New York is one of the greatest cities on earth. I say that without reservation. It is alive in a way that no other city quite matches, full of possibility and energy and people from every corner of the world all pressed together in this extraordinary, maddening, beautiful place. I chose to raise my daughter here. But choosing to be here does not mean choosing to become fully here. Some things I brought with me from Jamaica and I am keeping them.
Social Graces Are Not Optional
One of the first things I noticed about New York is that people do not say Good Morning. You walk past someone in your building, someone you see every single day, and they look through you. No acknowledgment. No greeting. Nothing. In Jamaica this is unthinkable. You greet people. You say Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening. Not because you are required to but because human beings deserve to be acknowledged when you pass through the same space.
This is one of the values I am most intentional about with Avi. She greets adults. She says Good Morning to her teachers, to our neighbors, to strangers she interacts with in any meaningful way. Not because I am forcing performance. Because I want her to understand that noticing people is a form of love. That saying good morning to someone is a small but real act of dignity you extend to another human being.
New York will not give her this. The city moves too fast and cares too little about formality. So I give it to her at home, every morning, in the way we move through our own space and the world outside it.
The Language of Respect
I grew up in an era when children had manners and those manners were not optional. You did not call your parents bro. You did not refer to a grown woman as bro. You did not use profanity in the presence of adults as though it were punctuation. You spoke to elders with a particular register that communicated, I know who I am and I know who you are and I respect the difference.
New York challenges this daily. The slang here is its own dialect and I am not against Avi learning it. Language evolves and she is a New York kid. But there is a difference between code-switching and losing the code entirely. She can speak how her friends speak with her friends. She does not speak that way to adults. She does not eat on the road walking past people like it is something to be done without thought. She does not address grown people with the casualness of addressing a peer.
I have lost my cool over this. I will admit it. There have been moments where something small happened and something large came out of me because the small thing touched something deep. It touched the memory of how I was raised and the respect I was expected to show and the pride I felt in being someone who knew how to conduct himself. I want that pride for her.
When Jamaican Values Clash With American Ones
The honest truth is that some of what I hold dear is not universally valued here and I have had to make peace with that tension. American culture prizes individual expression above almost everything else. Children are encouraged to have opinions, to speak their minds, to push back on authority as a form of healthy development. There is real value in that. I do not dismiss it.
But there is also value in learning to hold your tongue sometimes. In understanding that not every thought needs to be expressed. In recognizing that respect for those who came before you is not the same as submission. It is a form of wisdom. A form of understanding that you do not yet know everything and that the people who have lived longer than you might have something worth hearing.
I am not trying to raise a child who is afraid. I tried that model, inherited it from my own upbringing, and I know its costs. What I am trying to raise is a child who is both free and rooted. Who can move through the world with confidence and still know how to say Good Morning to a stranger. Who can be fully American and fully Jamaican at the same time. Who does not have to choose between the two but carries both as parts of a whole.
New York will shape her. I accept that. But Jamaica built the foundation and foundations do not wash away.
"Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their parents. This is the generation gap."
Marianne Moore