Lost and Found

After a long hiatus called life….we are back and we missed you!

Here’s our latest:

BY KCY

The other day my five-year-old asked me why I didn’t see my daddy that much when I was a kid. “Did he get lost, Mommy?” She asked.

We left my dad when I was eight going on nine, an impressionable age. You’ve heard my story before. I didn’t see him again until I was fifteen. One day, he just showed up in the city we were living. After seven years, he showed up.

But he didn’t show up the way I thought he would. I’d imagined him to be still living in the same condo we had left all those years, driving that same bus route he’d driven through the Bronx projects. Worst case scenario, he was remarried. Even worse case scenario, he had a new family.

I’d been utterly unprepared for the worst case scenario yet: he was homeless.

My amazing superhero father was homeless.

He wasn’t dirty. He didn’t push a shopping cart. He didn’t even carry a bag.

He was clean, but he combed his hair with a fork. His running shoes had holes in them.

He hitchhiked and “slept outside under the stars.”

He’d left his life in the Bronx for a new nomadic one. He spent his days traveling to different little cities in Mexico, taking the odd construction job, here and there. Sleeping in the wilderness.

He’d left the life I’d known him to have behind. He’d left our life behind.

I guess I couldn’t blame him. After all, we’d left him first. Gone were the days we spent eating icees while the subway screeched above us on those humid, Bronx nights. Gone were the snowman wearing my dads scarf and hat from the park across the street from our co-op. Gone were the days of my innocence.

That day, seeing him when I was fifteen years old, I’d pitied him. I’d thought he was lost, like my daughter asked me all those years later after his death.

The truth of the matter, was I was lost. I’d lost my childhood. I’d lost my father. I’d lost my happiness.

Instead of recognizing this, I lashed out at him, demanding he leave my life forever.

So, he did.

Until I found him this time, ten years later.

I didn’t tell my daughter any of this when she asked this seemingly harmless question all these years later. Instead I said, “yeah, he was lost. But it’s okay...”

“It’s okay, Mommy,” she interrupted. “It’s okay, Mommy, because sometimes you get lost, but then you can find your way. Right, Mommy? This is what happened to your daddy. He got lost but then he found his way, and he wasn’t lost anymore.”

“Yes, hon, that’s right. We all get lost at some point in time. Even Mommy. It’s okay, though, because sometimes you just have to get lost in order to find out what really makes you happy in life,” I said, thinking of my own experiences.