Shadley Grei describes the day he stopped being a kid and introduced himself to the father who had ignored him for eighteen years.
—
Frankly, the line was much shorter than I wanted it to be.
Patience and I have never been the best of dance partners. It seems I live like a fox trot and the world only wants to waltz. But, in this particular moment, the waiting could have been eternal, and I would have found a particular kind of comfort in that. All I wanted to do was slam the brakes on time and stand still. Life, however, had other plans. It was going to happen and there was no turning back.
I was going to leave. I honestly was. I turned toward the door to bolt, and Jen peeked around the corner with a smile. She was rooting for me. She thought I was braver than I really was. Standing there, saying nothing, but loving me as loud as a good friend can without saying a word, she gave me the courage to turn back and take one step closer.
Of course, I was fully responsible for all of this. I had taken very decisive steps to ensure that I would end up exactly where I was. And as each person in front of me peeled off the line, autographed book in hand, I moved closer to him, holding my own book, the pages already sweat-stained from my grip.
And then it was my turn.
He smiled and took my book and opened to the inside flap to give me his autograph. “What’s your name?”
I choked a little and did what I usually do when I’m terrified. I laughed. And then I shrugged. Okay, here we go…
“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” I said, “But I’m your son.”
♦◊♦
I was 18. Though I had grown up in the same town as my father, I had never met him. He and my mother had separated before I was born and he never saw me again, except for some fleeting moments in the very beginning of my life. While growing up, I wrote my father several letters, asking to meet him. I told him that I didn’t need anything from him other than I wanted to hear his laugh. I don’t know why that particular detail seemed important to me. But a child should know what their parents sound like when they laugh, right? That was the single thing I wanted. One laugh. But all of my letters were ignored. My entire being was ignored by the man who created half of who I was.
Growing up, I would repeatedly be “gifted” with the reminder that he was out there, living his life without me. My father and the brother I didn’t know did several plays together that were showcased in the local paper. My brother even ended up on the front page after he was cast as the lead in a film that shot locally. I got to read about my father praising his amazing son. The one that wasn’t me. I was an artist-actor-dancer watching from the shadows as my father gave my salvation to someone else while being raised by a step-dad who understood me about as much as he tolerated me.
The brutalities of having my father’s name but not his acknowledgement continued throughout my life until I finally had my name legally changed when I was 24. I think the decision to one day leave his name behind was cemented when I was 15 and had my very phone interview for a job. The man I spoke to said, “Are you Gary’s son? Tell him I said hi.” I replied, “You can tell him. You’ll probably see him before me.”
He laughed. I didn’t.
(A side note: I had my name legally changed 20 years this month and it wasn’t until writing this just now that I realized that I gave up his last name and had my name changed to what turns out to essentially be an anagram of his first name. Well, hell…)
I didn’t need to become his every-other-weekend son… Who am I kidding? Of course that’s what I wanted. I WANTED to be his son, to know him, to fill in the blanks of who I was. But he wouldn’t give me even one conversation.
So I stopped asking and played the only trump card I had left… Balls the size of Texas.
♦◊♦
I earned enough credits that I graduated high school early, finishing that January instead of in May with the rest of my class. School had been hard for me emotionally, if not academically, so I ran for the doors as fast as I could. But then the Universe offered up a sweet surprise—perhaps as an apology for the crappy hand I’d been dealt or, more likely, as a double-dog dare.
I learned that my father was going to be one of the guest speakers at a writer’s workshop at a local college during what would have been my final semester of school. So I did what any semi-rational person would do and convinced Miss R, one of my former teachers, to let me attend the workshop even though I was no longer a student. I explained to her my reason for wanting to go. Like the rest of the people in the small tribe who heard of my plan to publicly approach the man who had ignored my entire life and kick him in the groin, metaphorically (probably), with the “Hi, I’m your son” bombshell, she was concerned for my emotional (and perhaps physical) safety. But I somehow convinced her to let me go; so I climbed on the bus with Miss R and my old classmates and headed off to the workshop, armed only with some crappy poetry, one of my best friends, and a blind determination to no longer be ignored, regardless of the consequences.
The seminars were a series of classroom settings where different types of writers talked about their craft and answered questions about careers for writers. My father was a cartoonist who had done several political cartoons in the local paper and had published a couple collections of his work. I sat and listened to his spiel. There really aren’t words to describe how surreal it was to walk into that room and see him standing at the front, greeting us all with a smile. The first time I heard my father’s voice in person was when he said hello to someone else, which seemed ridiculously appropriate. I didn’t care. There he was. He wasn’t a picture in the paper, and I wasn’t listening to him on his answering machine message, which I had called several times over the years, just to hear his voice and hang up. He was standing right there in front of me. A real live person who was funny, smart, quick-witted, and he laughed a lot. HE LAUGHED! Check that off the bucket list.
There really aren’t words to describe how surreal it was to walk into that room and see him standing at the front, greeting us all with a smile. The first time I heard my father’s voice in person was when he said hello to someone else, which seemed ridiculously appropriate. I didn’t care. There he was.
|
I watched him interact with the students, clueless to the secret sitting in the third row. The entirety of 18 years of questions, anger, sadness, grief and confusion was coming to a head. My heart raced. My eyelashes held back nervous, elated, overwhelmed tears. It was too much and not enough at the same time. I wanted to hug him almost as much as I wanted to hit him. My dark mind toyed with the idea of humiliating him during the Q & A segment of the class. That would show him that I had just as much cinematic flair as the son he did acknowledge. I could channel Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and growl, “I won’t be ignored, Dad.”
I didn’t do that, but it might happen that way if I ever turn the story into a film.
At the end of the seminar, students filed up to shake his hands and get autographs. I hung back, wanting to be last. Wanting to be braver than I felt in the moment. Wanting to be invisible… but, also, wanting to finally, finally, finally be seen.
And then it was my turn.
He smiled and took my book and opened to the inside flap to give me his autograph. “What’s your name?”
Words felt like lead on my tongue, and I realized I hadn’t actually come up with exactly what I was going to say. But, really, there wasn’t anything to say other than the truth.
“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” I said, throat dry and eyes wet with fear tears. “But I’m your son.”
With sincere honesty, I have never been able to fully recall his exact immediate reaction. I think there was a moment of silence as he diverted his attention to the last few students casually making their way to the door, oblivious to the time bomb of emotions ticking away behind them. Once they were gone and were alone in a big room filled with big emotions, he finally spoke. “Oh, well… hello.”
And I finally exhaled.
Suddenly dizzy, I sat in one of the chairs in the front row as he leaned against a desk. And we started talking. Strangely, the one detail I remember most is him telling me that he doesn’t like music that much and doesn’t play it in the car. I had the startling flash of relief that he hadn’t been a huge influence on my life that might have risked altering the strong connection I had with music. To feel a bit of relief that he hadn’t been in my life was a weird thing to process.
I asked him point blank why he had never contacted me, and he said he thought it was best for me and that he didn’t want to interrupt my life. I accepted this in the moment but later I realized what a lie that had been. He didn’t do me any favors by ignoring me. He made it easy on himself and the life he created after divorcing my mother. You don’t have to take any responsibility if you just stop looking at the mess you are responsible for.
When we parted ways, he shook my hand and said “Give me a jingle sometime” and that’s when I choked on my heartbreak. I had spent 18 years begging to know him and had then thrown my heart on the floor in front of him, demanding to be seen and risking incredible rejection and humiliation, and, yet, it wasn’t enough to make him reach out. I realized that I had subconsciously hoped that if he would just meet me he would see that I was worth knowing and he would want to build a connection as much as I did. But that wasn’t the case. He had accepted my surprise attack but that was it. If I wanted more, I was going to have to beg for that, too. So I smiled through my silent screams and said good-bye.
When I left the conference room, Miss R came over to make sure I had survived the confrontation. I told her everything and thanked her repeatedly for helping me make it happen. When I told her that he had told me to give him a “jingle” sometime, unable to control her frustration with his behavior, she blurted out “Yeah, fuck your jingle.”
When I reconnected with Miss R a couple years ago via Facebook, she was humiliated to be reminded of this story, of how she responded and apologized repeatedly. I told her that it was, by far, the single most perfect thing anyone could have said in that moment. I love her for saying exactly what she did. Not only did it make me laugh really hard, but it also let all the air out of the situation and gave me full permission to be angry and sad and proud. She didn’t treat me like a child or a student, she treated me like a man who had done a grown-up thing and was entitled to a grown-up response. With her burst of empathetic frustration she taught me about the beauty of being both vulnerable and brave. In a life that has been rich with experience, that moment will forever be one of the best.
She let a scared little boy feel like a man.
And, with that gift, I realized that I didn’t need to give him a jingle.
I didn’t need anything from him anymore.
What I had needed most, I had given to myself.
♦◊♦
Credit: Image—Alex Murphy/Flickr