Time: A Great Revealer of Family Secrets

There are times things happen in one’s life and there are no apparent explanations for its occurrence until several years later it all comes together.

One morning in the early 1960’s my cousin and I walked into one of our neighbor’s yard and was just in time to see a fight in progress between one of our uncles and another man who we shall call Douglas. Douglas was giving my uncle the whipping of his life and as we attempted to rescue him, a marauding force consisting of several members of Douglas’ family came at us to halt our progress.

They specifically warned us that we should not interfere but allow them to fight it out. We did not know what they were fighting about, no one said anything to us, and we did not ask.

They were doing us justice but we did not know at the time.

Our uncle struggled in the fight and we got very concern for his safety as he was definitely no match for his opponent and was on the receiving end of several body blows.

When it seems we were in for a big embarrassment, a senior member in the same family came and abruptly ended the fight, so that we could walk away with our reputation somewhat better intact than seemed likely before.

We were spared from a bitter tongue lashing from our peers in the community. Had this fight continued and our uncle ended up more badly beaten, we would not hear the last of how much he could not fight and much more that I won’t mention here. As we gladly took him away he was still to fight but with his mouth. He was cursing and crying at the same time. We could only comfort and sympathize with him.

Several years passed after this incident and during that time my uncle and cousin migrated to the United States of America, and I relocated to the city to pursue university studies. Douglas also left the community with all his children and I thought everything had come to an end concerning this fight. I was to be proven wrong several years later.

It was a national holiday approximately twenty two years later, that brought us (my cousin was absent) back in the district and as I entered the family kitchen that first day, I distinctly heard my uncle called a young man that was standing near to him his son. I immediately queried him about the statement, as I was not aware of such addition to his family, and he told me that the boy’s mother was pregnant for him several years ago, but Douglas took the child as his own.

When he made that statement everything came together after all these years of ignorance on my part and I was glad the family kept me out of that fight.

I asked him if that was the reason why they were fighting in the neighbor’s yard and he responded in the affirmative.

Upon hearing this I proceeded to question the young man about his life and how he felt about his present and past father.

The news about the past father was not good as he relate the very cruel treatment that he received from him over ten years. He said that he was so badly beaten and treated like animal at times that when he could no longer bear it , he ran away to live with other families.

I observed him for a few days and noticed that he did drugs, stole money from my mother, made food disappear from the cupboard faster than we could imagined, had a high consumption rate for sugar, and defended the famous Rastafarian cult that was hated by most members of the community at that time.

There was also very little contact between my uncle and this young man for several years. He obviously had been neglected on all fronts as far as I could see and was very lucky to be alive. He could hardly read and his activities made him a potential candidate for the prisons or the grave as time passes.

The relationship my uncle had with his mother negatively affected her from that time, as she was deserted by Douglas and he was financially incapable of giving the necessary support, because he married another woman.

She never recovered and went into a life of abject poverty until this day.

On the other hand my father sired eight children and was there for the family over the years so much so that seven of us can now give a good report regarding his role as a father. Time revealed the secrets of my father and he is a happy man due to the success of his children in the business and other environments.

My uncle lifestyle twenty years ago came back to hurt him badly as he produced a son that really will not make him proud unless some drastic change takes place.

This type of lifestyle is a microcosm of several societies in North America, the Caribbean and several other areas of the world.

Men must stay with their sons and daughters especially in the formative years when an authoritative figure is needed to properly channel their energy, will power and passion.

Boys need to develop their confidence and self esteem especially when challenged by the powerful external societal forces.

Much time they are lost from within the homes due to the absence of influential fathers, and it is totally unfair for the teachers to be assuming such roles.

Girls will seek their fathers in the outside world in the form of boyfriends at an early age and this is one of the reasons why teenage pregnancy and abortions becomes a national problem. Our girls may simply want companions and not sex but the many boys may see it different.

A father in the midst would help the mother to mold both lives using their experience as a powerful object lesson.

Time has revealed some very bad things for our men if we look at the number of men in prison, infected with HIV, in the grave, or are trafficking drugs to wreck the lives of other young persons.

The medical, legal, political, financial, academic, religious, engineering, and sporting institutions should be filled with the products of the seeds our fathers has sown in two or three decades ago.

However the picture is not a good one when we look at the levels of crime, violence, poor roads, shortage of medicine, and poorly defended victims in prison, to name a few; that is currently retarding our societal development.

A change is drastically needed and our men of today should realize that they have the power to positively affect the future from where they are now, be in the universities, the churches, the sporting fields, or in business organizations.

We must make sure our sons do not turn up in our palace of excellence to embarrass in terms of goals and achievement like what my “nephew” did to his “father”.

How many of us will be able to get rewards from the community, schools, churches, and other institutions in our old age for a job well done?

Whatever we are seeing today is definitely a result of our past actions or inactions and I hope our present movers and shakers of nations will realized the opportunity they have today to sow seeds of greatness in the right soil so that the world later on will stand up and take notice.

Much of what is being revealed to us today even in terms of statistics are not worth emulating but should be seen as a warning signs that worse can come if there are no corrective measures injected. Successful leaders should start invading the schools in numbers to arrest the decline with quality mentorship programs.

There is nothing better than marketing the living examples of success as this destroy the negativism of those who do not desire to excel. Students will stand up and take notice when they are being addressed by successful leaders from the society. Success breeds success at all levels; from the school room to the boardroom and beyond.

Finally as time reveals the secrets of the past , the good deeds will be a good tonic to extend the lives of the aged and help them to pass on even more of their excellent growth and development strategies to the their grandchildren.

However the poor seeds sown in vessels that cannot nurture it will produce rejects that will be deposited in the social garbage heap, where compression to produced conformance will be very difficult.

Men, I hope I have arrested your attention and possible commitment for a future that is well engineered for success in abundance, in any discipline your seeds chose to excel in, and affect the world positively in years to come. Time would then reveal the secrets of your successes, which will then serve as inspirational information for others to use in their family growth and development programs.