How to use this Page

And now, the rest of the story, or more specifically, how poetry, Google, and Craigslist helped me find the family I never knew I had.

In November of last year I wrote about finding my father's obituary. It was an odd feeling to find him but to not be able to talk to him. Thanks to the Internet and Google I was able to use some of the information in the obituary to get a pretty good idea of where my aunts were living but I didn't do anything with the information. They were old and I was scared. How do you suddenly drop into someone's life and announce yourself as a relative? What if they yelled at me? So I decided to do nothing. I'm good at that.

Along came National Poetry Month and I had the idea to explore my relationship with my father through poetry so that I could finally make peace with it all and then move on. After I had posted the first few poems I was contacted by Diane Main, a local teacher, who had read my poems and been moved by my story. And it turned out that this teacher had a passion for something of her own, genealogical research. She offered to see what she could track down about my father's family.

In no time at all she located my father's half-sister living only an hour away from. She had been given up for adoption by my grandmother but had the opportunity to correspond with her mother/my grandmother, before my grandmother's death. I sent my aunt a link to some pictures I had of my parents wedding and in the set was a picture of me as a toddler taken in front of the Christmas tree at the car dealership where my mother worked. My aunt recognized the car dealership because she had grown up her entire life living right next door to the owner! My mother, when asked, remembered my aunt's parents but had no idea that their adopted daughter was related to me.

You can read more of Diane's side of her research for me here.

Each night while I worked on my poems Diane worked on my family tree. She found one Webb after another. My aunts and uncles. My great grandparents. Suddenly I was surrounded by Webbs. But most of her research went backwards, toward the older and mostly dead Webbs.

That's when I thought of those names and cities and states I read in my father's obituary. And I finally felt brave enough to try and make contact. Thanks to Google, I found the phone number for both of my aunts. I called the one that I knew my mom had met. And yes, my heart was pounding, wondering what I was going to say. I ended up just blurting out, "My name is Susan and I'm Tommy's daughter."

It was a wonderful conversation. She'd had some health issues so her memory wasn't as great as I had hoped for back when my mom and her brother were married but she never once doubted me and she told me so many stories about my father's childhood, stories that helped me make sense out of the type of person he had become. When she ran out of stories about my father I asked her about her mother, my grandmother.

She paused and then said, "Well, she loved to write poetry."

That was when I burst into tears. There is no one on my mother's side of the family that has any inclination toward writing at all so this small piece of information touched me to the core.

The next day I was still feeling pretty brave so I called my aunt Kitty, the one mentioned in this poem. And again I was greeted with open arms. She was able to tell me even more about my grandmother and she stopped every so often to call out the name of another relative. The following day I called my father's widow Ruth and she was able to fill in a few more pieces, but not muc

Add a Comment

Here we are, at the end of National Poetry month and this is my last poem in the series about my father. I wasn't quite sure what would happen to me during this month but I knew that I would be changed by the experience because that's what writing does, it changes you. What I was hoping for was to find a way to finally heal, after all these years, and let go of any of the anger and frustration I have had at the man who was my father only in the biological sense. I'm tired of carrying all that hurt around. It's a heavy load and it slows me down. I've tried to let go of it all before and never had much luck but this time, things were different. I could tell that right from the start.

I'm going to pause right now to tell you this is a longish post but I'm also going to ask you to keep on reading. I think you'll be glad you did so when you get to the end. (Actually I will break it into two parts because it's a long story.)

These have all been first draft poems written late at night after I've forced myself to sit still and quietly revisit those old hurts. I don't have a lot of memories so as the month went on, it got a little more difficult to mine the past for new poems but somehow, every night, something bubbled up that needed remembering so it could be put to rest. I didn't revise the poems or sit on them overnight so often, in the morning, there were mistakes in grammar, bad line breaks, even a few facts I got wrong - all stuff that needed fixing. Normally the idea that I've been posting poems with mistakes in them would make me cringe but this time, I was okay with it because in the writing of every poem I've been feeling myself heal. There's a scar, there always will be, but I no longer feel defined by the fact that I grew up without a father. I am who I am because of the things I've done in my life, the choices I've made, and while I am far from perfect, I'm pretty happy with how I turned out.

For all of you who read and posted comments and sent me emails offering support on this emotional journey, I thank you. I could feel you all holding me up when I was trying so hard not to fall apart. And for those of you who read but didn't comment, I could feel you there too. Really.

So here's my final poem of the series with an afterward worthy of an after-school special movie.

FAMILY STORIES

I grew up a lonely, only child in a
neighborhood of other people's grandparents.

Imaginary friends kept me company in my attic bedroom
except for those few weeks during summer vacation
when grandkids came to visit
up and down the street.

What I wanted as much
or maybe even more than a father
was a sense of family,
of feeling like I belonged,
a chance to find myself
in the faces of my family.

My mom and I
were the only Webbs I ever knew
and I felt the absence of that family
nearly every day.
It didn't seem to matter to me
if they were good or bad
what mattered
was that they were someplace
that I wasn't and for the longest time
I translated that in my mind
to mean that I was less than everyone else.

I learned to tell stories by watching television
and rewriting the endings of my favorite shows
when I was supposed to be asleep.
I'd hide under the covers
and rearrange the scenes in my head
so the star of the show had to search for someone,
a missing daughter
a missing sister
a missing someone,
who always
turned out to be me.

All I ever wanted
was to write a

Add a Comment

WHAT YOU MISSED KNOWING ABOUT ME

I like meat and potatoes
better than fruits and vegetables
and I can't stand it
when the juice from the green beans
runs into my mashed potatoes.
I used to take a paper napkin
and roll it into long, skinny tubes
that I could use to separate my food

Books were always my best friend
and I could navigate our entire house
while reading
and never run into anything.

One summer I hammered nails
into the apricot tree,
hoping it would die
so no one would ever make me try to eat one again.

School came easy for me
and teachers liked me
because I always did my homework
and volunteered to answer
even when no one else would raise their hand.

Even though I was short
I ran the hurdles on the track team
and I ran fast.

I got booed
when I tried out
for chorus
and the school play
and the fashion show.

Dance lessons and piano recitals
were okay
but what I loved most was
roller skating and horses.
I was good at skating
and not so great at riding horses.

I've been afraid to go to sleep all my life.

When you add it all up
I was just an ordinary kid
but I was your ordinary kid,
and that's
who you missed
knowing.


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

ALONE AGAIN

In the day time
he worked at a gas station fixing cars and pumping gas
but in the evenings
he got cleaned up and left my mom
home alone
so he could go out dancing with other women.

How good he
was at hurting
both of us
by not being there.

I don't know what the final straw was
for her, the ice cubes or the angel food cake,
(not my stories to tell)
but one day while I was still growing in her belly
she said enough
and moved out, back to the safe cocoon of her parents home
across the street from his mother's house.

I wonder if he ever came to see his mother
and maybe glanced across the street
where his soon-to-be ex-wife lived,
with me still growing in her belly, waiting to be born
and thought about coming to see her,
trying to fix what was broken between them.

Probably not.



@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The first week of school
Mr. MacComber made us write our autobiography
even though most of us  hadn't done anything more exciting
than go to the state fair over summer vacation.

We went through each year of our life
trying to remember something significant enough
to be recorded for all time.

I wrote about my father not being there
and how his not being there
left a giant hole in who I thought I was
and who I thought was supposed to be.
I wrote about how I felt like a freak,
different from everyone else,
because I was the only person I knew
who had never met their dad.
And I wrote about how sometimes
thinking about him made me want to scream
and sometimes it made me want to run away
and try to find him.

Mr. MacComber gave me an A
because I was good at writing
but then he wrote a long note
telling me I might need to go see a shrink
because it sounded like I needed some help.

But he didn't say it like that.

He said I was mentally unbalanced
and he recommended psychiatric help.

The rest of the school year
Mr. MacComber kept watching me
like he expected me to fall apart
in front of him and the entire class.

I fell apart a little bit every day
but it was on the inside
where no one could see.


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

WHAT I WANTED HIM TO SAY

I should have called
I should have written
I should have done something
to let you know I was thinking about you.

I thought about you every day
and wondered if you were happy
and tried to imagine your smile.

When I saw other little
blond-haired blue-eyed girls
my heart always caught in my throat
because they reminded me
of you.

Every day on your birthday
I paused to think of you
and hoped you would feel it.

I'm sorry I missed so much of your life,
missed getting to know you,
missed hearing you call me daddy.

Most of all, I'm sorry I hurt you
and ever made you feel that
my not being with you
meant you weren't a good person.

That's what I wanted him to say
and I think I could believe it,
all of it,
unless he tried to tell me
how much he loved me
because then I'd know
that everything he said before
was just a lie.


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

IN MY DREAMS

Sleep rarely came easy to me
so I made up stories
about how my father traveling
the world doing important work
and how one day, soon, he would
come back to find me.
My audience of stuffed animals,
crowded around me on the bed,
listened intently and never disagreed
with my expectation of his return.

My mother came before she went to bed
and tucked me in real tight,
Snug as a bug in a rug, she said
leaving me trapped beneath the crisp, cotton sheets
unable to run from the bad dreams ahead,
the nightmare that he came back
in the middle of the night not to stay,
but to steal me away from my mother, my grandmother
the only life and family
I had ever known

I'd wake up screaming
and my mother would run to me
but I could never tell her
my dream.

I wanted him in my world.
I didn't want to go into his.


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

WONDERING

So much time wondering
about you,
who you were,
where you were,
and all that time
I was living
in the house across the street
from where you used to live
and I wonder,
did you ever
even once,
wonder about me?

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

LESSONS LEARNED

For a while, Teresa was my best friend
and we played at her house after school
because her mom didn't have a job.

We drank grape Kool-Aid
and ate pink and white animal crackers
sitting on the teeter-totter
in her backyard.

Teresa said her dad
was the best dad because
he taught her how to whistle
with a piece of grass between her fingers,
how to ride her bike with no hands,
and how to throw a curve ball
better than Brucie Gilbert
who lived across the street.

I let her think she had the best dad
but I knew better.
My dad gave me a super power ---

he taught me how to be invisible.


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

NO FORWARDING ADDRESS

I don't remember the story very well,
I don't even know if it was real,
maybe it was one of the ones I made up and told
so many times, that it became real to me.
In the story
someone came to the front door of my grandmother's house,
asking if I was home,
asking to see me,
and my mom told my grandmother
to keep me in the kitchen
hidden from view.

That story got mixed up in my mind
with one I know was true,
the one my mother told me happened before I was born,
the one where men came to the front door of my grandmother's house,
asking for my father
and my mother saying
he wasn't there,
he was gone,
and she didn't know where.

That's what she told
those important men in suits
who needed to find my father,
needed to find him fast,
because of something he had done wrong.

All she had to give them was a list
of the people they invited to their wedding
less than a year before,
the only record she had, names and addresses of
my father's friends, my father's family
his mother, my grandmother
his sister, my aunt
his family, my family.

By the time I was old enough
to ask important questions
it was too late,
she couldn't remember where anyone lived
where he might have gone
and my father,
his family
my family,
was nowhere to be found.


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

CONSUMED

It was just a small fire
smoldering
on the kitchen table when
she came home from work.

It was just a small box
of photos, school friends,
kept on the closet shelf,
cherished mementos
from my mothers childhood
melting into nothingness
on the Formica table.

It was just a small spark
of jealously, uncontainable,
for him.

It was just
a
small
fire.



@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

THE GIFT

Seven
one dollar bills
plucked from a tired wallet,
my father's only gift,
when forced,
in family court.


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

10 THINGS I WISH I KNEW ABOUT HIM

His favorite color
What kind of music he played on the radio
The cologne he wore
His strengths and his weaknesses
What kind of car he drove
Something he was proud of
Was he a morning person or a night owl
Something that made him laugh
What did he want really want to be when he grew up

Did he ever regret not meeting me?


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

RING RING

Sometimes the phone would ring
and I would run to answer it but by the time I got there,
the line was dead.

Pressing the receiver against my ear
I pretended it was my dad
calling to check in on me while he was gone.

Curled into a ball
on the blue and white linoleum tiles in my grandmother's kitchen
I twisted the cord around my finger,
answering make-believe questions
while the dial tone droned in my ear like a tired bee.

My grandmother caught me once
and told me to quit playing games
that the phone was not a toy
but still, each time it rang,
I raced to be the first one
to pick it up
and say hello.


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

BLOODLINES
 
From my mother I get
my blond hair and blue eyes
my lack of height
my intense desire to avoid confrontation
at all costs, to give in to others
and make the world smooth out right
so people will like me

We share a love of animals
waffles smothered in maple syrup
and after many years, at last,
a joy of reading
but politics and religion
often reside in opposite corners
of our universes

I've been told I shouldn't let it matter
yet how can I not wonder
about my genetic inheritance?

People don't realize
how much it matters to a child
to know where they came from,
to contemplate what bits of nature might
have shaped the person they've become
even if where they came from
wasn't a very nice place.

It's the difference between walking gingerly through life
unsure when you are on solid ground
and marching forward with confidence
that you can take whatever the world
decides to throw your way.



@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

NEW MATH

dad plus mom equals
happy family, not always,
sometimes less is more


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

WHERE AM I?

The only pictures I've ever seen
are from their wedding.
My mother looked like a princess
with her tiny waist
in her lace dress
smiling her perfect smile for the camera.
My father wore a white jacket that
hung loose on his thin frame
his hair cut so short
that his big ears stuck out
like a car with both doors open.

My mother kept the pictures
in the pink box with her wedding dress
tucked in the corner of my grandmother's attic.
She never told me not to look
but I always waited for her to go to work
before I crept upstairs, found the pictures,
and spread them out until
I was surrounded
by my father's face.

His hair was Cherokee black
his eyes dark
and when I looked at him
I could find nothing of myself to claim.

I wanted that black hair
growing long down my back
like a rope connecting me to him.
I would have even taken his big ears,
just to help him recognize me,
when he came home.


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

SUNDAYS

For church I wore my Sunday uniform -
a lacy dress my grandmother made
puffed out with white tulle petticoats
that almost kissed my nose when I sat down
short white gloves
patent leather shoes
and ankle socks edged in lace.

As the bells called us to gather
I watched fathers guide mothers into pews,
a hand placed low on the back,
then the children filed in,
one by one,
sandwiched between two towers of love.

It made my heart ache
to see a father
share a hymnal with his daughter
pass a coin from his pocket
and let her drop it in the plate on her own.

I held my mother's hand
as she found her own place to sit
away from the families, and the people,
who would frown at her
for being divorced.

I never thought about what it must have been like for her
seeing all those happy families
singing for their salvation.

I only thought about me.
It was always about me.

Each week
the service ended the same way.
I pretended to whisper The Lord's Prayer
but really
I prayed a different prayer of my own.

My father, who isn't here,
Tommy is your name.
When will you come?
When will you come?
When will you come?
for me?


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

MORE LIES I TOLD

In 4th grade,
hungry for praise of any kind,
I volunteered to memorize
the preamble to the constitution
practicing over and over
until I could recite the whole thing
without once looking at the words
scribbled on my hand.

My teacher sent me to another class
to show off how her teaching skills
made me good at memorizing.

One deep breath, then
I recited each word, smooth and clear,
pausing to make sure I didn't trip over
"domestic tranquility" or "posterity"

Finished, the class clapped
then the teacher asked my name,
smiling when I told her,
smiling the kind of smile you smile
when something makes you feel good inside.

Any relation to Tommy Webb?

My heart pounded
when the name we never spoke at home
was blurted out in a room full of people.
My father's name.
The father I didn't know.
The father I felt sure
held the very answer to who I was
or who I was supposed to be.

But I was good at more than memorizing.

Trained for years to pretend
there was no such person as Tommy Webb
and if there was,
he had no hold on me,
I shook my head and said,

No. No relation at all.


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

LIES I'VE TOLD

My dad is a movie star
pretty soon he'll come get me
we'll go to Hollywood
and I'll be on his TV show.
Want my autograph?

He's a spy
an astronaut
a famous scientist working on a cure for Polio
really.

I can't come to your party
because my dad is taking me
to the zoo.
We always go to the monkey house first.

Right now my dad is asleep
so we have to play at your house.
(Can't you hear him snoring?)

My dad travels a lot.
but he taught me how to tie my shoes
ride a bike
and how to speak Pig-Latin
so we could share secrets just between us.

Last week he gave me his lucky silver dollar
and promised to buy me a pony
for my birthday.

He'll be home soon
and you can ask him yourself.



@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved

Add a Comment

Will Blood Tell?

I can count the stories told about my father
on just one hand
and none of them have happy endings.
He broke my mother's heart, her trust,
yet his blood runs in my veins.

I know the ways I am most like my mom
but what do I get from this man
I do not know?

As a child, every night after dinner,
my grandfather and I would play Go Fish
at the big dining room table.
I liked to straighten the cards into neat little piles
on Nana's white lace tablecloth
while Papa chewed on a toothpick and
contemplated his next move.

The day he caught me cheating
he put the cards away
without saying a word.

All night long
he wouldn't speak to me
and the shame I felt sat in my stomach
like a lead cannonball
until I cried myself to sleep.

For days afterward I wondered
what it meant that I would
jeopardize my grandfather's trust
to cheat at a silly game of cards.

Even now, I find it hard to see the best in me
so when they say
blood will tell
the truth of evil
which cannot be concealed
I am frightened
of the sleeping monster I imagine that waits within me
the monster that makes me wonder
if I am more like my father
than I might want to know?


@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
    All Rights Reserved


Look for the sure-to-be giant round-up of all the Poetry Friday posts at The Book Aunt.

Add a Comment