Sidney Poitier - Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter

D ECEMBER 23, 2005. A TLANTA , G EORGIA .

A rude blast of cold greeted me the moment I stepped outside of the baggage-claim area of the Delta Airlines terminal at Atlantas notoriously labyrinthine airport. It was two days before Christmas, and Id just flown from a sunny, mild Los Angeles morning into the darkening Georgia afternoonwhere the plane landed, and where overcast skies further contributed to the somber mood that winter invariably conjures in me. While I was en route to the hospital in the old city of Atlanta to meet my great-granddaughterjust two days oldthe weather outdoors struck me as woefully uncooperative in matching my inner feelings of joyful expectation.

At almost the age of seventy-nine, a year and a few months away from reaching the milestone of eighty years old, I had already welcomed two generations of offspring into the worldmy daughters Beverly, Pamela, Sherri, and Gina (the four born to me and my ex-wife, Juanita) and my daughters Anika and Sydney (the two born to me and my wife, Joanna), followed then by Beverlys two, my late granddaughter Kamaria and then Aisha, and by Ginas three children, my granddaughter Guylaine, my grandson Etienne, and my granddaughter Gabrielle.

Now, incredibly, the first of the next generation had made her debut on December 22, 2005. Born to Aisha and her husband, Darryl, Ayele had shown the good sense to arrive close to her due datedemonstrating upon her entrance into life a grace and charm in keeping with the season of celebration.

Not for anything under the sun would I have missed the opportunity to be on hand in person at her lifes commencement, to introduce myselfher great-grandfather on her maternal side.

That being said, I wasnt prepared for the impact of the sight that awaited me when I finally stood in the middle of the hospital room, surrounded by relatives, representing multiple generations, who had gathered to welcome Ayele into both the family and the world. As her doting father, Darryl, hovered nearby, there she was, center stage, cradled in her mothers arms, snoozing contentedly with a look of such peace and wisdom, I was convinced she knew that time was absolutely working in her favor. With her mother, Aisha, holding her close and beaming down at her, just above the two of them, bathed in the same maternal glow, were the radiant faces of Ayeles grandmother Beverly and great-grandmother Juanita. Together the four generations presented a living portrait that was instantly arresting.

Vestiges of Native American ancestry could be seen not only in my ex-wifes featuresthe defined cheekbones, straight hair, reddish skin tonebut also in the younger three, though to lesser degrees. Some of the physical traits from my side of the DNA branch were evident as well, ironically not pronounced as much in my daughter and granddaughter as they were in the newbornwho appeared with her open yet serious countenance, even in sleep, to be as close to a female version of myself at her age as there has ever been. Or so I imagined the case to be, given that I have never been privy to what I looked like as an infant or as a young child; in fact, I was sixteen years old when the first photograph was ever taken of me. Nonetheless, judging by the chorus of declarations in the room, I wasnt alone in believing there to be a strong likeness between the two of us.

Of course, aside from discernible inherited traits, each of the four women shone with her own remarkable essence: Juanita with her quiet determination; my daughter Beverly, family-oriented, vibrant and alive, an embracer of life and others; my granddaughter Aisha, knowing and certain, a modern young woman; and even Ayele, already a trailblazer, already making her mark in our lives.

It was then, in that unforgettable moment, while looking on fondly at the four generations of women arrayed in front of me, that the idea for this book as a series of letters to Ayele first flitted into my thoughts.

As has happened a time or two in my wanderings, the idea that came to me unbidden in this fashion was about to require a shifting of gears. Over the past couple of years, I had been seriously at work on a book of essays that were to go under the collective heading Unanswered Questions, Unfinished Lives. The scope of those questions encompassed everything from the most universally pondered issues of existence to the personal mysteries of my own travelsstarting with the puzzles of life that Id been attempting to unravel since early childhood.

In every stage of my growthover the first ten and a half years, when I lived on tiny Cat Island in the Bahamas, separate and apart from the rest of the world, through my youth in Nassau and then Miami, all along the road to adulthood that began when I arrived in Harlem at the age of sixteen, and over the next several decades, in which both opportunities and obstacles endowed me with a sense of the true measure of lifeprofound and nagging questions have continued to arise in me.

The notion that my time here is not unlimiteda reality that age and an earlier health scare helped to underscorehad certainly added urgency to the realization that I had many more unfinished, unanswered questions to address and much to do before resting. The other side of the philosophical coin had come from my observation that those who stop their questioningat seventy-five, sixty, even at thirtycut short their explorations and end up with permanently unfinished lives. To lose interest in lifeto retreat from being totally alive and totally engaged in the worlds within and outside of ourselvesis a tragic plight in my eyes, yet one easily remedied whenever we muster the willingness to bear up to our thorniest questions.

Such had been the focus of my writing in the period leading up to Ayeles arrival. Now, suddenly, as I stood in the middle of the hospital room, positioned at the far end of my history in this lifetime, gazing adoringly at my great-granddaughter at the beginning of hers, a new focus emerged.

It began with an awareness that I was more cognizant than anyone else of the four generations of women present there that day, which allowed me, as I stood looking at Ayele in her mamas arms, to focus even more closely on the childon the stark differences between us and on our unique kinship. She and I were connected by virtue of the contrast, in that I was not far from eighty and she was two days old. Beyond the realization that she had just arrived and that I was moving toward the end of a journey, my thoughts unfolded next to consider all of the history that had transpired between my own arrival and hers.

In the weeks that followed my first meeting Ayele, the more I reflected on the intersection of our paths, the more I thought that it would be fitting for me to adapt the focus of the writing that I had been doing. After all, if she were to begin her search for roots later on, at age sixteen, twenty-two, thirty, or thirty-five, she would have not much more than a sketch of me from which to draw. Even if she read the previous books that Ive written, hers would be only a partial view. And it occurred to me that I needed to go beyond the sketch to tell her more about the questions, answers, and mysteries that have concerned me at various important junctures; the partial view would not do for usage in her significant passages of life.