What about your dad, mom?

This is a question I am getting more and more often from Ella lately. I resist the temptation to lie and say he's dead. That's not fair to her. I also resist the temptation to tell her the whole truth and risk scaring her. So, I just say that he's alive, but that I don't know him at all. That he chose to not be a part of my life when I was a little girl so he lost the opportunity to know me and therefore to know her and Max.

My father is someone that the older I get the less I understand. He abandoned our family when I was about 3 and 1/2, my brother was almost 7. It was Christmas of 1977. He was a man full of rage, bad choices, alcohol and a pathetic lack of responsibility. Collection of child support ($50/week) or getting him to own up to his legal responsiblity to provide healthcare always was a battle, usually involving long waits and court hearings, until finally my mother just gave up. I really REALLY thought that as I got older I might understand. Maybe when I had kids, it would make sense & I would see how something like that could happen.

I will admit when Ella was born, it was hard for me, it made my core ache to see my husband, her father, being so tender with her. Even then I would question. Its easy now, she's just a tiny baby. But over the years, 5 so far, I have watched their relationship grow. I have seen a man, ill equipped by nature to deal with a little girl, wipe away tears, scoop her up in excitement, whipser sweet things in her ear, diaper her, read her bedtimes stories, blow endless noses, teach her, show her, feed her, bathe her, console her. I have seen a man love a girl more than he loves himself. And love a girl in a way that was not taught to him, but instead was just in him.

My father must have been missing that gene. I know with absolutely no doubt that whatever could come to pass between Hung & I, Ella will never suffer any more than necessary for it. I know that Ella will never not know her father. That is the single greatest gift he can give her.

I have spent a lifetime doubting because of the damage done by a father who walked away. Never on a conscious level did I feel like less, but I still want love to be proven. I don't understand or trust that love sometimes just is. It has made me test people and relationships in ways that is not fair. To make others pay for something they have had no role in creating.

I know I am better person, a better woman, a better mother, a better wife, for not having been influenced directly by his hatefulness. Still, I will never know what Ella knows. The strength, love, and security that one can know when raised by a real man who is there no matter what. I am not saying that a mother isn't enough, she surely was, but there is still a hole. A hole that though I would not have wanted him to fill, it would have been nice to have a real father fill.

I also know how tremendously lucky I was to find and marry the man I did. His patience, devotion and constant steadiness have allowed me to finally open up my heart and trust that it will not end in heartbreak. I could not ask for a better husband or father for my children. I also have found that there is no explanation that will ever suffice for what my father chose to do to my brother and I. That some things in life are truly unforgiveable. And that it is ok for me to chose to live my life without him in it. It is ok for me to refuse to forgive or welcome him now, just because I have children. That this choice is a reflection, not on me, but on him. That it does not make me less of a person or bitter, empty or even sad. It simply makes me resolute. I know this decision is the right decision. No relationship between he and I would ever be real.

It is because I have children, that I will never be able to understand his choice. There is nothing and no one who could ever stand between me and Ella and Max. Absolutely Nothing. And there is nothing that a relationship with him could bring that would add to my life. My life is full, sweet, rich and strangely just as it should be. I owe him nothing. I owe myself more.