Today I’m going to post more writing that I did when I was a college undergrad, seeing as how I had my wisdom teeth removed a few days ago and I’m still feeling rather sore and out-of-it. This piece was written when I was a sophomore and it’s part of a larger essay about my father - namely, the fact that he hasn’t been a part of my life since I was about seven years old.

It’s after the jump.

Growing up, a portrait always hung on the living room wall.  It was taken just after I was born.  My infant self was at the forefront, held by both my father and my mother.  Behind them stood my grandparents and two of my mother’s sisters.  It was a little inverted pyramid of our family, and its place was right behind my grandpa’s soft blue recliner.

One preteen afternoon, I was helping my grandmother peel potatoes for dinner.  We were discussing the usual things – school, the news, the kids in the neighborhood.  But she caught me completely off guard when she said, “You know, if you want to, we can take down that picture in the living room.”

“Which picture?” I asked nonchalantly, knowing exactly which one she meant.

“The picture with your father in it,” she answered point-blank.

“Oh.”  I stared into the half-full bowl of shorn potatoes, wondering it this excruciating moment in time could just end without any further response from me.

She must have sensed my discomfort.  “It’s up to you,” she said simply, and continued peeling.

“No, it can stay,” I blurted out.

She nodded, picking up a new potato.  A quiet minute passed.  Then she spoke again.

“You know, it’s not like it was a messy thing at all.  Your mother never said that he couldn’t come and see you kids or anything like that.”

“Yeah,” I said softly.

I think she was trying to make me feel better, but once all the potatoes were peeled, I locked myself in our tiny bathroom for half an hour, quietly sobbing.  No, my mother hadn’t forbidden my father from coming to visit my brothers and me.  He just never bothered.

Well, I decided, gazing determinedly at my tear-stained face in the mirror, if he was going to pretend I didn’t exist, it only made sense for me to pretend the same thing about him.  As far as I was concerned, my father was completely nonexistent.

It sounded good in theory.  But it proved quite difficult to actually maintain.