Hello, Daughter, How Have You Been?
"From The Heart 2"
More Stories of Love and Friendship
When I was seven years old I lost my father-not to some terrible
accident like a car roll-over or a horrible sickness like
cancer-these types of loss are permanent unless you believe
in some sort of afterlife. Still, my loss seemed just as permanent.
I believed in life after death, but for some reason, inside
my little girl's heart I couldn't believe a father could leave
his family, especially if he purported to love them. I couldn't
believe that one morning I would wake up without him. I couldn't
believe that I wouldn't even be able to kiss him goodbye.
After my father and mother divorced I was allowed to see dad
on the weekends. He bought me presents, and honestly, spoiled
me rotten. At even that young girl age, I could see his guilt
made up in the form of brightly wrapped presents and bows.
It was as if he thought the gifts would make up for all the
mornings I no longer saw him.
They didn't. All that my heart wished for was that father
and mother would make up and get back together again.
But that didn't happen. A few years passed and my mother remarried.
I had a new father who wanted to adopt me. I prayed he would
be a good daddy. I wanted to see him in the morning, and have
him tuck me in bed at night. Most of all, I wanted him to
be just like the father I had lost. I wanted him to swing
me by the feet in the front yard-along with every other neighborhood
kid. I wanted him to talk with me at the breakfast table,
and be really concerned if I got hurt.
When my step-father adopted me I thought it was wise to give
up my birth father. I wrote him a letter. In the letter, I
pretty much told him off.
But I think I was angry then, too angry to see how the letter
must have hurt him.
Years passed. As it turned out, my new daddy wasn't a bit
like my old one. He never took me out in the front yard. He
never swung me by my feet like my first daddy had done. At
the breakfast table he was pretty quiet, preferring to eat
his scrambled eggs or bite at his toast. As for tucking me
in bed at night, mother did that, at least, until I got older
and told her I didn't need to be tucked in anymore, even though
a part of me did.
My new dad was great in many other ways. He had time to listen
to my questions about life. Though I never shared with him
or mother my true feelings about the divorce until I was much
older, I was able to feel a closeness to him, and through
time, thought of him as my father.
I suppose I was angry with my birth father for many years,
because when I married, I had no inclination to invite him
to the wedding. I had a new father now, one that cared for
me and who had stuck by my mother for these many years. I
knew there would be no reason to contact my birth father ever
again.
I was wrong. Through the process of my growing up years, especially
the years following my marriage, I was able to keep some small
contact with my birth father's mother. She invited me to her
home and we spent time together talking, not about the old
days, but about what I was doing now in my life.
The day I heard she'd died, I knew I needed to go to her funeral.
I was pregnant, then, with my first child, and feeling huge
and uncomfortable. But I knew I needed to do this. I also
knew that my father would be there-the man I hadn't seen in
over ten years. How would I be able to walk inside the church
knowing he was there? What would I say? How would I feel seeing
him after all these years?
I arrived late, just before the service began, and took a
seat towards the back. All the family sat together near the
front of the room, but I knew I couldn't sit there. Even further
to the front, sat a man with dark hair, a smattering of gray
near the ears telling me how many years had passed-he was
facing me. He was thin, the same as in years before, and even
though I wasn't close enough to look into his penetrating
blue eyes, I knew it was him.
I tried not to stare during the funeral service, and when
he stood up to speak about his mother, I listened to his voice-tried
to remember it like so many lifetimes ago when he'd tucked
me in bed at night. But even his voice seemed strange to me.
I wondered, had I made a mistake in coming? No one knew me.
Only the woman in the coffin. And then I remembered. Grandma
knew I was here, listening. She probably also knew the fear
in my heart, as well as the love I felt for her.
At the end of the service I tried to retreat as discreetly
as possible, but I also knew the family had been given the
privilege of leaving before me and they were even now in the
foyer where I would need to pass by them on my way out.
My heart pounded. Well, I could sneak out the back. The thought
left me as I saw my father near the door. Our eyes met. He
seemed to say to me through his eyes, "Hello, daughter,
how have you been?" And I wanted to cry out then and
there, "I have been so lonely and sad without you!"
But I couldn't cry out. I could only walk to him, in somewhat
of a stumbling and bumbling fashion, around and through the
mobs of people hugging and kissing and clasping hands, until
I had finally reached him.
"Hello, Daughter, How Have You Been? " was published
in "From The Heart 2," ISBN 1-882943-21-X, 192 pages,
$14.95, by Coastal Village Press. The book is out of print.
