Father's Day

My parents separated when I was in fourth grade, the result of his night of drinking and wrapping my mom's car around a telephone pole. I only visited him once in the hospital, but once was enough considering he had bolts coming out of his knee and a gory, nasty wound on his forehead.

After the separation, the man who was my father disappeared and was replaced by a cold, sadistic human being. The same person who wanted to take my sister and I with him everywhere we went, suddenly lost interest in his children. We became luggage in his new life of revolving women, alcohol, and drugs. Eventually, he settled with Dawn, a friend from his years of high school. Dawn had three children, Chris, Karen, and Jenn, who became the replacement children. In fact, Jenn and I not only share the same name (though spelled differently), we also share the same age.

Custody was arranged through the court system, Wednesdays after school, every other weekend, and one Sunday a month. In the beginning, it was a strange adjustment but went smoothly. Wednesdays consisted of a trip to the library and dinner, with an occasional trip to his parents house. The more involved in his relationship with Dawn, the more he ignored his children though. Eventually, our Wednesday library trips were replaced with him not picking us up. Then the Sunday visits abruptly ended.

He still wanted us every other weekend, though why I'm not completely sure. Every weekend became the same, Friday nights consisted of buffalo wings or Chinese food, both made my sister extremely sick. I lost track of the number of times I had to call Momma Dukes at three in the morning to ask what I should do for her. Of course, my mom felt trapped seeing that our car was smashed into a telephone pole and she had no money to replace it.

Saturday and Sunday consisted of Diddy and I caring for ourselves, occasionally stealing the change from his truck to walk to Wawa to purchase food for the weekend. There was food in Dawn's house, but it consisted of stale cereal, leftovers from Friday night, flat soda, and chunky milk. We would live off of candy bars and soda during the weekend. We couldn't even shower at his house, since there was a hole in the bathroom door the size of the door and no clean towels. Eventually, it would be Sunday evening and we could finally go home to our loving mother who always had a huge meal cooked for us, clean towels, and our own beds to sleep in. Diddy and I would often make it a race to see who could get to the shower first. Momma Dukes always made sure that everything in the house was perfect for our return, because she knew the horrors we had to endure.

Nobody listened to her complaints about the environment she had to send her children to for the weekend, time after time, judges would favor Dave's side in court. As time passed, I got more and more frustrated and depressed at the thought of going to his house for the weekend. We watched him snort drugs on the side of the house, become annihilated with alcohol to the point where he couldn't even say his own name right, and even practically having sex with Dawn on the couch. Countless times, he would have a beer while driving us to or from his house.

After three years of painful weekends, I was on the verge of a breakdown. Of course, I held all of my emotions in because I was a conflicted, naive teenager who didn't know what to do. Going into seventh grade, he planned a vacation to Maryland with us. It was supposed to be a week of vacation on the beach in Ocean City, Maryland. My mom made sure we had everything we would need, including plenty of food and snacks (just in case). The night before the trip, she realized she had forgotten to purchase sunscreen for us, so she asked me to call Dave to ask him to pick some up for the trip.

What was supposed to be an easy phone call, turned into a four hour screaming match between the two of us. At barely 13 years old, I had to listen to the man who was supposed to be my father scream at me that my mother was a whore, I was unwelcome to come on vacation, he always loved my sister more, I was a mistake, etc. Nobody wants to hear this from their father, especially a teenager.

Instead of going on the trip, we stayed home. It was the best vacation of my life. Momma Dukes made sure that we had the best time at home, making everyday that week as special as the previous day. At that moment, Momma Dukes took on the permanent responsibility of mother and father.

Over the course of the next few years, he came in and out of our lives. The straw that broke the camel's back was my sixteenth birthday. After being separated for almost six years, my mother was not financially at a point to file for divorce. A few days before my birthday, I went to Dave's parents house (they insisted on taking us for his visitation weekends) where the delinquent showed up. He sat down with me for dinner, filled my head with thoughts of fixing our relationship, and asked what I wanted for my birthday. Seeing that the man hadn't bought me a gift in years, I was actually caught off guard. I told him that I didn't know what I wanted, which he told me was okay because he found the perfect gift. He was going to have it mailed to my house, but it would probably arrive a few days after my birthday.

My gift? On my sixteenth birthday, he filed for divorce. What a gift!

I was crushed. Not at the thought that they were finally going through with the divorce, but at the thought that it was so malicious and calculated. Was this his plan all along? How much effort and planning had he put into this "thoughtful" gift?

We stopped speaking for years, which really didn't change anything. It wasn't until I graduated from Rowan, had my own apartment, and began working my fantastic job at my district that I actually began speaking to him. He hadn't changed much, he was still the coward that I always new him to be. Dave talked a big game, how much he missed me, his regrets on losing so much time in my life, missing my graduations from high school and college, how he was so proud of me. The typical stuff you would expect to hear from a man who had vanished from your life for over a decade.

After almost two years of building on a relationship, putting in all of the effort and getting nothing in return, I had enough. I would call him only to get his voicemail with no return call from him. I would show up at his house occasionally when I was in the neighborhood and he wouldn't answer the door, even though I could hear him in the other room. We would go to his parents house and he wouldn't show up, even after his parents and siblings would call to tell him that we were around.

This past April, I had enough. I wrote a very long, nasty letter expressing everything to him, I even had the Bermanator edit the letter for me. At the very last moment, I decided to not send it. Instead, my sister called him and laid into him about how I was feeling. It resulted in him calling moments after their phone call, once again with his typical reaction of how much he loved and missed me. The phone call resulted on a positive note, we made plans for lunch and arrangements for phone calls in which we would take turns calling each other. He reaffirmed for me that he would call me later in the week with plans for lunch.

The phone call never came. There was no lunch later that week. Dave has not called me once since our conversation. Instead, I would call him every couple of days, for a five minute conversation. He would spend most of the conversation talking about Dawn, "their" children, and his grandchildren. I haven't called him in over a month, since his birthday. I'm waiting to see how long it takes for him to actually pick up the phone to call.

So here I am, once again, in the same exact predicament as I was for countless years, spending Father's Day with no "father." Though this year is a little different, at least I have not one but two future father-in-laws who actually treat me like family. Instead of spending the day with my own father, I will be having dinner with Rachel's father, who adores me...which definitely makes me smile.