Barack Reminds Me Why My Father Is My Hero

The instinct to know oneself is a force so strong, it transcends our human thinking. - Dianne Perea
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I never knew my biological father. He and my mother went their separate ways when I was barely 2 and my brother had just been born. My mom remarried soon after my brother's birth and had two more children with the man who is my father today. Like Barack Obama, I know what it's like to feel half of you is a total mystery, and how this pulls at your soul every day. You want to reach out and discover this missing side of you so badly, it hurts.

When I was 29, after the birth of my first child, I decided it was time to send a letter to my biological father. I had known his whereabouts for many years, but never had the courage to write him. It was a simple letter with a few photos of me, my husband, my new daughter Emily and my brother. It wasn't an easy letter to write, although I had written a thousand in my head over the years. I had thought by then he would have tried to reach me. I also worried about the repercussions this contact might have on my mother and beloved stepfather, the only father I ever knew. With a lick and a stamp, I put the letter in the mail. Then the waiting and the questioning began. Would he write back? Would he board a plane and show up on my doorstep? Or perhaps would I hear nothing at all.

About two weeks later, a response letter came in my mailbox. I remember the day so vividly. It was a cold day in January. I couldn't get back inside from the mailbox fast enough. My husband was home at the time and we ceremoniously read the letter together. My hands were trembling. After the first three warm and inviting sentences, I was so encouraged. But nothing could prepare me for what I was about to read next.

"Dianne, honey, this is your grandmother and grandfather. Your Dad died 3 years ago. He was 46." The rest was a blur. I scanned the rest of the letter with tears streaming down my face until finally my husband took the letter from my hands and read the rest out loud. The last words I remember hearing my husband read was that my letter was written on the anniversary of his death, an eerie, yet comforting coincidence.

When there are just too many words to say, silence is sometimes the best place to start. I put on my boots, called for my dog and walked into the chilly, gray, January hillsides outside my home. For hours I walked, pondered what it all meant, and felt the warmth of my tears fall down my cold face and lips. Gone were all the hopes and dreams I had of one day meeting my father face to face and him meeting me. Meeting my father consumed me like a raging fire. I had so desperately wanted to dive into those flames, rescue whatever I could from this all-consuming, beastly blaze so we could all walk away from the wounds of the past and move forward towards resolution and healing. I managed to do many of those things with other people, but I didn't do them with my father.

Barack Obama is facing head on one of our nation's most devastating fires: race in America. It took tremendous courage for Obama to say what he did March 18. He risked it all and he knew it. Afterwards, television journalists kept asking, "But did he go far enough?" In my opinion, that's like asking the decathlon winner, "Did you go far enough?" Where else could he have gone? What else could he have said? How much better could he have explained himself?

This whole thing reminds me how the Pharisees always tried to "A-HA!" Jesus by asking him problems that He had no winning answers to. Either way, they thought, whirling their scheming hands, Jesus was trapped. But every time, Jesus would give an answer that avoided their trap, answers that elevated the entire discussion to a higher ground, ground the Pharisees could not see because they were stuck in the mud.

Am I saying Barack is like Jesus? Of course not. I am simply making the point that since the time of Jesus and before, groups of powerful leaders don't like individuals "bucking the system" or saying things that make people uncomfortable, especially when it's cutting too close to home.

Back to my living father. My stepfather is my hero. He picked up the embers of my mother's life, a mother with two small children with no hope, no promise of a bright future, and brought us all out of a different kind of fire. He dusted us off, took us under his wing, and overnight, he went from bachelorhood to fatherhood. He stood by my mother and raised me and my brother as if we were his own flesh and blood. Shortly after they were married, he and my mother had two children together. We were a handsome foursome, my siblings and I, but as we grew up, obvious physical differences between me and my brother and my sisters appeared. Enter the elephant in the room. I discovered that my dad was not my "real" dad at the tender age of 13. That's when my world collapsed, and one of my lives ended, and a new one began.

Did my father ever say or do things that made me uncomfortable growing up? Yes. Did he mean to? No. Did he ever mean to hurt me? No. My father and my mother did their best to compensate in a difficult situation. Now, if I were somehow to produce a video of my father interacting with me at a young age where I am visibly upset by him, would I then be asked to denounce my father? I know what the comeback is to this ... you can't choose your family, but you can choose where you worship. Well, sorry, I don't see the difference. My father and my mother made me the person I am today. We all weathered some pretty rough times, but the point is ... we stuck it out and stuck together.

Barack's speech was not just about race. His speech was about commitment, honesty, bravery, courage and integrity, bridging the gaps that exist everywhere, but most of all, not throwing any human being under the bus for any reason. That's not what Barack does, and that's not what Americans do.

I am a white woman, but I know what it feels like to not quite belong. This is Barack's point. We've all experienced this feeling in some form or another, so the burning question was, is, and shall remain, "How can we all get along?" We had to ask that question in my family 40 years ago and we found an answer. If my family can do it, so can America.