Silence: my dad, in his black leather jacket and faded Steelers cap, gently pushed a peach-skinned 2-year-old girl through my aunt’s doorway. It was November, and my 12th birthday was just around the corner. Memories of autumn colors and Thanksgiving feasts mingled with the surreal image before me, a confusing snapshot titled, Autumn in Erie, Pennsylvania.
“This is your sister.”
Do you remember Oscar Proud? He was the patriarch of the animated series The Proud Family, which aired in the early 2000s. The show offered a humorous and heartwarming look into the life of a Black, middle-class family. Oscar, with his signature french-cuffed white shirt, black suspenders, blue trousers, and red tie, was a memorable character. His long, thin head, like an upside-down soda bottle, often wore a disapproving scowl, usually directed at his daughter Penny. Yet, he also possessed a wide, beaming smile that emerged with each small victory.
As a child, I would spend hours on my family’s sunroom floor, wrapped in blankets, watching The Proud Family. The show’s vibrant characters captivated me. There was Wizard Kelly, a basketball star reminiscent of Magic Johnson, so tall he barely fit on screen; Papi Boulevardez, Penny’s grandmother’s partner, who masked his sharp wit with feigned adoration and broken English; and Uncle Bobby, stuck in the disco era, communicating through song rather than speech. Among them was Oscar, the lanky, often hapless father, a figure who seemed to blend into the background yet held a central role in Penny’s life.
Oscar Proud, as Penny’s sometimes overbearing and always prideful father, was often the target of jokes due to his frequent mistakes. I recall the twins’ constant pranks and how his attempts at parental guidance often backfired, with Penny consistently outsmarting him. While Oscar sometimes offered sensible advice, like cautioning Penny against spending her entire paycheck on records, I, like Penny, often dismissed him. He seemed perpetually clueless, never quite getting it right.
At my aunt’s house, my two older brothers, Joshua, 16, and David, 14, sat on the suede couches, their mouths agape and eyebrows raised. Our family was still reeling from our parents’ divorce, and unexpected events had become the norm. We knew my father’s habits: the cigarettes in his Ford Trailblazer, his love for video games and football that drew him to his self-proclaimed theater room, and the mysteries of his life when we were asleep.
“Her name is Rebecca,” my dad continued, breaking the silence.
“Now, I want you to know, this wasn’t planned. I didn’t intend for this to happen. But I love her. And I don’t love her any more or any less than I love you all.”
Words failed me. My mind stalled, and emotions became indistinguishable. My life suddenly felt fragile and sharp, like the biting wind during snowy walks to school. Instead of protest, something within me silently shattered. When I tried to gather the pieces, I found nothing left.
This was the first time three felt like an incomplete number. The second time was when Elijah was born. I learned about my little brother’s arrival through a text message from my dad during Spanish class in high school. Again, a pause, a chilling stillness, delayed my reaction. Then, I chuckled at the text.
“This nigga is something else,” I thought. At 16, sporting a makeshift dread haircut, I was the sophomore class president, known for perhaps too many jokes and not enough seriousness. By the next year, my hair would be a buzzcut, my jokes replaced by earnestness. That was the year Marcia was born. Three became four with Rebecca, five with Elijah, and six with Marcia. Three was obsolete, erased.
Rebecca’s birth solidified my existing perceptions of my dad. Memories of him bending household rules resurfaced vividly: making us drink water with cookies to save milk, only to pour himself a large glass of milk moments later.
Or the midnight returns home, drunk, expounding on how Mom didn’t understand him and what we, his sons, needed to do. His somber proclamations would end in a whisper-shouted mantra, “I’m a man! I’m a man!”
Oscar Proud’s role as the comedic, bumbling father is not unique in animation. Timmy Turner’s dad in The Fairly Odd Parents mirrored this archetype, driven by simple desires he rarely achieved due to his incompetence. Any depth shown by Timmy’s dad was usually either a source of trouble for Timmy or part of a joke. Cartoon fathers in my favorite shows were often straightforward: clueless and uncomplicated.
The Proud Family stood out because my dad actually enjoyed watching it with us. He found shows like SpongeBob SquarePants nonsensical, “mind-numbing comedy.” But The Proud Family seemed to resonate with him.
“Yo, that dude funny!” he’d exclaim, erupting in laughter that often turned into a squeal. He’d then reenact the joke, complete with gestures and mimicry. My reactions were usually mixed. As the authority figure in our family, my dad could be intimidating. Phrases like “simple behind” and “narrow behind” were common when we didn’t meet his expectations. The threat of his double-folded leather belt loomed when we were disrespectful or destructive. Yet, compared to other fathers we knew, his discipline seemed relatively mild. Our friends often saw our family as stable and safe.
After my parents divorced and my dad moved out, the rules of engagement shifted. Weekends with him involved food, haircuts, video games. This was the same dad who had whipped me for breaking his LED flicker calendar. What was his role now?
Similarly, Oscar Proud seemed to preside over a relatively calm household. Penny had her own room, a computer, and despite their conflicts, there was no abuse. Oscar’s world seemed, on the surface, controlled.
Rebecca led me up the carpeted stairs, her small hand holding just three of my fingers, to her attic room. It was a haven of Doc McStuffins blankets, pink toys, and purple accessories. The scent of attic wood filled the air, and a silence settled in my chest. I had slept in that attic room a year before my 2017 psychotic break. The space should have evoked tears, but I felt utterly blank, unable to access the expected emotions.
My dad often said we shared a similar struggle with depression. For years, I accepted this. During my 2018 hospitalization for depression, calls with my dad were like brief respites in intense physical exertion. After each call from the hospital’s office phone, I’d glimpse a hopeful future. Yet, I desperately sought deeper understanding from him.
Then, during one call, hope faded. My depression deepened. It felt like two magnets were lodged between my chest and abdomen, pulling inward with relentless force. I half-listened as he prayed for a Job-like recovery, my mind preoccupied with my lack of progress. My only wish was for the magnetic pull to cease.
Oscar Proud is often portrayed as skeptical and sarcastic, quick to ridicule situations he disagrees with. In the season two premiere, “A Star is Scorned,” Penny and her friends perform in a talent show with Uncle Bobby (voiced by Cedric the Entertainer) and receive enthusiastic applause. After their performance, a conversation ensues between Penny’s friends, Oscar, Trudy, and Uncle Bobby:
“Yay, girls!” Trudy cheers. “You guys were wonderful! Weren’t they, Oscar?”
“For a couple of tweens and a has-been, they’re okay,” Oscar quips, despite having cheered and smiled throughout their act.
“What do you say, bro?” Bobby sings. “You wanna invest in our demo? Cause in a couple of weeks, we gonna be riding in limos!”
“Bobby,” Oscar begins, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Anybody who would be interested in your demO must be simpLE!”
Oscar’s humor frequently masks the seriousness of his disagreements. As a child, I understood Oscar’s basic paternal motivations – protection and support – but his dismissiveness puzzled me. Was it just his personality, or an essential part of fatherhood? Why was he always sarcastic and seemingly unlucky? He simply was.
“Men mourn differently, Joe,” my father said when his own father passed away in 2020. His grief manifested as confusion and anxiety, his words questioning, mine scarce. My mourning took the form of quietness and inappropriate laughter. My dad now had two deceased parents, including a father whose behavior was always enigmatic, his emotions locked away. I feared that silence was the Hughes family legacy.
My grandfather’s death was a consequence of years of smoking, leading to lung disease. He’d often retreat to the basement, tobacco smoke filling the air, to watch football, The Matrix reruns, or Battlestar Galactica. His isolation was often excused as a man’s need for solitude.
Before his death in August, just as I started my second year of college, he relied on an oxygen tank. His lungs, ravaged by cigarettes, were the color of spoiled meat. He couldn’t walk to the bathroom without collapsing. His condition required daily visits from my dad, who trimmed hedges, mowed the lawn, and delivered meals, all under my grandfather’s silent, directive gaze. I spoke to my dad about this via video call, and he confessed he had to stop the visits. My Aunt Cynthia, who lived closer, offered no help. I hadn’t expected her to.
I spent my grandfather’s funeral alone, attending online classes in my room. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, in an office chair too small for me, I typed away at an essay about “Black Superstition.” Many of my examples of Black fears, rational without empirical basis, were personal. If questioned, I’d cite “self-interrogation,” “narrative,” and “historical context.” I believed I was writing to help other Black people understand their experiences, and I took pride in my vulnerability for their sake.
Though expected, my grandfather’s death brought a profound emptiness. I wrote to the music he loved, Ace Spectrum, coke-snorting falsetto singers with afros, recalling the Fourth of July when he introduced me to their music in my dad’s kitchen, sweet tea in hand. When my abdomen ached, I winced and kept writing.
In the first season of The Proud Family, Oscar takes center stage primarily when criticizing, ridiculing, or scheming. These scenarios implicitly taught me that Oscar was static, peripheral to the main narrative; unimportant, by design. In the pilot episode, “Bring it On,” Oscar lies about a camping trip to watch TV with his neighbor Felix. But this is a brief detour; the episode’s focus is Penny’s cheerleading aspirations.
I never pitied Oscar. His problems were largely self-inflicted and overshadowed by Penny’s concerns. While he was funny, his humor, I later realized, was intertwined with cynicism. His primary motivation seemed to be self-serving convenience.
As a father figure, Oscar rarely showed compassion for Penny’s desires, despite readily scheming for his own. Shouldn’t fathers guide their children with gentleness, helping them navigate the unknown? What value is there in selfishness?
Video calls are now the main channel for conversations with my dad. Glitches, weak signals, and busy schedules create a barrier, an intangible film between us. My dad talks a lot; I mostly listen.
When his sister Cynthia unexpectedly died of a heart attack in May 2021, and my dad expressed a need for something beyond words to process his grief, I suggested writing.
My aunt’s death was shocking. My brother Joshua broke the news, and initially, we didn’t know the cause was a heart attack. A healthy dance instructor, recently turned fifty, she had just been at our grandfather’s funeral.
I wanted to avoid the emotional weight. I lay in bed, dreading facing people at the funeral, self-conscious about weight gain and lingering depression. Apathy became my shield. Even in conversations with my dad, apathy kept me detached.
A few days after my Aunt Cynthia’s repass, at my dad and stepmom’s house, I decided to apologize for my emotional distance. I had delayed it for fifteen minutes, lounging in a theater-style chair. When I finally voiced my apology, he leaned back on the couch, smiled gently, without a trace of reproach.
“Oh, that’s okay, Joe,” he said softly.
“Really?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah, I know how it is, ‘talking with dad’ is new territory, sometimes challenging. You talk when you’re ready. I’ll still be here.”
“Family Matters” is inscribed above the kitchen entrance in my dad and stepmom’s house, in bold black script. Family photos surround it, including one with all my siblings and my grandfather. By the time these words became his household’s motto, my dad had reaffirmed his faith, joining a local Baptist church. I witnessed his reacceptance firsthand, his face softened with a gentle smile as the pastor welcomed him back.
During the week of my aunt’s funeral, I stayed with my dad and stepmom, spending time with all my siblings. I was struck by their growth. Rebecca had grown taller, confident and competitive. Elijah’s quiet toddlerhood had evolved into vocal curiosity, and Marcia was a natural comedian. We danced, played games, and discussed Marcia’s cardboard box plans. Joshua and I agreed it was one of the most enjoyable times we’d had together in years.
That’s how I feel about being a Joe Hughes. Joe, meaning “growth” or “expansion,” is a name that sometimes feels at odds with my self-perception. Growth often involves pain, and I had always envisioned myself, Joe, as invulnerable. I held my dad to a similar standard. He should have been my constant support, a source of lightness and humor, easily understood, like Oscar Proud. He should have fit my simplistic definition of manhood.
The less I understood my dad, the more I misunderstood him. His drunken midnight confessions, once perceived as weakness, were actually desperate cries for comfort, moments of vulnerability. But lacking a gentler framework, I shut down. I was trying to interact with a fabricated ideal father, but my dad’s life was far more complex than Oscar Proud’s cartoon world. Oscar was static, secondary, fictional.
“Man, Joe, keep working on your gift. Remember, your gift makes room for you. It’s a principle,” my dad reminded me on a recent call. The metaphorical magnets from the hospital were gone, and our conversations had deepened. I now seek his guidance and, more importantly, his friendship. We now laugh and look forward when we talk about the future. Our conversations are still sometimes difficult, but we practice. We practice vulnerability as love, embrace growth as a principle, and learn to listen even when it hurts.
