(ThyBlackMan.com) This coming Sunday marks the celebration of Father’s Day for many around the nation. My son and I have made a big mess constructing an arts and craft thingy for his dad. I love seeing those two interact together, it warms my heart and I feel blessed to have that given the rather alarming statistics of Black children growing up in fatherless homes. Somewhere deep down, however, I feel a sharp pang, because my biological father hasn’t been in my life for nearly 20 years.
For the first 11 years of my life, I grew up in a two parent home and I loved my daddy fiercely. Unfortunately, my parents divorced and in almost a split second, the world I knew was gone. I have often heard stories from women who did not know their fathers at all, and the pain that they relate from growing up with that void. But what about the girls who had a daddy for a little while, and then he just disappeared? I wonder if the pain is somehow 
different, as to whether it hurts more because the abandonment is somehow more acute. As a teen and even young adult, I was cold towards men who showed romantic interest in me. I manipulated them, never letting anyone get close enough. It took a while for me to make that connection and realize that I still harbored resentment towards my father for his absence, and I was displacing these feelings on people who didn’t deserve it.
I asked myself so many questions as I tried to make sense of life without my father. He moved several states away, the visits became infrequent, the many promises he made were often broken, the calls stopped. I remember finally giving up on him when I was 13 years old. He gave me $200 for my junior high school graduation, only to call me a week later and ask for the money back. At one point, I started to wonder if he was merely a figment of my imagination. On the day of my wedding, it wasn’t my father who walked me down the aisle. I did not think to invite him.
The last time I physically saw him, I was 22. He made promises again, but this time I knew better. A couple of years later, he heard through the grapevine that I was expecting a child, biologically his first grandchild. He called my mother, asking her if he could somehow be a grandfather, thoroughly acknowledging that he failed as a father. My son is now 4, and my father has never laid eyes on him in person. My son acknowledges my step-father as granddad.
I can speculate on what was going on in my father’s head that made him do the things that he did, but I can’t dedicate too much energy to that. There are things that I do know: he missed the phenomenal growth of four awesome children. My younger brother, his only son and namesake, has defied all odds and societal expectations of Black men; my two sisters, both just as tough as I. In some ways, his absence made my siblings and I that much tighter. The impact of my father’s departure is undoubtedly different for all of us, but, we’re going to be alright.
In my years of direct counseling, “daddy issues” has been at the root of so many of my clients’ stunted growth. It makes me wonder how many acts of violence and destruction could have been ameliorated if there were just that paternal figure there to hug a child, or simply say “stop.” We have to do better for our next generation. To the fathers who are actively in their children’s lives, whether married or with the mom or not, I commend you for doing what you are supposed to do. To those who are spreading seeds all over, yet not sticking around to watch them flourish, shame on you.
Staff Writer; T.S. Taylor
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