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Description
It was late and the breeze tickled my window. Nights like these made me remember when I would lay in the dark and pretend to be sleep, while I heard the slow reggae from my parents’ room. My father loved reggae, like he loved revolution. He said it had power, which I could never decipher, probably because I was too young to understand at the time. I could hardly get the word out of my mouth correctly.  My mother on the other hand loved Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin. Soul stuff like that. Sometimes they would argue over what music to play in the house. Or more than sometimes, the importance of family and the movement.
Quietly, I would pray for them to stop.  For them to quiet down.  Often after their arguments, my father would disappear for days at a time, and my mother would yell his name as he furiously packed his things. “Gabriel! Gabriel!!!,” she would constantly shout, but he would ignore her and sweep out of the house as if he had wings.  He had always said how much he hated his name.  He had always said that it was a slave name bestowed upon him by his grandmother.  Everyone else called my father Riot because of the fire and passion that he held for the benefaction of African culture or sometimes G.Riot as a nickname.
Growing up, my relationship with him was always strong, even after he moved out of the house.  He’d drift in and out of our lives, my mother and I.  Always smiling, forever strong, that’s the way I remembered him.  I remembered the last time I saw him was at my 15th birthday party.  I still ran to jump on him, hug him, and experience what his cologne smelled like.  He played along with me, brought some jazz records for us to listen to.  We arm-wrestled and I lost like always.  But something seemed different. Although I was too young and naïve to recognize what it was, my father had changed.
His arguments had definetly changed with my mother.  They argued about my father’s habits and his health, something else that I really couldn’t understand at the time. A few days, I remember him rubbing my head and play-boxing with me as he was preparing to leave.  He looked me into my eyes and told me, “You’re a man now.  Stand tall and believe.”  He kissed me on my forehead and said goodbye.  I knew that I would never see my father again.

Description
It was late and the breeze tickled my window. Nights like these made me remember when I would lay in the dark and pretend to be sleep, while I heard the slow reggae from my parents’ room. My father loved reggae, like he loved revolution. He said it had power, which I could never decipher, probably because I was too young to understand at the time. I could hardly get the word out of my mouth correctly.  My mother on the other hand loved Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin. Soul stuff like that. Sometimes they would argue over what music to play in the house. Or more than sometimes, the importance of family and the movement.
Quietly, I would pray for them to stop.  For them to quiet down.  Often after their arguments, my father would disappear for days at a time, and my mother would yell his name as he furiously packed his things. “Gabriel! Gabriel!!!,” she would constantly shout, but he would ignore her and sweep out of the house as if he had wings.  He had always said how much he hated his name.  He had always said that it was a slave name bestowed upon him by his grandmother.  Everyone else called my father Riot because of the fire and passion that he held for the benefaction of African culture or sometimes G.Riot as a nickname.
Growing up, my relationship with him was always strong, even after he moved out of the house.  He’d drift in and out of our lives, my mother and I.  Always smiling, forever strong, that’s the way I remembered him.  I remembered the last time I saw him was at my 15th birthday party.  I still ran to jump on him, hug him, and experience what his cologne smelled like.  He played along with me, brought some jazz records for us to listen to.  We arm-wrestled and I lost like always.  But something seemed different. Although I was too young and naïve to recognize what it was, my father had changed.
His arguments had definetly changed with my mother.  They argued about my father’s habits and his health, something else that I really couldn’t understand at the time. A few days, I remember him rubbing my head and play-boxing with me as he was preparing to leave.  He looked me into my eyes and told me, “You’re a man now.  Stand tall and believe.”  He kissed me on my forehead and said goodbye.  I knew that I would never see my father again.