January 20, 2007~~8:18 p.m.
My dad.

I've been emailing with my father. Not the man my children call grandpa, the man who spent 23 years married to my mother, but the one who contributed half of my genetic material and then decided that perhaps the whole "family" thing required a little too much responsibility.

I heard back from him for the first time around Thanksgiving. I intended to compose a long, thoughtful reply, so I put off responding until I had a nice chunk of time to dedicate to the task. I wanted to say the *right* things in the *right* way. I wanted to open the door, but not so far that I left space to be hurt. I wanted the opportunity to know him, but I wanted to know that he wanted to know me too.

So Thanksgiving break passed and I never figured out exactly what to say, so the response never happened. I thought I would sort of make up for it by sending him a Christmas card thinking that our annual Christmas letter would, at least, bring him up to date with what our life was like last year.

Yea, well, the Christmas letter never materialized, so the cards never happened, so he got exactly nothing.

I should also probably mention, because it is part of the conundrum that I have created for myself, that during this time I never mentioned to the husband that my father had written back to the initial email I'd sent asking if I'd found the right person. It started out a little bit intentional because I wanted a little time to just digest the information on my own. I wanted to hold it close and see how it felt before inviting others in. And then I began to notice that he hadn't ever even asked me if I'd heard back from my father (even though my two closest friends had asked several times) and started to feel a little like he was disinterested in the whole thing.

And then I sort of meant to tell him, but so much time had passed that it was going to be obvious that I'd kept it from him. After all, hearing from a father one has not spoken with in seventeen years isn't exactly the sort of thing one forgets about.

Then, out of the blue, on Tuesday of last week, I got another email. He sent me copies of some probate documents pertaining to the estate of his grandfather and closed with "I haven't herd from you since I emailed you before Thanksgiving hope
this address is still good."

It may be the most effort he has ever made to reach out to me over the entire course of my life. We emailed several times after last week. I apologized for not sending a reply and sent a link to some online photo albums. He was happy to see the pictures of us and said I look just as he remembers me. Hmm... guess I still look about eleven because I think that was the last time he saw me. (No wonder that idiot at Costco carded me!)

On Thursday, I told the husband that I'd been emailing with my father and that he'd started sending me a little family history. I sort of intended to tell the story in a way that would omit the fact that I heard from him two months ago and failed to mention it, but I got a little twisted around and realized it was going to be necessary to fess up.

He seemed a little annoyed that I didn't tell him in November, but mostly he seemed pretty disinterested in the whole thing. Surprisingly, his response to my excitement about piecing together the half of me that I've never known anything about was something along the lines of, "If you keep this up, you're going to know more about his side of the family than you do your mom's."

Honestly, the comment shocked me. It would not have surprised me one bit out of my aunt, but from him? I suppose it is possible that he was reacting to feeling left out, but still...

Where this will go from here with my father, I have no idea. He is not a young man. I think that, at some point, if he wants to see me I will probably oblige. I don't know about my kids though. And I am absolutely not ready to have anyone in my family know that I am in touch with him.

And all this seems a lot to juggle when all I want to do is sink in to what it feels like to learn a little more about where I came from. I can't even tell you how surreal it was to see my last name on those documents. To see other people with MY last name. Other than my father, whose name I never really saw written down since he never sent any child support payments or birthday cards or... well, anything for that matter.

But there are all these people... related to me... and I just want to know who they are and where they were from and what their lives were like.

And in his last email, he thanked me for finding him. And the little girl in me thinks that maybe it isn't too late. Maybe I *can* let go of past wrongs and just let things be *right* starting now.

~Alice