Meeting an older guy who looked like me

By LEONEL MARTINEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

I was almost 40 when my father came to visit from Texas. It was the first time I’d seen him face to face.

When I reached out to shake his hand, I braced myself for whatever emotion might seize me as I met one of the people who gave me life.

But I didn’t feel much of anything.

He was just some older guy who looked a lot like me.

Much has been made of the plight of children born to single-parent families. Studies show they are more at risk for everything from teen pregnancy to drug abuse. Obviously, every child should have a stable family. And good fathers are indispensable.

But one point can’t be emphasized enough: Being raised by a single mother does not automatically mean being doomed to a life of failure, poverty and hopelessness.

I know that children with absent fathers can succeed because I am one.

An only child, I was raised by my grandmother, grandfather and mother with my uncles and aunts pitching in as big brothers and sisters. My grandfather, an oak of a man with thick, calloused hands, became my father. And this team effort must have worked a little because I’m not dead or in jail, I have a college degree, and people give me money when I write.

That doesn’t mean it was easy growing up as a fatherless son. I always ached to go to those father-son banquets at school. And I hated those get-acquainted sessions at the beginning of the year, when the teacher would stand in front of the class and ask the inevitable question: “What does your father do?”

Alone in bed at night, I would pray for my father to come back and wonder why a God who was also a Father wouldn’t grant me just that one favor.

In my teens and 20s, I confided to my close friends about how I really felt, and I raged about my father. I couldn’t understand how anyone who called himself a man could abandon his firstborn son to a life that could be so harsh.

But in my 30s, when I got married and started a family of my own, things changed. Although we say we raise our kids, in a way they raise us.

When I sneaked into my kids’ room at night to kiss them on the cheek as they slept, their pudgy chests rising and falling, I realized that my father lost much more than I ever did.

And he could never get those years back.

I pondered these things when I first met my father more than 10 years ago.

I don’t remember all that we talked about, but the conversation was clumsy. At one point, I finally took him aside and told him that I did not resent him for not being around. Time had turned the rage into acceptance, then contentment.

I like where I am in life and I have a great family of my own. How could I hate the path that led me here, however crooked?

He glanced at the ground and told me that he tried to do right all those years ago. We talked some more, and afterward, we both felt better.

He was a pleasant enough guy, and my kids really liked him, but it doesn’t feel like he’s my father.

Maybe it never will.

Although the father-son bond may never be there, I'd like to think that one day I could be friends with the older guy from Texas who has my face.