I remember when my mother first showed me a photo of him online. He looked good. After studying the picture for a while I could start to see a little bit here and there of how he could be me. I was skeptical at first, and you read my story you would know why. My mother had a tendency of keeping things from me. She assumed it was for my own good. But I think it was more about hiding her past than it was for protecting me.
You'd be surprised what Google can do these days. You can find out a lot about a person once you know who they are by name. Once I had the three Scotts down to one, I began to dig. I wanted to know what he was like before I contacted him. Was he a nice guy? Was he a family man? Or did he leave because he hated kids? These questions among hundreds of others were on my mind. As I began to uncover and read about him, things about him started to come up that upset me. There were also things that made me angry.
The first thing I read about was that he had owned a business. Had as in past. He sold it a few years prior. I was a large limousine company. It was located in the Dallas area. He was very successful. That was one of the many questions that I had. Was he some poor inconsiderate man who left everything behind only to find himself lost? Or could he be rich beyond your wildest dreams? Both turned out to not be the case, but he was successful. He also owned a few magazines that were all family oriented it seemed. He seemed to be doing well.
I will admit that it was kind of hard at first to see this. My mom had to spend her life raising me at the expense of a man that was selfish and wanted to skip fatherhood to reach his goals. He wanted to please himself. That is what it seemed like to me when putting the pieces together. Although the thought of money did cross my mind, I wasn't making this journey about money. Yeah I thought sometimes to myself that "oh maybe he will want to help me out with school or with life since he is loaded." Those childish ideas did come to mind. But my true self took over. I am NOT the type of person to ask someone for a handout. I wasn't raised that way. I was brought up to work for what I want. Those thoughts were simply the same as thinking of winning the lottery. Besides, it wasn't money that he owed me, it was time. All I wanted was time to get to know him and for him to get to know me.
My intentions of meeting this man were to learn. I was hoping at the most that he would accept me. I read so many stories about people who reunited with their lost families. And I tried to only read the good stuff. I was hoping for a Reunion like the ones I read about, where the families are of total acceptance and would bring me in with arms wide open. If you’re reading this and are thinking of looking for your real families, please do not set your standards this high. It will only get you hurt. It hurt me all the plenty. I wanted what most would call a fairy tale. He obviously left for a reason, and I don't think it was to jump right back into my life twenty two years later. No sir.
I started reading about his family. This is when I found out about his wife and son. I got excited. I don't know why, but it was kind of cool to know that I had a long lost brother out there. I had always wanted a brother. I grew up with a younger and older sister and that was rough. It would have been nice to have a brother to beat up on. Someone I could have competed with. It would have had a profound impact on my childhood. But I can't drown myself in what could have happened. That's a road to nowhere. I can't change time. Knowing about my brother has ended up being the most exciting thing and the most painful thing I've had to learn about since venturing off into my journey.
My father seemed to be quite the family man. Every single article I read about him was about family and how important it is to stay together and so on. This was encouraging. Maybe he was very nice and our encounter would be easy going. Maybe he would be apologetic rather than in denial. It was hope.
He was also a "little league," so to speak, hockey coach. He coached his son as well as others. After reading this I knew he had to be a tolerant man that was good with kids. Who would do this that had no patience with kids. I read in an article that while he was living in upstate New York, he himself played hockey. So it fit with how and why he was into the sport. It's just a weird thing to be into in the southern states and before reading about his past, it was a little hard to understand. Not the fact that he was coaching, but why. I checked out a schedule for one of the teams and they seemed to travel a lot. I thought that he must have really loved doing it to want to travel that much.
I finally started to get a clear picture of what my dad was like. He was this genuine man, that obviously was very family oriented and that loved kids. The question seemed to be, if he was such a great guy, then why would he just up and leave his kid. It was something that I had to find out. I had to know what happened when I was born and what his side of the story was. I learned a long time ago that you never trust just one side. You always need to know both sides of the story before you can be completely comfortable with the answer.
Maybe I was the reason he was such a great guy. Maybe he felt so bad that he decided to make up for it by helping others. I don't know exactly what he was thinking, but meeting him was the next step.
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