July 14th, 2010 | Posted in Knitting | 7 Comments »
Arrrrrrgggghhhh and he be here to steal me krabby patty secret formuler!
Okay, so I know that his computer wife claims that he is 1% evil; 99% hot gas. But according to a statement made by his target audience (i.e. a 6-year-old boy), he’s 100% “soft and easy to punch in his mean eyeball.” To quote him exactly.
He is my own creation, and I actually remembered to jot down some notes to make a pattern out of. So feel free to knit one up for the Spongebob fan in your life!
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July 12th, 2010 | Posted in Personal | 5 Comments »
Every day I log in to Facebook and for some reason, perhaps subconsciously, I type his name in the search box.
I never hit enter. I simply type it, examine it, erase it, and go about my business. Strange behavior to say the least.
Facebook is supposed to be for staying connected with the people you know. Presumably, for the people you hold dear. Why would I go searching for someone I’ve never even met (but thought about countless times)? What would I even do if I found him?
My half-brother, D, is out there somewhere. He has my family’s last name. A few strands of my dad’s DNA. After one look at his high school graduation photo many years ago, I can say that he looks just like my dad too, even more than my actual full brother. Dark hair, thick brows, eyes that pierce straight through you. I know that if I searched for him on Facebook, assuming that he has an account, I could find him no problem. That’s part of the reason why I don’t do it.
My father’s early adult life is one shrouded in mystery, at least to me. Growing up, I picked up on things over the course of a few years, and at some points my dad would indulge me and let me in on a few secrets. He was married at 17 to a woman he got pregnant. His first child, a son, was born somewhere around 1965. Two or three years later, a daughter came. To my knowledge, they lived together in vicious discontent until his wife ran off with their two children to be with another man a short time later.
He’s never told me what happened after that, in any detail that is.
He graduated high school, lived and worked around his home town until 1976, when he met, fell in love with, and married my mother. My brother was born in ’81, and I came a short time later in ’88.
His first daughter, as I mentioned earlier, was actually in our lives for a short lived period of time. I was little when she first came around. She pulled up at our house one day in a beat up Chevy truck with a topper on the back where she kept what looked like everything she owned. We went hiking in the woods behind my house where I took a backpack full of ‘hiking necessities’ like my Barbies and a camera. She told me all about her time in the Air Force. I told her about how much fun it would be if she played popcorn with me on the trampoline. I think my parents still have pictures of this somewhere. When she left, she gave me a handmade photo album, with nothing in it except for a greeting card talking about the blessings that family provide. The outside was adorned with soft, pink fabric (apparently she had learned from my dad prior to her visit that pink was my favorite color at the time), and in the center, was a large gold letter ‘K’. It was beautiful. A gift from one sister to another. She gave me her heavy, camouflage Air Force jacket that swallowed me up at the time, said goodbye, and disappeared.
I haven’t heard from her since. To my knowledge, neither has my parents.
I’ve often sat back and wondered why things are the way they are with my dad and his first two children. Why doesn’t he even TRY to keep contact with them? And it makes me angry when I think about it. How can he sleep at night knowing that he has children out there and wants nothing to do with them? Why are me and my brother different to him? How could he abandon them and live his life as ‘father of two’ all these years?
But then I think, maybe he didn’t turn his back. Maybe they abandoned him. And that has to hurt a whole lot worse.
I’ve seen him write her letters. I’ve seen him call and talk to her. I’ve seen him send emails and get nothing back. Once, I asked him what ever happened to his high school ring. He told me he mailed it to D, his first son. And that was that.
They have never met the father that I have known my entire life. Loving, trusting, dependable, affectionate. To them, they’ve only ever known him as…absent. And that’s nothing that is worth rekindling. I get it.
But there’s something in me that wants to search for both of my siblings on Facebook anyway and see what I can find. They’re well into their 40′s now, probably have families…but I never click ‘search’ and look for them because I don’t want to be the ghost showing up from their past. I don’t want to start a fire that may or may not be easy to put out. Honestly, I don’t even know who those people are. They may as well just be a concept or a dream. I’m sure there was a good reason to them why they decided not to acknowledge our existence anymore. And I should probably just write this off and do the same.
I am just eternally grateful for the family that I have known all my life. For the person that I have turned out to be. My dad, as I know him, has forever been a sturdy rock for me. I almost refuse to believe that he would be anything other than that to the ones he loves. In fact, I know it. He has to have a door slammed in his face before he walks away from it.
Even though it would be nice to know them, not knowing them isn’t taking away from what I have with my dad.
I don’t know that I’ll type their names anymore after this.
