I am America

My dad was a hustler. He hustled himself in and out of marriages and parental responsibilities to numerous women and kids. He hustled himself straight into prison by attempting to rob a bank, and he hustled the government by getting social security disability even though he wasn't disabled. When my dad died he didn't have a penny to his name, he was still an active alcoholic, and he had recently "moved up" to an apartment that didn't have rats running around or stray bullets flying through his living room window. My relationship with my dad was probably similar to most middle class girls with working class fathers -- I love talking about his deviousness and his spunk but neither I nor him wanted me to turn out like him. I was supposed to rise above his station and make something of myself.

Today I applied for SSI and SSDI, and I wonder how my dad would feel about me being on welfare just like he was. "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," he'd probably say, and probably still tell his neighbors about what a bright and gifted daughter he has. I can't shrug the feeling though that he would probably also be a bit disappointed to see that despite all my education and middle class upbringing, I'm right in the same spot he was in. And I can't deny the fact that I feel a bit disappointed in the situation myself. When I look at all the details that have led me to where I am now, it all makes sense, and I know that my case is different than his was. But coupled with that is the knowledge that despite our largely different life experiences, I am my father's daughter. I'm a bright and intelligent human being who is thwarted by a body that can't overcome its demons.

My dad had a lot of problems, and was not really a father at all, but the one thing he gave me was a sense that I am worth something and that I can do anything I set my mind to. My dad had a lot to say but did not have the strength to say it. He died an astute man who was not able to make his mark on the world. The longer he's been dead the more I learn about what his life must have been like... What it meant to be a black man born in the Midwest in 1930. What it meant to live through Martin Luther King, Brown v. Board of Education, and the LA riots. When Michael Jackson died it felt like my dad had died all over again, yet more tragically this time because I'd had years to get over his abusiveness to my mom and to grieve the relationship I wished we'd had. When Obama was elected into office my first thought was to my father and what that would have meant to him.

This is what keeps me writing. My dad left me with nothing but he also left me with everything. He and my mother created a daughter on Haight Street in the 70s and we lived in a walk-up apartment home until I was three. I slept in the walk-in closet in between the bedroom and bathroom, and got up and yelled "Daddy!" with a big smile on my face, every time he tiptoed past me to take a bath.

I may be on welfare like my father was, I may have even inherited my congenital brain abnormality from his genes, but he also gave me a legacy important to the history of mixed race America, and because of this I can't not share my story, no matter what it may be. So I'll take my food stamps and government handouts, and I'll be my welfare father's educated welfare daughter, writing writing writing till the day I die.