i have faith
in who you are becoming
in who you are
you are the wolf
having run through a stream
to stand on a mountain peak
dripping wet
-- Saul Williams
I got to thinking about men. They intrigue me and complete me.
I've never been a man-hater or afflicted with penis envy. But this being the Men's Issue, a woman's gotta speak up. Men don't always tell the truth about who they are. They know the truth -- they just don't disclose it.
Information is power, and I want to give you some of each.
Let me tell you about my brother, Kenny, because he's the composite of a little of each of you. It's apropos and ironic that he's also a father. I never thought Kenny could be a father, though he obviously had the biology.
But it was, most of all our lives, about Kenny.
We joke now about our father's infamous and ridiculously egocentric retort: "What am I gonna realize?" And beneath we know that, despite Kenny's strong physical resemblance to the Hills, my mother's people, he is most similar in temperament and conservatism to Clarence Wilson, our father and our shady and well-preserved Mighty Oak.
They're both those old-school men who know how to fix things and put furniture together. They cut grass and empty garbage, lift heavy things, dock tight finances and come through when you're stranded.
Kenny, the former juice-guzzling, cartoon-watching ladies man, is a gentle man who opens doors and disciplines his children. Throughout my life I watched Kenny topple fixtures in the downtown Hamilton Elder-Beerman and sock-skate the basement floor in Israel Baptist Church, but I couldn't picture it. All the times he called me names, yanked my chain and coveted my attention, it was unfathomable.
After all the expensive gym shoes he ran through, the stamp collections he bored of, the Sports Illustrated subscriptions he amassed, the macked-out 10 speeds he begged for and polyester leisure suits he rocked, there were no signs pointing to the possibilities, the future. I couldn't see it beneath his blow-dried, beach ball Afro.
Kenny is a study in contradictions. He's a shrewd businessman and a vaudevillian emcee. He's a Volvo-driving corporate executive who laments the abundances his sons enjoy.
He is Donald Trump and LL Cool J. He can be a disciple and a linchpin. He's an under-rower and a captain. He's arrogant, bombastic, perfunctory and sarcastic. But, then, so are all my mother's children.
His redemption is evident in the fact that his attributes dwarf his blemishes.
Kenny -- my nemesis, my hero, my brother -- is affable, intelligent, gracious, talented, energetic, sensible, insightful and tender. He's a Christian before and while he is black. He's a man before he is a Christian. He is a Wilson -- son of Clarence and Gladine, husband to Kelli, father of K.J. and Kyler and brother of Randy, Kathy and Devin -- above all else.
If you're against him, you'll wish you were with him, and if you are with him, be thankful he's on your team.
I knew it was divine order the first time I saw Kenny wrap his basketball-palming, extraterrestrial fingers around a newborn K.J., his first son. Suddenly, the past was a backdrop and the moment equaled the sum total of both our lives.
That was it. Kenny's fatherhood was and remains the manifestation of both our beings.
He gets to live with the purpose he's known God wanted him to possess, and I get to transfer all my unfulfilled maternal longings onto my nephews. His children are the measurements of the man and woman Kenny and I have grown to become.
K.J. and Kyler have shown us that we can each be and do better. They make us want to be good people.
Finally, I must say that I am proudest of Kenny's interpretation of black manhood. He's not typical, and he's not afraid.
His black male self is the antithesis of the sorry Sambo we've been socialized to believe black men to be. He's not showy in the responsibilities of fatherhood and manhood. He takes care of his wife and children because he's supposed to.
He is the priest of his household. He's an overcomer. He's a prince.
Kenny is the man I never expected he could be. And Father's Day is a day I never expected him to celebrate -- but nobody deserves to more than him.
contact Kathy y. wilson: kwilson@citybeat.com
