Gangsta Mittens
Words combined to express thoughts. Pictures displayed to convey emotion. Opening my brain to the world.

The Dictator turned two a few of days ago… TWO… I’m still in awe.  He talks… a lot.  He throws tantrums.  He can be stubborn.  He loves school — he cries when he can’t be there.  He talks about his friends at school.  He loves waffles… He’s a two year old.

He still struggles with weight gain and has some minor developmental issues that he’s working through.  I still struggle with appointments where I feel like i’m being blamed or that there is something more that I should be doing… but mostly things are normal.  And that’s a hard one for me to cope with…

The hardest days are the ones where he does something funny or silly and i want to pick up the phone and ask my mom “did i ever do that?” or when i look at him and i wonder if he looks like a relative that I never met.  It’s hard being a parent without parents… some days i repeat that to myself over and over… “I don’t have parents…”  not to torture myself or bring myself down… just in an effort to accept what has happened. I wish it was different.  When I was born, only one of my grandparents was still alive.  The Dictator had only two when he was born, and now he’s down to one.  I am grateful that he got to spend time with my mother, but most of his memories of her will fade.  She will be the woman in the picture… but i know how much she loved him and I will tell him often.

I’m enjoying him as best I know how.  Still working on my patience.  Still trying to allow him to grow and become independent and self sufficient… still trying to nurture creativity and freedom of expression.  Still aware of the difficult lessons about being a black man in this country that will come when he’s older…

I do my best to make sure he knows how much he is loved.  I do my best to surround him with people who love him as much as we do.  But most of all I do my best to prepare him for a world that will likely be hostile and unkind to him.  I want his foundation to be one of love and support so that when those harsh realities smack him in the face, he has a place to return to. I feel like that’s the most important thing that I can give him. I hope it’s enough.