A Discovery of Life

For my first blog post of 2026, I was pondering what to write about. 

It was a Friday evening and the Hubster, Eric, had already turned in for the night. As I sat at our dinner table with a glass of my favorite bubbly rose, I realized that we have been in our home for 19 years this week! It’s truly amazing and a bit sad how quickly time has gone by. It’s amazing that we’ve been able to share this awesomely designed space by Eric, with family and friends over the years. It’s sad because there’s more time now behind us than in front of us these days.

So for topics, I thought about the obvious political landscape, weather-related disasters, and general global instability, as potential writing points, but that would be too …typical. Besides, right now there’s too much negativity out there in the media forcing us into a downward spiral of despair anytime we look at our phones or televisions. That’s why I was thinking of writing about something more close to home. 

Last fall, I mentioned in a post that I was pondering about my next creative writing endeavor. I was trying to figure out if I should write another collection of poetry or do something completely different, such as a novel or memoir. Well, I’ve decided to start working on the latter by writing a memoir. I really wasn’t sure about this idea until I started chatting with other writers and friends who became intrigued by some of the situations and life adventures that I lived through. Now I have to figure out what type of memoir to write. Should I write a confessional where I reveal secrets and reflect on the personal lessons that were learned. Or, do I focus on some of the places that I’ve traveled to and the friendships I made along the way. I never realized that there were so many different types of memoir styles until I started doing some research. And just like who I am, I am not one thing or type so why shouldn’t my memoir reflect the cross collection of identities at which I represent. Anyone who is unfamiliar with this writer and is reading one of my posts for the first time should know who I am. I am Black, a Brother, a Gay man, I am Multi-lingual, a Husband to Eric (aka the Hubster) and of course being a good human. 

In addition to a memoir style, there were and are so many questions that have flooded my head about what details I should share about my life and how to put those details into some written form that would keep a reader engaged, entertained, and even enlightened. Should I talk about my coming out story, having the best job in the world, my time living in the city of Amsterdam, or even meeting the love of my life? I had to create an outline to help me focus and set things in motion. Logically I started with pulling content together for the first chapter. My approach was like that of a movie. I wanted to introduce the key characters to the chapter so that there was more continuity in the storyline. For example, I wanted to include information about my parents and decided to take a dip into the Ancestry.com genealogy pool to gather more information than what my mother could remember and what my father could provide (he died in 2023). 

I was surprised at some of the information that I was able to uncover about my mother, but more so about my father. On the site, I was able to view old marriage licenses, photos, and death records of my family and relatives that were uploaded to the website. There was information that I never knew about such as when my parents were married and the location. I also learned that my parents didn’t have a traditional wedding, but instead were married by the Justice of the Peace in the neighboring state of South Carolina. The most revealing bit of information that I discovered was that my father had been married before meeting my mother. Not only that, there was a child in the picture too. What I couldn’t figure out was whether the child was my father’s or not. However, that marriage ended in 1961, due to the death of his first wife who ended up dying at the young age of 24 of heart failure. What happened to the child remains a mystery. Three years later in 1964, my father would marry my mother and then later that same year, yours truly would be born. 

They actually weren’t together for very long following my youngest sister’s birth in 1969. Our parents ended up separating and eventually divorcing because of the verbal and physical abuse from my father. So we didn’t celebrate wedding anniversaries or even have conversations about that part of our past until we were much older. This was a painful memory for my mother so it’s completely understandable why this wasn’t openly discussed in our now smaller family unit. 

As for the information that Ancestry.com revealed, yes, my mother was aware of the death of wife #1. She just never disclosed it to us. Rightfully so, I believe. This wasn’t part of our “current” family history. Besides, that information was part of my father’s story. He could have shared that with me and my sisters at any point of our adult lives had he wanted to. Over the years, I did reach out to my father. I even invited him to my graduation from Portland State University back in 2007. I did so as a courtesy. I didn’t think that he would actually show up and he did. My mother was less than thrilled but that is something for the book. As an adult, talking to my father wasn’t the most revealing or interesting exchanges when we had conversations. For me, by getting to know more about him, I was hoping to learn more about another part of myself and my family. Sadly, the conversations we did have were centered more around sports and I’m not a sporty “G”. 

So, back to the memoir. To me writing a memoir is scarier than writing poetry. With factual accounts of my public life being written about, I need to pay closer attention to detail and accuracy.  I want to leave a written legacy of my existence. I hope to inspire someone on a similar path to follow their dreams even though the odds may appear to be stacked against them. I also want to encourage folks, especially if they’re Black, or from humble means not to be afraid to travel abroad, if the opportunity arises, solo to a non-English speaking country. You never know what adventures may await you on the other side of the Atlantic ocean and beyond. More importantly, I want readers of this book to know that my skin color and my sexual orientation are assets of a great life and have not been a detriment despite the American societal barriers that have anchored them into place. It hasn’t been easy, but I have taken knowledge from these academic systems and been gifted enough common sense to make smart decisions. We’re on this planet for such a short amount of time and I want the world to know that I was here.  

Stay tuned for more details about my new book!