Everyone who knows me knows that I am adopted. It has never been anything I've been shy about discussing. But this post isn't about being adopted or about growing up with my family. It's about Duke, the man who fathered me and the man I met at 24, already an adult myself.
Meeting Duke had a deep impact on me. For my 24 years of living, I had dismissed the debate of nature versus nurture, convinced that all that we are is through nurture. Environment builds us. The people we live with, interact with and learn from build us. Case closed. Next question, please.
Then my birth parents found me. Both of them, working together, set out on a quest of sorts, to find out if they had made the right choice, if I had a good life, if I turned out okay. The same questions every parent asks about the choices they make, whether you raise your children or not. Well according to modern conventional thinking, I was okay. I had turned out alright. I had a good life.
That left Duke and me staring at each other, from across the bar in the restaurant he owned for more than 30 years, wondering what was next.
I never really knew him in the way I know my parents. That type of understanding and insight only comes from time and trial, working through the issues and hardships of life. And just as I only really knew the basic details of how he died - I don't even know what he died from - I really only knew the basic details of his life. And they are these:
- He loved food, cooking and owned a restaurant
- He was a writer
- He was a force to be reckoned with
- He had a larger than life personality and enjoyed being the center of attention
- He had a physicality to him that I respected and many people feared
- He was a decorated soldier in the Army and a machine gunner in the Korean War
- He had been shot nine times and stabbed even more
- He had killed people
- He was an alcoholic
- He drove away the people who loved him
- He was a romantic
- He was a poet
- He was complicated
- He was a part of me, whether I really wanted to admit it or not
"Debbie (my birth mother) and I are very interested in our child's well being. We definitely do not want to hinder anything. We just would like to see if she is alright and if she is doing fine. I pray to God she is. I hope she had an education, a nice mother and father, a good religious background and most of all, drug free. I would be the happiest person in the world if she acquired the talent to write."
I read those words and realize all parents are the same. You hope for the best and want to see the most worthy parts of yourself reflected in your children. It's how you leave a legacy and how you carry on, into a future you won't see.
So as I stood there at Duke's funeral, a stranger among people I am related to, I said my own goodbye to a man I really didn't know but feel connected to because of all of him that is in me.
And the fact that I am a writer is not one that is lost on me.
