My Father

My Father, Who I Never Really Knew

My father passed away.

I remember when I stayed in Oakland and my father drove back to Oregon. On one of those visits he told me, “You’re my adult daughter.” He said it like he was proud. Like he was naming something. He knew I was strong and independent. Plus I was his natural, biological daughter. Blood. That counted for something to him.

As I look back now, in the short time I knew my father, I don’t think he really knew me. No one in his family, his heart’s circle, really knew me. If he had known me — really known me — he would not have done some of the things that he did. And frankly, I never knew my father either.

We were strangers with the same nose, the same stubborn jaw. We shared DNA, not days. Not breakfasts. Not the small moments that make a person a dad instead of a fact on a birth certificate.

He left when I was 2. That’s the truth of it. He drove away and built a life, and I built mine without him. So the few times we saw each other as adults felt like auditions. Him trying to be a father. Me trying to be a daughter. Both of us reading from scripts we didn’t write.

He called me strong. Independent. He wasn’t wrong. I had to be. Shelter in 2023 taught me that. Eugene Police Department taught me that. Walking into courthouses and seeing no faces that looked like mine taught me that. I learned to be strong because I didn’t have a father to lean on.

And I think I learned more from his absence than the time I actually spent with him.

His absence taught me how to show up for myself. How to get a library card and disappear into books when the house was loud. How to love antique stores because old things have survived, and I intended to, too. How to drive to the coast alone and not feel lonely.

His presence, when it happened, felt like a postcard. “You’re my adult daughter.” “You’re strong.” Nice words. True words. But not knowing words. Not “I’m sorry I missed your childhood.” Not “Tell me who you became without me.”

I grieve him, but I grieve the idea of him more than the man. I grieve the dad I made up as a little girl. The one who would have stayed. The one who would have known me.

.

Maybe he did the best he could. Maybe shame kept him away. Maybe pride. I’ll never know. Dead men don’t answer questions, and I’ve stopped asking most of mine.

What I do know is this: I am his natural, biological daughter. I am strong. I am independent. I am my mother’s daughter, too — the woman who showed me beauty in every race, every person, every hard thing. I am 51, and I’m still becoming.

My father didn’t raise me, but his leaving did. And for that, I guess I have to thank him. He gave me the one thing he never meant to: myself.

Rest in peace, Dad. I hope wherever you are, you finally see me.

*Cathryn m harris