I.
Last Monday I learned that we'd been awarded a five-year grant to provide afterschool for 150 students in Newark starting in the fall. It is far and away the most coveted award in the field. Multiple years, multiple millions. I was driving when the email came through so I pulled over at a gas station to read it again and again and again. We'd applied for the grant more than three months earlier, and frankly, I had zero expectation that we'd win in part because everyone told me that our chances or winning were slim to none. We were a new organization. We were in competition with more experienced organizations across the state of New Jersey. The application was arduous. We started the application process late and got it in two minutes before the deadline. For my own part, I'd long ago learned to manage my expectations. This way when good things came my way I was always be surprised. Here's the thing, though: even when those good things happened I remained suspicious. The bottom could still fall out, I'd tell myself. So while everyone else on the team who'd worked on this beast of a proposal was thrilled--congratulations poured in over email--the best I could muster was a "woah".
This last year was a series of firsts for me. I'd never been an Executive Director consequently I faced a number of questions that any new organizational leader faces. Could I raise money? Could I win grants? Could I build a board? Could I hire and a manage a team? Could I manage a budget? Could I navigate government bureaucracy? So far I think I've proven that I can do the job, some would even say with a fair degree of skill. In one year and with a lot of help, I've more tripled our budget. We've grown us from a staff one working out of a co-working space to a soon to be full-time staff of five and a part-time staff of nearly forty. We just signed the lease for a modest office space overlooking a beautiful park. This time last year we had no school partners. This fall we will be in six schools and serving well over 1,000 students. We're in the thick of New York City's new and ambitious Community Schools Initiative, and in the midst of planning and producing a fall fundraiser at 4 World Trade Center (https://www.crowdrise.com/AllStarClimb4Kids). And now we've been awarded the most competitive government grant in our field. I should've been thrilled. I should've felt awesome. Yet, I didn't. I felt suspicious. I found myself sitting in that gas station waiting for an email to come through saying it was all a mistake.
II.
As a kid I devoured comic books the way kids today devour video games. Comics--what would be called graphic novels in today's parlance--were my literature. I didn't read an actual novel cover to cover until I got to college and decided to become an English major but I read upwards of 20 comics each week, most twice and most in one sitting. Every Saturday after my soccer and later basketball games my dad took me to the Geppi's on Fenton Street in Silver Spring, MD. It was your stereotypical comic book store: musty, dimly lit, creepy manager behind the register who regarded any collector under the age of 30 an amateur unworthy of conversation. The intensity with which we regulars strummed the stacks in search of first editions, collector's items, missing links in whichever series we were attempting to amass the entirety of was the stuff of detective novels. My shopping pattern was rigid. I started with the new arrivals, picking up the latest issues of whichever series I'd been at the moment. Next, I drifted to the back issues in search of value comics. A decently priced mini-series in good-to-mint condition featuring multiple top-tier superheros was always my top choice. My goal as a collector was always to get entire sets because sets were more valuable on the market--not that was ever planning to sell. Next up was a special appearance issue in which one top-tier hero teamed up with or battled another top-tier hero. My last resort was a tie-in, meaning an issue in which an ongoing saga taking place in the greater (Marvel or DC)universe bled into a specific character's typically contained universe. Once I finished with my weekly buying spree the manager would slide my haul along with a stack of plastic sleeves to protect them into a thin brown bag like fresh baked cookies and off I'd go.
I had a rule against reading in the car. I required snacks and drink in place and to be comfortably seated in my father's recliner before I opened the bag. Once everything was set, I'd disappear from the world for hours on end reading and imagining, completely and utterly immersed in the worlds my heroes inhabited. The storylines were so rich and real. They involved life and death matters. serious moral questions, social issues of the day. To me, albeit at 14, it wasn't escapism or fantasy. The characters were always mired in one life struggle after another. I sympathized with their plights as outsiders more than I fantasized about the powers they possessed.
But I digress ...
What I was always most interested in with just about every comic book hero that I followed was the origin story. Now, the origin story isn't just how they got their super powers. The origin story is how they came to understand both their power and its accompanying burdens. Typically, the origin story begins with a loss. Peter Parker's uncle was murdered. Bruce Wayne's parents were killed in a robbery. Kal-El's parents died on Krypton. The loss these characters suffer is so deep and profound that the wound can never be healed. The rupture, in other words, is permanent. But the hero turns that rupture, that painful loss, into his reason for being. He becomes a hero in order to prevent others from experiencing the anguish he has to live with. The closest he can ever come to healing his own wound is through helping others. Batman will always have his darkness. Superman will always be a remove from humanity. This is their plight. Their destiny is to deliver themselves to strangers and in so doing experience glimmers of the serenity that preceded the rupture. For them, the safety and protection they once felt is lost forever. The best they can do is provide it for others.
III.
We all have our origin stories. Stories of our awakening, our coming to a deeper, richer consciousness as beings separate and apart from those who protect us. I actually have a handful of them. They each represent a different phase of awakening. But one in particular stands out above the others as the defining story that has shaped how I react to good news. It occurred when I was nine. We'd just moved into a new home. My parents had separated briefly the previous year. They announced they were getting back together and that we were buying a new house in one swoop. I was doubly elated: my parents back together and a new house. We'd spent months looking at different homes. This one had it all as far as I was concerned, which meant a basketball court and a basement in which to race my cars, play ping pong, and entertain my friends.
I remember the day distinctly. Remember the way the summer sun hit my skin as I was walking down the stairs in search of my parents and sisters. Remember the sight of everyone sobbing in our basement. Remember hearing my parents say they were splitting up again, this time for good. Dad was moving out. The decision had already been made. He packed a bag and drove away. It was and continues to be the most painful day I can recall. I cried so much that I got a throbbing headache. And when I stopped crying I went on to spend the next 20 years trying to regain my dad and, by extension, my family, in one sense or another. As a boy I thought if I could just perform well enough on the field for him he'd come back. As a young man I sought success in my career in order to prove my worth. It was always for him. Always an effort to bring him back which was all the more difficult because he was always both present and not present. I could reach him by phone, spend time with him on weekends, stop by his office whenever I wanted, but from that day forward he was a mirage in the desert, a phantom, a ghost. As a boy I'd dream about his total abandonment. In college I'd dream about his death. I worried endlessly about him building a new family and leaving me behind. It was my greatest fear and it spread to all of my relationship--this fear of abandonment, this sense that everything was conditional, temporary. It didn't help that at 19 he moved to the other end of the country. At 28, he got sick. Brain cancer. At 29 he was gone. I remember the morning distinctly. Uncle Jack called one morning and told me it was time to come home. I got up, got dressed, went to work and drove to DC that evening. I wrote a eulogy and helped with funeral plans. I don't recall crying or showing much emotion at all. Everyone was in awe of my composure. No one knew that I'd spent twenty years bracing myself for his departure. Sitting at the gas station nearly 11 years later it occurred to me that that origin story endured. I carry it like a shield.
IV.
My first year as an ED was a blessing. I got to grow something from nothing. I got to contribute to the growth of others. I got to combine all of my passions and use all of my skills and talents for a cause I care about. I got to be my own boss and experience that constant pressure and sense of urgency that either pushes one past doubt and disbelief or swallows one whole. Learning to be the boss has forced me to explore the stories I've told myself about who am I, what I'm capable of, how the world operates.
What became clear from all of the success I experienced and support I received was how wildly inaccurate my view of people and the world has been up to this point. At every turn people believed in me, encouraged me to stay the course. Looking back on a year that was easily the most challenging of my adult life, for me to continue harboring a lack faith belittles everyone and everything. Has going through life expecting the bottom to fall out whenever good things come my way served me? Certainly. It's made me circumspect and judicious. It helped me avoid the trap doors and pitfalls that cripple so many black men and their dreams. The distrust showed me how to not take anything for granted or leave anything to chance.
As a kid absorbing comic books by the bushel, I latched on to the loneliest, most tragic heroes and their origin stories. I identified with their awkwardness, their private suffering, and their commitment to a just world despite the evils that popped up in every issue. I hope to never lose my basic connection to the comic book universe. But every setback and disappointment needn't be proof of my ultimate doom, a symbol of my grim fate, cause for dread. I no longer need to view the world as threatening and adversarial. I don't have to wake up every morning ready for the worst to happen. I can embrace good news without fear that it will turn to defeat overnight.
I didn't break up with origin story at that gas station. I needed a solid week to work up the nerve. Once I did, though, I felt a sense of ease and confidence. Things are and will continue to work out. After all, we did not win because of dumb luck or happenstance. Nor did we win solely because of my efforts. I had a team of dedicated people. They came in early and stayed late. They didn't leave or let me down. Neither did my father for that matter.
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