I Got an Email Today

My FB status:

"Ive always said 'if youre over 30 and cant get past some shit with somebody that happened way back when you were 17, you need to grow the fuck up.' Then I got an email from my father...."

#ineedadrink

My father aka the turkey baster.....[I wanna LOL here, but I find it difficult at the moment...] Far as Im concerned, thats all he ever did - help give me life. All accounts would indicate he's been AWOL since I was about 2yrs old. Never got the whole story on the incident that made my mama finally tell him to kick rocks, but I do know he kicked every last one of em and kept on kicking for the next eleven years. That's when his father died and his sister brought me around for the funeral, after having sought me out the year before to introduce me to the family I never knew. I met my grandfather once, he gave me twenty dollars, and then he died. Day of the funeral, turkey baster approaches me: "Do you know who I am?" I reply, "Yes." His clip is empty so he simply walks away. But I got an email today.

Funerals are uncomfortable enough without people whispering about you. They're even worse when the woman who was married to your father when he impregnated your mother doesnt even pretend not to hate you. If looks could kill, I'd be a ghostwriter for real. But whats this - an email?

At least he called sometimes after that. Not often or regularly, but sometimes - at least until I was about seventeen. Havent seen or heard from him since. But then I got this email today.

Fast forward five years later. My sister (his daughter) got sick with TB. I went to visit her in the hospital, having built a relationship with her since the first visits, but she didnt want me to see her in the way she was. It hurt, but I respected her wishes and left. A few hours later, just before flying back upstate, I sat in my aunt's kitchen while she spoke to the turkey baster on the phone, 3 feet away. She tried to get him to talk to me, mentioning my sadness at what had happened, but he wouldnt. You know what he said? "I dont wanna make her miss her flight." Oh..... thanks. How considerate of you. And today I get an email.

Adding insult to injury, my sister died a month later. I couldnt go to the funeral because the woman that was married to my father when he impregnated my mother wouldnt have it. With not even an attempt on his part to talk some sense into her - by all accounts - they put her in the ground without me. I had to make my own peace and none of it made any sense. Since then, not a phone call, not a letter, not a smoke signal, not a carrier pigeon, not a message passed, not anything. Then I get an email today.

My other sister from him and some of my cousins and I reunited via FB last year. Over the summer, I missed a family cookout being held an hour away from the hotel I was in that day in Manhattan. No word about it until the last minute, but honestly I probably wouldnt have gone anyway. Got home to find a picture sent to me by one of my cousins - my aunt, my uncle and the turkey baster. I looked at the picture and saw a lot of things, but my "father" wasnt one of them. But hey, Ive got mail!

A month or two ago, I reconnected with another cousin, who told me he now lives in Detroit, near her. "Wonderful," I say, not caring IF he lived, let alone WHERE. She said she talks to him all the time and had been trying to get him to reach out to me. For what? If he needs to be convinced, I'm not interested. She went to bat for him - he's afraid, he doesnt know what to say, and all the other things that were supposed to soften me up. I couldnt even pretend to care - like father like daughter. She told me she gave him my email address, which I can only assume was because a phone call might be too much like.... adult. So today, I got this email.

And you know, I started to think, in talking to her, maybe I ought to confront the issues if he's willing to man up about them. Maybe it will cause me to feel something - SOMETHING. Some resentment, some anger, SOMETHING. All these years, I havent. All these years, in my heart, he simply didnt exist. I opened up to the possibility of finally putting to rest all the things that brought me to this point with him - getting to ask the questions, even though I know I wont like most of the answers. But then I got this email. You know what it said?

"Havent heard from you in a while."

Havent heard from you in a while. Thats it. Open heart surgery, a car accident, a college graduation, a sister's death, two kids, and seventeen years, and thats all I got. I stared at the screen for a while, like more words were gonna appear any second. But thats all I got.

Thats all I got.