyone else, including the tax officials, does the same thing. Fairness - Parents of wealthy students should not give teachers televisions during Ramadan, and their children have nothing to be proud of in terms of the high grades they might get for it. Forthright - If you don't like the shirt I gave you for your birthday, you can just say so instead of stuffing it at the bottom of the wardrobe. Use independent judgment - just because the other kids laughed at the poor boy's haircut doesn't mean you have to do the same.

Whenever she takes me aside to explain these things, I always nod obediently, but she must know that many of her ideas seem unrealistic. Everything around me remained the same, which bred a relentless skepticism.

She had only one supporter, and that was the distant authority of my father. She told me more and more often how he had grown up in a poor continent, in a poor country, in a poor family; How hard his life had been, how he had experienced any difficulty. Even so, he did not cut corners or resort to any means. He was always diligent and honest, no matter what the cost. He lived under the dictates of a different principle of thought, a principle that brought forth a higher form of power. My mother decided that I must follow his example. I had no choice. It's in my DNA.

Gradually, she brought me more information about black people. I was ashamed of myself for not getting up in the morning to study when she told me that children in southern schools could only read the books that came out of rich white schools and still became doctors and lawyers and scientists. As a black man, I had inherited a great legacy and a special destiny, and only we are strong enough to carry this glorious burden.