This story originally appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on June 22, 2010.
In the awkward summer before high school, when my voice was changing and hair started growing in odd places, my eldest sister pulled me into her room and locked the door. She must have been doing some spring cleaning as stacks of paper, folders and notebooks lay on the floor and dust filled the air.
I had always been uneasy with my sister who had the terrible job of acting as the family dentist. Whenever I had a loose tooth, she insisted on removing it, a practice that left my teeth cracked and deformed. Bad for my financial dealings with the tooth fairy, I thought. Her lunchtime schedule also interfered with mine, so I was often the last kid waiting to be fetched in the school’s guardhouse.
As I sat on the bed, she handed over my baby book filled with locks of hair, naked photographs for blackmail, and a collage of gift tags in the playful decoupage of the 1980s. Aside from bath time, other moments captured on film were birthday parties, the requisite “firsts,” and my baptism attended by ninongs and ninangs whose names remain unfamiliar to me to this day. There I was, wrapped in a white gown and being carried by my sister and surrounded by family.
That picture struck me as a bit odd, and after flipping through more curious pages it got even weirder because practically all the congratulatory cards were addressed to her. “Manang, why are you the one carrying me here?” I finally asked, pointing at the baptismal picture. “And why are all these cards addressed to you?”
She put the book aside and gave me a hesitant embrace. Then in a shaky, unsure voice she said, “I am your mother.”
I left her room that day knowing I was an adopted son. Apparently, while she was in college, my sister got pregnant by her long-time boyfriend and had no one to turn to but the family. Her parents decided to take their first grandchild and make him their youngest son.
People with whom I share this part of my story usually ask how I reacted to that fateful revelation. And to their disappointment, I would tell them that my raging adolescent hormones did not show themselves that day and so what I made was the dry, sardonic observation, “Ah, no wonder my parents are so old.”
Since I already knew my biological mother, my sights turned to seeking out for my biological father. Those in the family who knew him gave me a name and the most recent gossip about his whereabouts which all led to dead ends.
Later on, I found out that he was quite a charmer and had enough mestizo good looks for my grandmother to have a crush on him. She adored him so much that she kept a picture of him, a memento she saved before my sister put everything that might remind her of him inside a drum and set them on fire. My grandmother kept his picture so well that finding it was next to impossible.
At times when it rained hard while I was still in school, I would hole up in the library and type his name on search engines. The few results I considered promising turned out to be duds, with the persons I communicated with saying they didn’t know him. Still I continued throughout high school and college. There was no yawning emotional gap to be filled. So after every failed attempt, there was nothing left for me to do but shrug my shoulders and seek comfort in knowing that I tried.
I used to daydream about our eventual confrontation: Seeing me at the door of his suburban bungalow, he stares blankly without speaking. He knows who I am and opens the screen door to invite me in. Instead I turn around and drive away. He calls out my name, but it’s too late. (Cue sentimental music.)
There was no fanfare when I finally found him last February. One lazy afternoon while at work, I searched his name again, this time on Facebook. A few blank profiles showed up, but one had a fuzzy picture. I clicked it and saw a man in his mid-40s with mestizo features and a bit on the plump side.
The profile matched everything I knew about my biological father. He was a forty-something dentist based in the US West Coast and a graduate of a university located in Mendiola, Manila. I rolled back the office chair and slumped in it. After three drafts and an hour of typing, I finally sent him a message: “This is weird and I don’t really know how to start this or if I’m even sending this to the right person. But there’s no harm trying… If ever you are who I think you are, please don’t ignore this message. I’d really want to get to know someone as special as you. A reply would mean the world to me.”
Almost instantly he replied, “I thank the Good Lord for this unprecedented surprise! I have sent you several messages via e-mail without getting a reply. It’s been 22 years, my son, but it’s never too late, ever.”
So I found him. Or maybe we found each other. It wasn’t the dramatic and emotional meeting I had imagined all those years but a calming reminder of how relationships can take root no matter the distance of time and space. We go through many awkward phases in life but these always seem to pass us by. Finding my biological father, just as it was that summer before high school, was like stepping into a room and leaving it a different person.