Meeting Dad
by Kimberly Ashby
The house was quiet for a change. That alone was cause for celebration, as it was a rare occurrence since the day two months earlier when my husband and I had moved into my parents’ house for what we hoped was a short stay. Our landlord had unexpectedly broken our lease two weeks before Christmas, leaving us scrambling to find a place to live by the first of the year. My parents must have been under the influence of mind-altering drugs when they agreed to let the six of us move in with them. Whatever their reasoning was, we were grateful to have a place to land after being so unceremoniously dumped into the street.
Mom and Dad had never been a model for happy marriages. In fact, they very well could have been the poster couple for long-lasting, acrimonious relationships. For most of my life, they had alternated between sniping at each other all day, every day and outright warfare, complete with the slinging of the nearest moveable object. Tempestuous is too mild a word to describe their relationship. Surprisingly, they had been on good behavior since we moved in.
Never one to content myself with leaving well enough alone, it was at this particular point in time that I decided I wanted to meet my biological father. Mom and Dad were married when I was a baby; Dad adopted me and raised me as his own. I rarely thought about the fact that I had another dad out there somewhere. When I did, I envisioned him as some ogre who had abandoned my mother and me and the thought of meeting him was usually embroidered with lots of slamming doors and sneering looks—all on my part, as I imagined rejecting him in ways far more dramatic than how I believed he had rejected me. My mother, the ultimate Drama Queen, had certainly done her part in shaping my warped opinion of this man I had never met. Her favorite distortion of her short marriage to him was the story of how he went to sea (he was a Navy man), leaving her in a bare, lonely apartment with no money and only cigarettes and Dr. Pepper. Bastard! I thought, never stopping to examine the inconsistencies in her story. I do not know why I never questioned why he would bother to buy cigarettes for her if he would not buy her food. Dr. Pepper and cigarettes… hmmm, something is not quite right here. Regardless, I accepted her story at face value, deeming him a monster.
After the birth of my children, curiosity got the best of me; and I decided I wanted to meet the man/monster who was my father. My interest in meeting him seemed to peak at the same time we were living with my parents and I haphazardly mentioned to my mother one day that I was considering finding my birth father. Much to my surprise, she seemed excited to hear that. I was a bit confused, given her previous negative attitude toward him. However, she told me she would help me find him. I said, “Great!” and forgot about our conversation. Two weeks later, I was standing in Mom’s kitchen enjoying the quiet when the phone rang. I snatched the receiver up to silence the ringer, hoping I had caught it before it awakened my two napping sons. I am sure the irritation in my voice was obvious.
After a slight hesitation on the other end of the line, a man’s deep voice asked to speak with Kimberly. Oh great, I thought, how did a bill collector get this number? I considered hanging up, but instead, I used my business voice to say, “Yes, this is she,” hoping to give off an air of ‘don’t even think of messing with me, buster.’
“Kimberly, this is Donald Phifer, your father.” Now it was my turn to hesitate. My heart raced in my chest, I broke out in a cold sweat, and I felt the fluttering of what seemed like a million tiny butterflies in my stomach. I searched my brain for something brilliant to say. Nothing. I tried for something less ambitious—a word, maybe two. Nothing.
The man with the booming voice picked up the slack. “Is this a bad time? Can you talk or should I call back some other time?”
Panic! “No, no, it’s okay, I can talk. This isn’t a bad time, this is a good time, I… uhhh… no, it’s fine. Uhhh… so… hi.” Definitely not brilliant.
We talked for a long time, my father and I. I can’t remember how long, but when it was over, I didn’t want to hang up. He told me my mother had called his sister to tell her I was looking for him. She immediately contacted him with my phone number; and he had been working up the courage to call me for a while. Finally, he just did it. I told him about his four beautiful grandchildren. I told him about me. We exchanged addresses and agreed to correspond by mail to get to know each other.
He wrote beautiful letters. I learned about the early days of his marriage to my mother, how sad she was in California where he was stationed and how she could not seem to find happiness there with him. He told me about her leaving him to go back to Texas. He said they were too young to be married, that they got married because their parents thought they were a good match. He never spoke a bad word about my mom—not one.
The ogre wasn’t an ogre; he was just a man, a good man. We finally met face-to-face on my thirtieth birthday. It was bittersweet. I wished this man—my father—had not missed the first thirty years of my life. I know he wishes the same thing. Still, there is time—time for a daughter to know her father.
Kimberly Ashby was first bitten by the “writing bug” in grade school when her short-story won first place in the third grade writing competition. The next year, she had a story published in a children’s magazine. A native Texan, now living in Houston, she completed her first novel this year, writes a successful blog, Pearls of Wisdom and Foolish Mutterings (http://www.writing.com/authors/kayjordan/blog ) and spends her time working on her second book while searching for an agent to represent her. Contact Kimmie.
