A vivid memory that used to soar through my head on a daily basis for awhile but then went away, has come back slowly. My older sister Sara and I were sitting on the front porch very late at night, talking about the concept of a father; ours were different. However, both of us “lost” that man before we ever got to know them. My sister’s father took his life a week after she was born, mine was still alive (at that time) but he was never in my life, and I still only remember four times of meeting him. I remember my sister get this overwhelming sense of wanting to help me make sense of my life, jumping up, and running to phone the tattoo shop that my father was helping out at when he was living at a homeless shelter after being released from prison. While she did this, my body was completely shaking because I had no idea what I was even going to say to him, or what he was going to say to me. I also knew that my aunt and uncle were going to kill me for seeing him. But I went with it, because it sounded like an adventure: we were going to meet him at a coffee shop at midnight. On the way, the song True Colors (the Phil Collins version, how embarrassing) played on three different stations. Once we arrived, my sister and I were waiting outside and there he was. The man who I had no memories of, walking towards me with this look of nervousness and shyness in his eyes. My eyes. He didn’t invade my space, he looked as though he’d been waiting for this moment for years upon years, and he smiled through his crooked teeth.



“You aren’t a baby anymore,” my father told me.
“We have the same eyes,” I said.
“I’ve thought about you every single day of my life,” is what he said next.

After that, I was speechless, because all of my life I was taught to hate him by one side of my family; the other side told me that he was once a very good man. That his mistakes were just that: mistakes. My sister stood there and cried, smoking a cigarette. Breathing was difficult for me, the silence grew too loud, but my words never came after that moment. We hugged momentarily, and for the rest of the night I listened to him talk to me about everything he went through. I stayed quiet, nodded a few times, probably cried, smiled, and laughed. But it stayed silent. When my sister and I left to go home, we stayed quiet, and held hands the whole way home. My uncle picked me up the next day and I didn’t tell him that I saw my father at all. My facade was great. I didn’t even know what I was feeling. The next day, I went back to school and talked to my friends and the boyfriend that I had at the time like it was absolutely nothing. Sometimes I wish that this was the only memory I had of my father, or that it was the only time we ever saw one another after he got out. But it wasn’t. There was a moment that tested our relationship horribly, and changed my life forever. The next year, there was another moment where we were in the same room, and the only contact we had was when I lifted my head on a whim as he left the room of my cousin’s memorial service; he waved and smiled, I did nothing. Then, lays the final moment we had: him, moments from death, laying in ICU - me, moments from breakdown, trying to forgive him for everything, but being too late. Many questions are left without an answer to this day and it is time to forgive him for not answering them like he promised me long ago. But I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.