2. Finding Out His Name

I was around seven years old when I began to ask question about my real father. My mother had divorced her second husband Jim (the first person I called Dad) and we had moved in with a new man, who would later become my stepfather till this day.

It was then when I realized that dads were not permanent. They could leave, and new ones could replace them. And I knew that my dad wasn't always my dad. So This is when I started to ask questions. I asked my mom who my real dad was. She had told me that me and my sister had the same dad and that he was gone. He lived in England. She was referring to her first husband. I remember when I looked at my birth certificate and it said the dad was her second husband. This is when I got confused. My mother said my dad was one man, but the certificate said it was another. But I left it alone.

It wasn't until I was fourteen that things really got weird. And I mean weird. I was bored at home one day (we lived in the country and during the summers it could get very boring for a kid) and I was sitting in my room organizing a shelf that had all my books on it. I grabbed my baby book (everyone has one of these from when they were born). I was flipping through the pages looking at my pictures and seeing random things like hair from my first haircut. I turned the page and saw a family tree. It had my name at the top, and then the mother's side and the father's side right under it. My mother had put her name and all of the close family on her side. Nearly every line was full.

The father's side was a different story. The line for the father had been covered in white-out. Over it was my dad's name Jim (her second husband). I remembered back to when she said who my dad was and thought to myself "what if I scratched the white-out off?" So curiosity took over. I took a paper clip. I bent it straight and began lightly scratching off the white out. It slowly-but-surely came off and I could see the ink underneath it spelling out a name.

The first letter of the first name showed. And to my surprise, it was not a letter I was expecting to see. I remember I was so excited (not in a good way) that I threw the book down, ran to door of my room. I opened it and ran out looking for my mom. I yelled for her throughout the house until I found her. She was in her room taking a nap. I think she had a migraine that day. I said nothing. I just ran back to my room. The purpose was to know where she was so she would not catch me in the act of scratching. I knew something was up now, and I had to get to the bottom of it.

I began scratching some more and letter after letter began to uncover. When I was finished, it was a name I had never heard or seen. Scott was the first name. Her first husbands name was Hugh, and her second was Jim. So something wasn't adding up here. I'd never even heard of this guy. My emotions were running high. I was crying, and I felt like I was having a panic attack or something. My heart was beating to where I could feel it pulsate throughout my body. It was time to get some explaining. I had turned my emotions to anger.

I opened my bedroom door and screamed for my mother. She finally came into my room to see what was going on. I broke down in tears and demanded an explanation for what I was seeing in my baby book. I was screaming at the top of my lungs. She started yelling back at me as if I did something wrong. I guess uncovering her past was wrong. She told me that the name was no one, and that my dad was still who she said he was. She had supposedly written this other name in there on accident or something.

My step dad Chris walked in the house and heard the yelling and screaming. He came to my room. Once I saw him I started screaming to him asking if he knew who this guy was in my baby book. Apparently my mom never told him either because he started to question my mother as well. Then all hell broke loose. My mom went hysterical for the moment, grabbed my baby book, and ripped out the family tree. She ripped it in several pieces and went out of the room. My stepdad and I followed her. She told me to get to my room. I did. Then after some commotion from my parents arguing, she came back in blaming me. She was accusing me, at fourteen, of trying to ruin her marriage with Chris. She yelled at me for causing them to fight. It was suddenly all my fault. I'm already emotional for finding out my dad is a different person, and then to top it off I'm getting this thrown at me. What a great way to build the self-esteem in a young man. Then weight of the world was on my shoulders that evening. The real reason for the blame was simply because my mom got caught in a lie. She had never even told Chris about her past. She had kept it a secret from everyone but the few people that were involved. Those people will come out at a later date.

My mother threw that page away. But I had memorized every letter of that name. So throwing it away just got rid of the physical proof. I had it in me. I knew that someday when I had the tools, resources, and enough freedom to do it, I was going to find out who my real dad was.