By: Kenneth L. Hardin
I leapt over the 60 year old hurdle recently, well I ran up to it and gingerly climbed over one leg at a time. For the previous 21,914 days, I awakened each morning as the same man I was when I laid my head down on that pillow the night before. But, on that 915th day, I wasn’t the same man at 60 years old as I was when I wore a younger man’s clothes.
Recently, as I laid in a cold, sterile, clinical hospital attached to machines that were keeping track of my physiological existence, my mind wandered at the same rate and sounds of the vital signs monitor I was hooked up to standing tall at attention beside my headboard. I noticed tears inexplicably swelled up in my eyes, making the attending nurse pat me softly on the shoulder and ask if I was in pain. I rotated my head towards her as I squeezed my eyes closed trying to eliminate the buildup of lacrimal fluid clouding my vision and said, “It’s a different kind of pain ma’am, one that you can’t measure on that 10 point facial scale you showed me.” The nurse, who resembled that favorite fun, heavy set auntie you saw only at Christmas and Thanksgiving, looked confused by my response, but still offered the obligatory, “It’s gonna be alright, baby.”
As I laid there waiting on the blood pressure cup to repeat its five minute inflation rotation, I started singing my favorite Sam Cooke tune, “A Change is Gonna Come.” I wasn’t sure why at that moment that song started playing on repeat in my head, but I accepted that was where I was supposed to be and sang the lyrics quietly to myself, “I was born by the river
in a little tent. Oh, and just like the river, I’ve been running ever since.” I laid there thinking about how true to life those words were as I feel like I’ve spent most of my life running from myself instead of embracing and accepting who I was when I looked in the mirror. I thought about all the times I tried to fit in in a Black world that told me I wasn’t Black enough and a white world that punished me for being a bit too ethnic.
I reflected on all the racial microaggressions I had let slip, tucking them securely into my right front pocket because I wanted to get the job, keep the job and be accepted in the boardroom. When I was told I talked and sounded white, I just bit my bottom lip and smiled. When they said you are always dressed so well, I silently thanked my father and grandfather for never allowing me to look shabby as a child and to appreciate sartorial splendor. When I first heard the phrase at 17 and then again in both my 30’s and 40’s, “You’re not like most Black people,” thrown at me like a pitcher hurling a fast ball a little close at the head of a hitter, I was dumbfounded as to how to respond or react. So, I did the obligatory smile and nodded uncomfortably. I didn’t realize that a change was gonna come one day.
On my 291,915 day journey, the road has been long and sometimes weary, but I’ve persevered because, “It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die cause I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky.”
Kenneth L. (Kenny) Hardin lives in NC and is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.
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