Her name is Genitha Isaac.
I know that because that’s what’s on paper. That’s what shows up on forms, documents, official things. But I’ve never called her Genitha in my life. Not once. Not even as a joke.
To me, she’s Ms. Isaac. And even that feels formal, because somewhere around high school, without a conversation or ceremony, she quietly became “Ma.”
Listen To The Genitha Isaac Legacy Call:
That’s how it worked where we grew up.
South Jamaica, Queens. A time when community wasn’t theoretical. You didn’t talk about it. You lived inside it. The kids belonged to the block, and the block belonged to the mothers who made sure we didn’t disappear into it.
I’ve known Ms. Isaac for as long as my childhood memories go back. Elementary school, at least. Her son was my friend back then. Forty-plus years later, he’s my brother. That shift didn’t happen because we declared it. It happened because of time. Proximity. Shared rules, shared meals, shared looks that said, I’ve got the two of diamonds.
I grew up in a crew where we called each other’s mothers “Ma.” That wasn’t slang. That was respect. That was acknowledgment. It meant you were inside the circle. It meant you understood that survival wasn’t a solo effort.
One of the earliest signs that you’d officially made it into Ms. Isaac’s family had nothing to do with words. It was practical.
She sent you to the store.
You’d come by to kick it with Del, sit down for five minutes, and suddenly you were holding a couple of dollars and a short list. Bread. Milk. And if the date wasn’t right, take a wild guess who was going back to the store to get a fresher gallon. Here’s a hint. Not Ms. Isaac.
If she trusted you enough to send you on an errand, you were in. That was the test. And it came with responsibility. You came back correct. You didn’t disappear. You didn’t fumble the money. You didn’t bring back excuses.
Ms. Isaac was always present like that.
If there was going to be an event, there was a good chance she was behind it. If there was a trip, a road outing, a school excursion, a Six Flags day, something that required permission slips, planning, patience, and adults willing to stay adults the entire time, Ms. Isaac was usually the one orchestrating it.
And she did all of this with humor. With laughter. With jokes that kept you on point or pulled you back in line without ever humiliating you. When Ms. Isaac laughed, she laughed with her whole body. Full commitment. No half-stepping.
To this day, one of my quiet goals in life is to hear her laugh. I saw her the other day at Delano’s wife Zurn’s 50th birthday party. Mission accomplished.
It gives me joy in a way that’s hard to explain. The same way it feels when I make her son Del laugh, which is no small thing. He loves humor, but he doesn’t give laughs away easily. So when you get one, a real one, you know you earned it. You really know you got it right if he goes into a full laughing fit, convulsions and all, can’t catch his breath. That’s like winning a Grammy.
Her daughter has always felt like family too. Older sister energy. Sharp. Present. We all grew up together, and sometimes her people would kick it with us, and the crew just got bigger. Sometimes it was for a barbecue. Sometimes it was a college visit. Sometimes it was just life. We’re kindred spirits, for real.
The funny thing is, you can know someone for forty years and still realize you don’t fully know their story.
That’s what led to the call.
We spoke over the phone. I call it a Legacy Call. No agenda. Just a good talk.
It was the same thing we’ve always done. A connected conversation.
Most of the time, Ms. Isaac is the one asking the questions. It felt good to switch things up and ask her a question or thirty.
Listening to her talk about her life, I could hear the roots of so many things I recognize. Her understanding of systems long before people were comfortable naming them. Her instinct to protect children early, before damage became permanent. These systems did not have our best interests in mind. They were never designed for our success. If that sounds paranoid, then either you weren’t there or you helped sign the order.
A lot of who I am came from being in her orbit. How she spoke up. How she showed up. How she never assumed someone else would handle it.
When Ms. Isaac starts talking about her childhood, her voice changes just slightly.
She was born in Brooklyn. In a neighborhood that teaches you things early, whether you ask to learn them or not. She doesn’t dress it up. She never has. She says plainly that it was rough, especially for kids, especially for families. Too many people packed into too little space, with policies that worked against stability instead of supporting it.
Fathers couldn’t stay if the family was on public assistance. Men existed in the picture but not in the household. Women carried everything. Children learned to read rooms before they learned to read books.
Her earliest memories are crowded ones. Mixed families. Black and Puerto Rican households living on top of each other, cultures blending out of necessity. Spanish was everywhere. Music was everywhere. Conga drums outside because there was always something happening, or because people needed something to happen.
Food was functional. Cornmeal. Government-issued basics. Cheese she still jokes about with a seriousness that tells you it wasn’t funny at the time. Spam she refuses to touch to this day. You ate what was there. Hunger didn’t wait for preferences.
The best meals came from her grandmother, who cooked the way people from the South cooked back then. From scratch. No shortcuts. No boxes. Sundays mattered. You went to Grandma’s house and you ate real food, the kind that made you feel like someone cared that you were alive.
Kids played wherever they could. Playgrounds were concrete and metal, not padded and bright. You ran with older kids because there was no separate lane for children. You learned fast or you learned the hard way.
She tells me about being hungry and following older kids into a diner. Eating. Running. Hunger made decisions. You followed whoever knew how to get fed.
Then, at eight years old, she moved to Queens.
She remembers it as a different world. Trees. Space. Blocks where neighbors actually knew each other. Adults who watched not just their own kids, but everyone’s. If you came home late, someone noticed. If you acted up, word traveled faster than you could.
School felt different too. Smaller classes. Teachers who recognized kids as individuals. You walked home for lunch and came back. If there was a snowstorm, they fed you. Soup. Peanut butter sandwiches. Nothing fancy, but it counted.
She didn’t grow up thinking in terms of racism the way people talk about it now. Not because it wasn’t there, but because her world was defined by people more than abstractions. Neighbors were neighbors. Kids were kids. Problems existed, but the language for them came later.
That language arrived through schooling.
When she talks about being bused to a predominantly white junior high school, her voice tightens. The school itself was beautiful. Resources everywhere. But everything was separated. Lunch periods. Gym classes. Dismissal times.
White kids boarded buses. Black kids took public transportation.
She remembers one Black man on staff. The lunchroom manager. Seeing him every day mattered. It reminded her she wasn’t alone in a space that made sure she felt it.
Federal money flowed into those schools under the banner of opportunity. She understood early that the system benefited more than the students did. That lesson stuck.
It shaped how she moved when her own children entered school.
By the time Ms. Isaac became a mother, she was already alert to patterns. She knew how early labels started. She knew how quickly kids, especially Black boys, could be written off. She watched how special education became a dumping ground for children teachers didn’t want to deal with.
So she showed up.
She volunteered first. Learned the rhythms of the school. Learned who paid attention and who didn’t. When someone told her, “We don’t have that kind of parent involvement here,” she didn’t argue. She stayed. Every day. Before school. After school. Lunchtime. Dismissal.
She took a job that allowed her to be present during school hours. Visibility became strategy. Eventually, resistance faded. Familiarity replaced it.
When teachers suggested labeling, she asked questions. When referrals appeared, she pushed back. She didn’t accept vague explanations. If her children were fed, clothed, and safe, then they were expected to perform. She didn’t tolerate low expectations disguised as concern.
Raising her daughter meant vigilance. She had seen too much not to be careful. She watched adults closely. She trusted her instincts. She stayed nearby. Freedom came with supervision.
Raising her son meant responsibility. Letting him move. Letting him earn. Giving him room without abandoning structure. She understood that boys needed guidance, not confinement.
Listening to her talk, I hear the blueprint for so many moments from my own life. Why certain things were non-negotiable. Why some adults were always around. Why school mattered. Why behavior mattered. Why you came back from the store with the right order, soda and change.
Laughter was allowed. Accountability was mandatory.
And me, on the other end of the phone, listening to someone who helped shape the ground I learned to stand on.
As the call stretches on, time starts behaving differently. The conversation settles into that rare pocket where stories don’t feel summoned. They surface on their own. Ms. Isaac talks the way she always has. Direct. Remembering out loud.
After high school, she went to work. That was the expectation. Work wasn’t a phase. It was a responsibility. She landed a part-time job with an insurance company in Manhattan, filing paperwork in towering metal cabinets. The job came with rules that felt designed to teach obedience more than skill. Timed lunches. Strict clocks. Elevators that worked against you. Thirty-six minutes to eat and get back to your desk, no matter how high the building was or how slow the ride.
She remembers being proud of the paycheck at first. That mattered. Money always mattered. But it didn’t take long for the work to feel suffocating. Endless filing. No creativity. No growth. Just repetition. She describes it now as something close to bondage. Young people pulled straight out of high school, grateful for the opportunity, unaware that the ceiling was already set.
Then a letter arrived.
She still sounds surprised when she talks about it. An acceptance letter to a program called SEEK. Someone had seen her. Someone had opened a door. That program led her to college, first in Brooklyn, then eventually to Queens College, back when the campus wasn’t yet a campus. Classes scattered across buildings. Makeshift classrooms. Students piecing together an education from borrowed spaces.
It wasn’t glamorous, but it was movement.
She studied education, though she admits freely that her heart leaned toward social work. She wanted to help people navigate systems that were never designed for them. Education put her inside the machinery. It gave her leverage. It taught her how decisions were made and who usually made them.
She was the first in her household to go to college. That distinction came with pride and resistance. People questioned her. Mocked her. Told her she thought she was better than everyone else. She remembers hearing it clearly. Who do you think you are. Why are you trying to do more.
She didn’t argue. She kept going.
The library became her refuge. Quiet. Focus. Space to think without commentary. She learned how to persist without applause.
After graduation, she worked at Jamaica Hospital. It was solid work. Honest work. Work she probably could have stayed in. But life had other plans. Marriage followed, shaped by expectations from elders and church culture that valued appearances over compatibility.
She talks about that period with clarity, not regret. Cultural differences mattered more than anyone warned her. Traditions without flexibility. Rules enforced without conversation. Control disguised as care. She realized quickly that the version of marriage being offered to her came with conditions she was unwilling to accept.
She wanted freedom. Music. Dancing. Movement. New York had raised her to be expansive, not small. She wasn’t interested in being managed.
When anger entered the house, she made a decision. She left.
She never kept their father away. She understood that presence mattered, even when relationships failed. She chose separation without erasure. That balance took strength.
Eventually, she landed in the apartment I associate with so many memories. The place where laughter lived. Where people passed through. Where kids gathered. Where rules were clear but warmth was constant.
Ms. Isaac never announced herself as a mentor. She didn’t need to. She modeled what adulthood looked like. She showed you how to advocate without yelling. How to hold your ground without cruelty. How to stay joyful without being naive.
Music was always nearby. Stories. Jokes. Laughter that rolled through the room. When she laughed, everyone felt it. It loosened shoulders. It reminded you that life could still be good even when it was hard.
On the phone, decades later, I hear all of it again. The Brooklyn girl who learned early. The Queens woman who paid attention. The mother who protected fiercely. The community anchor who never waited to be asked.
She talks about watching neighborhoods change. Buildings left to decay. People discouraged until they left. Then renovations appeared. New names. New faces. Same patterns. She isn’t surprised by any of it. She has been watching long enough to recognize the sequence.
She talks about kids today and sees the same hunger she saw back then. Different clothes. Same need. She has learned not to judge behavior without context. Survival wears many disguises.
As the call winds down, she jokes again. Mentions photographs she still has. Archives she plans to pass along. Memories preserved in shoeboxes and albums that outlived entire eras.
We promise to talk again. To do this properly in person one day. To keep recording. To keep remembering.
When I hang up, I sit with the quiet for a moment.
This Legacy Call didn’t introduce someone new to me. It filled in the depth behind someone I already knew. Someone who helped shape my understanding of responsibility, humor, accountability, and care simply by being there.
Some people leave marks on your life without ever needing credit. They just show up. Over and over again. And years later, you realize how much of your footing came from standing on the ground they helped steady.
Thank you, Ms. Isaac.
Ma.
~~~
Want to capture your own story? A Legacy Call is a one-hour recorded conversation that preserves your memories, wisdom, and life experiences. Click here to learn more or email social@amonfocus.com for custom requests and details.
