Loving Boldly In Full Vulnerability And Compassion
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with husband, father, and writer Marc Typo
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Since becoming a father, he has found a newfound purpose in sharing the love he has for his son with the world through writing him letters weekly — which can be found in his newsletter
. Marc currently resides in Birmingham, AL, with his wife and 16-month-old son.
What are you reading now?
I read the same 6- 10 books almost everyday in rotation to the point I can recite them back and front – they aren’t for me, they are for my toddler, Myles. Since he’s been born, I’ve read one book for myself. But now since he’s in daycare I am on my second – Why Fathers Cry at Night by Kwame Alexander. It’s a book of letters written to his children, his wife, and his fathers. The letters are a mix of recipes, poems, and reflections about Alexander’s life. I talk a lot about books being mirrors, windows, and glassdoors. This book is a mirror for me because not only is it beautiful to see an author who looks like me loving boldly in full vulnerability and compassion, it’s also a glass door because it shows me that maybe the writing I write to my son could make it a book too. As I am getting back into reading again, books like Alexander’s remind me what’s possible in the world for me. If he can write about loving his children and wife, and put it in a book, then maybe I can too.
What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?
I hated reading when I was younger. My mother brought me so many books, I wished she would have hidden them. Back in elementary school, we used to have the Summer Reading Olympics, where if you read a certain number of books over the summer, you would win a big prize. Let's just say I didn’t even get a keychain.
I am not sure when this all changed for me, but my best friend Rachel gifted me a poetry book that opened doors for me—The Book of Silence: Manhood as a Pseudoscience by Rasheed Copeland. Copeland took everything I knew about Blackness, masculinity, love, and sports and condensed it into a thin poetry book filled with metaphors that made you look at everything in your house as if its sole purpose were to be compared to something else. He could take something as beautiful as a mac and cheese and connect it to something as painful and dark as the secrets we carry culturally as a people. I learned that it wasn’t that I hated reading; it was that no one ever gave me books I loved. To this day, Rachel still gives me books that I love and now does the same for my son, Myles.
What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?
I typically don’t reread books, but I do love rereading first sentences. I’m amazed by how a writer chooses to use that first sentence or paragraph to invite us into their journey. Sometimes, I don’t even read the whole book, just the first sentences. When I was a teacher, I used to take the first sentences from books as sentence frames, give them to my students, and have them freewrite. I found that, for them, it married the beauty of writing and reading and made the process a little more accessible for my most reticent students. And because I practiced alongside them, even though I no longer teach, I still use this strategy sometimes.
In a letter to my son, called How I Met Your Mother, I remixed Jane Austen’s first line in Pride and Prejudice.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife…” That’s the furthest I ever read in Pride and Prejudice—sorry, Ms. Austen. But it must be universally acknowledged that when I met your mother eight years ago, I was still living with your grandmother, just finished my master's, and was about to start my first year of teaching High School in NYC. I had no good fortune, just suffered a massive heartbreak seven months prior, and was definitely not in search of a wife. I was outside—IYKYK.”
While I never read past the first couple of pages of Austen’s book, I can recite that first sentence as if my life depended on it. In short, I don’t often reread books, but a good sentence can stick with me for a lifetime.
What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?
I am bald so I wear a hat - a lot. I haven’t been to an actual barber in years. My wife is my barber now. Lately, I’ve been cutting my hair myself though and it feels really empowering to be able to do this myself after all these years. But sometimes when I am feeling a little lazy, a hat keeps me feeling confident.
What’s the best piece of wisdom you've encountered recently?
My wife and I are doing things generationally that have never been done in our families, from the way we raise Myles to how we move in the world. We’ve learned that tradition—the way things have been forever—not only is often unquestioned, but also doesn’t always mean it’s right. In fact, some of the things we call tradition can also be toxic. As we try to question and untether ourselves from these things, a lot of conflict naturally arises for us and the people in our lives. This is not easy. In fact, sometimes it feels a lot easier to acquiesce, or to simply distance ourselves and move somewhere else.
But recently, after a conversation with a friend who listened to me and reflected what he was hearing back to me—a kind of mirror—I heard what I needed, even though it was hard to accept. Now I am beginning to look at things differently. He called me a trailblazer. When you are doing new things, things that go against the grain and take the road less traveled, the resistance you encounter and the conflict that comes up are signs that you are trailblazing. As I look at all the things my family and I are going through in this season, I am reminded that we are planting new seeds generationally. Though we might not yet see the fruits or even the saplings of what we are doing—because these things take time—the people in our lives, the ones here now, and the ones who have not yet arrived, the ones we will probably never meet, will benefit from them because we are trailblazers.
Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?
I am deathly afraid of cockroaches—so much so that I hope my son grows up to be an exterminator. Kidding, obviously. It is not so much their backs; it is their legs and their resilience. Even using the emoji drives me mad. When they appear in the basement and find their way into the house, I feel like moving my whole house. My wife used to be the one who killed them back when we were in Brooklyn, but since we moved down here to the South, she has become freakishly scared, like me. Nothing repairs, restores, and renews our relationship quite like when we are having an argument, and all of a sudden a cockroach appears, and we have to tag team to figure out how to get rid of it. Clearly, I did not have any pets growing up.
What's one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?
My marriage. I didn’t see the love I have with my wife when I was growing up. My parents fought a lot – so much I still wonder how two people who fought so much decided to bring not one but two children into the world. So marriage for me was a distant thought – I resigned it as something that it would be great to have, but nothing I saw myself longing for. But then I met my wife. Admittedly, when she was ready I was still holding on to those stories and ideas that I saw at home. But love does something to a man that I still have been trying to put words to – I never knew I could love someone this much. And now that we are parents, we’ve hit a whole other depth. It’s nothing like watching the person you love, love what you both created together. She’s my best friend, a wonderful wife and mom – I feel like the luckiest man alive.
Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?
I love weightlifting. When my son was born, I was going through a really tough time emotionally because I was struggling to find ways to take care of myself. While writing helped, there’s nothing like lifting and tossing weights around in the gym—but juggling work and taking care of Myles with no childcare meant no gym for the first year of his life. Not too long ago, though, he started daycare, and I built a home gym in the basement. Now, instead of traveling to a gym, I just go right downstairs. Emotionally, mentally, and physically, I feel so much better. As a new parent living in a city where I don’t know many people, having a gym and writing feels crucial for taking care of myself. I can’t take care of the people I love most without first taking care of myself.
What are your hopes for yourself?
I love the word hope. I cannot think about it without thinking about the word faith. I hope—and I don’t know how—but I would love to retire my wife. I do not dream of labor, but I know she would love to work not because she has to, but because she wants to. My hope is that one day, something so beautiful happens for me, and I come home on a Friday, park the car in the garage, walk up the stairs, say, “Honey, I’m home,” grab her by the waist, like in a really bad rom-com, and say something like, “You don’t have to work anymore.”
I’m also striving to be the father I never had—I hope I can keep writing to my son and that one day these letters reach him when he needs them. Sometimes, I realize the letters I write to him are actually for the boy in me who needed his father to tell him how much he loved him.
I love the word hope because it calls us to imagine and dream of a world we’ve never experienced. In this world—the one where my wife is working because she wants to, not because she has to, and I am fully present for them both while providing—I imagine and hope the people I love are happy, and I am here to see them smile.
What’s a kindness that changed your life?
I remember years ago having one of those days where you just feel down and don’t really know why. My wife—we were just dating then—took two buses and two trains from Brooklyn to New Jersey just to check on me. She had never made that trip before; it was her first time. To be honest, when I moved to Jersey, no one made that trip. When she did, it reminded me not only of her kindness but also that I was worth loving during a time when I didn’t feel I was.
She hasn’t just shown me that kindness since we met, but to everyone she meets. Through her, as difficult as it’s been, I’ve grown softer and kinder to others. She has taught me that kindness is like grace—it’s something we act on not because people deserve it, but because it’s something we get to do, not have to do.
What’s a guiding force in your life?
God.
If you enjoyed Marc’s questionnaire, you may also enjoy this one with Sari Botton:
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Thank you for highlighting this incredible black man, husband, and father. What a beautiful love story.
The first question here reminded me of the time when I was reading the same books for my daughters. Actually, there are some wonderful children’s books packed with wisdom. And writing for children is much harder than you think (I have tried)!