Daddy Issues

My father died when he was 37. I was told that he lay down on his couch one afternoon for a nap and never got up. I heard that it was a stroke that silently killed him. The story of how my father died is a fragmented legend, a story that is vague and mysterious. This is seemingly appropriate since my father has always been a ghost. I never met him and didn't even know his name until I was 30 years old. When I first spoke my father's name out loud he had been dead for over 17 years.

I had wondered about my father's identity since first learning that I was adopted. I grew up fantasizing that I would one day meet my biological parents and that all of my riddles regarding self would be solved. In them - my parents - I would see myself and understand not only who I was but  also who I would one day become. But this is not how things work. We never are given a gift of perfect understanding of self and we can never look to anyone else, particularly our parents to understand who we really are. Now, five years after being given what I long sought after... my biological identity, I still have no clear picture who I am. 

Before I was introduced to the memory of John Bernard Cameron, my birth father, I knew another man as my father. He raised me and did all of the things that a father should do. This adoptive father was (and is) an exceedingly quiet man who is almost as much of a mystery as my birth father. I know he likes sailing and engineering, and had a Porsche when he was in college, but I'm not sure that I know much more about who he really is. It was almost as if he made a choice to closet all of himself away when he slid on the shoes of parenthood. To this day we struggle to find comfortable conversation and common interests, resolving ourselves to communicate only in times when it would not appropriate to be silent. We greet one another on Father's Day and Christmas and he will come into town on the occasional weekend to see my children and be helpful in the endless list of things that overwhelm me...car problems, assembling furniture, computer malfunctions. These are the things that he is comfortable with and that he has used to construct his identity as a father. I long ago learned not to expect anything different.

I think I must have instead placed all my hopes of what a father was on my birth father, once I knew that he existed. I had only a small collection of facts listed on my adoption papers that I used to assemble an image of him. These facts would also become things that I would use to define myself. His self-described interest in sports became an explanation for my athleticism. His Irish-Scotch ethnicity became an explanation for my alcoholism. I looked to the little I knew of him to understand myself, instead of to the father right in front of me. Perhaps my adoptive father had an unfair disadvantage in living with the ghost of my birth father. His every maneuver was evaluated in the context of how my birth father might have executed the same maneuver.

When I finally found my birth mother I finally found some truth about who my birth father really was. She wasn't able to tell me much. Thirty years had passed since they had seen one another and the time that they had spent together was brief. She was, however, able to tell me his name and that he had been a kind and fun-loving man. They had met in Plattsburgh, New York, her hometown and the town in which he had been attending college. The summer after I first spoke to my birth mother, I visited her in Plattsburgh and she drove me around town. Smirking, she gestured to a large old house adjacent to the campus and explained that it was the frat house that I was conceived in. Down the road just a ways, I pointed down an alley to an all but obscured doorway and told her that it was the bar I had picked out to visit the night before. She looked shocked and laughed. That was the very bar in which she had met my birth father.

 In the months after I found out my birth father's name, I can't tell you how many times I entered it into Google searches and genealogy databases. I contacted the university, directing my initial inquiries to the alumni relations. I received the following response:

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On Dec 3, 2010, at 12:02 PM, "Joanne N******" wrote:

Dear Ms Stephan,

Thank you for your contact with the SUNY Plattsburgh Office of Alumni Relations. I understand that you have requested that your contact information be forwarded to John Cameron, perhaps an alumnus of the class of 1979. For the safety and security of its alumni, the college's policy prohibits me from sharing confidential information with you. Generally, though, I could forward your contact information to the alumnus but I have encountered a road block in that process.

My colleague researched the name on the college's database to find an alumnus by the name of John Cameron, class of 1980, and that football and Upward Bound were activities in which he was involved. That is perhaps the same person you seek but I can't guarantee that with absolute certainty.

It is with regret that I must also inform you that the college's database indicates that John Cameron '80 was deceased in 1993. Please know that if this is indeed your birth father, and I would recommend you research that further if possible, I extend my compassion to you that your hope to reach him may not come to fruition.

I am sorry that I could not really help you, Ms. Stephan. Best wishes to you.

Sincerely,

Joanne N******

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After receiving this news, I was devastated. There would never be the reunion that I fantasized about. He would never offer me his love or protection. He would never even know what I looked like. I, on the other hand, refused to go on not knowing what he looked like. I believed that I should at least know what he looked like. It was the least that I could have of him. So, I contacted the university library and told them my story. I asked if there was anyway that they could check old yearbooks and find out if there was a picture of him contained within one of them. The library directed me to a specific branch called Special Collections, that would be better equipped to handle my inquiry. After some research, a very helpful librarian within that department informed me that there were no yearbook photos of my father, but they had tracked down a photo of the 1978 SUNY Plattsburgh football team, on which he was a player. Somewhere in that grainy sea of faces was the face of my father.

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From: Debra K***** 

To: astephanwrites@yahoo.com

Sent: Fri, December 17, 2010 3:06:25 PM

Subject: Re: Looking for John B. Cameron

Well, the photo we have of him is in his football uniform--you can't really see what he looks like.  Still looking...

Debra

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After some more research, the librarians determined that he might be player number 88. They zoomed in on that player and sent me a scan of the image. He was handsome and smiling and I studied his face in search of myself.

I excitedly sent the close-up of 88 to my birth mother for confirmation. Her response was both humorous and heartbreaking. She said that she was sorry, but 88 was not my father but that she wouldn't have minded to terribly if he was. I dishearteningly sent the librarian, Debra yet another email, sharing the news that we had not yet found our man. I felt guilty for continuing to trouble her with the search, but she was patient and eager to play a role in the solving of this mystery. 

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From: Debra K*****

To: Amanda Stephan <astephanwrites@yahoo.com>

Sent: Thu, February 24, 2011 1:56:16 PM

Subject: Re: Looking for John B. Cameron

Hello Amanda.  Our super-duper, overachieving photograph person has just scanned another photograph of a football player who might be John Cameron.  We do know that at some point Mr. Cameron wore that number, but we haven't yet found any photographs that match the numbers/names without full uniform and helmets on.  So here's another possibility for you to check.

This photograph is from August 1978, which would have been the fall 1979 team.

I hope this is him!

Debra

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It was him! I was finally able to look at the face that I had spent so many years struggling to illustrate in my mind. The irony is that it really didn't matter what he actually looked like. There was just a feeling of peace in really seeing him, instead of imagining him. The gift of his photograph compelled me to continue unearthing him so many years after his death. Using the obituary that I had found in the Delmar Spotlight, a small newspaper in upstate New York, I continued sending emails to anyone that might have known my father. The map of avenues I ventured down included emails to Bethlehem Central High School, where my father was a football coach and the University of South Carolina where he played football in the early Seventies. Neither email resulted in any new information and in both cases there were no photographs to be had. I also contacted the Metro Mallers, a semi-professional football team that he had been a player on. My email was circulated among their contacts and the man who had coached my father sent me an email.

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From:

"James B*****"

To:

astephanwrites@yahoo.com

Hi Amanda,

My name is Jim B***** and I was the owner & Head Coach of the Albany Metro-Mallers during the entire decade of the 80's.  John Cameron played defensive end for me.  He was a great guy and was well liked by the staff & all of his teammates.  John was always upbeat & full of fun.  He was also a competitor in the Scottish games. I believe he threw a ( I can't remember the Scottish name) - It was a large piece of sausage!  A kabor or something like that!  I heard years after his retirement from the Mallers, that he passed away in his sleep during a nap, from a heart attack.  I will try to see if there are any pictures of John, somewhere in storage.  Feel free to contact me.  my telephone number is(386) XXX-XXXX.

Yours truly,

 Jim B*****

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I wish I could say that I called Mr. B***** but I didn't. I was nervous about what I would say to him, almost as if he somehow represented my father. I did manage to get up the courage for one very important phone conversation with someone who knew my father. After numerous Google searches I tracked down the email address of my father's widow. She graciously replied to my email and even agreed to speak with me by phone. I remember the phone call being awkward, the kind of awkward that I foresee every phone call to be. It's this unnatural fear of phone conversations that leaves me helpless with phone anxiety on most occasions, sending calls to voicemail and returning messages impossibly long after they were left. I'm sure it must have been strange for her to speak of her long deceased husband, particularly to speak of him with the child he had with another woman. I felt disappointed with how little she told me about him during that conversation. She spent most of the call politely listening and telling me small bits of information about the children she had with John. It was as if she was protecting the sanctity of the memory of their family from an intruder. She was not mean, just distant and as time went on my half-brothers proved to be even more distant. At the close of the conversation she said she would send me some pictures and she did what she promised. Strangely, she sent only pictures of herself and her children with my father. She did not send one picture of him. I studied the pictures of them that my father's widow sent, hoping to find some 

similarity and waited for the ever elusive photo of my father. It never came and his widow stopped replying to me. 

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From: "kxxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com" >

To: astephanwrites@yahoo.com

Sent: Fri, June 10, 2011 10:00:06 PM

Subject: Form submission from [Words Matter] - [Contact me...] - [Advanced Form 1]

Subject:

John Cameron's sister Kathy

Message:

Hi Amanda I can't tell you how many times I have thought of you over the years. I'd love to talk to you. John told me the whole story and was heartbroken to have you adopted but your mother had all the say on that. You are lovely and your children and husband are lovely too. I am John's older sister by three years. I loved John so much, we were very close. I miss him all the time. He died of a stroke and I have run marathons and continue to raise money for the stroke association. I think it is a great circle of love for you to reach out to your father's family. I live in Mystic, Ct. I'd love to meet you and give you a hug from your dad through me. He loved you and I am sure his spirit has always been with you. He had a great spirit and a great laugh he was an amazing athlete. Anyway call me or email me back. My home number is 860-XXX-XXXX or cell 860-XXX-XXXX 

Lots of love your Aunt Kathy

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Not long after I had abandoned all hope of communicating with anyone in my father's family, I received an unexpected email. It was from my father's sister. She had somehow found the website that I maintained as a portfolio of my writing and had sent me a message. It meant so much to hear that my father thought of me, and that he might have liked to have me in his life. I was also thrilled that she had reached out to me. It was as if my dream of him appearing to rescue me had finally been realized, with his sister standing in as his replacement. I imagined visiting her in Connecticut and becoming like a daughter to her. Unfortunately, after this initial email, she too seemed to disappear. I never received any more contact from her, and she never sent the picture that I requested.

The mystery of my father doesn't feel like it has been solved, but it does feel like it has shrunk in size. It takes up a smaller space inside of me. I treasure the one picture of him that I was able to track down and can't help wonder why every other attempt at getting a picture of him resulted in nil. Why wasn't he in the college yearbook, or the yearbook for the high school he coached football at? Why would his widow send me pictures of herself and his kids instead of of him? Why would his sister send me her love and his but refuse to send a picture? I've started to believe that he, like my adoptive father, is meant to remain a mystery, maybe because mysteries make the monotony and struggle in everyday life more magical. This sense of magic is important and makes me believe that there is more to life than what we move through each day. I feel this magic when I consider the parallels between my life and what I know of my father's life as well. For many years my father had been working as a salesman and was apparently quite successful at it. Shortly before he died, when he was 35, he had an epiphany of sorts. He wasn't happy as a salesman and wanted to do something different with his life. He decided to go back to school and get his Master's Degree so that he could become a teacher. He wanted to work with autistic children. Like him, I have been compelled by dissatisfaction in the course my life has taken. At age 35 I applied and was accepted to a Master's Program. In the fall I begin classes to become a social worker. I only hope that I have a little more time than he did to understand who I am meant to be.

Getting Clean

I once read an Aldous Huxley quote in the forward of Brave New World in which he described chronic remorse as the most hapless of human emotions. Perhaps the catchiest line of the quote, the line that has stayed with me is, “Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”

Of course Huxley is referring to his remorse when it comes to Brave New World – his regrets when it comes to plot structure, character development and other literary features in the text of the novel. This type of remorse is one that I wish I could empathize with. I would love to digress on the features of my beloved novel and consider how I might do things differently and how that might have led to a million more people loving my book, in addition of the millions that found love for it just the way it was.

Unfortunately, my crimes are not literary and are not ones that would be the subject of heated discussion in a high school English class. My infidelity, selfishness, and drunken debauchery wouldn’t make for good scholarly debates. Quite the contrary, they are mistakes that people are uncomfortable acknowledging, and I am the most uncomfortable of those people. My mistakes are burned into me and the people that I love and are painful when exposed to the open air. My mistakes are weapons that are used to burn me when I become too confident or at ease with myself.

For this reason, it is difficult to heed Huxley’s advice and let my failings become the dust of former footsteps – dust easily disrupted by new wind and forgotten in the distance. My dirt is always there, on me and on the mirrors in which I search for myself.

I’m not alone – not the only human trying to get clean. We all struggle to shake off our former selves and the regrets that bind us to our past. Even when we are diligent in our efforts to get clean and stay clean, we collect dirt.

The analogy of cleanliness and spiritual fitness is an easy one for me to grasp because I clean people’s houses. Every week or two I am wiping down the same surfaces, mopping the same floors, and scrubbing the same toilets. The dirt is different dirt than the week before but really it’s all the same – settling in the same places and originating from the same sources – from the same patterns of behavior.

When I’m cleaning, I am always struck by the futility of it and I wait in fear for the day that these people are struck by it as well.  But that doesn’t happen. Instead, they tell me that a feeling of rejuvenation fills the air, mingling with the scent of bleach and PineSol. In the moments after everything has been cleaned, these people feel compelled to do the things that they’ve been meaning to do – to clean out their closets or go through those stacks of papers on their desk. It’s as if they had been weighted down and immobile by the layers of dust – that the grime had made things impossible to grasp or made them unwilling to grasp those things.

Obviously there is no return to that pristine state we started in. We will never be granted an eternal state of grace. However, every time that we work to get clean we are able to catch a glimpse of the self that we aspire to. If we don’t make an effort to get clean, we risk losing all of ourselves in what we accumulate. It’s what we manage to do in the moments of clarity that matter and will shine bright in the measure of our lives.

Sum of All Parts

You just have to accept all parts of yourself and the way they've come together. You must admire each crease and fold and smile at every scar. You mustn't crop your picture of yourself to fit it into another person's frame. I know this now.

I was sick for a very long time, trying desperately to change the body that I was born into. Each day I examined my body and did everything I could to beat it into another shape...another's shape. I starved and I shrank until I was almost nothing.

I changed my hair in the most drastic of ways. I wanted to distract you. I wanted you to see my hair, not my face. I wanted you to see my hair, not the parts of me that weren't right.

I covered my skin with tattoos to hide its flaws. The pictures that covered me revealed only what I wanted you to know of me. The tattoos were individual snapshots of beauty intended to transform me into something beautiful.

I made fun of myself.  If I hijacked the punchline there would be nothing left for you to say...

...and I drank...a lot...so that I didn't have to continue to imagine what you thought of me. I drank to escape my dissatisfaction with myself.

I was sick for a very long time and the drinking made the sickness spread. It traveled outside of this body that I so despised and began to affect the people closest to me. This compelled me into sobriety and sobriety compelled me into self-acceptance.

Getting sober isn't just about the refusal to give in to a need to drink or use drugs. It's also about uncovering what created that need in the first place. Most addicts will assert that they never felt comfortable with themselves, never felt at ease with who they were whether they were alone or in a group. They used substances to silence the voices of self-doubt and criticism that were constantly echoing within.

When I began my journey into sobriety, I had to closely examine myself, instead of turning away from my own reflection. I couldn't hide my personal truths from myself or from others. This is not optional, but a requirement if you want to get and stay clean. This demands that people like me must unlearn a lifetime of avoidance and suddenly become brave enough to love ourselves. It's like learning to befriend the monster under your bed.

This learning would be impossible were it not for the presence of a roomful of teachers, many roomfuls of teachers, who have walked before me in the path of sobriety. These people have experienced the same feelings and have similarly abused themselves in their battles with those feelings. Their survival is evidence that there is another way to live and that this way welcomes me...all aspects of me, no matter how diseased or ugly.

Today I am willing to accept that my perception of myself has never been accurate. I have always viewed myself through a tarnished lens. My reflection has always been presented in a carnival mirror, warped by low self-esteem. I must now trust the love and acceptance that I receive from those around me as a reflection of who I am. I must have faith that if I love myself I will be nourished and thrive.

I don't regret the past or wish to forget it. The tattoos and the scars that mark my body are a collection of lines that write the letters of my story. They are exclusively mine and that makes them magically unique, just as every part of my body is mine and mine alone. No one else bears the same marks that I do. No one else's feet have carried a body through the same twists and turns of life. No one else's arms have embraced the same people with the same love. No one else's hands have transcribed the same thoughts in the same way.  You just have to accept all parts of yourself and the way they've come together. You must admire each crease and fold and smile at every scar. Don't crop your picture of yourself to fit it into another person's frame. I know this now.

Music

I listen to my music really loud

loud enough to shake the frame

of my small car and

the frame of my body that

sometimes feels small.

And in that overwhelming sound

all the thoughts I want to fade do.

They disappear with a quickness

into the intrusive waves that swell

within my ears.

The music is deafening

in that way-

flooding the seashells on my head

into selective silence.

My self examination ceases-

propelled into the periphery

like my reflection in

a disrupted puddle.

I listen to my music really loud

so patterns of thought are broken

enough for me to move through them

into something else.

My mind moves involuntarily

like when I'm shaken at the shoulders

stirred from that transient state where

I've been staring at myself.

That brutal self study, you know

where you look at all your parts

with carnival mirror vision.

I listen to my music really loud

so that my autopsied body hops

off the examination table

unhindered by a heavy head.

Pie-Eating

In the 1980s there was a movie version of Stephen King’s book Stand by Me, a dark story of boyhood set in the 1950s. The plot centers on four adolescent boys in their quest to discover the body of another boy who had been struck by a train. The central character, Gordie LaChance appears to be fashioned after a young Stephen King. He is a writer whose stories lean to the dark side, infused with the feelings of the tragic loss of his beloved older brother as well as the emotional abuse and neglect he suffers at the hands of his father and most of the outside world.

In the movie Gordie tells one of these dark stories to his friends as they sit around a campfire in the woods. Gordie’s story is about an obese teenager nicknamed Lard who is ridiculed by the entire town in which he lives. When he walks by, grandparents and teenagers alike yell, “Boom Baba, boom baba, boom baba,” suggesting that he’s so fat that his footsteps rattle the earth. The incessant bullying pushes Lard to the breaking point and he hatches a plot to seek revenge at the town’s infamous pie-eating contest.

 

I can’t tell you how many times that the pie-eating scene from the movie Stand by Me flashes through my mind. It wouldn’t be a gross exaggeration to claim that once a day I think of Lard’s face, covered with blueberry pie filling. I hear him heave out, “Done! Done! Done,” as he plows through pie after pie, the sound of his stomach prophesizing the horror that is to come.

It’s an odd thing to think about – I know. It’s certainly not an image I delight in. My stomach recoils every time I think about Lard chugging castor oil and a raw egg before the contest commences. I shut my eyes as if I’m watching the movie every time Lard enters my mind, the remains of an astounding number of pies oozing from the folds of his neck fat. The chants of the crowd as they call out, “Lard! Lard! Lard!” and his response, “Done! Done! Done!” are an unwelcome noise in my head.

But it’s there – a lot. I guess this scene from this movie of my childhood has become part of me. I remember sliding that VHS in the tape player over and over again, consuming that movie the way Lard took in those pies – pausing only to fast forward through the commercials that were an unfortunate side effect of taping the Sunday Night Movie. There was something about Stand by Me that I latched on to – something real and unnerving that was different from the movies that I had watched up until that point.

Perhaps that younger version of me identified with Gordie, an outsider no matter where he went, even in his own home. I related to the silence he lived in and how he filled it with the stories he wrote in his head. I understood what it felt like to feel inadequate and what it meant to see more of your parents’ backs then their fronts.

However, this older version of me doesn’t think of Gordie. It’s not Gordie that my mind revisits with uncomfortable frequency. It’s Lard. I suppose that over the years I have come to identify more with Lard, than with Gordie. It’s not his obesity, or his desire for revenge that I can relate to. Nobody shouts Boom baba! Boom baba! Boom baba!  when I walk by. But I think I do feel like Lard sometimes as he barrels through pie after pie, not enjoying the process of taking them in but realizing that he will enjoy the outcome if he can see his plan through.

In the end Lard wins. He forces down every pie that they set before him. He fills his stomach with pie after disgusting pie until the castor oil and egg soup that awaits them in his gut forces them out. He vomits all those pies back up and his vomit triggers, “A complete and utter Barf-O-Rama,” according to Gordie. Everyone in the crowd throws up – throws up all over themselves and on one another and Lard sits back and is content. He has accomplished his goal. He has gotten his revenge. The discomfort that he endured was worth it.

I think about Lard because so many days feel like that pie-eating contest in Gordie’s story. Pies get placed before me, pies that I don’t want to eat, far too many pies for my stomach to handle but I force each one down. Pie – Done! Pie – Done! Pie – Done! I vow to finish every unwelcome pie because I know that if I stick to the plan one day the pies will stop coming (or at least won’t come so frequently). Someday  I will be able to sit back, like Lard, and enjoy the fruits of my labor…which hopefully, won’t be blueberries.