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(He Did Not Say Dear) Lorilee

Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.

PSALM 27:10, NIV

TOM’S WIFE DID NOT INTERCEPT MY LETTER. He got to the mail first that day. And within a week, he sent me a long letter in response.

When I saw the envelope, I knew the timing would be either fantastic or atrocious, depending on what I would find inside. Just a week beforehand, I had been blindsided, let go from my beloved job as an entertainment writer at the Grand Rapids Press after seventeen and a half years. “Corporate consolidation” was the reason given, and I was in full sackcloth and ashes over it. That job had been my dream come true, the making of me. Now it was over, and I was completely bereft, grieving the loss of income, work camaraderie, and mostly my identity as an entertainment writer, which was forged in countless rock, pop, and country concerts, provocative plays, frothy musicals, interviews, and backstage encounters. I was the girl who interviewed rock stars and actors, who had a humdinger of a story to tell at any given time about, say, an eighties heavy metal singer falling asleep three times during our interview, or (my favorite) Henry Winkler, aka The Fonz, a kindred spirit, kissing me twice and making Doyle feel a bit like Potsie Weber.

I went to all the shows for free and formed real, sacred friendships with a few entertainers, including (my favorite) James “JY” Young of the band Styx. This is who I was, a journalist who bore witness to the pop culture conversation in our city and beyond—a person with my (nonfavorite) photo in the paper, someone recognized out and about and approached constantly for my opinion about who would be kicked off Dancing with the Stars and other grave matters of public discourse. I knew in my mind I had been let go for legitimate business reasons, but my orphan’s heart felt like it had been hit by a sledgehammer. Once again, the cracks were pinging: See, you’re not good enough; obviously, you are not worthy of your dream job; and now you go back to being a nobody.

And now here in my hands was another potential grenade. The ground underneath me felt shaky and soft. Would this letter raise my spirits or be another two-by-four to the psyche?

I thought the fatness of the sealed envelope boded well. Here was the first sign of acknowledgment, and I had waited forty-five years to receive these words. He had held this paper. I ran my fingers over the neatly handwritten address. He had formed each word.

After decades of not getting even a dial tone, someone was picking up the line.

I ripped open the letter:

(He Did Not Begin with Dear)

Lorilee,

I have decided to compose a reply to your recently received letter. I do know that many adopted children actively seek their biological parents; others seemingly don’t have any interest.

Firstly, my long ago, very short relationship with Dora . . .

Tom describes his relationship with my birth mother as “four or five encounters” that took place between late May and late June 1967, which, “whereby, using a nine-month calculation” made himself a “probability” to be my birth father.

I will now endeavor to present a brief history of myself, including ancestry, ethnicity, and any pertinent health issues . . .

I will now endeavor to cry my eyes out, I thought. Tom continued on with his CV. The letter, which devoted a full page and a half to health, sounded like an application for a life insurance policy. He gave me his precise ethnic makeup—even his life philosophy:

I am now [a] pretty hard-core secular humanist.

And finally:

Lorilee, you are obviously a wonderful person, BUT I have come to a conclusion that I am unable to deal with and cannot handle an ongoing relationship of this nature at this stage of my life.

I began to breathe through my mouth, and a curiously painful sensation droned in my chest. Could my birth father really be this indifferent?

If I may be so bold, I would suggest that you already have an idyllic life . . .

No, you may not be so bold, sir. You may not! Tom wrapped up his letter, after nine hundred words coated in ice, to tell me to e-mail him only “if you feel the need to contact me further.” Also, he had made the decision not to “broach” this “situation” with his family, as if I was a situation, to be broached or not.

Maybe the worst part? Tom signed off with just his name. Not even a “sincerely yours,” as he might sign off on a business letter to his realtor. He didn’t have to say “love,” although I was hoping for it. I knew that I had harbored that hope by the hairline crack that fissured my heart. He didn’t have to say “blessings” or “sweet blessings” or “sweet banana pepper blessings,” but he could have said more than what he did. He could have, but all he said was . . .

Tom Gordon

I cried for three days, the kind of helpless tears that fall out when somebody dies. I didn’t know I cared this much.

His words were as cool as my letter to him was warm, as walled-off as mine was invitational, as soulless as mine was soulful. I was furious on Dora’s behalf, and mine. How dare he be seventy years old and still behave as if none of this—my entire life!—was his responsibility! I felt that he had used a vulnerable young woman, impregnated her, and then run from her, from us.

It enraged me that he didn’t even mention the existence of my children.

I didn’t need another dad, but I wanted this missing person to be found, to show up and walk toward me, not away from me. After forty-five years, I wanted him to say something perfect, something like I have missed you so, something like I’m here now, I promise. This time, I will keep you. It was a strange loss of something I had never experienced, a withholding of a blessing, a connection that had always been possible but never realized.

Doyle read the letter and shook his head. His blue eyes looked concerned. “He just can’t handle this.”

My friend Sheri came over bearing sugared-up lattes and expertise. “He seems very intelligent,” she started off, on the positive. “He seems to be saying two things: that none of it is his fault and that you would be better off without him.”

“But why,” I railed, “couldn’t he even mention my kids? He seems to make no connection whatsoever between them being his grandchildren!”

“He just can’t handle that,” she said, echoing Doyle. “If he thought about them, it would be too much.”

The Guild loaded me onto a stretcher and carried me for days, covering me with love and sputtering indignation.

Troy, whose birth father saga is actually worse than mine, said sometimes people get harder and more unfeeling as they get older, contrary to what we wish.

Becky, feeler and caregiver extraordinaire, sent me this note after I burbled at her on a phone call to New Jersey:

If I was your birth father, I would be the proudest. I would have been on a plane and buying a house on your street. You are worthy of his love. (You have that from the Father who builds His home inside you.) I thought of you today. I was the first car at a just-turned green light. A man, paralyzed and in an electric wheelchair, rolled out in front of me. I waited, of course. The cars, four, five, six deep behind me, honked in fury and impatience. They had no idea. Somehow, I thought of you and your job and now this. How we can’t see what’s ahead. How we react to what we think is (or isn’t) happening. So . . . interpret as you see fit. A time to stop honking and trust great protection is the plan? Are there bigger things on the next block? Slowing down to prepare for saving a life? I mean, who knows. All I know is I experienced it, and all I could think of was you.

A message like this from a kindred spirit can be what it takes to turn the corner. Becky was right. We don’t always know why bad things happen, why one day we are tooling along, doing what we think is an ace job at work and life, and then everything falls apart on a dime—or at least it feels like a dime. Like the cars behind her in traffic—furious, honking, impatient—I was devastated by both the loss of my newspaper job and by Tom’s rejection, and it was good for me to experience all the anger and grief I needed to experience. It was part of the healing process. But for whatever reason, Becky’s message was a green arrow to turn left to the new normal. I was still sore and bruised for a long time, but in terms of Tom, I stopped honking. I saw a vision of my flesh-and-blood father as limited, disempowered, closed-off emotionally and spiritually. He could no sooner respond to me as a true father than a paralyzed man could suddenly get up and walk.

He didn’t want to keep me, then or now. My hopes for a relationship with my first father were in cinders. Yet it was clear where I should go with my crashed expectations: to the Father who sent His Son from on high to make His home on my planet, my street, my soul. Unlike my birth father, He’s not running from me; He’s been reaching for me since time began. Not only can my heavenly Father “handle” me; He carved my name in His hands.[111] He always calls me “Dear Lorilee”; He’s wanted to call my name since He crafted the stars, calling them each by name. He claims me forever and will keep me forever.

God the Father knew Tom’s rejection would hurt me but also that the temporary pain would give way to healing, clarity, and a new vision. One redemptive piece of it is that now I can be consciously guiding Phoebe as she connects her own birth-father “dots.” It’s probable she will never meet or even have the chance to exchange letters with Jin. But I get to point her to the Father who never disappears, who never forsakes. I get to bear witness to my own story; yes, it felt wretched to be disclaimed by Tom, again, but I was not left on life’s curb, bereft, left behind, and left.

Oh no, that wasn’t the finale of my story, because the Divine Author always has a plot twist up His sleeve. He would pick me up, dust me off, bind up my wounds, and lead me away from the ashes of the smoking blimp. He would say, “Hey, kid, hop in this air balloon, and let Me show you things you’ve never seen so clearly before.” He would show me that I did have a Father who was with me—wanting, choosing, and keeping me then, now, and always.

He showed me that, yes, my beginnings had been a complete mess, but that there was no messy “situation” too complicated—no trouble too deep—for Him to reach into through adoption.

God also incited my compassion for the man who was supposed to love me but did not. As if there were a chafing dish at the bottom of my soul, my furious heart started to warm and thaw toward Tom.

I don’t know if I will ever have any contact with Tom again, but he’s a part of me, slipped in my spirit and my blood. He’s in my prayers, along with Dora, Moon, and Jin.

Tom had let me go. And after our brief exchange of letters, I knew he was standing behind that decision. But my real Father found me long ago. And from this, I feel joy, because I will have Him as my Father for all time.