As of this moment, my wife’s and my baby is a senior in high school…
Last night, Charles E. Brimm Medical Arts High School graduated their class of 2020 and the Class of 2021 are now the school’s student body elders as next year this time, it will be their turn to walk across the stage, receive their diplomas, turn their tassels, and toss their caps skyward in cathartic cheer indicating their high school journey is concluded. But before that moment comes, and in reflection of Father’s Day, indulge me the opportunity to briefly reflect upon my journey as a father to my wonderful daughter, Nadine Ayanna Melendez-Benson…
Nadine was born on March 6th, 2003 on Lackland Airforce Base in San Antonio while I was finishing my senior year at Rutgers University-Camden. The first time I met my daughter was in August 2003 in Camden’s Arletha Wright Social Services Building on Market St despite her being born in early five months prior. What I remember most about that day were two things: how much this baby, at that point a stranger, looked like me in terms of the size of her head and skin complexion, and the anxiety I felt.
I vividly recall how my daughter, a five-month-old baby then, intimidated me, a 23-year-old man. I was afraid and believed myself to be insufficient. I knew I had no real job, and no financial stability as I just graduated college, and nothing in the works, yet here I was sitting in this social services building terrified to hold my own daughter. I remember finally asking Jeanette, “Can I hold her?” to which she agreed. My daughter, I thought. This little girl is my child, and here I am with absolutely nothing to offer her, my child. I felt inadequate and scared. My daughter is eventually gonna get hungry… she’s gonna have to go to the bathroom sometime… she’s gonna eventually need clothes… I don’t even have money right now to buy my child a toy as a gesture of love I hadn’t felt yet... Love wasn’t the first emotion I felt upon seeing and holding my child, but how much I was not ready for her…that I was unprepared, and that maybe, I’d fail and ruin her. This little baby girl who looked like me, who was so innocent and beautiful, and here I was, her father, not able to love her in this moment because I was too paralyzed by fear that all of my inadequacies would become evident culminating in a compromised life for Jeanette, myself, and our little one.
That was how I met my daughter. Fortunately for me, Nadine doesn’t remember that day, but I do. That day, among many others, makes today so beautiful for so many reasons. The day I saw my daughter and believed my life was collapsing around me, was actually the day my life got infinitely better and more worthwhile. I cannot capture a shared path that spans 17 years in this brief post, but raising this baby alongside my wife has been quite a journey for all of us. From North Camden to Glassboro to Parkside for them, and from the dorm-room floor of my best friend, to Cramer Hill, to Downtown to Parkside for me, we three made this trip together leading us to this moment to where our daughter is beginning to select colleges she wants to attend next year.
It seems to have happened so fast. It seems like just yesterday Nadine was learning to pull herself up in her crib and learning to stand on her wobbly infant legs, that I saw her taking her first steps, that she first rode her bike in Camden High School’s football field parking lot, that she used to sing Rihanna in the shower before bedtime, that she started high school at Brimm, that she went to her first school party…and here she is a senior choosing where she wants to attend school for the next few years; Pace University? Rutgers University? Delaware State University? Johns Hopkins University? Princeton University? Time flies…
Today, two days after Father’s Day, my heart is torn between the immense joy I have for my little baby, the love I have for her, and the pride in the expedition we took to get our daughter to this moment, and sadness that our child is preparing to take these next steps forward in her life. In full transparency, I miss her already. The baby that struck so much panic in me seventeen years ago, who I was convinced could sense my lack of confidence and deficient self-esteem, is today, a wonderful, kind, and thoughtful young lady. My little baby, and the person she’s grown to become, makes me prouder than anything I’ve ever experienced in my near 40 years, and reminds me of how blessed and fortunate I am to have had this opportunity, and how facing my fears seventeen years ago yielded something more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.
Lord thank you for the blessing of raising Nadine. Thank you for guiding me through all my doubts and fears, and allowing me to see what our daughter has become and knowing the best is yet to come. Thank you for my wife for taking a chance on me so long ago, and being a living example for our daughter of what she should aspire to be. Indeed, I am all over the place, but I guess I simply want to say to my Nadine publicly: “I love you. I am proud of you and expect great things from you.”
Very sweet, Keith
I love you too, Papi!