I was five years old when my teeth got kicked out. It was my first trauma.

But before I get into that, introductions: My name is Matthew Johnson. Well, realistically, my name is George Matthew Johnson, but at five years old, I didn't know that yet. It all will matter in the end, though.

I'm from a small city located in New Jersey called Plainfield, about thirty miles from the bright lights of Manhattan. You could literally drive from one end of Plainfield to the other in less than ten minutes. It's a compact city with so many interconnected stories. Triumph, tragedy, and trauma all exist within those few square miles. It is a place I once hated but grew to love as my true home. My only home.

My family has been a part of the fabric of this city for more than fifty years. My parents both held down city jobs for nearly three decades and still live there to this day. My brother and I grew up middle class, or at least what Black folk were supposed to think was middle class. With Christmases full of gifts under the tree, my little brother and I never wanted for a thing.

We were blessed to have parents who understood what it was like to have the bare minimum, and who ensured that their kids never experienced that same plight. We are a rarity amongst most Black folks, who don't get to have intergenerational wealth like our white neighbors just one block over.

Family came first for us. I grew up with my little brother, Garrett, in the house. Our older brother, Gregory Jr., and sister, Tonya, from my dad's first marriage had moved out by that time. There were also cousins, aunts, and uncles living in Plainfield. Holidays were always a big family affair. For reference, I think the movie Soul Food stands as the closest semblance to my upbringing, minus the fighting. Well, maybe a little bit of fighting.

My parents both worked "9-5, 5-9" as we called it. My father was a police officer who worked very long shifts. My mother was the head of the secretaries at the police department and owned a hair salon in town, where she would go in the evenings after her day job.

Some of my cousins used to live in the projects in Jersey City, an environment my mom's mother, Nanny, felt wasn't very conducive to the safe upbringing of small Black boys. Their parents were like oil and water. I can recall one time when their mom and dad visited Nanny's house. Aunt Cynthia and "Uncle" got into an argument over laundry that I learned much later was really over drugs. It then escalated into a full- on fistfight in the upstairs hallway. That would be the last time I saw Aunt Cynthia for years. Nanny knew she didn't want her grandkids growing up in all that. As she put it, "Y'all can run the streets all you want, my grandkids will not." And from that moment, she took them in and put them into school in Plainfield.

Nanny became the caregiver, cook, nurse, and disciplinarian for us all. Nanny was brown-skinned and had a head full of gray hair. She was a bit heavyset, with one arm a little bigger than the other due to her lymphedema. She was from Spartanburg, South Carolina, and despite having lived in Jersey more than thirty-five years, she still had a very Southern accent.

My family provided the kind of upbringing and support system anyone would hope their children would have.