17 Oct
2026
Not every chapter of my childhood was dark. My memoir, Neglected But Undefeated, has a chapter called “Happy, For a While.” It covers a short stretch around 1995 and 1996 when things got better for me. It did not last. But I have come to believe that a happy season does not have to last forever to matter.
It started after I had been away from home for days. When I came back, my mother apologized for putting me out. That night she cooked dinner, we played cards, and she bought my favorite foods. For the first time in my life, she told me she loved me. I wrote, “It felt so good to be finally bonding with my mother. I went to bed that night with a feeling of satisfaction.”
There is more to that night than a warm dinner, and I have written about it elsewhere. Here I want to talk about the good days that came after it, because they were real too.
In the summer of 1995, after my first little brother was born, my parents took me to Universal Studios and Disney World in Orlando. We spent about four days there, along with my father's sisters. What I remember most is that everyone was getting along.
Then my mother told me I was going to Jamaica to visit my grandparents. I was overjoyed. I spent that summer with them, and I begged to stay. My cousins even told me to find my passport and throw it away. I found it, but my grandmother spotted me holding it, took it away and hid it.
When it was time to leave, I cried. My grandfather talked to me again. He wanted me to go back to America, finish school and find a job so I could come home and take care of them. I promised. In my book I wrote, “Their happiness was all that really mattered to me, so I promised them I would and returned to America with the determination to accomplish those goals and become successful.”
I had no idea that by November 1996 my grandfather would be gone.
After my second brother was born in December 1995, I was sent to spend a lot of time at the home of a woman from church who had become my mother's friend. There I met a boy who became my best friend. We were together every day after school, eating and watching Home Alone and Home Alone 2. One time I laughed so hard that the juice I was drinking came out of my nose. After he choked on his food from laughing, we were no longer allowed to eat during those movies.
He laughed at me for proudly wearing “BUFU” clothes instead of real FUBU. As I wrote, “Those times were great and such a contrast to my home life.”
We got into mischief too, copying the movies. We threw water balloons at cars, and worse. When we were finally caught, I was punished more than he was, because my mother had to pay to fix someone's car window. That part was wrong, and I was punished for it.
By September 1996, in third grade, the daily beatings at home had started again. I was still happy to go to school every day. And every morning I looked into my mother's room and smiled at my two little brothers, even though I could not go near them unless a parent was around.
If a child is in immediate danger, call 911. In the U.S., the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline is 1-800-422-4453.
The happy stretch was over, but it left me with something. The promise I made at the end of that Jamaica summer stayed with me for years. When I was at my lowest, wanting to make my grandfather proud was one of the reasons I kept going.
When life is hard, it is easy to decide that a good stretch that ended was never worth much. My story says otherwise. If you are in a good season right now, or remembering one, here are a few ways to make it count:
Those few happy months are as much a part of my story as the hard years. You can read the whole journey in Neglected But Undefeated on my Books page. And today, take a minute to thank someone who gave you a good season.
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