The summer of 1941, my grandmother welcomed her last born, a son, named James. While to many this may not be significant but for Clara it was as she had once been told she would never have children yet she and my grandmother raised six health children, four boys and two girls, to adulthood. Some of asked the question how do you measure the life of a man? Do you measure it by the number of second, minutes, days, or hours they have lived? Do you measure it by the way the work they do? Or is it measured by how they treat eithers?
I thought of this question recently when I began reading The Measure of a May: a spiritual autobiography by Sidney Poitier. I was sitting in the family room of my parents’ home reading while my father was watching television.