At first I didn’t feel entirely worthy of writing a tribute to a great performer. I thought to myself, “How could I say anything about Michael Jackson that hasn’t been said a million times already by people who knew the man more than I ever could?” But then I realized like so many fans and critics alike, Michael Jackson has, in a way, always been a part of my life. He was famous for years before I was even alive, but like so many others his music and image struck a personal chord with me from an early age.

I could chalk it back to Halloween, 1991, when I sat in my living room in my princess costume, nervously munching on Abba Zabbas while watching the Thriller video for the first time with a mixture of joy and crippling fear. I remember thinking “Oh he’s cute,” followed by “Oh my god what is happening? Why is he a werewolf?!” followed by “I’m too freaked out to dance right now.” I had yet to know how important the man moonwalking in front of me was to people; back then he was another childhood crush, right along with Geordi LaForge and Captain Planet. That would change drastically in a very short time. As you know, that video first hit airwaves in 1983 and that Halloween, nearly ten years later, I wasn’t looking at the same man that America was. I always was the last to know about everything.

Growing up in a black household, the subject of Michael Jackson made its way into conversations in a very unique way. As I grew from a gawky little black girl to a gawky black young woman, Jackson seemed to take a much different approach to aging. The more famous he got, the whiter he got, and the whiter he got, the more confused I got. My parents could always be counted on to shed some light on the subject of the ever changing singer in their own way, “Only in America can a poor black boy grow up to be a rich white woman,” my dad would say, relating the famous Dick Gregory quote every chance he got and laughing his distinctive laugh. My mom would simply shake her head and say “leave that boy alone,” while the look in her eyes suggested that she agreed wholeheartedly with my father’s sentiment. It was a testament to how the black community continued to feel about a man who seemed to be slowly turning his back on us. We could love him and feel betrayed by him all at once. This never really registered with me. I saw a man destroying a handsome face for reasons I couldn’t fathom, and it took me years to understand why that bothered my parents so much. As he physically resembled himself less and less, his groundbreaking music resonated with everyone. As much as they wanted to give up on him, they simply couldn’t.

“Leave that boy alone,” became my mother’s catch phrase regarding Jackson; she said it every time he showed up on the news doing one crazy thing or another. I didn’t understand it. Why was it so important for her to defend a guy who was so bizarre publicly and completely unknown to her privately? I’d moved on from Jackson some time ago at that point, and at best wished that he had gone crazy in a sexier way, like trashing hotel rooms or developing a fondness for hookers. Then I found the Christmas Album.

I was about sixteen years old when I found The Jackson 5 Christmas Album among my dad’s things. It was the first Christmas album I’d ever listened to outside of the holidays, I’d always had a strict rule about making Christmas more special by only engaging in holiday entertainments during the holidays, but this was different. I popped in the album and the memories came rushing back as "Santa Claus is Coming To Town" and "Christmas Won’t Be The Same This Year" played on that hot August day. The Jackson 5 cover of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" was my absolute favorite song when I was seven. How could I have forgotten that? How could I have forgotten that Michael Jackson was once an innocent little boy with a pet rat who my parents grew up with? Who the world grew up with? I didn’t put them together back then. When I was young, Little Michael, Thriller Michael and Michael as we knew him later in life were three different people and even when I grew up to know better, the truth didn’t affect me much. But listening to that album for the second time in sixteen years made it seem clearer to me why so many loved him so unconditionally. I began to buy the same BS I’d brushed off so many times before, He didn’t have a childhood, we didn’t know for sure what he was like in his private life, and yes the media didn’t “leave that boy alone.”

Now at this very moment I’m watching CNN on continuous loop as they cover his tragic death and my mother bitterly yells at the screen “he sold more albums than Elvis, get your facts straight!” Somewhere my dad’s probably cracking a joke and crying inside and I am writing this article which I hope will in some way make up for all of those years I didn’t appreciate a legend.