Just A Man

Genevieve's father has been on my mind a lot recently. There is more than one reason why this might be. Certainly another failed attempt at a relationship will call him to mind, but I think that it's rather this incident:

Genevieve likes to play in "Mama's room." We go up to the attic, I sit on my bed with a book or a magazine or a newspaper and play music on the BlackBerry, and she runs around, pulling things out of drawers and off of shelves and hangers. Sometimes I don't read like I'm supposed to; sometimes I watch her frenetic activity, driven to fever pitch by the sheer delight of playing around in "Mama's tings."

I keep a picture of Jim in my nightstand. It used to be on the nightstand, but when he disappeared, I moved it into the drawer and there it has stayed. I hadn't actually thought about it in quite some time.

Last week, my little girl found the picture. It was buried amongst the accumulated detritus of a year and a half, but she found it. She is nothing if not tenacious. I was actually reading, this day, so when she held up the picture and announced loudly, "Picture of man!" I had to look up to see what she was talking about.

My breath caught. I literally could not breath in for a full five seconds. She brought the picture back down, so she could study it again. She did so for a good length of time. Then she looked back up at me and said, "Just a man."

And then she tossed the picture to the side.

I burst into tears. I couldn't help it. Genevieve was incredibly startled; she climbed up on the bed, leaned against my back, and stroked my hair and exhorted me "No sad, Mama. No cry."

I'm the mother-of-the-year. Letting my not-yet-two-year-old comfort me.

I did pull myself together pretty quickly (for me, anyway) but he's definitely been on my mind since.

Something I've never really told anyone: I'm not actually sure I know anything about the man. I was deeply, completely, hopelessly, helplessly in love with him, and I realize now that I might not even know his real name. That's the real reason I've not made any serious attempts to find him. I did quite a bit of investigating on my own, a year and a half ago, and what I discovered rocked the foundations of my world.

His house, might not be his house. His name, might not be his name. I may know nothing true about the man whose DNA composes half the genetic material of my child.

I may have been quite thoroughly duped. He may be sitting somewhere, laughing to himself about how easy that dumb American girl was. It is a possibility I can no longer fully ignore. I'd like to think that if he is out there somewhere, he feels some pang of regret for what he did. To that end, I do still email him once a month (or, maybe once every other month) with a few pictures and some choice anecdotes.

This unbroken stream of unreturned communication has turned him into something of a priest, or a god, for me. I confess my sins to him. It's something I always did; he always did know all my secrets. But this is different. I have no expectation of ever hearing from him again. He is a non-entity, but one I still feel immeasurably close to. I tell him everything now without hesitation, without remorse, without anything at all except relief. Knowing that he can never, never pass judgment on me because of what he's done, I feel absolved after each of these missives.

I imagine this is how people feel when they talk to God. Or go to confession. I do neither, these days, but I do email my daughter's father.