Dad redux

Once upon a time, in the magical kingdom of Greenwich Village, a couple of idealistic teenagers met in a smoky cafe on Bleeker Street. There, the two 17-year-olds, drawn together like star-crossed lovers, passionately discussed Miles and Coltrane, Kerouac and Ginsberg. He was an aspiring writer, she a gifted artist. Kindred souls, they fell hard, convinced it was love. Upon the revelation that she was pregnant, he proposed marriage, which she declined, declaring they were too young for such commitment. Despondent, he hopped a train, headed west and never looked back. She was banished to a home for unwed mothers. Eight months later, I was born.

This was the gist of my mother’s long overdue confession, her response to my query, who IS my father? I was now 15, wanting answers, no longer content with the flimsy web of fabrications and half-truths I’d been fed. I was not upset or angry with my mother or her surprising revelation. In fact, I was elated, instantly fascinated with the man who sired me. He had a name, he was out there somewhere, and I was determined to find him, a task way more daunting than I’d realized. I’d drag that name around with me for years, obsessively looking him up in phone books and, eventually, the internet.

After four decades of searching, an at-home DNA kit led me to two half-siblings and their delightfully welcoming mother, who, over the course of many emails, apologetically described my ne’er do well father, his persistent substance abuse and neglect, pitiless lying and uncontrollable outbursts. She’d left him, pregnant with a toddler in tow, and hadn’t seen him in decades. My disappointment haunted me. So this was what I came from, what I’d been longing to discover all these years, a man with no conscience, no accountability. I was done with my search for him, content to let the trail go cold.

A year later, I received an email from an unknown sender with the header, Your Dad Rick. I clicked on the message and gulped down the story it told. The sender’s name was Zoe, and she’d known my father for more than 20 years. He had cohabitated with her and other roommates in an open door, faith-based community in San Francisco that had taken him in, faults, drugs and all. Learning about my existence from his son (my recently discovered half-brother), Rick had taken a keen interest in getting to know me. Zoe included many pictures of him looking fit and robust in a black t-shirt, laughing with friends, and one final one of him in a hospital gown, frail and wheelchair bound in a nursing home. It was there that my father had died.

This news impacted me in ways I couldn’t have imagined, a conflicted sadness I had trouble processing. But when I learned the community had organized a memorial, I knew I had to be there. I attended virtually, and what I saw astonished me. One after another, my father was remembered by friends and neighbors in loving and glowing terms: a man of great passion, argumentative but generous of spirit, loved by all for his extravagant Italian feasts and Shakespearean quotations, his deeply felt loves and hates expressed with loud, unbridled enthusiasm.

Everyone had a funny story or a fond remembrance to share. Nearly every one cried. When Zoe got up to speak, I felt the last shreds of my resistance give way. She described a man with a traumatized childhood, a sensitive soul, deeply flawed but desperate to heal, to feel connection. And here was the community that invited him in and, despite his oft-repeated failures, kept him close and showed him compassion. She described him careening down the road on his scooter in his signature black t-shirt, Einstein hair blowing in the breeze, full of the joy of life. He’d found his place among kind people, where love enabled him to overcome his demons. What I’d found was peace and gratitude, knowing, underneath it all, my father was a good man, a man worth knowing after all.