I Finally Did It!
Well! I am nervous and I have no idea how well received this will be or if/when I get a response. I wrote a card to my biological father, Harry Trebilcox.
I think about it often enough that I should have written something ages ago. And time is not quite on my side. He is 74 years old... I have no idea of his general health. What if he is dying? What if he has Alzheimers? I have no idea and no way of knowing. It really, I guess, hasn't been my business. But he is - like it or not - part of me. He has not been a part of my life in any active father sort of way; he hasn't really even been in my life. He wanted a child quite badly in the mid-60s when they began trying (there were a lot of road blocks on the path to conception, both figurative and literal, so that is why I was born in the late 60s, not mid). But this is a man who was born in the 30s. Ouch. That is quite a long time ago. I wonder how well he recalls World War II? My grandfather fought in WWII (I recall that Grandma said he was stationed on Okinawa) but where my mother was born in 1941, Harry was born in 1932 - quite a bit earlier and enough to likely recall more than the air raid sirens and practicing hiding under the desk, which seems to be the extent of a 4-year-old's memory of that. Ray was born in 1944 so has no recollection of World War II and its depredations.
Anyway, I was thinking about it this morning after watching "The Sixth Sense", in the scene near the end, when the little boy, Cole, is telling his mother how Grandma likes to visit and talk to him. Oh, how I wish I could do that. I don't know that I would want to talk to every single lost soul with something to discuss, but to talk to my Pop-pop would mean the world to me. I can't do that - I don't even know where, exactly, he is buried, but I can extend the olive branch, as it were, to Harry and maybe find out (on a non-emotional level) family history. I also want to ask about family medical history, since I don't have a lot to go on.
So I wrote the card, asked if the four of us could meet somewhere in Dallas, PA (they live there) at a tea shop or a diner or something to just see each other. Have a polite conversation. Catch up on 20+ years of no knowledge of what the other person has done. I had in my head a thousand things to say, but shorter is better (like less is more) and so I kept it very generic, didn't mention careers, hobbies, my parents, anything about not having kids, or anything too personal. It's just an invitation.
The fact is, genetically speaking, half of me is from him. I think it is important to see the genetic other half of me. I certainly need to know any existing medical history as a benchmark for what I should look for. I want to know my family's history. I would not mind seeing Harry and Donna and I would like for them to meet Luis. I have not gotten to the point of omitting the fact that we are not legally/religiously married or just saying that it is a commonlaw marriage (most people are wholly unaware that New Jersey has no commonlaw marriage, surprisingly enough. This state doesn't recognise it. (You would think I lived in Louisiana, or some other buckle belt state...) Anyway, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it. I won't lie about it if asked directly, but I may not bring it up.
My feelings about children are what they are and again, I won't lie if it comes up, but I may not go out of my way to comment that I understand why certain species eat their young! (While that brought out a lot of laughter in Jack over at Car 69, somehow I don't know enough of Harry's sense of humour to know if that would deadpan, be outright frowned upon or received the right way and maybe he'd laugh. Oddly, though, I don't recall Harry as a smiling, happy, laughing, extroverted person. I may not look a lot like my mother, but I am very much her child in personality.
Still, the reader, the scientist, the music appreciator, that is all from Harry, not my mother. My mother likes science and occasionally reads, and she likes music. I love sciences - almost all of them - I absolutely HAVE to read, and I do not live life in any way, shape or form without music. That is much more Harry than my maternal side. Oh, and I was an artist. I'm not now, but I was. He is/was a painter as well as a musician.
Oops, I need to be at the squadhouse in four minutes for Parsippany Day!
I think about it often enough that I should have written something ages ago. And time is not quite on my side. He is 74 years old... I have no idea of his general health. What if he is dying? What if he has Alzheimers? I have no idea and no way of knowing. It really, I guess, hasn't been my business. But he is - like it or not - part of me. He has not been a part of my life in any active father sort of way; he hasn't really even been in my life. He wanted a child quite badly in the mid-60s when they began trying (there were a lot of road blocks on the path to conception, both figurative and literal, so that is why I was born in the late 60s, not mid). But this is a man who was born in the 30s. Ouch. That is quite a long time ago. I wonder how well he recalls World War II? My grandfather fought in WWII (I recall that Grandma said he was stationed on Okinawa) but where my mother was born in 1941, Harry was born in 1932 - quite a bit earlier and enough to likely recall more than the air raid sirens and practicing hiding under the desk, which seems to be the extent of a 4-year-old's memory of that. Ray was born in 1944 so has no recollection of World War II and its depredations.
Anyway, I was thinking about it this morning after watching "The Sixth Sense", in the scene near the end, when the little boy, Cole, is telling his mother how Grandma likes to visit and talk to him. Oh, how I wish I could do that. I don't know that I would want to talk to every single lost soul with something to discuss, but to talk to my Pop-pop would mean the world to me. I can't do that - I don't even know where, exactly, he is buried, but I can extend the olive branch, as it were, to Harry and maybe find out (on a non-emotional level) family history. I also want to ask about family medical history, since I don't have a lot to go on.
So I wrote the card, asked if the four of us could meet somewhere in Dallas, PA (they live there) at a tea shop or a diner or something to just see each other. Have a polite conversation. Catch up on 20+ years of no knowledge of what the other person has done. I had in my head a thousand things to say, but shorter is better (like less is more) and so I kept it very generic, didn't mention careers, hobbies, my parents, anything about not having kids, or anything too personal. It's just an invitation.
The fact is, genetically speaking, half of me is from him. I think it is important to see the genetic other half of me. I certainly need to know any existing medical history as a benchmark for what I should look for. I want to know my family's history. I would not mind seeing Harry and Donna and I would like for them to meet Luis. I have not gotten to the point of omitting the fact that we are not legally/religiously married or just saying that it is a commonlaw marriage (most people are wholly unaware that New Jersey has no commonlaw marriage, surprisingly enough. This state doesn't recognise it. (You would think I lived in Louisiana, or some other buckle belt state...) Anyway, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it. I won't lie about it if asked directly, but I may not bring it up.
My feelings about children are what they are and again, I won't lie if it comes up, but I may not go out of my way to comment that I understand why certain species eat their young! (While that brought out a lot of laughter in Jack over at Car 69, somehow I don't know enough of Harry's sense of humour to know if that would deadpan, be outright frowned upon or received the right way and maybe he'd laugh. Oddly, though, I don't recall Harry as a smiling, happy, laughing, extroverted person. I may not look a lot like my mother, but I am very much her child in personality.
Still, the reader, the scientist, the music appreciator, that is all from Harry, not my mother. My mother likes science and occasionally reads, and she likes music. I love sciences - almost all of them - I absolutely HAVE to read, and I do not live life in any way, shape or form without music. That is much more Harry than my maternal side. Oh, and I was an artist. I'm not now, but I was. He is/was a painter as well as a musician.
Oops, I need to be at the squadhouse in four minutes for Parsippany Day!
Comments