My mother left my father when I was just a toddler. After that, I met my father only once at twelve; we corresponded briefly and then I didn’t hear from him again until I decided to search him out when I was 38 years old.
I found him; we arranged to meet. It was a very strange time. We did not speak about what had kept him out of my life for most of it; about why he had never chosen to find me, except for this cryptic exchange:
One evening during that first visit, I went outside to sit on the front step to smoke. My father, and the daunting creature he married, lived in a little clapboard house in a rather poor part of town.
As I smoked, my father came and joined me, sitting himself down beside me on the step in companionable silence. After a time, I said, “that rhododendron is lookin’ kinda scraggly. Maybe you should water it.”
There was more silence.
Then my father said, “Anything in my care is gonna have to be pretty tough.”
Silence.
I replied, “I know.”
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