Day 11: the Cuckoo
Jul. 4th, 2008 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishDay 11
“You knew?”
“Yes, of course I knew. Your mother was already pregnant when I met her- I mean obviously pregnant. We dated a little, but after you were born things just fit into place. Your mom was… she was just wonderful, you know that…” My dad starts to tear up again, and even knowing that he’s not really my father doesn’t change the fact that I’m still watching my dad cry- it’s like watching the moon fall into the sea. The world is broken.
When my dad starts crying, you know someone is dead: he only cries at funerals. And I cannot express accurately how angry I am at him for lying all these years when he tears up like that. It gets mixed up with how much I love him, and how much it hurt watching my mother die, and how utterly unjust it is that he’s not related to me by blood. It’s all still there, but all I can do is hand him a handkerchief and stare at my knees until he’s composed again.
He catches his breath. “It was perfect. I walked right into the family I had wanted, and it was just after I found out I couldn’t have kids- you both needed me so much. It was like God planned it out exactly just for us to fit into each others’ lives.” I nod. He’s a great dad- he just puts everything into it. I can’t imagine the waste it would have been for him never to have children of his own.
“I did not know she’d put it in her will. I didn’t know that. We’d talked about telling you, but she’d asked your biological father to stay away- she still loved him even after she had you and she met me. She still loved him.” He clutches the hankie and for just a second he grimaced like he was in pain before going on. “He did ask to see you- he wasn’t a bad guy, kiddo, but she just couldn’t stand the idea of you and him meeting.” Like I wasn’t really your father, he does not say, but my dad can’t lie worth a damn and he can’t hide either.
It’s not fair, but it’s how my mother would have thought of it. I’d grown up used to obvious adoptions and Asian schoolmates with white parents, but she was always shocked to see that anyone would do something like that. She thought adoptive parents were good people for taking in a child in need, but she never seemed to accept that they were family in the same way as blood parents. That she was just so much of a hypocrite, to tell me that my dad was really my biological father when it was a lie, never crossed my mind.
My dad was crying again. My mother was dead, and my dad was crying but he wasn’t my real father, and there was some stranger in California whose name and face I knew from billboards and he was my real father. It was like someone was granting every hateful wish I’d made at seven years old, fourteen years too late.
“You knew?”
“Yes, of course I knew. Your mother was already pregnant when I met her- I mean obviously pregnant. We dated a little, but after you were born things just fit into place. Your mom was… she was just wonderful, you know that…” My dad starts to tear up again, and even knowing that he’s not really my father doesn’t change the fact that I’m still watching my dad cry- it’s like watching the moon fall into the sea. The world is broken.
When my dad starts crying, you know someone is dead: he only cries at funerals. And I cannot express accurately how angry I am at him for lying all these years when he tears up like that. It gets mixed up with how much I love him, and how much it hurt watching my mother die, and how utterly unjust it is that he’s not related to me by blood. It’s all still there, but all I can do is hand him a handkerchief and stare at my knees until he’s composed again.
He catches his breath. “It was perfect. I walked right into the family I had wanted, and it was just after I found out I couldn’t have kids- you both needed me so much. It was like God planned it out exactly just for us to fit into each others’ lives.” I nod. He’s a great dad- he just puts everything into it. I can’t imagine the waste it would have been for him never to have children of his own.
“I did not know she’d put it in her will. I didn’t know that. We’d talked about telling you, but she’d asked your biological father to stay away- she still loved him even after she had you and she met me. She still loved him.” He clutches the hankie and for just a second he grimaced like he was in pain before going on. “He did ask to see you- he wasn’t a bad guy, kiddo, but she just couldn’t stand the idea of you and him meeting.” Like I wasn’t really your father, he does not say, but my dad can’t lie worth a damn and he can’t hide either.
It’s not fair, but it’s how my mother would have thought of it. I’d grown up used to obvious adoptions and Asian schoolmates with white parents, but she was always shocked to see that anyone would do something like that. She thought adoptive parents were good people for taking in a child in need, but she never seemed to accept that they were family in the same way as blood parents. That she was just so much of a hypocrite, to tell me that my dad was really my biological father when it was a lie, never crossed my mind.
My dad was crying again. My mother was dead, and my dad was crying but he wasn’t my real father, and there was some stranger in California whose name and face I knew from billboards and he was my real father. It was like someone was granting every hateful wish I’d made at seven years old, fourteen years too late.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-05 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-06 01:20 am (UTC)Good writers borrow- great writers steal outright.