A Penguin in the Orchard

A New Christmas

I took a few days off, as you can see. The holiday season becomes all-consuming at some point, though not nearly to the level at which it took over my life during 13 years in retail.

That retail experience tainted my view of Christmas more than I’d like to admit. It’s a bit more than seven years since I put my rock ‘n’ roll selling days behind, and I’m only just beginning to find an adult version of the Christmas joy I held as a child. Quite a few events in the past year have helped that spirit along, but none quite as strongly as an event that took place early in the year.

It’s my custom to have coffee and conversation with some close friends on Tuesday evenings. It’s a centering part of my week, something that pulls me from the computer and work and places me squarely in the mainstream of real life. I’ve done it for years and it’s become as natural a part of my week as coding all night on Saturdays and sleeping in on Sundays.

On a particular Tuesday night in late March, the 19th, I returned home around 9:30 and, as is also my custom, headed straight to the computer to check my email. As I scanned through the subject lines in Pine, one caught my attention. It was from my Mom in Ames and had the subject line “Email Address.” Thinking that perhaps she was changing ISPs, I opened the email fully expecting to copy her new address to my address book. Instead, the email began:

I thought you might be interested in having your father’s email address. I signed up on Classmates.com recently as his best friend from high school. Today, he sent an email and I’m forwarding his address to you.

These three lines left me physically numb. My mother and father had divorced before I turned three. My mother remarried quickly and I’d been adopted by my stepfather. Though I’d seen one fading black and white picture that looked eerily like my own reflection in the morning mirror, I’d had no contact with my father in 39 years.

When the blood returned to my head and the feeling to my fingertips and toes, I called my wife into the laundry-room office. She and my daughter were in bed but, sensing something indefinable in the tone of my voice, she crawled from under the covers and padded into the office. I pointed a shaking finger to the email on the monitor and watched as she read the note.

I heard a catch in her breath as her hand drifted to her lips. Her eyes, already the most beautiful blue I’ve ever known, deepened perceptibly, widening in a broad pallette of surprise and uncertainty. Without thought, her hand drifted from her lips to my shoulder.

“Oh my gosh,” she said, re-scanning the email, “what are you going to do?”

“Ummm, well,” I started, without knowing even at that moment how the sentence would end, “I think I’m going to send him an email.”

Her hand tightened on my shoulder, then drifted away, brushing the long blond hair from her face. “Are you sure?”

“No.”

She turned to look at me for the first time since entering the office. “If he doesn’t respond … you could just be setting yourself up for disappointment.”

She was right, but I’d already weighed the disappointment of no response against the feeling of having the information and never giving contact a shot.

“You’re right. But I can’t not.”

After nearly twenty years together, my wife sometimes recognizes the signs in my face better than I do myself. She saw in my face the same fear and uncertainty she was feeling. She also saw a quiet decision, a determination that was already unquenchable. She kissed me on the head, hugged my shoulders, and padded back into the bedroom.

I sat back in my chair to compose what held the potential to be the most important email of my life.

My mom’s investigative skills left me dumbstruck. Posing as my father’s best friend from high school had added a particularly razor-like edge to the whole search. His friend, you see, had died eight years past high school. Just the use of that name ratcheted the curiosity to a level my father couldn’t ignore. A single line in his email told all:

> I am curious if you are his son or if this is some type of ruse!

I began the email with only this line intact, and far from certain where I was headed.

It is, in fact, a bit of a ruse. More than that, it’s good solid investigative skills using the Internet

My name is Tony Steidler-Dennison. I was, however, born Anthony Raymond XXX on February 25, 1961, the son of Sharon XXX and David XXX of Newton and Baxter. I’ve spent some time looking for you and it appears the efforts have finally paid off.

While you still your pounding heart, let me assure you that the only end result I’ve expected from this hunt is simply to quench my own curiosity. Nothing more, though that curiosity is certainly strong.

I’ll tell you a bit about your 41-year-old first son. I am a programmer, a writer, a paralegal, and a businessman working hard to develop and nuture a small computer company. I’ve been married for 16 years to a remarkable woman with whom I went to high school …”

There have been times in my life when a clear line formed in my mind and found its way to the keyboard before I had time to pollute it with thought. Sensing the process seems to banish it, reducing a pure sensation to the rubble of egocentrism. On March 19, 2002, I hammered away without thought, ending the note in a single onrushing paragraph.

As I’ve said, I really wanted nothing more than to satisfy my own curiosity. Your connection with Bill XXX from the XXX class of ‘59 is irrefutable evidence, in my mind, that I’ve found the right person. There are certainly a lot of questions, but they’ve been unanswered for most of my life - I’ll certainly carry on if you’re unable or disinclined to answer them. I, too, had a pretty wild youth. I understand that it’s not always easy or possible to answer for those actions in the light of age and maturity. I would, however, be interested in some dialog, however brief and even if it’s only in this medium.

You have my email. I hope to hear from you.

At 10:36 pm, I hit the Ctrl-X key combination in Pine, sending the email inexorably to its destination, and sat in my office chair shaking like a rain-soaked fawn.

I hardly slept that night, finally dropping off around 4 am. I didn’t rise or head off to the Fullbrain office until late, and was even then drained by anticipation.

Late in the afternoon, I ran home for a sandwich and a quick check of the email, convinced that the only contents of my inbox would be spam and comments from Penguin Shell readers.

Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 1:11 PM

To: Tony Steidler-Dennison

Subject: Re: Class of ‘59

Shock is not a strong enough word! I have wondered for years as to where you were and how your life was progressing.

I took a deep breath, bearing in mind the concerns of my wife on the previous night. Standing in the klieg light of one of the most monumental moments of my life, I wilted. I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and steel myself before reading the remainder of the note.

I basically lost touch with your mother and family shortly after the death of your brother. I was in the military at the time and could not deal with the fact that I never saw him …

I should tell you that the divorce was very much my fault. We married when I was 17, your mother 18, and I didn’t grow up or accept any responsibility for my actions or whims until several years later …

So much to talk about and so little time. I will stay in touch and hope the same from you. Thanks for your persistence.

Love, Dave (dad)

It was the parenthetical that got me. Three little letters in parentheses that reduced me to uncontrollable tears, my wife stroking my shoulders and brushing away tears of her own.

On Thursday, the 21st, I received another email, asking for more detail about my life. The door, it seemed, was really open. I filled in the details of 39 years as best as can be expected in an email. At the same time, I offered my phone number and yet another out. If it was all too much for him or his family, I noted, I only asked that he tell me. I had no intention of interfering with the lives of those close to him, and I needed both to assure him that I’d understand if that was the case and to assure myself that I’d been clear on that point.

While the process had actually started on Tuesday night, the relationship began with that email on Thursday. We spoke on the phone on Friday. Three weeks later, he and his wife spent the weekend in Iowa City, staying at a local Holiday Inn. It was a surreal visit that encompassed a five-hour Friday night catch-up session in the motel room. Surprise caught me often throughout the evening as I saw more than just a mere shadow of my face, my expressions, my gestures - things I’d always assumed were nurture rather than nature. We fed them the next evening, stuffing them full of my 20 lb lasagne. We laughed and swapped stories, pictures, handshakes, and hugs.

In June, I accompanied them to Colorado for the wedding of a family member. It was the first time the family had all been together in sixteen years. I’d never met most of them and had no memory of the others. The night before, I met my dad’s wife’s oldest son. I felt as welcomed as a brother, believing that Greg viewed me as one. The next day, we rushed straight from the airport in Denver to my aunt’s house in Loveland, getting lost just once along the way. I saw my own temerament behind the wheel; a quick hot flash, an exaggerated groan and a letting go to move on, a funny one liner and a broad smile.

The house sat on a beautiful quiet corner lot in a middle class Loveland subdivision. As I stepped through the door, I saw my grandmother and watched as she recognized the man, once the boy who was, in her words, the center of their world. She started to stretch her arms toward me, then politely withdrew as my aunt strode from the kitchen to hug my 6′ 4″ frame with every ounce of her hundred pounds. She didn’t bother to knock the tears from her cheeks as she said in my ear, “We thought this would never happen. Thank God. Thank God.” I just had no words. When she cut me loose to step back and look, I felt the burning in my eyes all over again. I took a step to the left to hug my Grandma in her rocking chair. “Tony, Tony. We’re so glad you’re here,” and more tears.

I turned to the couch behind me. Curled up at the end and wide-eyed at the unfolding scene was, without doubt, my younger sister. She smiled a smile I’d only seen on the face of another two months before and stood to greet me.

“You have to be Marcy,” I said as I wrapped my arms around her shoulders.

“And you have to be Tony,” she responded, laughing. “We are really glad you’re here.”

As I pulled away from Marcy, I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a quiet voice. “This must be really strange for you.” I turned around and took the hand of my brother Mark. “It is,” I said and found myself struck dumb.

We’ve since been been to Illinois, to my dad and Judi’s house, for a barbeque with her kids. There’s no distinction made between the children of the parents. I’ll make none either. Greg, Rachel, Mike, Marcy, and Mark are brothers and sisters I didn’t have or know about a year ago. Judi is a trusted friend who opened her arms and her family to me immediately, greeting me and my family with love and sharply intellectual barbs that told me clearly why she and my dad are such a great match. I speak with my dad often about work, family, baseball, and Linux, which he dove into with both feet just weeks after we first met.

Christmas can be a dangerous time. The danger is in believing that the gifts we receive are only valuable if they have a physical essence. I received some good ones this year, physical gifts for which I’m notoriously inarticulate in my thanks. But those who have had close contact with my life this year have another understanding. When the new leather jacket has worn thin, when the soles on the ten-hole Doc Martens have worn smooth, the gift that my mother gave me will remain. Though it was given in March, it’s a gift in the purest spirit of Christmas, given completely absent of self and purely for the benefit of a loved one. And it’s the deepest I’ve ever received.