Things Long Buried

Mamakat's writing workshop prompts this week are as follows:

1.) The last time I laughed really hard...
2.) Forgive and forget...I think.
3.) I remember when...
4.) Write about something that bothered you this week.
5.) Write a poem about a favorite color.
Based on something that happened in my life recently, I chose #2

If you had asked me last month if I was the type of person to forgive and forget, I would have said yes without even thinking about it. Life is too short to hold grudges and dwell on the negative. It is easier to forgive someone and move on than to let the anger fester and be bitter. Right? This is the type of person I am. Hell I even forgave my ex husband after cheating on me (after all he got cancer and I figured that was punishment enough) and we are semi friends today.

But something happened a couple weeks ago that has me questioning all this.

36 years ago, I had a brief romantic encounter with a young man I was infatuated with, I was 18 y/o, in college and as dumb as a box of rocks when it came to men. He was in the service stationed in Viet Nam and we wrote letters back and forth the whole time he was gone. When he came home, he came to visit me at school and we partied like there was no tomorrow for three days straight (alcohol was involved) and of course there was sex. I thought I was one of those girls that couldn't get pregnant the first time without protection (yeah right). 9 months later out pops a beautiful little girl named Carrin! Surprise you're a daddy!

However this guy doesn't buy it and decides he isn't the daddy and doesn't want anything to do with me or his daughter. The army sent a representative who offered to help me do a paternity test and fight for child support but I decided that anyone who was asshole enough not to want to love a child had no rights to that child at all. I tried letting his parents know but they too wanted nothing to do with their grandchild. I called this person one more time the day my daughter was born to let him know he had a daughter and that she was healthy and beautiful. He could have cared less. That was 35 years ago and the last time I had any contact with him. I told my daughter about her father when she was old enough to understand and then promptly forgot about him.

Until a couple weeks ago when my daughter asked me for information about him. It seems she has decided she wants health information an may even wish to try and find him. This is her right of course. It terrifies me to no end. What if he decides now that he wants to know her and be her dad after all these years? I raised her, he can't just waltz into her life now and decide he gets to claim bragging rights for how she turned out. What if he rejects her? This could devastate her to be rejected a second time by this man. How can a father not want to know his child? How can he know he has a child for 35 years and never wonder where she is or what she is doing?

I wish my daughter well in whatever she decides to do about this. I will always be there to pick up the pieces if she is hurt or share in the joy if she is successful cause that's a moms job.

Forgive and forget this man who is her father..... I thought I had. Now I have to rethink