Visiting with my Estranged Father
Up until this particular trip to Ohio I hadn't spent more than a few hours at a single time with my biological father for my entire life. @afturner had been trying to convince me for years to go visit him, but I just had never gotten around to it and had a lot of emotional baggage to deal with. My parents divorced when I was 3, and after that point my father was essentially out of my life. It wasn't that I didn't want to know him, it was more of a matter of complicated issues between he and my mother which sadly got in the way of us developing a relationship.
After a certain amount of time passed, it became more and more awkward. It's the same old story, but I digress! Finally, Amanda got in touch with him and asked if we could come to visit him and he emphatically said "yes! I would love to see you both."
Initially, I felt a bit nervous, but once we arrived at his house, I quickly felt right at home. It turned out that we had a lot in common, and we truly felt a deep understanding of each other. One of the things that brought us closer was our shared enjoyment of Key and Peele episodes.
I vividly recall the time when I had never seen the show before, and he played the episode titled 'Continental Breakfast,' featuring Jordan Peele as an exuberant guest at a hotel offering a Continental Breakfast. His exaggerated enthusiasm for the breakfast experience had me in absolute fits of laughter, to the point where I was crying, and I couldn't stop for quite some time. Even my dad joined in and it was a moment of shared hilarity that we kind of bonded over.
Camping at Indian Lake State Park
Even though I didn't spend a huge amount of time with my dad as a kid, I did spend a lot of time with my aunts an uncles, which are his siblings. They all had kids my age and us cousins were very close at the time. We would all get together and end up camping out at all of the camping spots not far from Dayton, Ohio. One spot was Indian Lake.
My father had a nice trailer stationed at Indian Lake, a spot he loved for camping and boating. He invited Amanda and I for a weekend getaway, and we said heck yeah! I hadn't visited the place since my childhood, but I remembered it well. The prospect of spending a weekend there was exciting, especially since we didn't have the opportunity to experience boating when we were younger due to lake of money in our families.
Profound Catharsis
This turned out to be one of the most memorable trips of my lifetime. We spent hours just cruising around the lake, joking around and talking about old times. Even though we didn't spend a lot of time together when I was a kid, we were around the same people and experiencing a lot of the same things.
I got to ask him a lot of questions about why he never tried to connect with me. I got to tell him about how it made me feel and got a lot off of my chest. It was like like unloading a lifetime of feeling hurt all in one weekend.
In all honesty, we had loads of options for our weekend trip, as long as it provided a calm atmosphere conducive to relaxation and meaningful dialogue. An interesting aspect of the connection between my father and me is our tendency to communicate through humor.
It seems that nearly every exchange between us is full of jokes, and we often resort to humor as our primary mode of conversation. It does take a peculiar turn whenever we attempt to engage in a straightforward, serious discussion. It's a dynamic that we've grown accustomed to, our own unique way of conversing over the years.
There were a lot of homes for sale at the time which in hindsight probably would have been seriously worth buying with the way that prices have been going through the roof these days. I remember looking at the prices through the lens of a Los Angeles resident and thinking they were an absolute steal! At the time we were going through losing a major contract after the whole Flash debacle disrupted my career. At the time I was really going through a lot of personal issues that turned my life upside down! I was a very successful game developer working with the Adobe Flash platform. That should give you a clue.
That being said, I really wouldn't change much about the way things went down. If you don't keep up with the times, you get left behind! You live and you learn as they say.
After a nice long day out on the boat and a hell of a lot of eating it was time to head back to eat yet more while talking over the fire. This was the time I was really looking forward to. When we were kids, I used to look over at my dad while he was hanging out with his siblings laughing and talking by the fire but I was never included in those conversations. I felt so close, yet miles away. This was my opportunity to have that experience. I wasn't a little kid anymore, but it was still just me and my dad. I had gotten over his flaws and realized I had plenty of my own! At this point it was just about trying to heal and let the past remain in the past.
A Great End to a Wonderful Trip
I have to say, the whole thing went pretty well and I wouldn't change a single thing. We got back to his place where a 2 week vacation ended up getting expanded to 2 months. We actually ended up cancelling our return plane tickets and repurchasing then when we were ready to come back home. I really needed this visit! More than anyone will ever know.
I would really appreciate your support!
