On Father's Day

Thanks dad

Father’s Day is often celebrated with cards, ties, and simple gestures of affection. For me, the holiday is more complicated.

I’m adopted. I was adopted before birth, and my parents told me as soon as I could comprehend, so it never stung. Or, so I thought. As I grew older, an inescapable detail nagged at me, despite a happy upbringing.

I never knew my biological father, and he never sought me out.

Over time, it grew to be a nagging question in my subconscious. Who was he? Where did I come from?

My biological mother did plenty to discourage me from contact. She pretended to have cancer to solicit money from me, for example. But my biological father was a blank slate, a complete unknown.

In my early twenties, driven by curiosity and simple vanity, I decided to research my genealogy. I was partially hoping to find ancestors of historical significance, but more honestly, I was trying to meet the father that vanished from my life before it even began. Through this process, I gained information.

Data. Context? Not really. Unease. In the end, it didn’t change much. I knew biographical information and not much more.

Over time, I learned it was just a reality of my life and I would never know him.

A few years ago, my own child was born. That life-changing experience elevated the subconscious, lifelong question in my mind. Just as important, how could any father willingly abandon the responsibility and joy of nurturing their child? I was his son, and had done plenty worth being proud of.

Not even a letter?

Yet his absence throws a brighter light on the father who did show up. My adoptive father, now 85 with declining health, built a foundation beneath me of uncompromising support and profound love.

Born on a Georgia farm in 1940, he lost his own father at five. At fourteen he lied about his age to join the Florida Army National Guard. From a one-room farmhouse he carved out a life of comfort, driven by the simple goal to give that life to me.

When I was five, he marked a quiet milestone that I still think about. He bought an expensive watch to commemorate his success. Five-year-old me was deputized to hand a second, duplicate watch to his best friend and business partner, because success means nothing unless the people who helped you can wear it too.

He provided not just materially but emotionally and spiritually. In every important measure, he gave me a family, tracing lineage back hundreds of years, a history I was graciously invited into, rather than born into.

As a young idealist, I've steadily and imperfectly been working towards a legacy I could pass down to my own children. Yet, I've come to understand that the most profound success I can attain is my father's pride; a pride I've ironically always had.

Today I fight a losing battle against the cruel arithmetic of life. The older I get, the more I understand what he gave, and the less time I have to thank him. The guilt I carry isn't a practical one, but born out of the fear that I can't fully repay the devotion he's shown me. A thousand miles away, my attention split between work and family and employment. Every conversation we share seems more valuable to him, and increasingly, me, than any material possession.

There have been moments in my life when he was my lone supporter. No mistake of mine was great enough to eclipse his love, even for the son he didn’t need to provide for. On this Father’s Day, I recognize the man who showed me what fatherhood truly means. Not biological coincidence, but deliberate and selfless choice. His devotion and his example have been my greatest inheritance.

So, I wear his watch, a symbol of his earned success, and endeavor to live by the values he instilled. I'm powerfully aware of where I came from because of him.

A card would insult the scale of that gift. This public gratitude will have to do. Dad, you didn’t just adopt a baby. You adopted every future day of my life. Whatever good I manage to build from here rests on the foundation you poured.

Happy Father’s Day to the man who proved that DNA matters far less than a heart that refuses to quit.