Meeting my Dad,etc.

 

"Your father is at Administration, my best buddy Paul said. "They've been looking all over for you."

I was a college freshman. I'd found a deserted staircase in the music building where I could study and listen to the different music students practice as I studied. Paul knew of my hidey hole.

I'd not seen my father for over five years. My parents were divorced. The cliché that they mixed like oil and water was much too mild for their relationship. They were like people who threw gasoline on the raging fire of our family. The divorce was a welcome relief.

At first my father used his visitation rights regularly, but suddenly he stopped coming. He never missed a support payment, however. My mother had always made it clear that if I chose my father for anything, I would disappoint her at different levels.

I still didn't understand why he had deserted me.

My immediate reaction was to tell Paul to tell Administration they couldn't find me, but my curiosity was too strong.

He didn't look that different. He wore a good business suit. As a salesman for a tool company, he was always a snappy dresser.

He suggested we go to lunch. Although I had a class, I agreed. Once we ordered, he asked me about my classes. Somehow he knew how well I'd done in high school, how I worked as a cub reporter for a daily newspaper, and I almost never played golf. As a kid, I had been forced to take lessons on Saturday mornings when I would have preferred to watch cartoons or to pick blueberries when we played as a family -- outings were always tension filled. He knew I was engaged. Since we were from a small town and my mother's best friend's husband was a close friend of my father, I didn't need to ask how he knew.

That he cared enough to follow my activities, reduced my anger somewhat.

I knew he had remarried to a woman my mother described as an ignorant tramp. My father had met her when she and her then husband had given dance lessons at the country club where my parents were members.

I'd met her at the dress rehearsal for a club talent show. She and her husband dressed in Civil War costumes. Hers was white with violets and a hooped skirt. It went with a green velvet bonnet tied with a purple ribbon and had a big purple feather. They did a waltz. When she saw how much I loved the dress, she said I could borrow it. I wore it all the next day. Then my father took it back to her.

I debated asking him why he deserted us, except since he continued paying child support that wasn't total desertion. 

He said that the last time he'd visited we were sitting on our front porch. My mother had had him served to appear in court for larger child support, which was granted. He said he has always complied with any request she made as far as court appearances were involved, but he never went back.

It wasn't the last time I saw him. My fiancé and I went to dinner with them, unbeknownst to my mother. His wife was there. They give us a wooden salad bowl bought from Welch's in Scituate where they lived. I still have it 42 years later.

While waiting to go overseas where my fiancé had been assigned to the 7th Army Band, I lived with my father and stepmom. My mother had tried to get my elopement annulled. I discovered my stepmom was anything but an ignorant tramp. She was a warm, loving, generous woman who made my father happier than I had ever known him. She played a mean game of gin rummy, worked as a school secretary, had a good sense of humor. 

I learned that my father had wanted to make contact with me for a longtime, but was afraid of rejection. After listening for much too long, she told him to try. He would never know what might be if he didn't.

My father was one of 10 children. As adults there were regular get togethers and activities. I had a chance to meet my grandfather shortly before he died. My aunts and uncles had children and I found a bunch of cousins. Because my mother had considered them ignorant foreigners and because they had moved from Nova Scotia in the 1920s, I had missed out on lots of family fun. I was accepted with open arms.

My father, stepmom and I developed an ideal relationship, almost of storybook quality. Their love and support helped me thru a divorce and being a single mom. When my dad died, my stepmom and I continued that relationship. She stayed with me in Boston. My parents had moved to Florida, my dad's lifelong dream. She visited me in Switzerland after I moved there. 

We did have one cross word, well almost cross in all the years I knew her. I had put an iron away when it was hot, and she said she wished I hadn't done that. I found out how she stopped my father from making comments about how he didn't like how my husband treated me. Not a man who could share his emotions easily, she encouraged him to let me know how proud he was of me in getting my degree, developing my career and raising my daughter. 

I'd visit her in Florida. We'd do the early bird specials. She'd beat me mercilessly in gin rummy, watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, guessing at the answers.

My parents' divorce was a good thing. My father's remarriage was a good thing. My stepmom was a good thing. I am so grateful to myself that I didn't refuse to meet him that day when my buddy Paul told me my father was at Administration.