Understanding comes through communication, and through understanding we find the way to peace.
~Ralph C. Smedley
My wife spent her first thirty-two years on this planet believing that her biological father was the town drunk, who was usually passed out in the ditch next to the local gas station. Her friends and neighbors walked by him on Sundays, clucking their tongues and shaking their heads to show their disgust. As a child, she was guilty by association, shamed by an invisible bond that could never be broken.
He wasn’t a part of my wife’s life growing up. Her mother said that he left, abandoning both of them when she was only a baby. But they lived in a small town, so he was always there — just out of reach, but too close for comfort.
When she and I first started dating in our early twenties, we spent hours staying up late at her brother and sister-in-law’s place. We drank beer and tossed around the kind of stories coaxed out by bottles of Yuengling and the moonlight. Late one night, we were stringing together the pieces of their broken childhoods, and her brother mentioned that he wasn’t so sure the town drunk was truly her father. He threw around some wild theories of potential candidates who used to hang around with their mother back in the 1980s. It all seemed a little far-fetched at the time, so we had a good laugh and moved on.
Nine years full of jobs, apartments, friends, weddings, and funerals passed in a blur. Then our son was born. We experienced all the joy and pain of those first few months as new parents. And again, in the wee hours of the morning, over cups of black coffee and bottles of thawing breast milk, the question of Bio-Dad bubbled back up to the surface. After all those years, was it possible that her brother was right? We finally decided that there had been enough uncertainty. We wanted to know the absolute truth — if not for us, then for our son. So, we hatched a plan.
“Why not just walk up and ask the guy outright?” I asked. “Or I could do it for you.”
“No, we’re not talking to him. Besides, his brain has been pickling in alcohol for forty years — he’s not exactly a reliable source.” Good point, I thought.
We knew that over the years, the town drunk had married, then divorced, and had a grown son who still lived locally. If a DNA test showed that they were half-siblings, then we could finally put an end to our decade-long, half-drunk, sleep-deprived sleuthing. After some gentle prodding, the potential half-brother kindly provided us with a single swab soaked in DNA from his inner cheek. We sent it off to be tested and waited.
A week later, a thin white envelope with a slick logo showed up in the mail — the results! She held it in her hand, took a deep breath, and ripped it open.
“Probability of relatedness: .000001%”
She stared at me, eyes filling with tears, and all I could do was hug her. After a few minutes, we pulled ourselves together and spotted our son, already halfway over the baby gate. I grabbed him and cradled him on my hip.
“So… what now?” I asked.
We were both thinking the same thing: How could we possibly track down even half of the potential Bio-Dads? All we had was a list of sketchy nicknames compiled from her brother’s foggy childhood memories.
She took a deep breath. “Now, I talk to my mother.”
The next day, she took her mom for a drive and asked her point-blank just what the hell was going on. She theorized that if they were both trapped in a moving car, there was no escaping the question. I spent the morning pacing around our house, waiting for an update.
Finally, I heard the back door open and ran into the kitchen.
“James Sweetland,” she said.
“Wait, what? Who’s that?” I stammered.
“Bio-Dad,” she answered.
I stood there, slack-jawed, and a million questions erupted in my brain: “Your mom lied for over thirty years? Why? How do we know it’s the truth this time? Who the hell is James Sweetland? What if he’s somehow worse than the town drunk? How do we find him? Wait… do we even want to find him?”
We spent the rest of the day re-hashing the talk with her mom, Internet stalking James Sweetland, and trying to figure out what to do next. That night, she called Amy, one of her best friends from high school, and told her the news. Out of nowhere, I watched her face turn white.
“Yes, I’m sure that’s his name. Why?” she asked into the phone.
Within an hour, Amy was at our front door with a stack of old family photos. She sat on the couch, fingers shaking, and pulled out a worn Polaroid.
“That’s my Uncle Jimmy. He was married to my biological aunt. They got divorced when I was in middle school.”
Amy pulled out another picture of a large group of people, all smiling for the camera, giving each other bunny ears.
“This is my high school graduation party. Remember? Sadie, that’s you.” She pointed to my wife’s smiling face.
“And that over there is Uncle Jimmy. Jimmy Sweetland.”
The three of us stared at each other. Not only did we believe James Sweetland was my wife’s biological father, but he also happened to be her best friend’s former uncle by marriage — and my wife had met him before.
We opened a bottle of wine.
After some booze-fueled Google searching and a phone call to Amy’s aunt, we discovered that James Sweetland lived only a few towns over. He held down a full-time job, had no criminal record, and was most likely not an alcoholic.
The hunt for Bio-Dad had taken a seriously unexpected turn.
Amy agreed to reach out to him via e-mail and take his temperature regarding the whole “you might have a daughter” situation. James wrote back to Amy the same day and agreed to meet Sadie as soon as possible. All my wife wanted was a DNA test so she could finally know the truth. They went out to dinner together that week, and they did a cheek swab before the appetizers.
The results almost didn’t even matter — they were two peas in a pod from day one. They talked on the phone and texted during the day, stitching together a patchwork quilt of her childhood and his adulthood. After a few weeks, the DNA tests confirmed what we already knew: James Sweetland was my wife’s biological father.
When we started on the journey of finding him, we assumed that it would be a long road with a dark ending. I do still mourn the stolen parts of my wife’s childhood; the years she and her dad missed having together can never be replaced. At the same time, I’m so happy that they have the chance to build their relationship as adults. Best of all? Our now four-year-old son has another grandfather. He will never even remember a time when “Poppy” wasn’t around to hand out toy cars from his jacket pockets on weekend visits.
~Virginia B. Harmon
