Daddy Dearest Part II

Part II:
By 14, I was in high school and I was about to finish up my first season of field hockey. It was a cold night in November when my parents walked in and my dad's eyes were puffy and my mom was holding a letter looking very nervous. My dad could read the panicked look on my face knowing that I would probably immediately assume something was wrong with my mom. He didn't hesitate and said, "He's back. He wants you back." I stood there for a second, I was shocked and speechless.

This was my dad's worst nightmare. If my biological father ever came up in conversation, he would say how he was always a little scared that he would come back and I would leave him. My dad would be replaced by the sperm donor. In his weakest moments, he would say that. I would tell him it was totally ridiculous. I felt more comfortable and connected with him than I ever felt in all my 7 years of growing up with my biological father. I felt a connection instantly on that day many years ago when I met him for the first time after being picked up from playing in the pool at my friend's house. I was in my bathing suit wrapped up in a big towel when my mom picked me up and told me she was going to introduce me to a good friend of hers. I remember asking if it was a girl or a boy. When I walked into the house and met him, the first question I asked him was if he had any other children that I could play with. I always hoped I would have siblings and with my dad just walking out, the chance of it happening looked slim. I guess I figured maybe this person could bridge the gap and give me some new playmates.

We got along quite well except for a few minor mishaps--one day I told him that his "five minute" time slot with my mom was up and it was time for him to leave, but other than that, we were fast friends from the beginning. He loved my mom and knew I would have to love him if she was going to love him. He bribed me occasionally with candy and took me to the teacher store and let me pick out whatever I wanted to have for my pretend classroom at home. I was never a Barbie kind of gal. My new Barbie dream house got destroyed when my biogical father had his "mental breakdown," so I stuck with playing school which was more up my alley anyway. I played school before school and I played school after school and I played school during the summer. Pretending to be a teacher was all I ever wanted to do and I took it seriously and I needed real materials. So… we went to the teacher store and he treated me to an expensive grade book. He still laughs about how he must have really liked my mom to buy such a ridiculous "toy" for me. He used to bring me lollipops and gum too and he would play school with me for hours and be my student. I would teach him simple math and read to him and he would answer all of my questions and fill out my "homework" for him in my extra math workbooks. He would tell me stories about his trip to Disney World and the water slides he went down and we had certain cartoons that only we watched together.

It was as if we were always meant to be parent and child and something just got mixed up for a few years. God had corrected everything. We looked like we could be related. We talked the same way. We worried about things in the same way. We had a lot of similarities, the cause for some major arguments, but he was my dad. When I see little girls with their dads now, I mourn the time I lost with my dad because we hadn't found each other yet, but I have learned to just be grateful that I got him at all.

Anyway, I digress. My parents told me that my biological father had contacted a lawyer about getting visitation rights for me and that my mom was due into court to address the situation. I was shocked. I guess I figured this day might come, but I really hadn't ever thought about it. My father was a loose cannon the last time I saw him, he was completely unreliable, he destroyed my house. On visits when he would actually come to see me, he would take me out on his bread route and allow me to sit in the back of the truck in old bread boxes that would spin around in the back of the truck. I guess I thought this was amusing. He left me more than once in one of these trucks late at night while he would go into a bank. I had no idea what he was doing and I remember being scared and hiding in the back of the truck so no one would see me. This was the same bank that he met his mistress at, that he offered her a line of credit and then got fired since they thought he was embezzling money. He lost his job at this bank and put us on welfare and this was the same place he was taking me in the wee hours of the morning.

I remember being scared in his presence and wanting to go home. I would beg my mother not to make me go and see him. She tried to do the right thing and keep my relationship with him going. When she realized I was riding around in trucks without a seat belt and being left alone at 2 AM, she pulled the plug on his visitation rights and never said anything else about him unless I asked questions...which I rarely did. I happily moved out of our old house with the unhappy memories and moved on with my new life. I barely looked back. From my short time in psychology classes, I later learned that I was at an age where adjustment was easy.