Biological Father

I have never met my biological father. I have two pictures of him. In one, he's in a white prom suit. My mother is six mos. pregnant and wearing a blue dress. She's cut out of the photo by the photographer. She's half in and half out. My father has a wide open-mouth smile. He's beaming.

In the other picture, my mother is 18, holding me as an infant and my sister, probably not yet 18 mos. is sitting on my father's lap. He's 21 or 22. That picture is frayed on all four sides. It's the only family photo I have of the four of us.

My brother, who was born 2 years later, has a different father. Except for the fact that we have a different last name and a different biological father, I never think of him as my half-brother. His "bio dad" is the guy I called Dad my entire childhood. His "bio dad" is the guy I gave father's day cards too while I wrote about my own bio dad in my journal.

My father is so young in both pictures and my mother even younger. I have trouble picturing these kids as the creators of anyone's life. They are smiling in the picture but it's a posed smile and they look uneasy. Instead of parents, they look like older siblings holding babies, concentrating hard on not letting the babies fall out of their laps.

It's hard to imagine my father as a destroyer of life either when he is so young. He went to Vietnam soon after the photo was taken. I have two letters he wrote from Vietnam. They are my proof that he was a real person, give me a glimpse into what he thought, how he felt, how he wrote even. He was gentle and sensitive in the letters, caring and captured lots of details about how hot Vietnam was, how poor the people were, how hard it was to eat or sleep, how hard they were "hit" in "Rocket Alley" and how he wanted more photos and to come home to rest. He said the only thing he was getting in Vietnam was a good tan.

I don't know if he's dead or alive. Every five or so years I think I'd like to know and I make some mild inquiry and then usually hit a dead-end and let it go. Lately, because I feel he's probably not going to live long if he's even still alive, I feel more of a press to search. I don't want to meet him but I'd like to see his face. I'd like to know what his adult, pre-60 face looks like so I can age him in my mind. I know he's an alcoholic so the chances of him being alive, or staying alive long, aren't good. I know it in my head and yet I feel time is endless. Do I even want to know if he has died? I'm not sure.

I hate the term bio father but I don't have a term I like better. I mean, let's face it, men have a good deal to do with conception but have very little to do with birth. I've been with two women who gave birth. It's a one-person deal, a one-woman show - and that's true no matter how supportive the others in the room are.

As a kid growing up, I used bio father to differentiate him from the guy who lived with us when I was toddler through pre-adolscence, the one I called "dad" and the one I gave father's day cards too. But, since the guy I called "dad" has died, my biological father has just morphed in "my father" in my mind. The shift snuck on me. I mumble over my words if I say them out loud.

Just thinking and thinking. I think about everything in new and different ways now that I'm a parent, now that I think about how my daughter may think of her own biological parents some day, as I struggle to help her find words and name experiences she has already had but which aren't totally integrated into her toddler self.