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Every year, on July 22nd, I go inward. This year, my daughter will be 19, and as I prepare for the day, I do so from a distance. She was adopted at birth, when I was nineteen years old myself. I’ve only ever spent one birthday with her – the day she was born.
While I know my daughter in an open adoption, her biological father does not. He was cast out by the time I was five months pregnant. I’d had to return home after having just moved nine hours away to college, and the combination of heavy shame and the overwhelm of parental reaction, as well as the determination to care for that child while she was inside of me, caused me to put my head down. I only focused on the inward. He was pushed out. I allowed it to happen. He agrees now I did what I knew to do.
He wanted to be a part of her life, wanted us to get married and raise her. I was eighteen and he was twenty-three. We loved one another and had for years. And somehow, and I can’t for the life of me really remember how it happened, I cut him out entirely, and allowed others to convince me he was harmful, and in doing so, allowed him to be denied his daughter.
He was deemed dangerous. I believed it. I had no idea that he was working three jobs, had bought a crib and painted a nursery, and believed wholeheartedly that I’d remember our shared love and come back. Until he was called on July 22 and told to come sign the adoption papers.
There are two people that feel this way on July 22 – he and I. And as the years go by, I somehow have more answers and yet still more questions.
He started to email me on her birthday when she was an early teenager, to tell me that he thought of her and that he was sorry it had happened, was sorry I’d gotten pregnant so young. It affected every day of my life ever since, but I was angry at him initially for these emails, because I never felt it was a mistake at all. I didn’t want him to apologize. She is in the world and she is magnificent. How could that have been a mistake?
Like always, he was just trying to connect and get it right.
Over the years, we’ve gifted one another grace. I’m the person responsible for him never having met his daughter (yet). He forgives me. And when I need to remember that I’m a redeemable person, I think of his grace. We’ve become close friends again.
Because I think that there are only two people on earth that truly remember who we each were before everything changed. We share that. And for the last few years, we’ve been healing on parallel paths. Sometimes they cross.
I’ve seen him three times since she was born, two were this year. I was going through a very difficult time and I called him and asked to camp on his land – with no electricity or water but that holds his prized barn-framed shelter. He said, “Whatever you need.” I got there and he’d made the loft in the barn into a place that could comfortably hold my unfolding soul in this dark period. He brought me water and a hot plate and good cheese and we talked about honest things.
The last time I saw him was three weeks ago when I’d driven back to central Pennsylvania again. We were standing and saying goodbye after a brief visit, and talking about the significance of the healing since our visit in April, and I looked over and on the back of a truck, someone had fashioned the letters into a handmade bumper sticker, “Fathers Have Zero Rights.”
I showed him. We both felt the impact.
I advocate to our daughter at this point to meet him. I truly think that of all four of her parents, she’s likely going to see herself most in him. She’ll realize he’s been a missing piece. She’s not ready yet. I pray it is soon, for both of them.
Because I know his heart breaks. I know it aches daily for this loss, 365 days a year, so many years ago but always present for him.
On July 22, I relive the birth. I have the memories of the hospital and sticking up to the doctors that didn’t trust a young mother to make her own choices, and the stream of visitors I had before her adoptive parents came. And this year, more than ever, whether healthy or not, I imagine what it would have been had I known he was always, always so ready.
Because I was convinced that he was not responsible, I never thought another man was responsible enough after that.
Because I was convinced he was no good, I never thought another man would be good enough.
Because I was convinced he could not take care of me and his daughter, I never thought another man would be able to show up for me well either.
This is where fathers have zero rights – not that he didn’t sign legal adoption papers like I had to, but because he felt he had zero choice. He had been defeated.
And there he was, all along. Willing. Wanting.
And somehow, by the grace of God, he still is.
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