I don’t think it’s any secret that when I was eighteen years old, my girlfriend at the time gave birth to a baby boy. We both knew there was no way we could raise that child properly and so she found a lovely family to adopt our baby boy. Rather than face up to my responsibilities, I let her do all the work of finding the family and setting up the adoption. I did my best to stay out of the way and despite several chances to meet the family, I did not meet them until the day he was born.

So, for eighteen years, every Father’s Day was like a knife twisting in my heart. The pain of knowing I had abandoned my son in a much more final way than my father had abandoned me digging into me constantly. But when I was twenty-two I was working for one of my heroes and I decided to write a letter to this child to let him know who his biological father was. The letter was full of passion and pride as I did my best to explain who I was and what I stood for at the time. More or less.

When he was eighteen the two of us got back in touch. We met face to face. I met his adopted family. And I began to become whole in a way I didn’t quite understand yet.

Eventually I had a reconciliation with my dad, and Father’s Day took on whole new meaning. You see, for many years it was the worst day of the year because I felt I was an absolute failure as a father, worse than mine had been. Then it was why can’t my father be more like me and recognize how important this relationship is. But for a few short years, it was my favorite day of the year.

Being able to spend the day with my dad, knowing my baby boy who was now a young man was out there with his dad, but that I could talk with him and share with him and then report all that back to my dad. Share the wonders of seeing something you created tackle the world. See the many similarities that you shared, me and my offspring. I knew I wasn’t his dad, I had no responsibility to him, but he listened to me nonetheless. Seeing him struggle with so much of the world that I struggled with, and being able to compare and contrast with my dad. Almost every time I talked to my offspring, I had to call my dad and share notes. Ask him what I could do better, and how dad had handled me at that age.

And now my dad is gone.

But I still have the boy and I’m not sure he can ever understand how much it means to me that he lets me into his life, despite me throwing him out of mine. I am so incredibly proud to know this boy who is now very much the kind of man I can respect and enjoy. His parents did an amazing job with this life, better than I could have ever hoped to. He’s working, he’s married and he has a house for god’s sake! There is no danger of me ever owning a home, short of someone giving me one. I believe whole heartedly that what I want is to see my offspring do is to achieve more than me. Be better than me in ways that actually matter. And he has done that already, at barely more than half my age. I’m so impressed with him, because of who he is, as a man, as a father, already.

And all I want to do is tell my dad and share this moment of pride with him.

Last year, for a few months before Father’s Day, my father had been telling me that I had raised him. This was relatively shortly after the stroke; So I wasn’t quite sure where this was coming from or where it was going. Dad was a bit discombobulated at this point, so some of what he was saying made no sense as he tried to learn how to deal with the stroke. But on Father’s day I went to visit him for a lunch we were having at his memory unit. I showed up early so we could have some time alone before my brother’s family showed up. We were doing our usual rounds of the unit, chatting and such. Dad really had something he wanted to say and again he brought up the “I raised him” bit. I sat him down in the lunch area and asked him what exactly he meant. That’s when he grabbed me by the arm and looked me dead in the eyes and said:

“You raised me up so I could be the kind of man I always wanted to be”

It was one of the most beautiful and meaningful things he ever said to me. It filled me with a confidence and pride I had never known. If my dad were the kind of person prone to theatrics, I’m not sure it would have meant as much, but as it was it left an indelible mark on me. It helped me to understand my purpose. To understand that he needed me as much as I needed him, that all of the fighting and bad blood between us was gone, and that we truly understood each other.

It was also the greatest Father’s Day gift one could hope for.

I know I am not my offspring’s father. I am just a guy who loves that man as much as one possibly can. I will never have the relationship that he has with his actual dad. I just donated some genetic material. I gave that family some really good clay. They made the beautiful sculpture that he is today.

But one day, just for one moment, I hope to make him feel that proud of his genetics and his blood line and most importantly, I hope to make him feel that proud of himself as a father.