March 7, 2023

I’ve looked more into my (maybe) father’s genealogy and I still can’t explain why I didn’t inherit any of the German, Italian or French ancestry from him. It doesn’t make any sense and it seems unlikely, but I can’t find it in me to care whether he is or isn’t my father. It doesn’t make any difference either way. 

On March 7, 2023 I wrote in my notes that I had been talking to my father on facebook messenger. He called me around 9 that night and we talked until after 10:30. I remember this conversation pretty well, especially how I was trying to end it because it was time for me, my husband, and my kids to wind down the day and go to bed, but he was just getting geared up for another night posting on facebook and he wanted to talk. Meaning he wanted to talk and I was his captive audience.

He talked about his first son, mostly. I never met the guy because he, according to my father, didn’t like me because I was related to my mother and grandmother. As if I could help that. If I had my druthers, I wouldn't be related to any of them. Anyway, his son was holding their actions against me, I guess. Supposedly. Looking back, I can see my father turning us all against each other, and everyone against me. 

Anyway, he said his oldest son was a truck driver and lived in Mississippi. According to my father, his son had issues and was giving money to his girlfriend against his advice. This got him started on trucking back in the day. 

According to him, truck drivers had $100,000 in life insurance that would go to their widows. This led to talking about different characters that he knew of on the CB radio, most of whom I’d never heard of, but a couple of names I recognized. He said my uncle tried to dominate the frequencies and talk over everyone. Who knows the truth there, but if anything, in my experience it was him that dominated conversations, never letting me get a word in edgewise. 

He said my mother acted like a 6 year old and was very immature. (What does it say about him that he was in his mid-20s and was attracted to someone who acted like a child?) According to him, while she was pregnant with me she was spending more and more time at her mother’s house, which made him jealous. And yeah, that’s probably the most truthful tidbit of this conversation.

He said he didn’t love her. I asked if he loved the idea of her. He said he loved the idea of me. He was feeling the void of losing his first son (his first wife took his son from him) and in his mind I was going to fill that hole in his life. All of this is just awesome. I wasn’t even born yet and it was up to me to fix his mistakes. 

This is where things get dark. Mentions of gun violence ahead. 

According to him, when my mother was 7 months pregnant, he cocked his gun and told her that if it was going to be like that, then she should just kill him. She picked up his service revolver and shot at him, hitting an oil can instead. He said that’s when he realized that he didn’t want to die. 

This was not the story that I’d been told about the gun, but we’ll get there. 

When I was one or two months old, she left him and he was forbidden from having any contact with me. He said he couldn’t risk getting arrested because of the security clearance he had gotten to work as a security guard. Yes, he really just told me that his newborn replacement baby was less important than his clearance to work as a security guard. 

He shared that when he was getting that clearance, he omitted his mental hospital stay. Just another instance of playing fast and loose with facts. I mean, sure, why not? Might as well add to the lies.

The conversation took a turn and he said he could count on one hand the number of lovers he’d had in his life. By this point we’d been talking for just over a week and it was just an inappropriate topic that was unprompted by me. (This type of talk will get worse and way over the line.)

He said that when his first wife left him and took their son, he came home to a dark house and tripped over the coffee table that she’d left by the door. That was the only piece of furniture left in the house and something had happened with the fuse box, which was why the lights wouldn’t turn on. When she was moving, they’d had to flip the fuses to remove the dryer. 

He said the drugs (I don’t know which drugs) he was on while he was with my mother were from his stay in the 7th floor at Memorial hospital. I presume those were prescription drugs, but who knows. 

He talked about how his mother had him when she was 15 or 16 and then had his sister 11 months later. I’ve since looked at my family tree research, as well as his entries on ancestry and this cannot be accurate. His mother was born in 1932. He was born in 1954. I never mentioned this discovery in our conversations, but he repeatedly said his mother was 15 or 16 when he was born. His sister was born in 1955, so his claim of 11 months might be true, but his mother was certainly in her early 20s, not 16.

In any case, according to him motherhood was hard and even hard on teens. He said when he was 3, his mother “set him across the ditch” at his grandparents’ house and she caught a bus to Texas with his little sister. The way he shared this story, on several occasions, in messages, posts on facebook, and in conversation, I could see how much he resented this. And yet he was able to rationalize doing this to me as a newborn. 

He said he rarely saw his father, maybe only every 3-4 months, because his father was a truck driver. According to him, his father would come home, drink for a couple of days, then go back out on the road. 

My father said he felt guilty for being a burden on his grandparents. I wrote in my notes from that day that I could see history repeating itself all over the place. His mother abandoned him, he abandoned me. He felt guilty for being a burden, and so did I. I also noted my research into his claims that his mother was a teenager. I can’t think of any reason for him to lie about this and surely it would occur to him that I was looking into all of this and could do basic math. There’s no reason to lie about this, but I guess some people lie just to lie. Or they’ve told so many lies that they can’t keep it all straight anymore. 

In our facebook message conversation, he told me that when we first met in 1999, he was going to community college to go into business management, but between work and his third  family, he wasn’t able to finish the degree. 

Now looking back at the messages from March 6-7, I see we ended the conversation with him talking about taking blankets to the car and sleeping there and how he loved his wife, but didn’t like her. He’d invited me to join his facebook group where he shared more political posts and was running as a write-in for sheriff. 

He had argued with his wife during the day because of some landscaping work. I think she and the workers both spoke Spanish and she didn’t understand his complaints about the gravel path. She didn’t learn English and he never learned Spanish. He said again that he loved her but didn’t like her. 

I told him my DNA results were now expected on March 9th and he said he was still certain that he was my father. He asked if I “had visions of Jerry Springer”. It's funny because in a rare moment of self-awareness my grandmother said our family was messed up enough to go on Jerry Springer. Jerry would have had a field day with us.

He said “I got a question though. 

Ho stressed are you going to be if you confirm that this broken old man really is your father for real. 

I'm not much to write home about”

“I mean, I'm not every child's dream of the perfect father. Nor is my dysfunctional family. I sure wouldn't pick me from the gene pool”

I guess there was some self-reflection there, but not enough to make a difference. 

I wasn't looking for a genetic lottery and I didn't care about his dysfunctional family of origin. I didn't even care about what he'd done to me in 1980 or what happened in 1999. I wanted to get to know him as an adult and give him a chance to get to know me. I was hoping for a fresh start, even with him telling me on day 1 that he was keeping score.