Other Women

When I was thirteen, my grandmother died.

My heart, my soul, my grandmother.

This precipitated my relationship with my father.

I knew I had a father, and I knew what he looked like and who he was, generally.

I could pick him from a crowd if I needed to.

And I knew I had a brother and a sister, though I didn’t think at the time that they’d know me if they saw me.

My father lived in my neighborhood.

About a mile away.  I was old enough to ride my bike to his house.

My aunt C met me at his house.  I remember sitting on the curb of the sidewalk.

Or maybe it was on his front porch.

We were in shock.  My grandmother was young.  Vibrant.

I wondered what my grandmother would think of this.

I knew she would want me to know him.

A few days later, I rode my bike to my father’s house.

He wasn’t home, but his girlfriend was there.

She invited me in.  She was a new girlfriend, one who wouldn’t last for long.

She didn’t know that.

It was the first time I ever felt what it was like to have a grown up care what I thought of them.

It was strange.  She tried really hard.  Now I completely understand what it was like to be her in that situation.

We hung out.  We listened to music.  We sang and danced with the mop and the broom.

We slid around on the smooth wooden floors in our socks.

We cleaned the house, a house of a father I didn’t know.

We ordered pizza and made those cute sugar cookies that come in a roll and have fun designs in them.

They must have been Christmas cookies.  Or Halloween cookies.

It was strange.  I was discovering my father, and yet he was nowhere to be found.

Which I suppose was as it would always be.

I called my mom and told her I was going to hang out with my father’s girlfriend that night.

A woman whose name escapes me half my life later.

The rest of my life has been spent learning about my father through other women.

And I suppose that just now, I figured out that I was okay with that.