Read Finding Dad: From "Love Child" to Daughter for Free Online Page A

behind them. His boyhood pictures looked almost angelic with soft curly hair and innocent eyes, but his face hardened as we turned the pages. His life was marked by battles that he always seemed to win, but I couldn’t help but wonder at what cost? Here I was sitting next to him, a casualty of his fight to not be a father because it didn’t suit him, and all we did was dance around the big white elephant that I could be his daughter.
    Yet, I could feel his approval as I showed him awards from school, and told him I was a straight A student. His eyes widened as he looked at my accolades, “You have an impressive record for such a young lady.”
    Wow, he likes me, and I like him.
    As I pointed to a picture to explain what he was seeing, my hand briefly touched his by accident. I felt a rush of electricity. My God! He was real, and this was actually happening!
    Though he wasn’t saying much, a part of me was connecting to the softer side of him, the side he tried to never show. I saw glimpses of it when his eyes softened while looking at my pictures. There was an unspoken transfer of energy as we talked about our lives, as though we saw our reflection in each other. He was the other half of me. In fact, later, my new family would joke that I was the female version of him. We really were so much alike, and each held the missing piece to heal the other. He could be my rock solid source of stability and safety, and I could be the one to soften his heart. Like a new puppy, I was eager to give him the kind of unconditional love he needed, but never let in.
    His smile revealed a hint of pride looking at my varsity ski team pictures and my winning debate record. These were things he was good at, too, and I wondered if he saw himself in me even though we seemed like opposites. I’m already a bubbly person by nature, but my nervousness that day made me smile and laugh more as I tried to tell him stories about my life back home.
    As I giggled, he stared at me and said, “You remind me of your mother, she was effervescent too.”
    Wow, he just mentioned Mom, maybe we were going to talk about why I was here?
    I grabbed some popcorn and sucked down some pink juice getting ready to move past pleasantries, but it was a false alarm.
    Instead, he moved on to pictures from his inauguration, and he showed me my three half-brothers, Tracy, Stuart, and Peter, and, who he referred to only as his sons. I stared at Peter since Mom always told me I looked most like him with his blonde hair and light eyes, but I couldn’t be sure. My father’s eyes were dark brown, and nothing on his face jumped out and said “I have your DNA.” He was fifty-five years older than I, and a man, so it was hard for me to see the striking resemblance everyone would later remark on. I kept waiting for something deep inside to go DING! and let me know for sure this man was really my father. But it didn’t. Like him, the rational side of my brain was running the show, and I told myself I would just have to do this one step at time.
    He was judging me, too. I’m only 5’2” and wasn’t even a hundred pounds yet, so when I stood up to go to the bathroom, he seemed shocked as he looked me up and down.
    “You are one of the smallest women I’ve ever seen. Was your mother that short?” he asked, seeming to question how he could have a daughter as tiny as I was. He was still trying to convince himself I couldn’t be his.
    “No, she’s 5’6”, but her mother was short, and I’m told yours was, too.” No comment.
    My stomach tightened. I had just inched toward the real question of why we were both here sharing our life stories on a Sunday afternoon over juice and popcorn with people listening to us in the other room.
    Thank goodness for football so he could look away and yell, “Hot damn, that’s a good play.”
    The game and my bathroom break was a good way for us both to take a breath.
    In the bathroom, I tried to collect my spinning thoughts. I wanted him