17 Oct
2026
When I was six and seven years old in Miami, I had a daily ritual. I prepared a bowl of purple grapes. I sat beside the man I called my father while he watched the Florida Marlins. I asked to go to work with him. Looking back, all of it was a little boy trying to stay close to the one adult in the house who might help him.
In 1993, I left my grandparents in Jamaica and moved to Miami. The man I called my father, who had come to Jamaica to bring me home, was my mother's husband. I never met my biological father. But as a child, he was the father I knew.
The house was pink, with a big tree in the driveway. My mother wanted me in my room, away from her. My father was always working and wasn't around much. It seemed he came home only to pay the bills and rest.
When he did come home, I ran to him and stayed at his side.
My father loved baseball, especially his team, the Florida Marlins. I would sit with him until it was my bedtime. I was only allowed to watch television when he was watching the Marlins play, so those games became my time to be near him.
I wasn't really there for the baseball. I was there for him.
My father loved purple grapes. So every day and every night, I prepared a bowl of them so he could have them whenever he got home or whenever he wanted them.
I want to be honest about why. In school I brought home good grades but bad behavior on my interim reports, and I would be punished for a couple of days each time. Sucking up to my father was how I got out of punishment. The grapes were part of that. But they were also a way to be noticed and to be useful to someone, because being useful felt like the closest thing to being wanted.
The deeper reason was that home was not safe for me. My mother didn't want to feed me, and I often had to wait for my father to come home before I could eat. When I ended up shut out of the house, my father was the one who found out and let me back in. In my memoir Neglected But Undefeated I wrote, "That was one of the reasons I always wanted my father around me, so that he could help me out of situations with my mother."
If a child is in immediate danger, call 911. In the U.S., the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline is 1-800-422-4453.
That is why I started asking to go to work with him whenever I had no school. I didn't want to be home alone. And though he was distant, my father never screamed at me, no matter how much trouble I had gotten into at school. Honestly, back then I thought that meant he didn't really care. As a man, I can see that for a boy in my situation, an adult who didn't scream was a kind of shelter.
Children rarely say out loud that they need you to notice them. They show it. If you are a parent, stepparent, relative or teacher, here are some signs to watch for:
When you see these signs, respond with simple attention. Ask about their day. Let them sit with you without having to earn it. And if something seems wrong at home, ask gently and listen to the answer.
I didn't get the kind of attention I needed as a child, but I learned what it looks like by missing it. One of the lines from my book says it best: "Instead of treating your child like how you were treated. Treat them with the same love and attention you wanted from your parents while growing up."
If you want to read the whole story of my childhood in Miami, you can find Neglected But Undefeated on my Books page, and learn more about my journey on my About page. And today, if a child in your life keeps bringing you a bowl of grapes, put down what you're doing and say thank you. Then sit with them a while.
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