A friend Is Another Yourself Bao Man（Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China）

Tom Feelings, My Daddy

My daddy had lots of big feelings. He loved to talk about them, and sometimes he liked to write about his feelings, but usually, he drew them out. This is a drawing of himself, his self-portrait. He called it “Tom Inside.” I think he looks just a little bit upset. Maybe because he was thinking about how the world should be a better place for children everywhere, children like you and me.

He imagined that better place. That’s why, on December 20, 1994, the night I was born, he named me Niani Sekai. Niani is the name of an African city. And Sekai means laughter. So for Daddy, my name meant “a place in Africa filled with laughter.”

Here’s a picture he drew of a little girl he imagined living in Niani, the capital city of the ancient Mali empire. This picture will always hang on my bedroom wall.

Daddy is everywhere I look. Would you believe this doll is wearing a dress he bought for me? And these pillows on my bed, with pictures from his pencil, make me smile every night. The little boy is happy because he is holding a book, reminding me of my big brother, Kamili, and my cousin, Richie. The little girl is happy because she is touching the soil of Africa. Daddy was happiest when he was in Africa, the Mother Continent. This painting shines like the sun in Ghana, where he used to live. He talked a lot about that sun.

And Daddy was happy when he was with children, at their schools or at home. Besides me, his favorite little girl was my cousin, Taelor. See how comfortable she looks in his arms. We think he saw her before she was even born, because in this drawing he made a long time ago, the girl sucks her fingers just like Taelor did---not her thumb, but the two middle ones.

My daddy was good at drawing children. That’s how he became an artist, drawing boys and girls in his New York neighborhood--just sitting on the stoop thinking, or standing around, watching the world go ‘round.

Brooklyn was where Daddy was born and raised, but South Carolina was his adopted home. He thought that made sense because Carolina is where so many Africans first set foot after being taken way, way across the Middle Passage, from Africa to America. The Middle Passage. That’s the title of the book Daddy spent twenty years of his life creating. This is the poster announcing that it would be published in 1976! But he kept on working on it until 1995 because it is such an important story. And guess what? The book is dedicated to me.

Daddy wanted me and black people all over the world, in Ghana and Guyana, Brooklyn and Brazil, Paris and Puerto Rico, to remember where we came from. So he called this drawing “Tree of Return.”

When my daddy died on August 25, 2003, I know his spirit returned home to Africa. And of course, his spirit is still here in South Carolina too. As I go all around town, I remember us at the circus and the grocery store, at the sorbet shop and the library. The librarians in Columbia will think about him a lot, too, especially when they give his books to readers, young and old.

Daddy’s life was filled with books and with dreams. This is another self-portrait he drew. Across his forehead he wrote Langston Hughes’s famous poem “Harlem” that asks what happens when people cannot make their dreams come true. Daddy thought that reading and dreaming, and then doing, could go far. Could help us to soar.

In this collage from his book Soul Looks Back in Wonder there is a pretty purple bird in the girl’s mind. That means she is a dreamer. The grown-ups around her can help her live up to those dreams.

The last time I saw my daddy in his hospital room, he told me that he looked out of the window every day and thought about me. Maybe he was thinking about the times the two of us would walk and skip down the street holding hands, him grinning and chanting:

Niani,

Niani.

Niani.

Or maybe he was thinking about one of his favorite pictures of me, suspended in the air.

Here is the very last photograph of my daddy. My Aunt Linda took it in her garden on Father’s Day, in June. Everyone says I look like him. What do you think?

I wish Daddy could hug me just one more time.

I know he will always speak to me, though, through his spirit, and his art, and the cards and letters I’ve saved. Here is a letter I wrote to him.

Dear Daddy,

Bless me. I will see you in heaven.

Say hey to Harriet Tubman.

Goodbye.

Love, Niani

You might recognize the covers of these books. The illustrator’s name is Tom Feelings. My Daddy.

‘Children’s Forum’, Lam Tong and Tung Cheng Yuen Buddhist Association