My Dad
When I was younger, I struggled to find a compelling reason to engage with the world around me. It was difficult to balance the difficulties of my home life and a passion that had always burned inside of me. Even as a child, I was intrigued by the complexities of writing, painting, and math. There was a swirl of curiosity that pushed me to learn as much as I could about anything that popped into my head.
At the same time, I was subjected to incredible trauma that no child could fully comprehend. In those moments when I couldn't figure out how to hold on to what was real, I fantasized about the kinds of heroes that would whisk me away to a new kind of life. Many of those fantasies ended with my absent father appearing to save me from the pain of everyday life.
When I finally met my dad, I was a Freshman in college and had no way of building a productive relationship with him. This excerpt from my book describes the first meal we had together and how I struggled to embrace a dad that I didn't know I needed in my life.
My dad kept calling and I kept hanging up. Even though I wasn’t sure if we could ever create a relationship, I kept answering the phone. The more we talked the more my anger was replaced with curiosity at the reawakening of a dream I had buried under the story of Jesus. A few months later when he told me he was coming to Philly to visit his family, I agreed to have dinner with him. I still didn’t know what it meant to have a relationship with him, but I could finally think about trying.
We’d agreed to meet on the edge of campus. There was a long set of stairs down a steep incline to the road and when he got out of his rental car, I stopped and stared. When I made it to the bottom and he opened his arms for an embrace, I realized that he was shorter than me and had dreadlocks that hung down to his shoulder. His pace had been as slow as mine and we eventually met in an awkward embrace of two strangers who were supposed to love one another. He smiled weakly at me and went into a familiar litany of questions to fill the uncomfortable silence,
“Hey, how are you?”
“Fine.”
He took me to an Italian restaurant near campus that served fancy food on white tablecloths. He broke the silence shortly after we sat down,
“Do you drink?” he asked.
“No.”
“Do you mind if I have a drink?”
“I guess not.”
We went on like that as we looked over the menu, but I slowly started to see a reflection of myself in my dad,
“I’ll have the spaghetti with meatballs, but no cheese.”
My dad ordered exactly what I was planning to order, so I changed mine to chicken parmesan.
It was unavoidable. The more his face stared back at mine, the more I saw myself and heard my voice. Without thinking, halfway through my chicken, I asked the question I didn’t know was gnawing at my insides,
“So what happened between you and my mom?”
“Well. That’s a tough question. I guess we just grew apart.”
“No, I mean, what happened. How did you get separated?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…what happened?”
“Don’t you know what happened?”
“No.”
My dad got uncomfortable. And ashamed.
“This isn’t easy.”
He hesitated and took a long drink.
I pushed my chicken around my plate watching him gather his nerves.
“We were living in that small apartment in West Philly trying to figure out how to be adults, but we were fighting a lot. We didn’t know what we were doing. But we had you three kids so we didn’t want to talk about what it all meant. I was trying to start a career and move on with my life and she…well…”
My dad was giving me an abbreviated story about something that still hurt him.
“We just didn’t know what to do….”
I didn’t try to help him out by asking questions or telling him it was OK.
“…and then I got an interview for an advertising job in Minneapolis. A very good job making a lot of money…”
The pauses only amplified the pain in his eyes and in my heart,
“When I got back you kids were gone. You, your sisters, your mom. You were all gone…and then I packed my bags and moved to Minneapolis.”