Kids & Parenting

And So I Became

by Samuel Dumas 
09/13/19
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And So I Became

 About once every three months, my dad lined the children of our church up on the platform on Sunday afternoon to ask them what they wanted to be. It was one of my particular times that I paid keen attention because each time he would question them their ‘wanna be’ would sometimes change, or would be new ones I had not heard before—and it was enjoyable to hear their voices amplified by the great mike system we had.

Because I was five years old I was included in the line for the first time. The older ones answered into the microphone: doctor, lawyer, etc...and when questioned, why they wanted to be that type of person, they spoke forthrightly like older kids…then he microphoned the 5 year olds and they answered: doctor, lawyer, nurse, policeman…when he came to me, I spoke, with some teacher loudness, "When I grow up, I want to be a man." I heard a muzz of expressions, and some snickering, and since I was the last person, it was time for my father to present to the congregation the future of America’s best.

Thirty years later, just two years before my dad passed away, we were talking one on one about some theological reference, and mixing into our conversation other philosophical behaviors of mankind in general: politics; and after a pause made its way into the room, my dad said that he had from time to time gone back to what I had said that day, not because it was so different than all the others, or that the chuckling had erupted (the muzz) —wherein the audience had thought it was humorous, naïve baby babble coming from the novice to their program. No it was not that, he clarified, but he thought back on it because as he watched me grow, he saw me more and more becoming the manly men which he had preached about all these years, saw I was, by choice and by purpose, trying to keep to the pattern of what those mighty biblical giants were about. To him this demonstrated that I had truly meant, and had an idea at least of what I was saying and thereby was among the few who got the messages about these great biographical men he was always telling us about. He then said that of all his eight children, I was the one he saw who had become what they had desired, and that he was proud of me.

It was a simple desire, just such a common one that didn’t require a college degree: Samuel had none, Elijah had none, Martha, Peter, and Mary had none…and Jesus. What I had thought of was just a normal singular, growable desire that only required diligent observations of other men in sight, and many quiet thought-sessions: ‘alone with cosmic eggs, being terse.’ And Spread out in between these functions were the trials, mistakes, and loves and joys of varying kinds—plus the not forgetting to keep God in the mix. This was not too dissimilar, at all, to what we read about the biographical men of the Bible, who grew up to be humans not just of power , but of domain, during the time of their youth, during the time of adversity, during their time of listening to the God who made them. That was the ‘everything I needed to know’ which I learned from my dad’s sermons while I was still yet in kindergarten: that these she-and-he heroes were not just doing the actions of men: doctors, lawyers, judges, goliath killers, prophets, leaders, lambs —they were being those things; whether they had gone through the schools of the Pharisees or not.

And so it was that at five, after hearing my father sing-out in between great sweat-wiping pauses, the details about these great heroes, I came to realize that the being part was the most desirable part, and that day, in front of all those people, it had become what I wanted.

My first coming into being came when the breath of life entered into me before I was born, before I became one of the many Samuels that have given a cry-out into the world. Even though I cannot remember whose hands under-cradled my nakedness when it was my time to be scissored and swaddled, this Sam became a man-child, delivered from the life of a woman; a man-child who then has kept desire in the sight of a father’s favor; and that, God and Jesus willing, still wants to grow up and be a man.

—Dumas fils