2005年NPR美国国家公共电台八月-Being a Single Black Father（在线收听） |
| This year there will be more than a million divorce filings in the United States. One of them has commentator Leon Wynter's name on it. I am now playing at age 51 the strangest role yet in my long strange trip: suburban single father, non-custodial, and black. I've said goodbye to white privilege by association with a marriage, a mortgage and a master's degree. Now, well, if I were still in the Bronx, I'd be the baby father. Except I still pay the mortgage, and I still do the Saturday shuffle with my seven-year-old Grace from piano lessons to playground to her softball game, but in my hand-me-down 1990 Toyota, not the Volvo that brought her home from the hospital. As we pull to the ball field, I spy the single mother of the only other black girl on the team getting out of a taxicab. We don't do that on our side of town. We don't give our kids names that sound like imaginary African nations, either. Some of us are black, of course, but not like that. What do I mean by "we", anyway? We, the white privileged upper middle class? Or we, who grew up in the Bronx with kids who lived in the projects? After the game, the mother is stranded, negotiating on herself for a ride that's not coming. I offer her one and once we partner the Toyota, Grace finagles an impromptu play date in the park—our nearly all white park. It's just a public park, they're just kids banging and clanging the jungle gym with the other kids. I wish and I'm tired from being "we", and "we" and "me". I sit next to the single mom on the bench and I really don't care if the white people judge her loudhailer or cringe at her even louder R-rated cell phone chatter . I don't care if she turns my "we" into a black stereotype just by sitting next to me. Truth is, I'm not feeling the white suburban "we" this weekend, I'm feeling single black parent and the sticker shock of divorcing while maintaining appearances. She tells me her baby father is working overtime. I don't know the brother but now I can identify— slaving on a Saturday to keep his child as high above his head as he can reach even if he can't afford to be with her. Play date done, we drive down to the other side of town and drop them off. As we drive away Grace notices the graffiti and remarks that we must have gone a long way toward the Bronx in taking them home. Slipping back north on the greeny boulevards, we observe an unusual silence. We sit in the drive way and grow wise awhile together, before alighting on the three-quarter acre that is still her home. I break the silence with a simple question "Grace, look at me, do you like the way you live?" She sighs, "I know, daddy. I know. I'm thankful." She's well ahead of me as usual. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- non-custodial parent：The parent who does not have custodial rights to the child, but is responsible for the partial support of the child and is physically absent from the home where the child resides. This parent is usually referred to as the non-custodial parent. Hand-me-down: 1.Handed down to one person after being used and discarded by another. 2.of inferior quality; shabby. Boulevard: 林荫大道 Graffiti：涂鸦 |
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