My dad fathered me and left.
I grew up feeling like a sissy. I didn't know football or fishing or sports of any kind. I couldn't fight and I blushed easily. Other kids went to baseball games with their dad. I stayed home with my grandmother and listened to opera.
When I was 6 I started asking my mom about my father. I pestered her. One evening she took me over to the telephone and dialed his number. I heard her say, "Wes? Your son is here and he wants to talk to you." I don't know what he said. My mother started cussing him out and an argument ended the call.
I was 25 years old when I hunted for him and found him. I showed up at his door and knocked.
He was surprised and embarrassed to see me; but, he invited me in.
We sized each other up pretty well. All the fathering I had needed all my life was pretty well beyond his power to provide. Whatever I was; I was.
He had never bought me a nickle's worth of gum or troubled his finger to dial my telephone.
Yet, here I was standing in his living room. Why? He hadn't found me; I had found him.
Should I have been grateful to him for what he had provided? What is the value of a haphazard shtup and the accident who followed?
I stayed awhile and travelled the 1500 miles back home to Texas. Yes, he was living in Michigan.
I didn't see him again until I was 33 years old. I was now living in California. He was visiting his sister in Pomona. My aunt called me and told me they were bringing my dad by my house to spend the night! What was I to make of that?
He showed up and ate dinner and then said he had to go out and by a pair of socks.
He didn't return until the bars had closed and he slept in late the next day reeking of alcohol. My Aunt and Uncle picked him up and off he went with nary a word of explanation or adieu.
The last time I heard from him was when a letter arrived. I was now 45 years old and he was dying. On his deathbed he wrote to say how much he loved me. Now he loved me. Now. He loved me now that the sun was was vanishing from the last spring sky and the horrors of eternal night were filling the room like a pool of ink. His thoughts were spent. I was the final afterthought. I was the tidying up in his conscience. Cross the t's and dot the i's and slip the bonds of fragile life into the void.
I walked over to the window and stared outside as my own children played in the sprinkler. The twilight gathered itself into starlight and the hush of day quietly became moonlight and cricket song. I crumpled the letter into my fist and tossed it in the trash.
These are my thoughts on God.