When it Matters Most.

As a child it seemed as if my mother never got sick. On the few occasions in which she did allow a cold or the flu to keep her bed ridden, I often worried that things would fall apart in the house. My mother cooked dinner every night. She did laundry for everyone in the house. She helped with homework. Heck, she even made my bed! I was reminded of this, this past weekend, when my wife, who much like my mother seemingly never gets sick, did just that. With my national board application looming, and two 16 month olds nearing bed time, my wife called to me from the couch on which she was laying and said she was “heading upstairs”. It was 6:30. on a Saturday. Crap! The boys wouldn’t be a problem. For all intents and purposes at this point, ages 10 and 5, they can entertain themselves for one night. But those girls! My loving, affectionate, devilish, tornadoes wrapped in the flesh, twin girls, they were another issue altogether. Don’t get me wrong I’ve put them down for bed before, but sometimes they like to pretend that they’re allergic to sleep, especially when mommy’s not around. So there I was, looking at my self, through my own 10 year old eyes, much like I looked at my dad and wondering “How’s this going to turn out?”
But what I remembered was that my dad always seemed to step up in those moments. We’d have fried chicken or gumbo or something else he could make reasonably fast (I’d forgotten that my dad was a pretty good cook, because he so seldom did it). He’d run to Rite Aid to get mom some Theraflu-Alka-Seltzer-Hot Tea with Lemon and Honey and tell her to drink tons of Orange Juice. (BTW, it works, I swear by this whenever I’m sick). He’d clean the house, usually with the radio blaring (and of course by clean, I mean neatly stack things into piles, that my mother would go back and actually organize once she felt better). Then we’d usually watch tv until we fell asleep. So what happened to me on Saturday?? Well first I fried some chicken and made mac-n-cheese and fed the kids. Then I sent Kaleb and Noah to their rooms to clean up (which can occupy them for 6-12 days at a time, its a disaster area in there). The girls and I watched Dora and Yo Gabba Gabba, while I washed dishes, straigtened the living room and swept the floors. Then I made milk cups, turned out the lights and laid the girls down for bed. As if they knew I needed there help, they fell asleep almost immediately, and I was able to work until 2 am on my National Board entry.
It's funny how much of our childhood experiences we absorb into our own beings as adults. Noah had asked me earlier in the day, “Dad, what was Bunny’s (his grandfather/my father) favorite color?” I responded, “I don’t know Noah, I think it was Blue”, to which Noah replied, “Nope, I think it was Red”. Maybe it was Red. That’ll be part of his mind’s memory of my dad. My memory will be that when it mattered most, my dad always came through. And this weekend, I think he would have been proud to see what I learned from him.

A Jar of Questions

As a parent, you are expected to have answers for your children’s questions. Often times we make it up as we go along. And if we don’t know, we simply make it up and then explain why we were wrong at a later date. But what happens when you, as the parent, have more questions than your kids? We expect that as we get older, things will begin to get more clear. “With age, comes wisdom” a saying goes. BS! What I am beginning to realize, as I drift perilously closer to 30, is that very few things in life, go as expected. Instead of gaining more clarity, as we grow older, life becomes much more complex and the picture, a bit murkier.
I say all of this in the context of having lost a parent a month ago and as a person very much struggling to make sense of it all. On most days I’m fine. But on others, I’m overwhelmed with questions that are unanswerable. Why only 53 years? Why while I was away? Why leave my mother lonely? Why the burden on me? Why wont he be there to see my kids get older? Somehow we’ve been convinced that questions are a bad thing. The church tells you not to question GOD. Everything happens according to his plan. Our entire educational system teaches children to never question their teachers. That questioning a teacher’s facts or methods somehow represents disrespect. BS! The questions we have are what fuel our journey through life. GOD may have his plan, but that doesn’t make it any easier for us to cope on this side of the journey. I encourage my students to ask why. Why should they believe me? Because I have a piece of paper that makes me a certified teacher? Any teacher who thinks they have all the answers, is no teacher at all. I learn from my students everyday (many things I never wanted to know) but again, its all a part of the journey.
The permanence of death is what leaves me the most puzzled. I sometimes think to myself, “Oh I haven’t seen my dad in a few days”, and then I remember suddenly the circumstances in which I now live. I know eventually, it’ll sink in. I’m just not sure when. My wife keeps asking me, if I’m okay. I ask myself the same question. I just know that I miss my dad and I wish that he was here. A son is supposed to learn from his father. Ask him questions about life as they both grow older. Stupid questions like how to shave a door or how to change car oil; complex questions about love and faith and the struggles of manhood. I’m not sure where I’ll get those answers from. I just pray that when my sons start asking those questions, I’ll be able to answer them truthfully and with the confidence of knowing that my answers are the right ones.

Proverbs 4: 1-9 speaks of a father’s wisdom;
1 Hear, my children, the instruction of a father, And give attention to know understanding; 2 For I give you good doctrine: Do not forsake my law.
3 When I was my father’s son, Tender and the only one in the sight of my mother,
4 He also taught me, and said to me: “Let your heart retain my words; Keep my commands, and live.
5 Get wisdom! Get understanding! Do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth.
6 Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you; Love her, and she will keep you.
7 Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.
8 Exalt her, and she will promote you; She will bring you honor, when you embrace her.
9 She will place on your head an ornament of grace; A crown of glory she will deliver to you.”


I pray that God will grant me the wisdom to understand this journey of ours, that I may that wisdom on to my sons, until then I’ll just press forward each day, some better than others, collecting questions, in my jar of life, and hoping that one day I’ll be able to cash them in for some answers.

Finding peace amidst the noise

Silence had never bothered me. Typically I value it. In a house of 6 (my wife and I included) with twin 14 month old girls, a kindergartner, and a child who is deaf in one ear and therefore can be very loud, silence comes few times and far between. In my house someone’s usually fighting, or crying, or wrestling or singing, or crying after fighting or screaming at somebody else to stop singing. I’ve grown use to it.
Even growing up, my house was rarely silent. My father, insane about music, was usually singing, blasting his radio, woofing like a dog, or making noise of some sort. My mother, yelling at him to stop singing, turn down the radio, stop barking, added to the noise. Add in the Friday/Saturday, I just got paid, so I need to drink, alcoholism of my father and the noise often lasted well into the mornings.
And yet when silence befell me, I wasn’t prepared for it. Who could be? My father’s death, in many ways has left me, with only myself and silence. All the what ifs, maybes, should haves, didn’t get a chance tos, swimming in the silence. Silence was what I had always wanted, until I got it. Yeah, there’s been tons of phone calls, well wishes, prayers, hugs, cards, and food to help us cope…help me cope. But those sentiments fade away into the silence of his death. Sometimes all I can hear is my wife’s voice, somber, surreal, “Sedrick, baby, it’s your father…”. That same silence that I wanted so desperately as a kid, became the last thing I wanted as an adult.
What I wanted most was normalcy. And normalcy for me is noise. As a teacher, I deal with it for 7.33 hours per day. Someone’s arguing about a grade, some crisis in their life, something. When the school bell rings, its off to the grunts and screaming of soccer or lacrosse practice. Yelling at the refs. Yelling at the players. Yelling about something. Then home to hear about who sat next to who at lunch, whose talking behind whose back at Hopkins and some indistinguishable baby language other than the occasional “Mama”, “Da-dee” and the all new “Uh-Oh”. Noise to me meant that everything was okay. When my dad was barking, at least I knew he was there. When the silence came, I knew something was wrong.
My father liked noise. He seemed to live for it. In my mind, I had thought that someday I want to retire someplace quiet, just me and my wife and listen to the nothingness of life. Maybe I’ll get back to the place. But for right now, what’s helping me the most, is the noise. Silence may be golden, but noise represents life. Peace and Blessings.

Finding the words

I decided to post as a blog, the letter I wrote in rememberance of my father, which I spoke at his funeral. While much of it is personal to me and our relationship, I hope someone can draw from it the idea that we are all complicated people and that maybe we can take a second and reflect on ourselves rather than taking the time to critique others. Peace and Blessings...


My father was a man. Not a good man, not a bad man, rather a man. A young man. A Black man, a man. My memories of my father vary because his life was complicated. It would be easy to stand before you and tell you fantastic stories of a great man, who worked hard and accomplished his dreams, and provided for his family etc, etc etc. Some of those things are true of my father. But some of them are not. He wasn’t an amazing man, but he was a man.
One of my fondest memories of my father was when I was about 9 maybe 10. He and my mother took me to Carol Park to play tennis. I had no idea how to play, and neither did he. For a few minutes, he’d hit a ball across the net to me, with the tennis rackets hed bought from the thrift store. I’d slam it back across, way over his head into the fence behind him. My mother looked on. After a few frustrating minutes, he said angrily that that was enough. We were done with tennis. But I wasn’t mad. I too had realized tennis probably wasn’t for me. The reason that memory sticks out to me is because it symbolized my father’s love for me. He was always willing to let me try things out, figure out what worked and what didn’t. We did it with baseball, we did it with basketball, rollerskating, tennis. Some worked out, some didn’t. But he was always there to let me try and to try it with me.
A part of me always felt, that Baltimore was my father’s hell. He was a country boy through and through. I could see it whenever we visited South Carolina. He’d get this boyish grin on his face, become excited. The stories would just roll out. “Mama, you remember the club that used to be over there?” My mother had no clue what he was talking about. “Awww man, I remember such and such used to live down there”, “Oh yeah, such and such always had the best barbeque”, “We used to cut down that path to get to such and such’s house”. He’d be looking at some random field. Where the path actually was, only God really knows. But he was home. I sometimes wonder how different his life may have been if he had never left there.
But the reality is, he did move to Baltimore. He had a good life with a wife and sons and grandkids. But sometimes I felt the city was just a bit too fast for him. Too many hustlers, too much drugs, too much alcohol. He got caught in it. The reality is, that was part of my father too. He couldn’t figure out how to get out of it. I always felt like he wanted to, but it was like he was caught in a hurricane, and trying to hold on to a palm tree. For much of his life, it was a losing battle.
But it was a battle he never quit fighting. You see that was part of who my father was too. He was a fighter. He fought his addictions. He fought to live, up until his dying breath. He fought for the people he loved the most. He was 5’7 with shoes on, but in my mind he was a giant. I was never afraid of anyone, any neighborhood when I was with him. He taught me to never be afraid of anything. I only fear God.
Sometimes we get caught up in who we think people are supposed to be. We look at other people’s lives, we look at tv and we compare our lives to there. The truth is that we are living the lives we are meant to live until we aren’t meant to live it anymore. My father was only meant to have 53 years on this earth. I cried to my wife when he died, that “he wasn’t ready”. But it doesn’t matter if he, was ready, God was.
And so I’ll cry because I miss him, and I’ll cry when I want to hear his voice again and I can’t. But I wont cry about him not being ready. God was ready for him and who am I to question. Instead, I’ll see him everyday. When my son, hears music and starts dancing: I’ll see my father. When my brother smiles and sits by quietly: I’ll see my father. When my daughters laugh, I’ll see my father. When my mother says I loveyou, I’ll hear my father. And when I look in the mirror: I’ll see my father. Because Silas Levern Smith lives on. His body failed him, but his spirit will never die. I’ll talk to him everyday. And I’ll tell him I love him just like he told me everytime he saw me. That’s the man I’ll remember. Not a good man, not a bad man, because I’m in no position to judge him. Only heaven can do that. I’ll remember a man who loved and who fought and who taught me how to do both.

Another Blog?

I decided to write this blog for a variety of reasons. In the wake of my father's passing, I sense that it will serve as some sort of coping mechanism, a public journal of sorts, for me to get "stuff" off of my chest. The title, "Son to Father, Father to Son" is a signal to its second purpose. I hope to write pieces, thoughts, questions, quieries about fatherhood, from a young black male perspective. Some entries will be questions to my father, questions, that because of his untimely death, i was never able to ask him myself. Some entries, I hope can serve as advice to my sons (I have two) about how to be a good man, a God-fearing man, the man I hope to be. Eventually I hope to engage in some sort of civic discussion, with the people that read this, about our purpose for being here, how we can strive to improve our world and build a community of men (and for that purpose women) that people can count on. I am a teacher by trade, but first and foremost I am somebody's son and somebody else's father. Peace and blessings to you all!