Today is National Programmers Day, a day reserved for celebrating the innovators of the world. Observed on the 256th day of the year, 256 is the number of distinct values that can be represented with an eight-bit byte, and the highest power of two which is less than 365.
I know, right? What the f — k does any of that even mean? I guess that’s part of what makes being a programmer so cool. Besides the fact that they play such a pivotal role in shaping our world through the many amazing things they create, they also share some sort of culture, right? They share a language and an innate desire to solve problems, both big and small. I want to take this day to celebrate my favorite programmer in the whole entire world, my husband and best friend, Anthony Edwards Jr. He doesn’t know I’m writing this, so I’ll try my best not to embarrass him too much. Still, I couldn’t let the day go by without honoring his work ethic, his patience and his commitment to seeing his dreams come true.
I think everyone has heard the story about how we started EatOkra. If you haven’t, I’ll tell you again, because I don’t want to take the chance of you leaving this site to read about it elsewhere and never returning. That’s not good for engagement. In the Spring of 2016, I moved to Brooklyn. For five years I lived with my mom in her two bedroom apartment in the Bronx as I tried to save money and pay off the rest of my student loans simultaneously (F — k student loans by the way. And if they’re unsubsidized, f — k them times two). I moved into my tiny one bedroom apartment a week before my first piece of furniture was scheduled for delivery. It was that serious.
At the time, Anthony and I were just dating. Because I didn’t even have a stove to cook on yet, we spent that entire week venturing out to find places to eat. In an attempt to really get to know the neighborhood I was living in, and just a general desire to support my community, I was pretty adamant about eating at Black-owned restaurants. Each night, we pulled out our phones and searched for places to eat in our area. Finally, I made the suggestion that Anthony create an app that would make finding Black businesses easier.
When I met him, he was working on building this website called “Who ‘Dat Is.” It was a site that served as a directory for dancers and choreographers. If you didn’t know this, Anthony really likes to dance. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the name, and now that I think back on it, I often mocked him because of it. In hindsight, that probably made me a shitty girlfriend. Still, no matter what I thought about the site or the name, there were numerous nights I’d be awakened from my sleep by glow of his computer screen and the steady tapping of his fingers hitting the keyboard. He was like a man possessed. So I knew when he casually mentioned to me one morning over coffee, “Babe, I wanna build an app,” he was dead a — serious.
I have to say, even as a Cofounder of EatOkra, I didn’t always make the process of building it easy. Getting diagnosed with endometriosis, losing my father, and even dealing with postpartum after the birth our daughter, made it increasingly difficult for me to still believe what I knew EatOkra had the potential to be. Anthony never wavered though. He brought his laptop with him to the waiting rooms when I had to have surgery to remove fibroids in my uterus, not once but twice. And when I was discharged, spent the days feeding me, helping me bathe, and making sure I was comfortable and keeping up with my meds. At night, he coded. Early in the morning, he walked the dog, moved the car, cleaned the dishes, and then he coded. When we had our daughter, he fed her, washed the bottles, walked the dog, moved the car, cleaned the dishes, then he coded, and after that he went to work.
Meanwhile, I was fighting and losing my own battle with depression. It felt like so many things were spiraling out of control for me. I can’t say that there weren’t blessings, because obviously there were. We got married in the middle of this. We had our daughter in the middle of this, and yet still there was a part of me that felt like I was drowning in something. I wasn’t prepared to lose my father. He was the person who offered me my first bite of okra. My great-grandmother would stew it with tomatoes for him when we visited her in Sumter, South Carolina during the summer. I never gave myself permission to sit with my grief. He was my compass, so naturally I found myself completely lost without him. I finally made the decision to tell Anthony that I was temporarily stepping away from EatOkra.
It wasn’t something he was thrilled about at first. EatOkra was something we started together. It was something we worked on side by side. It was something we thought could help our community. All of these things were absolutely true, but I needed some time to find myself again. He knew this, and so I started the arduous journey of healing. It was hard on us. We carried a lot individually. We argued. Anthony continued to build out the app himself. He managed all of the social media accounts. He did interviews and went on podcasts alone. All while working and helping raise our infant daughter. To say he was a one man show would be an understatement. There were parts of me that resented his determination at the time. As crazy as it seems to me now, a part of me envied what I saw then as true perseverance. I didn’t see what I was doing as persevering at all. In fact, I was in therapy because I couldn’t persevere. I couldn’t cope, or at least that’s what I told myself. Thankfully, I eventually started coming around to the idea of being a lot more gracious with myself.
In the meantime, every night there was that glow of the computer screen, the gentle tapping of the keyboard in the dark room. The neat rows of colorful letters, some of them forming words, and numbers, all methodically lined together, popping against a black backdrop. I always thought it was so funny how a man who could consistently leave his shoes in the middle of literally any room, could be so precise and meticulous with the overall look and uniformity of his code. For him it seemed to be an opportunity to escape reality, something like the Matrix where he could create a world that was different.
I don’t know if we’d be here today without Anthony’s refusal to keep pushing. I’m almost certain we wouldn’t be. Sometimes I think about that when I look over at him sleeping at night. Black people only make up 6% of software and web developers in the tech industry. And when it comes to being founders, only 1% of our startups are funded by venture capital firms. What do these numbers mean to the little Black boy who grew up in the slow and steady town of Saugerties, NY? When they came to the Americas and the Caribbean, most enslaved peoples had to ensure their own food production. To feed themselves, many of them took the initiative to plant crops on small plots of land with the limited resources they had. One of those crops was Okra, a plant brought over from West Africa during the slave trade. Feeding yourself is an act of resistance. Using the limited resources you’re given to plant your own seed in this world, and tending to that seed day and night, until it grows, is an act of resistance. I love you, Anthony. Thank you for giving me the space to feed myself when I needed to the most and having the heart to keep tending to the seed that is EatOkra.
To find Black-owned restaurants in your area, download EatOkra.
