Memoir

I have this good story, I find it hard to tell a story that has not finished yet so I am going to say this is part one to a multi series. It all started in 1985, but the best part started before that so I’m going to tell that first. My parents originally where named Roger Jones and Maryland May Walker but changed it in the future, that part will come up in the story later. My dad was born in Plainfield, New Jersey and my mother was born in King Queen County Virginia, in a little shack house in the woods. She moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her mother and two sisters. My grandmother soon died in Philadelphia so my mother and her sisters moved to New Jersey. My mother and her younger sister moved in with her aunt while her older sister moved with their uncle, they all lived in the same city, just not the same house. The sisters also had different fathers so they did not look alike at all. My grandmother was a Native American from the Plamunkey Indians in Virginia, her father she never talked about. My mother has a very light complexion and my aunts are very dark skinned. My mother always said she was only Native, she said that’s what her aunt told her so that is what she is. When asking my aunts about their race they would explain differently.
Growing up in New Jersey was very hard at times for my mother. Back then it was very rare to see a single-family home, let alone a family with no parents. My mother also grew up in a large Afro American area so she was always an outcast. People Never accepted her as what she was she was too light to be black and too dark to be white and in those times either you were black or white nothing else mattered. So my mother did not always get along with people and the majority of the time that included her sisters. Sometimes the stories she told us as children sounded very ignorant. She would tell me they classified her by the type of hair she had. They would tell her she was not black because she had “good hair”. I thought that was very stupid to say because they where subconsciously saying that black people had bad hair and I totally disagree with that statement. Because of all of the troubles she came across as a young lady, she basically grew to stay to herself growing up and in school.
When she started high school she met my father and that’s where it all started, before it really started. My father is a year older then my mom so he was in a grade over her, and in Plainfield, New Jersey even though it was a pretty large populated city, they only had one high school. My father, as he told it introduced him self to my mother as soon as she came to the school as a freshmen. He said she had a corrector that no other girl had and she was very shy. My mother told me whenever he came around she would always smile. However, he was one of those guys that all the girls wanted, so she would not get too excited about the attention she would get from him because she did not know if it was genuine. According to my father, it was love at first sight. He also told me that her family was a very tuff church going family. My father’s dad was from Lexington, Kentucky and he was very church orientated as so my grandmother, her family was from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. They all migrated to the east in the early 1900’s. I did not learn too much about my grandmother’s family but my grandfather’s family lived long and strong so I heard plenty of stories both good and bad.
My grandmother is the type to always refer everything to the bible, she is the type of Christian that pushea all her beliefs onto everyone whether desired or not. Therefore, my father grew up knowing the bible front to back. That knowledge gave him an advantage when it came to meeting and getting to know my mothers family. My mother lived in the part of the city located on the west side and referred to as “the ghetto”. My father lived on the east end, he use to walk the city just to get to her house. My mother recalls that when he came over to supposedly visit her, he wouldn’t even hang out with her; instead he would go and read the bible with her aunt at the kitchen table. He said they would read for hours until my grandmother would call and ask where he was. When my aunt would tell her that they where reading the bible at the table she would resist being mad. She could not be angered at someone reading the good lords word but at the same time she would get jealous because he would never read with her. Dad said that his mother’s views where not always rational and he found it hard to cope with her understanding. He did not think she understood at all, instead she just knew that it was a sin not to understand.
Right away my father knew he wanted to marry my mother. Once he graduated he moved away to college. He went to Tuskegee University and around that time the Civil Rights battle was brewing pretty hot. He soon noticed himself becoming a member in the movement towards Civil Rights. They gave him the nickname “Che”; it was from the revolutionary man from Argentina who helped Fidel Castro free Cuba. My father ended up coming back to New Jersey after the riots of 1967; my mother told him that her house had been shot through from the military. She said when they National Guard came they had guns and tanks in the city and they would shoot. They had to lie under the beds and listen to the bullets fly through the house.
At that time my father said he was lost in and felt the need of searching. So he decided not to go back to school, once back in New Jersey he started to go to New York City to listen to a minister named Elijah Mohammed. After a few visits he choose to join the group called Nation of Islam. His parents did not agree to his choice because they knew that the Nation was not Christian. My father always explained that all his doubts about Christianity would never be answered when he would ask pastors or anyone of that faith with knowledge. But after a few visits to the Nation he had his answer. The Nation of Islam taught a fair amount of Islam, enough to get people to the point where they needed to be as human beings. During that time he told my mother that he loved her but he knew that she was content with being a Christian even though she had the same questions. He told her that he knew he was going to marry a Muslim and that he hoped that Muslim would be her. She got the point he was making and she started to go to New York with him to hear the ministers. She said that at first she would just go but after a few times she started to listen and she couldn’t get enough. She said she felt like she was getting more questions about Christianity then before and receiving the answers with Islam.
Shortly after they were married and had their first child. Sorry to say that kid was not I, so the best did not come yet. Not to be cocky, but this is my story right? Soon after having my brother they had my sister and during that period in their life they where not only questioning religion but their history. My father was part of the security detail in the Nation, so he had time to be around Malcolm X and Elijah Mohammed.
Elijah Mohammed also had a son by the name of W.D. Muhammad; he was the man that my father was mostly around. W.D. Muhammad was the man who would teach Malcolm X in regards to Islam. He instructed the Muslim Americans to not just listen to someone preaching but to learn Arabic to get their own prospective of what they read. He stated that if you lived your life listening to everyone else, you would only see life through their views and opinions, and we are all humans entitled to our own views. It was something like that but don’t quote me.
Being around those men my father would learn to understand that life is meant to be questioned and that every question has an answer even if it is not the answer you want. My father is not ignorant in regards to his history and knew his history down to the slave master that once owned his familly. Knowing the history of our family gave him a lot of discomfort. My grandparents always said our history is ugly but it’s our history and our name is what we got from it. My grandfather’s last name is Jones and that was actually our second owner’s last name given to us for property reasons. It was basically a second hand slave name and my father wanted a name that created a family of corrector.
I don’t know exactly how long my father took to change the name or find the right name but what he had comfort with was the name Nasir. Nasir means “The helper” in Arabic, it was what they use to call the followers of Jesus. My Father expected us to be like that and according to him, a good name creates a good person. As the years went past my parents had a total of seven kids, with me being the last. I was born July 26,1985 in Plainfield, New Jersey in the early morning. By the time my parents had me they were tired, after having 5 boys and one girl they already had a full house. One more child just made it packed.
My mother describes me as a child who wanted all the attention. I remember asking for something material and if I would not get it at that second, I would not want it later. I can understand my description as needy but I can always remember not having the same time with my mom and father as everyone else. Being a child at the time, I did not see the bigger picture of not having enough money for all my desires. Both of my parents had a job, so either my sister or brother would take care of me. My problems where that I did not have the same type of stories of my brothers and sister, they use to spend all the time with my parents.
Now as I raise my own family, it is easer to see that my family needed money but that was not my concern at the time. I also held a grudge because my older brothers went to private school, while my brother right over me and I attended public schools. I think all of the problems I thought I had would eventually cause me to become a problem child.
My grandparents became a major part in my life, they made it a point to be closer to us then my older siblings. I use to wait at the window to see if and when my grandfather would pull up in his Pontiac sedan. They had an old school phone at their home so they hardly used it. That meant the only way to find out if they were coming was to sit and wait for them to show up. When they pulled up to the house there were always multiple horn beeps coming down the street.
I was this young skinny kid running out side in some torn shorts, no shoes and maybe a shirt. I would jump inside the car dressed as is, and we would pull away and go to our favorite spot, Dunking Donuts. After we purchased donuts grandpa would take us up to this place called Washington Rock, it was at the top of one of the peaks in the Appalachian Mountains in New Jersey. We would eat donuts and climb the mountain until we passed out. Most of the time it was my two older brothers and I that would spend time with my grandparents. My grandfather was always into magic, so he would also take us to his house and practice his magic tricks. If it were not magic that we were playing with him, he would teach my brothers how to tap dance.
I was about five years old when I started to have interest in tap dancing. My brothers did not want me to dance. They would push me off the stage because I would come up and tell my grandfather I want to dance. He would always tell me I was too small but I insisted. One day he got fed up with me and he went into his basement and looked for a pair of tapping shoes for me. The only pair he found was an old pair of female tapping shoes. So my first pair of taps were made for girls, awkward.
As time passed, my brothers and I became the dance group “ Nasir Brothers”. My grandfather would get us gigs all over New Jersey, from retirement homes to talent shows, you name it, we danced it. We danced actively until I turned fourteen.
When I became a teenager I was more into girls and being dumb. Due to my ignorance, I was a high school drop out and getting into a lot of trouble. When I was a teenager my parents lost our home and we moved to another city beside my hometown. The only problem with that was that the city we moved to, was a rival town with my hometown. I found myself involved in more fights. By the time I turned seventeen everything was becoming a lot. My cousin was killed and on the day of her funeral I was involved in a pretty serious fight, where I had my jaw broken. The problem with fights is that neither gentlemen want to take a loss, so it’s always retaliation until it gets to a point where there is clearly a winner and a loser, or I should say a loser and a person lost.
It is weird how things work though because at the time that I needed help is when I received that help. I would be stupid to say it was not from god, so I will say god helped me when I needed it. My sister ,who at the time I had no contact with, asked me if I wanted to move to Florida with her. It took me about an hour to tell her yes, and a month to move. If I had not moved my life would have never been what it is now. In Florida I met my now wife, a native Texan. Although I never wanted to move, she never intended in staying in Texas. I eventually followed her. Here is where the story of my own family begins. Every day I have an opportunity to impact the memoirs of my young children. No day is taken for granted.