Father's Day

Tomorrow will be my first Father's Day as a father. It is both thrilling and bittersweet, as I will be leaving for Afghanistan very shortly and will not be able to see my son. I have missed many firsts and will miss quite a few more before I return home next year. His first time holding his bottle on his own, his first time crawling, his first time talking, his first time walking. These are memories that I will never be able to hold and cherish, but I hope that in ten or fifteen years when my son asks me why I left, he can understand the values that I hope to instill in him: love of God, family and country. This post, however, is not about me, it is about my father, and another gentleman I have recently come to know. My father is not my biological father, he adopted me at the age of seven. I cannot call him a gentle man, as I never saw him cry until he lost his leg in 2003. He has never been prone to show weakness, only in his times of vulnerability have I ever seen that. He was an angry man, prone to spankings and a backhand before he would consider sending me to the corner. He showed me what it meant to work, clocking in 40 plus hours during the week and helping out friends on their farms and roofs on the weekends. I joined the military in part because I wanted to be like him. He is now a frail man of 65, but he has never lost the twinkle in his eye, that sly look that he always carried about him. He still loves a good joke and is still too proud to ask for a hand. I hope that one day I can epitomize that which he is, a hard working, blue collar family man.

Now to the other part... My biological father found me via Facebook. In a story straight out of a Lifetime movie... When my son was born I posted some pics of him on FB. Someone sent him a link of the pics of my son and told him that these were pictures of his grandchild. He sent me a message, we met, had a DNA test, and the results confirmed that he was my biological father. It's odd for a 22 year old man to meet his father for the first time. I had written this man off a long time ago as a dead beat man who didn't care enough to even try to find me. Now, I realize that he didn't try to find me not because he didn't want to, but out of love. The realization that him trying to become a part of my life at the time would have been catastrophic. My adoptive parents love and support me to achieve all of my dreams, and for that, I am truly grateful. However, I also want to know what else is out there. This man was diagnosed with cancer and has had repeated operations on it. My fear is that I will never truly get to know this man, that the tragedies of life may take him away before I can pick his brain, to find out who my biological father is. As it is said in the Middle East, Inshallah, or God Willing, I will get to discover who this man is. If fate has it differently, however, I can answer that question that has been nagging me all of my life. I know who my fathers are.