A Greater Story Read online

  Auburn Ave (aka Sweet Auburn) was the mecca for black-owned businesses. Farther up Auburn Ave, past the I-75/85 bridge, was the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became copastor with his father. Next door was the palatial Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, a memorial dedicated to Dr. King’s legacy.

  Riding with my dad every Saturday to the barbershop, I never thought to visit Ebenezer Church or the King Center. During holidays or the summertime, I would see lines of tourists eagerly waiting to take photos of the pulpit Dr. King preached from or to see his worn Bible or wristwatch displayed in the King Center. I imagined parents trying to put Dr. King’s legacy in context for a young mind to grasp the magnitude of this freedom fighter. With all that history right up the street, I never thought to enter the space and take in the sites. I was a kid, and the thought of Dr. King’s legacy seemed to be such an out-of-reach story for me to wrap my brain around.

  Dad wasn’t chatty on these trips. Keeping in line with his no-talking-during-football rule, these commutes were quiet. As a young boy who wanted nothing more than to be like his dad, I followed suit. Collier men were silent. I became silent too.

  Filling in the space were area transit buses stopping and starting, homeless men shouting out their requests for cash, businessmen and Georgia State University students hustling and bustling through their morning routines. The city was jumping.

  Eventually, we’d arrive, and Dad would tug out his key ring stuffed full with keys. He’d jiggle the lock, open the door, and walk laps around the shop as he got everything ready for the day.

  Dad was always the first one to arrive, but shortly after, the rest of the Silver Star crew would come in. Black barbershops flow like a church service. Someone is always there to open the door and start the day, and between worship and the Word, everyone kind of trickles in. By the time the preacher gets up to preach, everyone is where they’re supposed to be. In a black barbershop, the “preacher” is up by noon—ten a.m. on Saturdays. The culture of his “church” centers on what’s always on TV in his shop, how good the coffee is, which customers are regulars, and what conversations are held.

  If you ever witnessed the sheer madness of a black-barbershop debate, then you know that it’s not for the faint of heart. You’d better come with facts. You’d better come with passion. You’d better come with strength to go the distance. I used to love being a fly on the wall whenever Dad’s staff and clients went at it. In his unassuming way, Dad served as a quiet referee who secretly loved to indulge a few fools.

  On one occasion, a Silver Star legend named Lucky started a debate about whether James Brown was the greatest recording artist of all time. This was the king of soul he was talking about. Things got crazy fast, mostly because everyone there forgot that Lucky’s dad was once JB’s bodyguard. “James Brown is the king!” half the shop (including Lucky) were hollering, while the others hollered, “James Brown is trash!”

  Welcome to the black barbershop. Those fools were family to me.

  As crazy and fun as the debates were, they were also empowering to me. I was a young man trying to sort out my identity, my character, my place in the world. To be allowed to be present for those discussions marked me. From time to time, someone would even ask my opinion on the debate at hand, and while the invitation made me sweat bullets, I loved feeling included like that. Those men weren’t just customers or employees; they were big brothers and uncles and dads. They knew my name. They loved me and my dad. They cared about the progress I was making with every year that passed. Hanging around them told me much of what I needed to know about how to make it in this world. If it takes a village to raise a kid, well, these men were that village for me.

  In this country, the term “family” historically has referred to a husband, a wife, and their biological offspring. Anything that doesn’t run along those lines may be considered “family,” but only if you throw some descriptive words before or behind it. If your mom isn’t married, you’re in a “single-parent family.” If your mom or dad marries someone who has children of their own, you’re part of a “blended family.” If you’re part of the LGBTQ community and have friends or partners who serve as your primary support system, you might be part of a “chosen family.” If you’ve been adopted, like me, then you may refer to the individuals whose DNA runs through you as your “biological mother” or “biological father.”

  With that in mind, woven throughout contemporary science, sociologists and anthropologists have talked in terms of “degrees of kinship” when analyzing how people fit into and behave inside of family units. For example, the children of a parent are “first-degree” kin. Full biological siblings, half siblings, and biological grandmothers, grandfathers, nieces, nephews, aunts, and uncles are “second-degree” kin. Half nieces, half nephews, first cousins, and more are “third-degree,” whereas half first cousins are “fourth-degree,” first cousins once removed are fifth, second cousins are sixth, and so on, right down the line. And with these degrees, we have great clarity. We have an answer to the question, “Who are you to me?”

  Other than Sara, the lines weren’t exactly clear regarding my connection to another human being. Which was cool with me, because we’d been loved, accepted, and welcomed by an amazing mom and dad. We may not have had a ton of external wealth, but internal riches? We had buckets and buckets of it. Sara and I are living proof that some of the poorest people in the world, materially speaking, are happier than some of the richest. Why? Because those “poor” ones have sorted out where true wealth really comes from. Kindness, patience, confidence, self-esteem, faith, integrity, love—these things were the glue that held our family together. Whatever “lack” I was supposed to be experiencing from the absence of my biological family, I just didn’t have.

  Researchers will tell you that the effects of “maternal abandonment” are almost always guaranteed to create substantial damage in the hearts and souls of its victims. There are evidently various forms that this type of abandonment can take, such as emotional maternal abandonment, where the mother is present with her children in body but miles away in her mind and heart. Or psychological maternal abandonment, where the mother regards her kids with hatred or apathy, often neglecting them and not tending to their basic needs. But these experts in the field agree that, by far, the worst form of maternal abandonment is the physical one, where the mom literally just leaves.

  In the world of reptiles, abandonment is a part of their coming-of-age strategy. Snakes lay eggs filled with their babies, and even before those eggs hatch, the females exit stage left. Geckos do the very same thing.

  To create a closer parallel, panda moms, who almost always deliver twins, keep one with them and abandon the other to the woods.

  We read these facts and find ourselves resisting the urge to cringe: Aren’t mothers hardwired to care for their young? We know there’s something called maternal instinct, and regardless how fast and bright our independent streak runs, we still kind of expect moms to show up. This is why we just laugh when a baby starts to cry when his mother leaves the room. “Oh, it’s okay,” we say in a baby voice, an attempt to convince the child that his mother will be right back. Until a child experiences the development that occurs during the sensorimotor stage, the baby will always freak out. Why? Because until that point, I’ve learned, the baby believes that when an object disappears, it ceases to exist. If Mom leaves the room, Mom dies—which consequently makes the baby want to die too. “How will I live without Mama?”

  But, of course, his mom hasn’t ceased to exist. She’s just using the restroom. All moms eventually come back. Right?

  Back to the abandonment research: When a child is physically abandoned by the one who birthed him, in nearly every instance, chaos ensues. The child wonders what he did wrong to make his mother leave. The child may feel guilty—even though he’s not sure what he’s feeling guilty about. Later in life he may grow fearful of building relationships with other
adults, because look what happened to the first adult he knew. He may walk through life expecting every person he is around to leave at some point. He longs for his long-awaited reunion with Mom. I mean, what other solution is there?

  As I developed the ability to evaluate the world around me, to put words to that world and my life, to make sense of all that I’d been through, I saw that none of the expected results for someone like me had come to pass. In other words, I never felt abandoned, nor did I experience what the research communicates.

  As far as I knew, our mother left and wasn’t coming back, and that was a good thing for our future. I’d survived being abandoned by the woman who birthed me.

  I’d survived two months of foster care—two months of Benadryl in my milk to keep me quiet because we were sickly and cared for poorly before the Colliers (Mom and Dad) showed up.

  I’d even survived being rejected by couples filled with familial anticipation who might have adopted Sara and me but didn’t because of the false prediction placed on my and Sara’s life by the shortsighted, and dare I say racist, agency director. “You don’t want them,” she’d tell prospective adopting parents. “Because of where they come from, they probably won’t amount to much.”

  Lately, whenever I speak to an audience or a congregation, I tell them that being from the black church, I need some energy in the room. To get the crowd warmed up, I ask them to turn to someone they don’t know, smile, and say, “You look good today!”

  Like the responsible, upstanding citizens they are, they follow suit, and the room quickly fills with encouragement and laughter as people receive a compliment that makes them feel good, even if it’s not true. It’s interesting to think back to my infant self and wonder if anyone back then had thought we looked good. I’m sure someone had to. I mean, look at me! Joke.

  The truth is, our origin story attracted a dark cloud over us in that adoption home. That is, until Belinda and Lamar came by. “Oh, you don’t want them,” the director of the agency said. “Their mama was a druggie and a prostitute, and their daddy loved him some crack cocaine. These kids are for sure going to have problems. . . .”

  That director believed that this was the truth of Sara and me and treated us according to that truth.

  She’d leave me lying on one side of my head for weeks, causing my head to become misshapen over time. She’d put Benadryl, like I mentioned, in our bottles of formula. She never bent my sister’s legs, leaving Sara frustrated and stiff. When Mom and Dad found us, we were a mess.

  Still, they saw past all those barriers and blockages. “To be a mother to a child,” musician Alicia Keys writes, “is the most brilliant gift.”1 Mom and Dad couldn’t have kids of their own, so they decided that we’d be their kids; we’d be their gift. They didn’t want just any babies to come home with them that day; they wanted us.

  The abandoned ones.

  The counted-out ones.

  The left-for-dead ones.

  The set-apart ones.

  No matter the struggles, we’d be family—together, as one.

  Even if you’ve been on this earth for just a short time, I’m sure you’ve come face-to-face with the feeling of being overlooked and dismissed. You work tirelessly, only to have someone else get the promotion. You put everything into a friendship, only to have the other person not hold up their end of the bargain—again. You pour out your heart to your significant other and get silence in return. You invest. And there’s no return.

  On the flip side, maybe you also know how it feels to be handpicked, chosen, called out from all the rest. Maybe you got picked for a playground game when you were a kid. Or you got chosen to be on student council. You were asked to go to a dance, accept a job, or become someone’s husband or wife. Didn’t you feel seen? In a world of seven billion people, to have someone look your way, take you in, and intentionally choose you is a special thing. For Sara and me, Mom and Dad’s single act of selection, on a cold but hope-filled winter day, would mean the world. Four days before Christmas, Belinda and Lamar . . . Mom and Dad . . . stepped through the front door of their Georgia ranch-style home, a pair of car seats in their arms, and hollered as only Dad could, “We’re here!”

  Our future uncles and aunties, cousins, babysitters, and role models all lit up with eager anticipation as we stepped over the threshold and into the Collier universe. One of the matriarchs of the group leaned in to establish a familial bond and, in a voice barely above a whisper, said, “Everything is gonna be okay. You are one of us now.”

  One of us.

  At last, we had a family. At last, we had a place to belong. We were part of an us now. We were no longer on our own.

  How much did my infant mind know of this? Did my heart sense that something had changed? Essayist Diane Ackerman wrote that “[words] paint watercolors of perception.”2 I like to think that on the canvas that is my life, those words of love and acceptance—you are one of us now—established a soul-stirring portrait.

  When I reexamine my place in the Collier family, the notion of adoption is woven throughout our lineage. Not only my family, but this notion of taking care of a child without a biological connection runs deep before and after the emancipation of the African slaves, reverberating those words, “You are one of us now.” The establishment of adopting a motherless child because she was sold to another family or had escaped was a staple in the community. These familial relationships proved a powerful coping tool for slaves, especially those separated from blood relatives.

  According to Pittsburg State University scholar Lucy Phelps Hamilton,

  The slaves took these relationships seriously and genuinely considered their fictive kin as blood family. This strategy allowed them to fill voids in one another’s lives. While not biologically related, these women—the mothers, aunties, and grannies—loved “their” children and raised them as their own. Through the adoption of motherless children, these women attained the respect and status of mothers within their community.3

  I like to imagine how those slaves refused to allow the “abandoned baby” story to take hold of a motherless child left because the mother or father was auctioned or snatched by death. I like to imagine how those slaves walked the razor-thin boundary of bondage life daily and saw the greater story resting in an orphan child.

  I look back now and find that while that day with Steve Harvey would go down as one of the most memorable experiences of my life—right up there with meeting Jesus and, later, meeting my wife—it didn’t overwhelm me in the way that an outside observer might have expected it to. I didn’t fall at Elinor’s feet in a puddle of tears, crying, “Mom! Finally, the moment has come! It’s you! It’s you!”

  I didn’t experience that revelatory, identity-shaping, out-of-this-world feeling that long-awaited reunions can bring about. Unfortunately for the viewing audience, there was no “I’m finally whole! I’m finally complete!” moment. (Sorry, homies.)

  No, meeting my biological mother didn’t fill the monstrous hole left by her absence for the simple reason that there was no hole. I often say that if adoption is done in the right way, at the right time, by the right people, something special can happen. I’m not confident enough to guarantee this, but I am sure that adoption done right can fill holes before they even truly form. So no, meeting my biological mother didn’t fill a hole. But it did start something.

  REFLECTION

  So how’d your life start? Yeah, you—the one reading these words. Were you abandoned? What about accepted? Here’s what I know. No matter how our lives started, by now we’ve all been accepted at some point by someone. Heck, even if that someone is only God. I’m not sure how difficult your beginning was—for some of you, I’m sure it was crazy, possibly even filled with massive abandonment and rejection. My hope for you is that, regardless of your circumstances and/or trauma, you will find a way to receive the acceptance that I guarantee is around you. Let yourself be accepted by someone who is dying to love you or by a God who already does.

&nb
sp; 2

  Church Clothes

  Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.

  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

  MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

  I grew up in a house where the Golden Rule ruled. Every major world religion has at its core some version of this idea of reciprocity, but for my parents, the Jesus version was the only version that mattered. In the Sermon on the Mount, after Jesus addresses some of the core topics that help shape the formation of our Christian ethic—anger, adultery, divorce, revenge, giving to the poor, prayer and fasting, money, possessions, and judging others—Jesus in effect says, “Look, if you don’t want to have to remember the fine print on every issue, just do this: treat everyone the way you want to be treated—end of story.” His exact words were: “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7:12).

  That was clear, easy to remember, and profound enough to be impactful in my dad’s eyes. Plus, he agreed with it—simple as that. Anytime something in the Bible lined up with something that my father learned growing up in the country, he was game. For both my mom and my dad, if the Golden Rule was good enough for Jesus, then it was good enough for them. And for them, good was something they’d decided from the day they met would be their North Star. They had experienced enough bad.

  Mom and Dad met on a Sunday. It was three o’clock in the afternoon when my mother walked into a laundromat near her home in urban Washington, DC. She was married at the time to her first husband, a wild man who was a part of the Black Panther Party, formed in the mid-1960s in Oakland, California, that prided itself on protecting the black community by any means necessary. This party formed at a time in history in which the black community was split between several strategies for resistance and preservation in a racist America. While Dr. King was teaching nonviolence, many others—including the Black Panther Party—were teaching retaliation. As the news media painted the organization as “hate spreaders,” they often neglected to mention the Black Panthers’ free breakfast programs in various cities. From 1969 through the early 1970s, the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for School Children Program fed tens of thousands of hungry kids. However, my mom’s first husband didn’t gravitate to the organization’s benevolent aspect. He was angry and directed his anger toward racist police, and Mom. A few hours before she headed for the laundromat, she decided she’d had enough.