04/24/98
Daddy Dearest

So I'm at dinner with my family the other night. A birthday dinner, in fact, celebrating my mom and sister's birthdays - both on April 22. My black-sheep brother's birthday is also on April 22, but needless to say he wasn't there. Anyway, we're eating Mexican and my mom - from the other end of the table - say, "Harold, I saw your uncle Cecil today - he wants to get your address. Your father wants to send you a letter."

Wow. Now I haven't seen or spoken to my dad since one summer afternoon late in the seventies. He and my mom were off-again, on-again back then and he showed up at our house, found me in the driveway, and took me to his favorite bar in West Memphis - the Pig -n- Poke. It's still up on Broadway if you care to see it. So my father (whom everyone - including me - at the time called "Pete") had a beer and I had a Coke. I don't remember what we talked about, but we did talk. It was pleasant. Then he dropped me off. The family had freaked, of course. The youngest had disappeared - abducted, for all they knew, by his own father. I think my dad was smarter than that. He knew even then that I liked him just fine but I loved my mother and grandparents and brother and sisters. There wasn't any competition there. He was a nice-enough guy when he was around but he had nothing on the rest of my family.

And that was it. Now, twenty years later, he wants to re-establish contact? I don't get it. Why? Playing the odds, his best chances would be for me to be surly, hateful, and sulky. Luckily I'm none of those things. I had a good family when I was growing up, lack of a "father" notwithstanding. I had a loving mother, fun sisters, a devil-may-care brother, and possibly the best grandparents a kid could have. I am a suprisingly well-adjusted young man - better, I daresay, than some of my friends who came through childhood living in the battlefield that was their parent's stormy marriages.

I just don't know, though. What do you say to a man that, even though you still haven't spoken to him in two decades, contributed to fifty percent of who you are? What does he say to you? Call me old-fashioned, but I would be monstrously guilty if I were my dad. Denial and alcohol would be my way of dealing with an abondoned namesake. What does he want? To find out how I've been? For the last twenty years? "Well, the eighties were pretty cool, dad...I got laid for the first time!" I mean, intellectually I know he's my dad. But if he showed up on my doorstep this afternoon I'd just have to get to know him all over again. I'd put him in the truck, drive him on over to Alex's, and pick his brain. Or, on second thought, I'd take him to a bar downtown. I think I might need a few drinks just to deal with the overwhelming weirdness of the situation. And I wouldn't want to be driving.

My sister Julie said maybe he wanted to send a check. That would be nice. A big, fat wad of guilt-induced cash would go down mighty sweet right now - and maybe a little note saying "sorry, son, get yourself something nice." That would probably be the best.

Then again, my uncle also told my mom that my dad was in Indonesia. Maybe he's sending me a mail-order bride.

I don't think Sonya would like that.





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