Some Messages Wait for Faraway Places: How Memory Delivers the Messages Love Leaves Behind

Guaratinguetá

Some of the most important messages we are meant to receive must travel through time and space before they can be delivered. They wait through years, cross oceans, and survive the people who first spoke them. Sometimes they even wait for places we have never visited, hidden in cities whose names we have never heard.

This is my story.

For nearly twenty years, I carried something Listervelt Middleton said to me. I remembered everything about that moment: the words, his face, the sound and force of his joy. What I did not understand was why that memory remained so clear until I arrived with my mother in Guaratinguetá, Brazil.

Listervelt was a big, tall man with a deep, booming voice. When he entered a room, you knew he was there, not because he demanded attention, but because he carried a presence that settled everyone around him. The Listervelt I knew through my parents was humble, with a smile and laugh that put you at ease the moment he made eye contact with you.

He produced and hosted For the People, a television program that carried African history, scholarship, culture, and political thought to viewers across the country. Through that program, people encountered African and African American scholars they might never otherwise have heard. He was also a published poet; one of his poems hung on our family room wall.

Many people knew Listervelt’s face, recognized his voice, and respected his work. When something truly amused him, his whole body joined in. His shoulders shook, sweat gathered across his forehead, and sometimes he laughed so hard he had to stop speaking. Anyone nearby ended up laughing too, even if they had missed the original joke.

Listervelt was more than someone who had interviewed my father on television. He was our friend, one of the most important relationships in my father’s life. Pop called him “brilliant.”

“His analysis is so precise,” Pop would say. “A scholar with a poetic tongue.”

My mother probably spoke with him more than anyone else in our house. She and Listervelt handled the business around my father’s videotaped lectures that he produced, including Free Your Mind: Return to the Source and Master Keys. She received orders, deposited checks, packed tapes, mailed them across the country, and talked with him about inventory, sales, and conferences.

Their conversations rarely stayed on business.

The phone would ring.

My mother would answer.

“Hello?”

Then her face would change.

“Listervelt!”

I could hear his voice through the receiver.

“Hey, Pat.”

Within minutes, she would be laughing so hard she had to lean against the kitchen counter.

“What did he say?” I would ask.

She would wave me away because she could not catch her breath.

“Wait. Wait. I can’t…”

Then he would say something else, and she would start all over again. Sometimes tears ran down her face. When Pop was home, he would be laughing too.

That was how I first came to know Listervelt, through the joy he inspired in our house.

When there was a major conference, one where hundreds of people gathered and many knew him personally, Listervelt sometimes came. Those were the times I saw him in person.

The memory that followed me for almost twenty years began at one of those events, shortly before I left for law school.

It was a Saturday afternoon at a conference in Atlanta, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. My father was speaking. Listervelt was holding court in the lobby. When I approached him, he looked at me and, before even saying hello, asked in that booming voice,

“Boy, what are you getting ready to do?”

“I’m going to law school,” I said.

He stopped.

“LAW school?”

“Yes, sir.”

His face opened.

“Boy!”

Then came that broad smile.

“You’re going to LAW school?”

“Yes, sir.”

That was the first celebration.

He slapped his hands together.

“Boy, do you know how proud your mama and daddy are?”

I smiled.

“They’re proud.”

“PROUD?” he said. “Boy, they are more than proud. Do you understand what this means to them?”

He began describing their happiness in ways they had not yet expressed to me. He spoke as though he had been inside their hearts. He knew what they had hoped, sacrificed, prayed, and worked toward. What I remember most is that he made me understand my decision belonged not only to me.

Then he asked,

“What law school?”

“Georgetown,” I said.

He froze again.

“GEORGETOWN?”

“Yes, sir.”

The joy already filling him grew larger.

“Georgetown?” he said again.

People nearby turned toward his voice. He leaned back and stared at me as though I had been hiding the best part.

“Boy, that is a top school.”

I smiled.

He was not finished.

“Georgetown. Boy, that’s Ivy League.”

Technically, Georgetown is not an Ivy League school, but I knew better than to interrupt Listervelt Middleton in the middle of a celebration.

“Ivy League,” he said again. “Do you hear me? Your mama and daddy have got to be beside themselves.”

He was laughing now, sweat gathering across his forehead.

“Law school. Georgetown. Boy.”

There had been two celebrations. First, he celebrated the decision. Then he celebrated the destination. Through both, he kept returning to my parents and what this moment must have meant to them. He celebrated me with such complete joy that, for a moment, I saw myself through his eyes.

For years, I believed my father had arranged that conversation. Listervelt’s response felt too enormous and perfectly timed to be spontaneous. Only later did I understand that nobody had coached him. That was simply Listervelt. The son of his friends was going to law school, and he rejoiced. Then he heard Georgetown, and he rejoiced all over again.

I moved to Washington, D.C., and began law school. Almost immediately, something strange started happening. Strangers recognized me. At Union Station, someone would slow down and stare. On the Metro, a person sitting across from me might study my face for several stops before asking,

“Are you related to Dr. Asa Hilliard?”

People approached me in grocery stores and at gas stations.

“I am sorry,” one woman said. “But you must be related to Asa Hilliard somehow.”

At first, I assumed I simply looked like my father, which happened occasionally back home, though not this often. Then one afternoon, a woman stepped out of her car on the opposite side of the fuel pump island where I was filling my tank, looked at me, and froze. Her eyes filled with tears.

“I know you,” she said.

I looked behind me, thinking she was speaking to someone else.

“No,” she said, pointing at me. “I know exactly who you are.”

“I do not think we have met,” I said.

“I know where you come from,” she said. “And if you tell me I am wrong, I am going to call you a liar.”

I laughed nervously.

She stepped closer.

“You are something to Asa Hilliard’s son, or you have something to do with him.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “He is my father.”

She pressed her hand against her chest.

“I knew it.”

Then she said, with a force I have never forgotten,

“Oh my God.”

I told her I had recently moved to the area to attend law school. She wrote her phone number on a scrap of paper and told me to call if I needed anything.

Later, I called home.

“Pop, why does everybody in Washington know you?”

He laughed.

“Everybody does not know me, Hawk.”

“Yes, they do,” I said. “People keep stopping me. On the Metro. At Union Station. In stores.

Everywhere I go, somebody knows who I am because I look like you.”

“Well,” he said in his soft tone, “I have lectured in the area many times over the years, but not enough for people to be stopping you on the street.”

Then he added, almost casually,

“And Listervelt’s program used to come on there many years ago, and I was on there a couple of times.”

For the People had aired regularly in Washington long before I moved there for law school.

Thousands of people had encountered my father through conversations Listervelt carried into their homes. Listervelt asked the questions, created the space, and introduced viewers to ideas they might otherwise never have known. Through his work, he had made Pop part of that conversation. Long before I would carry a memory of Listervelt to his son, Listervelt had carried my father’s message to the world.

Years passed. Listervelt died in 1996, by which time I had been practicing law for three years.

Eleven years later, my father died during another trip to Kmt. Not long after his homegoing service, my mother was invited to Brazil for the wedding of Listervelt’s oldest child, Bakari.

Brazil was not unfamiliar to me. I had traveled across the country, to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Bahia, and Angra dos Reis. I knew Brazil, but I knew only of Bakari and his sister Zakiya. The wedding was in a city called Guaratinguetá. I had never heard of it.

“Where are we going?” I asked my mother.

“Guaratinguetá,” she said.

“What?”

“Guaratinguetá.”

“Say it again.”

She did. I tried to repeat it and failed. She laughed.

“You have been all over Brazil, and now you cannot even pronounce where we are going.”

She was right. I had crossed much of the country, yet the place waiting for me was one I did not know existed.

Had my father still been alive, the invitation almost certainly would have been addressed to Asa and Pat. My parents would have traveled together and probably not thought to invite me. But my father was gone, so I traveled with my mother in his place.

When we arrived, our luggage had not. It would reach us only after the wedding, which was two days later. By the evening of the rehearsal dinner, I was still in my traveling clothes: sweatpants, a T‑shirt, and casual shoes.

Everyone else was beautifully dressed. People had traveled from different parts of the world to celebrate Bakari and his Brazilian bride. The room was elegant. The families looked radiant. I looked as though I had stopped by on my way to the gym.

I leaned toward my mother.

“I do not think I should go in,” I said. “It would be disrespectful.”

“You are going in,” she responded.

“I cannot walk into a rehearsal dinner dressed like this.”

“You did not cause our luggage to be delayed on purpose.”

“That will not stop everybody from seeing me in sweatpants.”

“You will be fine.”

“I do not know these people well enough for them to know I do not dress like this for important events.”

“You know Ernestine,” she said.

“Not well enough for her to understand.”

Then she gave me the look mothers use when a conversation has ended.

“Hakim, come on.”

So I followed her inside.

I had never met Bakari or Zakiya. I knew Ernestine, their mother, but not well; most of what I knew came from my father’s stories. My father was gone, and I felt as though I were occupying a seat meant for him.

My mother and I sat near the front of the room. From there I could see Bakari and his bride, and I could hear every word as guests began to speak. At first, their comments sounded like typical rehearsal dinner stories, memories and jokes from different parts of Bakari’s life.

Then their questions shifted.

One person turned to Bakari and asked, “How did it feel when we finally finished law school?”

Another said, laughing, “Did you ever think we would all survive it together?”

Someone else added, “Who would have imagined we would all be in D.C. at the same time, suffering through Georgetown together?”

With each comment, something in me tightened. These were not just old friends. They were law school classmates. They spoke about exams, long nights, and study groups the way only fellow students do.

Finally, someone said it plainly.

“Bakari, can you believe we all made it through Georgetown Law? All of us, together?”

Sitting near the front, I realized many of the people who had traveled to that small Brazilian city were fellow graduates of Georgetown Law who had just finished with him.

I did not know Bakari’s routines in law school. I did not know which classes had nearly broken him. But I knew Georgetown Law. I knew what that place demands. As their words settled over the room, the memory from the Hyatt lobby rose up in me again, Listervelt’s voice, his questions, his shout of “Georgetown?” loud enough to turn heads.

For nearly twenty years, I had treated that conversation as my story. In that room, hearing that Bakari and his classmates had just finished Georgetown Law, I understood that I had been holding something more, his father’s pride in that same accomplishment.

I turned to my mother.

“They all went to Georgetown Law,” I said quietly. “With Bakari.”

She nodded. I could see in her face that she understood what that meant for the memory I had been carrying.

The realization hit me harder than I expected. My eyes began to fill, and I blinked quickly, staring toward the front so no one behind me would see. I steadied my breathing and tried to sit still, but inside, something was shifting. The memory I had called mine was quietly turning itself toward the person it was meant for.

Until that moment, I believed the message I carried from Listervelt was about me and my parents. Now I saw that the joy he poured into me was also about his own son. His loud celebration of my future was the way his heart spoke about any child walking that path, most of all Bakari. The memory I thought I was keeping for myself was actually a message with Bakari’s name on it.

Only then did I realize I had something to say.

I leaned toward my mother again.

“I think I do have something to say,” I said.

She smiled.

“I thought you might.”

When it was my turn, I stood and looked down at my sweatpants and T‑shirt.

“Our luggage was delayed,” I began, “so I want everyone to know I did not intentionally come to this beautiful dinner dressed like this.”

They heard me, and they laughed, and I could breathe.

Then I turned to Bakari.

“You and I had never met before this trip,” I said. “So you may have wondered who I am and why I came all the way to Brazil for your wedding.”

I paused.

“The truth is, I wondered the same thing. I knew your father, but not as you did. I knew him as my parents’ friend. I knew his booming voice and his laughter. I knew the sound of my mother and father laughing whenever he called. I knew our families were connected by work, trust, friendship, and love.”

I took a breath.

“But there is one thing your father did for me that I have carried for almost twenty years.

When I was preparing to leave for law school, he asked, ‘Boy, what are you getting ready to do?’ I told him I was going to law school. Before he even knew which law school, he celebrated. He told me how proud my parents were. He described their joy before they had expressed it that way themselves.”

I looked directly at Bakari.

“Then he asked me where I was going,” I said. “I told him Georgetown.”

I raised my voice.

“Georgetown?”

They heard the echo in that one word.

“His celebration became even bigger,” I said. “He shouted, ‘Boy, that is a top school. Ivy League. Ivy League.’ For years I thought my father had asked him to react that way so I would understand what I was doing. Eventually I realized no one told him anything. That was your father. He heard that the son of his friends was going to law school, and he rejoiced. Then he heard Georgetown, and he rejoiced all over again.”

I let a quiet settle between us.

“He made me feel that I was doing something important,” I said. “He made me understand that my accomplishment was a source of joy for my mother and father. But tonight I finally understand something else.

“That celebration was also about you.

“It was your father’s way of saying how he felt about his own son going to Georgetown Law. I carried that joy for almost twenty years so I could hand it back to you.”

I paused for a moment before I trusted myself to go on.

“I came all the way to Guaratinguetá to tell you that your father was proud of you,” I said. “The way he shouted for me is how his heart shouted for you. His loud celebration for my life was the vehicle that made sure I remembered his words long enough to deliver them when our worlds finally collided, in this room, on this night, with your classmates who just finished Georgetown by your side.”

When I finished, they had heard me. That was all I could say for certain. I did not know what each person carried away from that moment, or whether some would remember it at all. I only knew that the words I had held for so long were no longer mine alone.

Afterward, Bakari shook my hand. I do not remember every word we said. I remember the steadiness of his grip and the way he held my eyes a moment longer than usual. I remember a quiet sense of recognition passing between us, something that did not need to be explained. I remember relief. Not because I had delivered a perfect speech, not because the room had risen to meet it in some dramatic way, but because something I had been carrying finally reached the person it was meant for.

For most of my life, I thought memories remained simply because something mattered to us. Now I wonder whether some memories remain because they still have something to do.

Love places certain words inside us and asks us to hold them without telling us why. We remember one brief conversation and forget a thousand others. A voice returns decades later with its laughter, its volume, even the sweat gathering across a forehead. We think we are merely remembering. But perhaps we are also carrying.

Some of the most important messages we are meant to receive must travel through time and space before they can be delivered. The message may not be late. We may simply not yet be standing in the place where it can be received.

I thought I traveled to Guaratinguetá because my father could not. I returned understanding that I may also have traveled because a moment of love had been waiting almost twenty years to reach a son.

Listervelt never asked me to remember his words. He never instructed me to repeat them.

He never called them a message. He simply celebrated the child of his friends with everything he had in him, then continued with his life.

But love sometimes preserves what we do not yet understand. It keeps a voice alive. It holds a conversation open. It places a memory in our care and permits it to travel across years, generations, countries, and oceans until it reaches the person who was meant to receive it.

Some messages wait for faraway places. Some of them wait behind photographs on a wall, or in the ink of a handwritten foreword from one friend to another. Some of them wait in cities whose names we stumble over the first time we say them.

Even Guaratinguetá.

And when those messages finally arrive, they do not always come with applause or a perfect silence that everyone remembers. Sometimes they arrive quietly, in the space between two people, when one heart has finally carried a message as far as it can, and another heart is ready to receive it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY2cxgke_xI&t=83s