I met my father outside a Holiday Inn. He didn't look like the man in the only picture I had of him: a picture I've had on my bookshelf for the majority of my life of a man in his twenties on the beach with a healthy tan and windblown hair. Here in this parking lot stood a man with a glazed look in his eyes, a man with the fashion sense of a garden gnome or Santa Clause vacationing in Maui, and a beer belly -- ironically from someone who doesn't drink beer.
Three decades of anticipation culminated into a single moment: the opportunity for me and my twin brother to meet our biological father, Biodad Brad.
***
First, the backstory...
My biological parents were never married; they had an on-and-off again relationship for about five years. Brad married another woman about a year after we were born and my mom moved halfway across the country shortly thereafter. She worked long hours to provide for her newborn twin boys with minimal help. It's my understanding that he paid child support once or twice and tried to reach out to us once in our childhood.
I wondered if we had any similarities. What did his voice sound like? Did he sneeze like me or laugh like me? Did he bite his tongue when he really, really concentrated on something, like me? I wondered if he ever thought about us or if he felt regret for leaving.
***
Fast-forward a couple dozen years, Biodad Brad's mother, whom we never met, passed away. Before she passed, she revealed that she felt robbed of a relationship with two of her grandkids. She made him promise that his four children would have a relationship -- the two kids he raised and my brother and me. On March 21, 2010, I moved from Austin to Boston. The first day of my drive I received a Facebook message from someone out of my network stating she was my sister.
***
Fast-forward another six years and here we are today.
I had built-up this moment in my head for so long. It was like seeing a preview of the new X-men movie and waiting months for it to be released and then hearing from everyone how great it is and then hearing that it got a 97 percent Tomatoes rating. And when you finally see it, expecting a life-changing, 2-hour motion picture masterpiece and if it's nothing less than the greatest movie of all-time, you inevitably leave the theater feeling let down.
He told us a lot of stories of raising his children. I couldn't help but think of what it would have been like to grow up with a father around. When I was young, I remember feeling that the concept of a father wasn't real to me. It was a mythical creature that existed only in other families. He talked about making dinner for his kids and I wondered if he knew that sometimes we had to come home to an empty house and eat peanut butter out of a jar with a spoon. I also wondered if he was aware of the stats I had recently read about children in fatherless homes:
- 85 percent of all children who exhibit behavior disorders come from fatherless homes -- Center of Disease Control
- 71 percent of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes -- National Principals Association
- Children from fatherless homes are 5 times more likely to commit suicide -- FCLU
- 70% of youths in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes - US Department of Justice
- 85 percent of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes -- Now NYS
In case you're wondering, meeting him on Father's Day weekend was coincidental (and sort of awkward). We picked a weekend we all had open months in advance and my brother and I had a good laugh when we realized the irony of which weekend we had actually picked.
***
During our time together, I asked a lot of questions. I had a lot to say but nevertheless I felt like there were still more awkward silences than there should have been. Some things I had the courage to say but some I did not.
I didn't tell him about the anger I felt. The anger mostly stemmed from the hurt and hardship he caused my mom, a single mother having to raise two boys on her own. She married a good man around our 11th birthday who my brother and I now call dad but the early years were particularly tough. I still feel angry that he took some of the joy of parenting away from my mom.
I didn't tell him how he could have helped us when we needed a father. Growing up I felt that kids who were fathered had certain advantages in life. When we were terrified and cried before every single football practice. When we didn't know how to handle speech problems that we discovered he used to suffer from, too. There were times in my life when I grew up feeling like a burden. A kid can't grow up feeling this way; it leads to feelings that the other person in the relationship will eventually be burdened by their relationship with me.
I didn't tell him about the damage I felt he caused. Recently I've recognized deep-routed seeds of not feeling special or unique and a level of rejection that comes from feeling abandoned. Because how could you walk away from something special? You naturally gravitate to it and hold on to it. I know it's more complicated than that, but not to a child's mind it isn't. Instead of enjoying the good I have in life, I'm counting the days when it will inevitably go away. It caused me to exit from people's lives before they were able to exit out of mine, which has caused me to hurt people who didn't deserve it. This matter of thinking has caused me to lose some pretty incredible things in my life.
But I believe that the positive effects of his absence outweigh the negative. There's potential to overcome all of what I've mentioned and I've come to the conclusion that maybe this was exactly the way it was supposed to be.
His absence actually ended up bringing my family closer. My mom did a great job in times of high stress, did the joint work of two parents, and she handled more than I thought was possible. Much of my respect for her is grounded in all that she did for us during that time. And, for the latter half of my childhood, he would have taken away a dad that I was fortunate and blessed to have who didn't have to be involved or put up with half of what my brother and I put him through.
His absence allowed us to recognize the kindness and good in others. There are truly good people on this planet, willing to help when they have no obligation to do so. Countless people have looked out for us from neighbors to pastors to teachers to friends' parents to aunts and uncles. In first grade, our elderly neighbor took us to church even though we were hellions at times.
His absence taught us compassion and motivation. My mother taught us compassion and how to treat others. We are the men we are now because of what happened in our past. I was fortunate to realize at an early age that no one is going to hand me what I need and it caused me to work harder at a younger age.
Some of the best memories and happiest moments of my life involved my mom, my brother, and me and some of those moments might not exist if he were present. He might have been home and told my brother and me not to ride down the stairs in the oversized box we found in the attic. He might have prevented my panicking brother from unnecessarily calling 911 when we were wrestling and my glasses snapped in half and got stuck in my forehead. Maybe we could've afforded a proper birthday cake for my mom instead of making her a cake out of three pieces of bread, whipped cream, and Nerds candy; and a proper birthday gift instead of a makeshift puppet show with old cardboard boxes and socks with taped-on buttons for eyes. He essentially would have taken away those memories and I wouldn't trade them for anything.
My brother and his wife had their first baby last October and they have the strongest relationship I've ever known. Their baby is surrounded by so much love. My brother and his son are living proof that the hurt others have caused isn't passed on like eye color, skin color, or the way you bite your tongue when you're thinking too hard. If all of that was to learn how to be a better father one day, then I owe him a bit of gratitude.
Happy Father's Day to all the fathers, future fathers, and the mothers who are brave enough to be both.