Becoming Shayla's Father

A year or so later, I stand next to Shayla at the courthouse in Atlanta, as she marries her boyfriend. Meanwhile, I've co-signed their apartment lease and outfitted the nursery. Shayla didn't ask me to do these things, and in fact she gives me a hard time for offering to buy her and the baby expensive clothes instead of going to Target.

As the years go by, the take-charge lawyer in me comes out. When my granddaughter, Ashanti, is 4, I tell Shayla I want her to pursue child support from the baby's father, from whom she is now separated. I also tell her I want her to stop smoking because it's bad for her and the baby's health. I'm asserting my values.

I don't smoke that much or around the baby, she tells me, and her husband doesn't have anything to get.

He may at some point, and that's why you should protect Ashanti's interests, I tell her. I make what I think is a joke. I have insisted on paying Ashanti's preschool tuition, but I say I'm not going to keep helping out until Shayla agrees to seek child support. I remember us laughing it off, or maybe that was just me laughing.

She stops sending me the e-mails I've requested that she send to remind me about the payments. When I notice, I call her and ask why I'm not getting the e-mails.

Because you told me you weren't going to pay, she says.

I was just joking, I reply.

You didn't sound like you were joking, she says. I went and got a second job.

You didn't have to get another job, I tell her. She's an assistant manager at a document production company.

Yes, I did, because I don't want to be handled that way, she says. She's wearing the patch to quit smoking and trying to decide how to deal with her husband. Clearly, she'll do it on her terms.

At work, I charge a very high billable rate for my advice, but here it's not wanted, and I can't force it. Shayla holds the trump card. At any moment, I fear she will say, "It's nice you're giving me advice, but don't you think you're a little late?"

She never says it, but we both know she could. She has my mouth and my smile, but she also has my stubborn outspokenness.

I VISIT SHAYLA AND THE TWINS, McKenzie and McKay, who moved there last year, a couple times a month in Atlanta and indulge her and my granddaughter on special occasions. It's the least I can do. And I hold back on the advice. Maybe that's the least I can do, too. But although I might not have played the kind of formative father role with Shayla that results in parental entitlement, we're creating a history together now. I keep thinking back to when I took her to meet my father in Joliet, the Thanksgiving of 2002. My granddaughter was 5 months old, and, by this point, I had told my twin girls about their older sister. They were so curious, asking if I had been married before, and, if I hadn't been married, how I could have a child. As I explained, they looked at me as if I had done something wrong. I had. Then, they asked who their sister's mother was. I explained the relationship. They concluded that my oldest daughter was only their half sister. If she is our half sister, does that make her mother your half wife, they asked. I chuckled.

She is not your half sister, I said . She is your sister, and we are all one family. I had decided to move Shayla and her daughter from the margins to the center of my life.

We had all flown to Illinois, my four girls and I, getting into O'Hare in the wee hours and renting an SUV for the 45-minute trip to Joliet. My father greeted us at the door and looked my eldest daughter up and down. And then he looked at me.

I don't know why you ever needed a test, son. She's definitely yours. And she's mine, he said. He touched the baby's foot. And she's mine, too.

Ya'll all mine, he declared, loud enough to awaken a neighbor or two.

I thought to myself: This Bolden man may have just met his child, but it's not too late to bring her home.

A. Scott Bolden, who lives in the District, can be reached at abolden@reedsmith.com.