Michael Jackson Memories

I never had a Michael Jackson button on my jean jacket. Never had a lunchbox with his face on it. Never had a Thriller poster up in my bedroom, and I never wished I could marry him or be his girlfriend.

But our hearts know musical genius when they see it. And our hearts know when we've lost it. It truly feels like the end of an era... an end I knew would always come, but I never thought it would come so soon.

I remember being maybe two years old and turning a 45 record of The Jackson 5's "ABC" over in my hands. My sister told me that Michael Jackson had actually touched it and I got sooo excited.

When The Wiz came out, I remember my mom and her sisters talking about it non-stop. It was something for us, for all the people of African descent who didn't see ourselves in many positive, creative, uplifting movies.

My mom also had a Jane Fonda workout cassette tape with the Jackson 5's "Can You Feel It" on it. I think it was the first song on the tape. She played it so much, I can't listen to that song now without thinking of her exercising.

When I was seven years old, my mom bought a cassette of "Off The Wall". To this day it remains my absolute favorite Michael Jackson record. We cleaned the house to it, had family dance parties to it and played Clue and pokeno to it.

Thriller got released and Michael Jackson became MICHAEL JACKSON, the man people all over the world screamed, cried and fainted over. And not just black folks. White people, Asian people, Latino people... pretty much everybody all around the world loved them some Michael Jackson. It was beyond insanity.

With the Thriller era, Michael became the biggest pop star this world will probably ever see, and in some ways the last vestiges of any kind of normal life he had probably ended back in the early '80s.

But I didn't think of such things back then. Like everyone else, I was so proud to finally see videos by a black man on MTV. And I remember how we'd wait in agony to see the Thriller video. When it came on, it was a mad scramble to press "record" so we could get the footage onto a VHS tape and memorize the choreography.

By the time I was a 17 year-old freshman in college, the Michael Jackson I'd grown up loving looked a LOT different. The September 1990 issue of Vogue had one of the first big stories about his metamorphosis. The article had two pictures of him right next to each other: one from the Off The Wall era and one from 1990. I cut the pictures out and taped them to my dorm room door. It was the Michael of my childhood and adolescence right next to the very altered Michael of my adulthood.

As the years passed, there was so much sadness and conflict in my heart when I thought about Michael Jackson. Unlike some in our culture who seemed to enjoy mocking and tearing him apart, I felt genuinely sorry for him. I never enjoyed watching what his personal life had become.

However, I did enjoy introducing the music of "Off The Wall" and "Thriller" to my sons, even if I did my best to hide his physical metamorphosis from them. I didn't want my boys, who have at times felt self-conscious about their blackness, to see Michael's transformation. Of course, I failed and they wondered who the "white lady" on the cover of Ebony was.

And so, last summer we drove through Gary, Indiana so they could see where Michael Jackson was born. I always tell people that if they want to understand the Jacksons, they have to go to Gary. In the face of rancid air, vacant lots, boarded up houses, abandoned factories, abject poverty... when you've been to Gary, it's not hard to understand that family and Michael Jackson.

This afternoon I was on the phone with the wonderful lady who used to watch my sons when I worked full time. While chatting with her, I was surfing the web, and I popped by TMZ to see what was going on in the celebrity world.

I saw the posting about Michael Jackson going into cardiac arrest, and I seriously thought I must've been reading something wrong, so I refreshed the page. Up popped another story. And once I saw the headline, I burst into tears.

I have cried off and on since reading of Michael's death. It's weird, but it feels like a member of my extended family has passed. I feel such sadness that even in death, Michael Jackson will have no peace. The media circus will continue and people will endeavor to exploit his story for their own personal profit and gain.



In the end, all I have is gratitude for his wonderful music, for all the memories I associate it with, and I have prayers for the progress of his soul. I hope Michael rests in peace.