Part One in an Already Spiraling Out of Control Series

Not-My-Daddy with Not-Me and my Not-Family 

On Mother’s Day, 1976, my Mother sat down on my bed, woke me up and said, “Your Father is alive.” 

This was big news.  From first memory, I had believed my father had died in a fiery automobile crash on a Louisiana back road just days before my birth.  That was the story that I’d been told from the start.  That was the story corroborated by my closest family members.  That had been my reality for 17 years.

The circumstances of his death made a vague and solemn tale, rarely told, and never elaborated upon.   I imbued the shadowy story with a tragic romance, and chose to believe that overwhelming grief and loss made the telling so difficult that it would it be unseemly to press for details.  This worked well as I came from a family of very poor communicators. 

More importantly, however, it allowed me to create my own vision of my father. With nothing concrete to work with, I was able to conjure up the most heroic, handsome, devoted, and loving father ever.  MY father would never drink, or raise a hand to me, or make me nervous when he touched me, and he would never, ever frighten my mother with threats so dire that she would hurriedly bundle my sister and me into the car where we would sleep while she drove aimlessly through the night to keep us out of harm’s way.  MY father would never be capable of such things.

This picture was the holy relic I held up before me in the face of the evil represented by my pseudo-step-father (they were never married).  I beat back my fear and sadness by clinging to the image of a man who would have loved me unstintingly.   

On Mothers' Day, 1976, my perfect father would become a lie.

My new reality was this; my extremely imperfect father took off running in the opposite direction when he learned my mother had become pregnant following a casual night spent together.  He immediately severed all contact with her, never acknowledged my existence, deftly dodged her legal attempts for child support, and married a very wealthy woman who was able to help keep my mother at bay for the rest of his life.  I never met or spoke to him. I share his last name because that was the only thing of his my Mother could give me. 

I have never clearly understood why my Mother chose that particular day, or that method, to tell me the truth.  The morning is a smeary memory.  I know I was shocked.  I know I was angry and hurt.  I know it happened.  I just have no remembrance of what actually took place.

What evolved from that revelation were feelings of deep and abiding pain, betrayal, anger, mistrust, and finally, of utter abandonment that informed the rest of my life.  There was also an almost immediate sense of “AHA! “, as pieces began falling together.  I’d like to say that I had my suspicions all along but it wouldn’t be true.  I was just a miserable kid who had cobbled together a happy fantasy to substitute for an unhappy reality.

On the upside, when I finally worked up the nerve to tell someone, it became abidingly clear that I was in possession of a pretty good story.

Ground-breaking Gal journalist gets pregnant in 1959 – societal suicide!  With her ambition and career in jeopardy, she makes the brave decision to have the child anyway.  In order to make an infant's appearance viable, she enlists the aid of her new boyfriend, a man purported to be deeply involved in the city’s shady underworld.  With his help, they plan a daring subterfuge involving misdirection, frequent trips to Mexico, red herrings, actors, fantastical coincidences, and lies upon lies upon lies.  Family, friends and co-workers are brought in to play their parts.  My seven year old half-sister is in on the act.  A terrific amount of time, energy and money is spent to create the theater that makes up the first 17 years of my life.

My mother’s career is saved, her boyfriend becomes the de facto step-father), and tormentor of my youth, my sister never forgives me for coming along and messing up her seven year run of being the adored only child and is still making me pay for it.  I spend years in therapy unraveling the tangled strands of lies and truth and mangled feelings. 

And that’s just a thumbnail sketch!  This is tabloid worthy stuff!

Not so very long ago, I developed an odd habit of buying bins of old photos from eBay.   I put them in cheap but elegant frames I purchased at Target and placed them all over apartment.   Some are formal portraits, others are more candid.   None of them are taken after 1960, and all of them are of men.   

The communication and information dissemination strategy within my family had been, and still is, less is more.  Due to my Mother’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the bi-polar nature of my relationship with my half-sister, and the implacable “you aren’t the boss of me” stone face I showed my now deceased fake-step-father, I never gathered as many facts as I could.  I don’t think it matters in any case, since the main players didn’t seem to have much of an acquaintance with the truth.  I doubt there’s anyone alive who knows all the facts and details.  And the older I get, the more I learn I’m a lot like my Mother in my disregard for hard facts and details.  

Truthfully, the whole” Who’s Your Daddy” mishigas has long since lost its power to hurt or heal.  Emotionally, it’s a done deal.  Anger has given way to indifference, hurt is acknowledged with a passing nod. 

What’s left is a gothic family saga. Everyone has one.  I hope I’ll do mine justice.