The Beginning Of The Great Divide

In December 2006, I left New Jersey to go back to Brooklyn for winter break. I said Good Bye To Shamar, Packed and headed home. I was very apprehensive about seeing my parents. I had a tattoo, chocolate covered cherries on my stomach and I knew my mother was going to have a heart attack over it, and I also planned to tell them about Shamar. just as I suspected when my mother found out about the tattoo, courtesy of my brother, she looked at me with disgust and said she couldn't believe that I laid on a table and had a stranger put his hands on my stomach... I told her she was overreacting , my father agreed with me, because he also had a tattoo. Then came the big news. I remember sitting in the living room with my parents watching TV and I just blurted out that I had a boyfriend. Immediate silence followed. My mother said, what do you mean you have a boyfriend?? that's not what we are sending you to school for, please note here that I was eighteen years old, and she still believed that I shouldn't be dating. I calmly told her that yes, I was dating a guy and his name was Shamar, at this point my father left the living room. As was the case most of the time, he left when he sensed an impending battle between my mother and I. She then asked me what he did, I said he worked in a supermarket. She got up, looked at me and said  your dating someone who works in a supermarket??????!!!!!!!!  my mother is a very superficial woman, I feel I must add that to this statement so you can understand or perhaps maybe even hear the disdain and contempt dripping off her words. My mother always had to have the best clothes, the best car, we lived in the hood and she had a BMW car, she sent us both to private school, not because she could afford it, but because she felt that she was better than everyone else in the surrounding area. NO, I'M NOT bashing my mother for sending me to a good school, I'm simply stressing the reason why I went there. My mother I believe to some extent resented my father because he was a stay at home dad and he didn't work for the longest time. She would always tell me that when I was ready for a man, I should look for a WHITE man with a briefcase, because a white man knew how to take care of his woman better that a black man could. That was the ideals of my mother and that is why she asked me in such a tone, your dating someone who works in a supermarket????!!!!! I asked her in a controlled voice, although the anger was simmering in my stomach what was wrong with someone who worked in a supermarket ? she said I could do so much better, That for crying out loud, I was in college on an academic scholarship and the best thing I could find was a bum who worked in a supermarket. You see, she was totally focused on the fact that he worked in a supermarket. At this point, I feel I need to shed some light on the person that is I, so you can understand why, when I could have easily dated anyone I wanted, I chose Shamar. I have never been a female that required much. Yes I was blessed to be easy on the eyes, but I never used that to my advantage. I never chased the guys with the fancy cars, or the ones who were decked out in fancy clothes. I guess you can say I'm a wholesome girl. Now, to the skeptics, IF I wanted a man with money and the cars and the jewels, I could have, time and time again, even today as I sit here, three years single, I could have that if I wanted to.... things like that never amused or caught my eye. That is something that my mother could never understand and she never will. I simply told her that at least he had a job and was doing something productive, and not standing on the street corner. She shook her head in disgust and left the room. This was the first match to the fuse that would eventually light and explode with me leaving and never looking back. The rest of my winter break was uneventful, as I wasn't allowed to go anywhere. I spent my days trapped in the apartment, and my nights talking on the phone with Shamar. I couldn't wait to go back to Jersey. I honestly believe that if my parents were less constricting I would be writing this under completely different circumstances. In January 2007, I returned to Georgian Court, resumed my studies and my relationship with Shamar flourished even more, leading to my first pregnancy.