High Price

Hospital in Laramie, Wyoming. She had wanted and achieved a drug-free birth.
    I’d brought my CDs to play soothing music for her and we listened to Bob Marley as the contractions got closer together and became more intense. I was overwhelmed by Robin’s beauty and grace throughout the whole messy and sometimes frightening process. Indeed, moments before Damon was actually born, I’d seen a look of concern flash in the doctor’s eye as he discovered that the umbilical cord was wrapped around our baby’s throat—but he didn’t tell us that this was what had occurred until the boy was safe in our arms. I couldn’t believe I was a father. It was beyond anything I’d ever experienced.
    I’d never before felt as happy or close to anyone as I did to my little family when we first held Damon. The responsibility we had for this tiny, brand-new life felt like both a blessing and an almost unbearable burden. I had been reading John Edgar Wideman’s Fatheralong , which emphasized the difficult task faced by black fathers in protecting their sons. I was humbled by the challenge I faced, keeping a black boy safe while he grew up in the America I knew.
    I also couldn’t believe that they were letting people as inexperienced as we were take this fragile creature home with us. At the same time, I wanted to give him everything I’d always wanted from my father. I realized I had no clue what I was doing. I knew my life would have to change.
    For one, I recognized that I had to get serious about our relationship and resolve my internal interracial-couple conflict. I wasn’t yet sure exactly how to do this, but I knew for certain that I wanted to raise my son right. I wanted the security of a two-parent home for my baby. I certainly didn’t want any child of mine to have the kind of chaotic home life that I’d experienced.

    Robin and Damon in Wyoming while I was in D.C. studying at the NIH.
    I ultimately decided not to stay at NIH, where I’d planned to complete my PhD. Instead I’d return to Wyoming to do it, so that I could be with Robin and our son. We would ultimately get married there, three years after Damon was born, on May 23, 1998, in a simple ceremony at Wyoming’s Newman Center, following Robin’s Catholic traditions. But first, I had to go back to Washington shortly after Damon was born to wrap up my research before I’d be able to return to Wyoming to get my degree.
    While at a D.C. Metro stop waiting for a train, I began what turned into a lengthy conversation with a machine technician who was working in the station, repairing the ticket vending equipment. I had complimented him on his dreadlocks, thinking that he wore them as part of the Rastafarian religion. For years I had considered growing dreads myself, but I’d always held back because I believed that it was disrespectful if you weren’t a part of that religion. I also did not want to be seen as faddish or simply following the crowd: that was not how I wanted to live.
    But this man said that for him, wearing dreads was a way of showing homage and respect, even though he wasn’t religious. That resonated with me, as did his self-assurance and thoughtfulness. By the time I left, we were no longer strangers. And I decided right then to grow my hair. It would remind me that I could be myself and be a conscious spirit, no matter what other people might decide a scientist should look like. It would connect me both to my heritage and my new son. It felt right.
    I found myself thinking about this and about Damon’s future a few months later, when Louis Farrakhan gave the keynote speech at the Million Man March on October 16, 1995. I’d been unable to attend since I was back at work on my research in Wyoming by that time, but I watched on TV as I minded Damon. Here were hundreds of thousands, perhaps more than a million black men. They were leaders, businessmen, professional people like Barack Obama (who attended himself), mainly middle class, and virtually all employed. It was inspiring to see.
    And yet, the rhetoric was tightly focused on hard work and responsibility, on pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and supporting our families. No demands were being made of Congress; no delegations sent just a few streets over to meet with our senators and representatives. Here were people who had done what we were supposed to do—not people who were uneducated or unmotivated—and they still didn’t get it. They had bought into the mainstream