Aging is an insane concept of life.
It begins with taking in a variety of faculties and experiences as an infant and through our teenage years. If we’re lucky, we reap blessings from the encounters of adulthood—only to afford ourselves therapy sessions to help deconstruct past childhood trauma. Human existence is a chronicling carousel, constantly building upon our personalities and oftentimes our life events or impediments—enabling us to refine our existence the more we revisit our past, in all our sincerity.
The now is truly a godsend.
Yet, the past shares similar godlike qualities. The people we’ve become as adults, have always existed—even as our childhood traumas helped to exaggerate qualities within us — the good and the bad. Recognizing these truths affords great profitability for ourselves and the ones who care most of us. Recently, I curated a beer-and-storytelling excursion for Charleston Wine and Food alongside Sammy Backman. I’ve known “Mr. Sammy” since I was 3 years old. He’s one of many elders in my life who played a huge role in keeping me occupied and on a progressive path, away from adolescent and teenage social ills. He taught me how to fish.
He and his family owned the first African-American fishing company in South Carolina (James Island), and I was fortunate to spend most of my childhood running up and down Sol Legare Road and fishing off the docks at Backman’s Seafood. As I’ve grown to realize, I’ve always been one to learn through visuals, which is telling—starting with my knowledge of how to clean fish. It’s a skill I learned at Backman’s from watching others do it.
Unbeknownst to me at that time, I’d eventually become a writer, and the experiences I shared fishing and crabbing in Folly Creek with Mr. Sammy would become the inspiration and cultural foundation to all my writings, in some form.
We often think of life as a linear notion: You live, you work, and eventually you pass on to be with your maker. Yet, I would suggest, it’s more cyclical than not. Whatever has been determined for you shall always be. It’s as simple as looking back in our formative years for understanding. There was no explanation for me as a kid about my enjoyment of fishing. What I’ve come to realize is that those moments were vivid experiences for a reason. As a writer, I’m able to maintain palpability in my recollections. Most importantly, I’m able to use that wisdom in my own parenting with our son. Flooding him with a diverse wave of experiences, with the hope of him carrying on a legacy of appreciating moments.
I finally had a chance to explain to Mr. Sammy how much he and his family meant to me. “Man, I’m proud of you, it’s a beautiful thing,” he replied. Life doesn’t end for us, it goes around. During our time “above ground,” we’ll occasionally go fishing, run a mile, or curate a boat tour explaining to 50 patrons how an area helped you become the person you are today.
Words + Photoby Jamaal Lemon