High Price

questioning him about his education and trying to emphasize the importance of completing high school or getting a GED, though, at some level, I knew this was only a bandage for what amounted to a cancer by this point. I really was at a loss for words. I was accustomed to helping people solve problems by teaching and I was in that mind-set when we spoke, wanting to fix him and make it all right. Of course, that wasn’t possible: here he was, a young, uneducated black man in a world that had no use for him, a fate I’d only narrowly avoided myself.
    But advice wasn’t what he wanted from me then anyway, I later recognized. All he wanted was to speak with his father, to tell him about his hopes and dreams and life. He wanted me to know that he was going to be a good father, that he was a good person. He wanted that affirmation from the man who had brought him into the world, just like I’d wanted from my own father as a child.
    Meanwhile, I was still struggling with the fact that he was my son and that he actually was in the life I might have had myself if I’d stayed in Miami. I kept looking at him, but I really didn’t see any of myself there other than in his defiance. I sure recognized that angry swagger and desperate need for respect. I didn’t want to, but I did.
    And truthfully, I didn’t really want to look very closely. At the time, I didn’t want to think too much about the other path my life could have taken, and be forced again to contemplate the differences between where I was now and the person I’d been growing up. I was surrounded by the starkness of that difference every time I came home. Still, we did manage to leave the lines of communication open.
    And as I got to know him, I thought about the alternative reinforcers my other sons have had available to them that Tobias had either not been exposed to or not found ways to experience. I realized, too, that meeting Tobias had been especially shocking in comparison with my first encounters with my two other sons. The birth of my son Damon had been one of the deepest, most joyous, and most memorable experiences of my life. And by the time my son Malakai arrived six years later, I felt that I was actually starting to get the hang of this dad thing.
    Though both of their births had been peak life experiences for me, I’d realized as I changed diapers, chased toddlers, and—before I knew it—found myself watching them play basketball and wondering when they’d be able to outplay me, that it wasn’t at all the biological bond that made a father. It was the care, the daily repetitive care. It was being there and learning with them, having a life together.
    And so seeing Tobias had felt like a slap in the face. I felt as though I was being held responsible for a child I’d had no say in raising. I wanted to do the right thing but I couldn’t help feeling cheated. All the learning he’d done, all the reinforcement and punishment and extinction training he’d received for the most formative years of his life had had nothing to do with me. I’d almost literally been an unwitting sperm donor and yet this child was blood. The differences between him and my other sons and the arc of my childhood and his confounded me. I couldn’t help thinking about those differences as I slowly got to learn more about his life.
    Although I can’t know for sure, I do have some speculations about some of the important differences. Unlike me, my son Tobias had never seriously participated in organized sports or even much in street games. He hadn’t known the pleasure of becoming skilled at something through practice and using the fruit of hard work to win public competitions. He hadn’t had a father like me in his life or older sisters like mine who nurtured him when his mother was unable to. His mother had been even younger and less well informed than MH had been when I was born; he didn’t know the real story about his father. He didn’t have even the limited academic success I’d had with math in elementary school. In fact, he doesn’t appear to have ever been engaged at all by education and he dropped out before completing high school.
    Tobias didn’t have a Big Mama who stressed the importance of getting that degree, nor did he have a dream like mine of athletic glory, which led me to enlist in the air force rather than face the humiliation of not playing at least college-level ball. He didn’t get military training, nor did he have the opportunity to