Mis(ter)Conception

When Kathy was young and trying to escape a home that had caused so much pain, she met a young man. He was from West Virginia but working in Ohio. He was ruggedly handsome, dark, but highly intelligent. For about fifteen minutes he made for a pretty good distraction. As suddenly as he appeared into her life, he went back to the hills of West Virginia. He wanted to take her back with him but Kathy could never leave her metropolitan roots for a single-wide trailer nestled in the middle of nowhere. That is the way she pictured his homestead.

Kathy was now alone and pregnant. He had chosen his place in the backwoods, hill country. He must have lived really deep in the holler because I didn’t see him until I was thirteen years old. He spoke this foreign language that I was unable to understand. I think it was called “Hillbilly-eez.” My biological father was a complete and total stranger to me. I recognized, however, the profound resemblance between us.

I spent one week each summer with him, his wife and my younger sister and brother. We looked like a family. We all shared the same dark hair and almost ebony eyes. For that one uncomfortable week each year we acted like the perfect tv family, all polite and smiling. But there was just no substance to our time spent together. Maybe because we did speak in different tongues. We had no memories to share. Those memories that bind a family. They had their own only family and I had mine.

After my first failed marriage, my biological father offered me a place to live. I had longed to be a part of his family for my first thirteen years. Years filled with angst, yearning for a sense of belonging. Seeking a relationship with a man I hardly knew, I moved to West Virginia and fell in love. I would like to say that I fell in the love with the man who helped to create me. With no memories to share, we were as we had always been, strangers. We did come to share one thing. We both loved West Virginia.

Even though my fantasies were more satisfying than reality, I have made my life here in West Virginia. I have not seen my father in quite some time. I have no ill feelings for him. How do you feel ill towards a complete stranger? I am thankful that our relationship brought me to the place I call home. My father gave me the gift of living, laughing and loving in the state of “Almost Heaven!”