I don't know when exactly I became aware of the fact that my birth father wasn't in the picture. I know that, for much of my childhood, I looked to my grandfather on my mother's side of the family as a "daddy," and even called him such well until my sister (then a toddler) provided us all with the nickname that's stuck to this day: "Big Pop." That's my "half-sister technically, because she and my half-brother have a different father than I do, but we get on each other's nerves enough that we might as well be full-blooded relatives." Anyway, I know that, when I finally realized my father wasn't like other kids' dads (in that he wasn't a presence in my life), I began a tentative and ongoing quest to both seek him out and avoid him like the plague. I think that was born of both the urge to address this gaping hole in my personal history (my father's side of the family) and also my desire to fill that hole with anything other than what the truth might be, in case I didn't like that truth very much. My dad could be anybody, I decided, even a famous person that my mom had never probably had opportunity to run into (because we share a birthday, I thought John Lennon might have somehow fathered me, though that could be excused to my budding Beatlemania at the time).
I do know some basic facts about him, my real dad, including his name. I'm not going to share that name here, because I want the option (exercised since I was just becoming aware of my father's absence, and the attendant anger that triggered) of not having to look him up or have him looked up for me by someone who means well. I do know how to get in touch with him, as it turns out. But I'm still not sure that I'm at a place emotionally where that would be a good thing for me. So anyway, my father was some years older than my mom when they met, he'd been in the armed forces in Vietnam (my mom showed me a picture of him in Marine-looking uniforms, but I'm not 100 percent sure that's what he ended up in, though I do remember a sort of "yearbook" from Parris Island, the Marine training complex in SC), and he was pursuing some sort of degree at the same college she attended, which is how they met. When my mom showed me a picture of him in her yearbook, he had the whole "late Seventies" look going on (long hair, tacky moustache, leisure suit), and there was a menorah in the background, leading me briefly to consider that my dad was Jewish (it would explain my fandom of such Jewish entertainers as Woody Allen or Mel Brooks, perhaps), but as it turns out that was just a decoration in the library where he was posed. He had a motorcycle, he and my mom weren't a great romance by any means but they got together and later on, I came along. When I was born, he wasn't in the picture; my mom says that years later, he wanted to try and help raise me but my mom thought that would be unfair to me to suddenly have this guy that I didn't know in my life. I don't blame her for that or fault her one bit. I know it would've been an adjustment, and required a whole lot of explaining.
My dad, according to my mom, moved to the beat of his own drummer, and I think that's the most obvious thing I got from him. I've never been entirely comfortable with "received wisdom," I've always tried to be different (or if I wasn't trying, I was still different) from whatever the prevailing tone or opinion might be. Something that I got from him because of his absence was a ready identification with those who similarly grew up with an absentee parent, usually a father missing from the scene. I identified with John Lennon because of our shared birthdays and our absentee dads, and thought maybe that, if I became famous for something, my dad would see my name and once again feel like he's missed out on something (assuming he'd felt like that to begin with). I identified with Barack Obama when I learned that he was raised by his mom and her parents (his maternal grandparents), much like I was. I identify with Francois Truffaut because he had the chance to met his natural father and decided that it might be best to just let sleeping dogs lie.
I also read about famous folks whose fathers wouldn't win any parenting awards anytime soon (Brian Wilson's dad/band manager swindled his son out of millions in songwriting profits, Marvin Gaye's dad shot him on April Fool's Day). Whenever I hear someone talk about "family values," and how the father should be in the household (otherwise the worth of the children being raised in that household are somehow devalued), I get angry and defensive. I turned out fine, I want to say. Or at least 75%, more or less, on my good days...
But I want to end with talking about those fathers who stayed, among them some of my friends who have been or just now are becoming parents. I learned, thanks to my dad's absence, that a family doesn't have to be the basic man-woman-child(-ren) set-up. Even if you're a product of a single-parent home, or an adoptive set of parents, or what have you, you have a family, a legacy. You have value no matter who missed out on your childhood and adulthood. I might never take that step to contact my dad, but it won't be because I'm afraid he won't like or love me. It'll be my choice. I don't need to have my father, by his presence or absence in my life, determine mine, or whether I'll be there for any hypothetical kids that I have. I have a strong group of role models (beginning with my maternal grandfather) for how to parent, how to be there for your kids. I wouldn't be getting in touch with my father because I need a dad. It would be nice to know if there are any diseases on his side of the family that I need to watch out for, naturally, but I would want to get in touch with him if and when I'm ready.
At any rate, just be kind to each other (if we learn anything from the Charleston shootings, let it be that)
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