And here she is, at my home, sitting around our dinner table with Pele and my three daughters. It’s evening on Mother’s Day 2017, one of those warm nights in Hawaii. The kind of evening where the breeze makes you feel open to the world.
I start dinner by saying grace and then I begin to cry. Six feet four, 275 pounds, and I am crying. I’m crying because I’m thinking about every moment growing up as a child, every moment we missed together, every moment I wanted to have this moment. My tears start falling and you could hear a pin drop in that kitchen. I explain to everyone—and it takes a moment for me to put it into words—that I’m not crying because I’m sad, I’m crying because I feel free of so much pain I didn’t even realize was sitting on my chest.
I am attempting to bring Caronda back into our lives, and this dinner is a part of that. I could’ve said, “To hell with her! She wasn’t here for me.” But I don’t want to show my daughters that carrying pain, anger, and resentment is a way to live. How can I be the kind of father I want to be if I can’t forgive? If I can’t forgive my birth mother, how can I be out in the world arguing for love, justice, and community? How can I hold her hostage away from my heart for something she did when she was so young? My instincts are to stay angry, but my heart says that anger is the road to ruin.
I force myself to think about the cold truth: being a parent is challenging for me, and I’m thirty-one at this time, with all the resources I could ask for. She was a child, basically, just a few years older than my oldest daughter, with more children than dollars in her pocket. I can’t walk in her shoes, but I can guess that it probably felt, day in and day out, even worse than it sounds. So how can I not forgive her?
I know this is difficult for her, too. Remember, I’m thirty-one and she’s forty-eight. We are practically peers. After grace, I tell her I am proud to know her, and I say that I feel blessed just to be able to forgive her and build a relationship so we can finally care for each other. Then everyone starts crying. I am glad my daughters, young as they are, are here to see all this. I am glad we aren’t hiding this from them. I want them to see all of this, and say to them that this is what a man looks like—a real man, not a façade. Not just a fearless person on the field. Not just someone who speaks at a rally. I don’t want them to go their whole lives and say they never saw their father cry.
When my birth mom and I were trying to reconnect, I knew my dad and my mom who raised me were nervous. They were scared that I would get hurt, and I think maybe they were scared that this could end with my loving them less. I could never love them less. But I couldn’t go on and not be connected to the person who birthed me simply because of the decisions she made at the most difficult time of her life. I told my parents that I was trying to reconnect with her because that is how they raised me. They raised me to be the kind of man who could forgive. It’s not the 1920s or the 1950s, when you were told not to be emotional, not to kiss your wife in public, not to cry in front of your daughters, and that showing charity or forgiveness was somehow a sign of weakness. This is a time when people are growing, and there is an understanding that we are more than just this flesh, right here. Spiritually, I need to forgive her to grow. I can’t love my wife fully unless I love my birth mom properly.
As we’ve gotten to know each other all these years later, I’m finding out that she is a great person. Just as much as I’ve been hurt, she has been hurting, too. She has been in Louisiana all these years, not bonded to Martellus and me. Think about how hard that’s been for her, living in that tight-knit community, as Martellus and I made our way through the NFL. Every day, people are asking her about us, these sons she has had no connection with. It must have been devastating for her, like having a wound poked, day in, day out. Like Prometheus, chained to a rock, having an eagle eat her liver every day, only for it to grow back and be eaten again. A Groundhog’s Day of suffering. But now she can say to them, with a smile, “I’m reconnecting with my family, especially with my grandchildren.”
Martellus isn’t quite there yet. He’s trying. I’m pushing him more and more to be able to do it, and he will get there in his own time. I tell him, “You have to let this go, the anger. And if you don’t, you won’t be able to grow.”
Martellus did invite her to his wedding, in 2017. I think that was a big step. Before his wedding day, he hadn’t seen her in ten years. It was a special moment, and I’m proud of him. My brother looks up to me, so the fact that I’ve made this decision to reconnect with her means he will take it seriously. It’s like when he sees me being an activist, moving forward, seeing my dedication. He has slowly transformed from being seen as a comedian into a real risk
