Ruben,
What can I say? More specifically, what do you expect me to say? I have been on this earth for 16, almost 17, years and you have been in my life for approximately seven of them. From ages 10 to 12 you were in Hawaii. Phone calls: 0. From ages 13 to 16, you were in Japan. Phone calls: 3 or so. Amount of money put in the bank: over $100. Now, I understand the pressures of the military, and I know that is something that you can't control. I guess you could say your location on the planet and chosen profession is a valid excuse, but your lack of effort is not. News flash, money can't buy affection.
Then there are what I call The Absent Years. This was ages 0 to 4. During this time, you weren't out of the country. You weren't going back and forth between here and Puerto Rico. And you most definitely were not contributing to my quality of life. That was up to my mother. You know, the one whom you were with for two years, leaving pregnant? The one who, thank God, had a Chief Warrant Officer as a father that knew where you worked. I can only imagine the words, "She's not mine," coming out of your mouth. And I laugh when I think of you saying that to my grandfather's face.
I'll have you know, modern medicine is a miracle. The development of DNA Diagnostic Testing was a God-send. I remember the first time I met you. If I haven't mentioned already, I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD! A lot of children meet their father in a hospital, by their mother's side. That wasn't the case here. Anyways, I remember that first meeting quite vividly. It was night time and summer. I know it was summer because Virginia summers are not something you forget. At the time my mom had a Hyundai Santa Fe. It was silver and she called it the "Momma Mobile." She had told me as she strapped me into my car seat that we were going to see somebody. It took about ten minutes to get to your house. (This didn't click until I was tad older that the whole time my "daddy" lived ten minutes away and hadn't even bothered to waste his breath with a visit). Mom lifted me out of the car and, as I have come to say, the whole Hispanic community was there. Lisa, Pedro, Shaira, Jonathan, Paul, Jon-Paul, and the list goes on. I do remember that the first person I really looked at while I was there was not you, but another little girl. She was age 6 at the time and had curly hair just like me. We had the same nose, same colored eyes, same cheek bones. I found out later that evening that that little girl was my sister, Nicole. Then there was you. You bent down into a squat and held your arms out as if you expected me to run towards you crying, "Daddy!" I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but even as a four year old I wasn't that stupid. There was this other woman there, too. She was short, busty, had big gold hoop earrings. "This is Peggy," my mom said, "She's your father's wife."
The other people in the garage looked confused as hell. Peggy turned to them and said, "Esta es la mujer que tuvo una bebe por Ruben." Now that I am fluent in Spanish, I understand why my mother took this as insult post-translation by you. This is the woman that had a baby by Ruben. Needlesstosay, this could have been put a bit nicer. For the next six years I was forced over to your house every Sunday. You always only saw the smile Mom told me to put on while I was on your doorstep. But you have never, and will never to be frank, witness the kicking, screaming, crying torture that I put my mom through every Sunday morning when she tried to get me ready, tried to make me presentable for you and your wife. I dreaded Sundays, just so you know. Peggy was rude to my mother. Nicole hated it when I followed her around or tried to talk to her, and you were always so preoccupied in your shed.
That is about 312 Sundays - give or take a few - that I will never get back.
But things got better.
Peggy and Mom are friends now. They drink together, we all have dinner, and it's actually pretty nice to see.
Nicole and I are great. We talk often about maybe going to Orlando for Spring Break.
Then there's you and I. Since you came back from Japan in December, it seems as if were are both trying to fit sixteen years in. All I wanted was for you to acknowledge that you haven't been Number 1 Dad. And I'm happy that you have. I guess by the time I'm 32, we will have made up for the sixteen years of lost time. I used to hate being Puerto Rican. Now, every time they ask for my ethnicity on surveys, instead of putting "Caucasian," I put "Hispanic/Latin American." When I am asked what my primary language is, I say, "I have two: English and Spanish."
I guess the moral of the story is that burying a hatchet doesn't eliminate that there was a hole... but Miracle-Grow sure helps. 797Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7XBvjVdvTk
Mientras se gana algo, no se pierde nada. 797Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDpxIeYnVpV
Your daughter,
Kylee
ns 15.158.61.48da2
