Finding Dad: From "Love Child" to Daughter (3 page)

With all the turmoil and moves, I was getting good at adapting, and it was easier to make new friends. For a couple years, life was good. Mom was thrilled that I tested at the 12
^th
grade level, which put me in all accelerated classes, thus bolstering Mom’s vision that I was “destined for greatness.” But things started to go south with Mom’s fiancé, and shortly after I started the eighth grade, we had to move. Again. The only apartment she could find was outside my current school district.

For a while, I just kept going to my regular school, but the administrators found out we had moved and made me leave. After spending the evening crying and fruitlessly begging my mom to let me stay, I started my fourth school in three years. And what was worse, I was starting a month after school had already started, so when I showed up for my first day, the kids were lined up in the hall, waiting to see the “new girl.” I felt overexposed, so I slapped on a big smile as I walked toward the front office.

It was the kind of school where most everyone had been friends since preschool, but two bubbly girls, Dayna and Brooke, saved my pre-teen existence by reaching out to me and welcoming me with open arms into their group. As distraught as I’d been about the move, this was meant to be. To this day, Brooke and Dayna are like sisters to me. I couldn’t have known then how they’d be there for me during the media firestorm that would brew a few short years later with my father. But it’s safe to say that God gave me bookends to hold me up.

Through their warmth and friendship, my fear about not being liked subsided, and I was grateful and excited to be invited to so many things with my new friends. I also loved the stability of Brooke’s and Dayna’s homes. They had happy homes with loving, caring parents. Though Mom tried to give me unwavering love and encouragement, my soul was missing the other half of the recipe. I wasn’t naïve, and could easily see the difference in my friends’ homes. I loved the feeling of their family dinners, and envied the simple things like the greetings they got from their dads after coming home from work—the car pulling in, and the squeal of the children running to see Daddy, climbing on him to clamor for their hugs, stepping on each other’s words to tell him about their day. I sometimes looked away, feeling embarrassed—I didn’t want them to see me standing there and pity me that I didn’t have a dad to hug like them.

I know now there is no substitute for the grounding energy of a father, and without it I was like a dinghy tossing about in the ocean, carried away by each passing current, unsure where life would take me, and yearning for the direction that comes from a
Dad Compass
.

To hide my insecurity, I wanted to appear confident and happy, and learned to just smile so no one would feel awkward. Anytime I felt insecure, my smile rescued me, thereby masking my feelings.

After seeing my real father on TV, I knew he was someone I could be really proud of, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he could be my hero. Maybe he was wondering where I was, too?

The hole in my heart was what drove me to find him. Not only did I feel like something had always been missing, but my real father was everything I would want to dream up. He was handsome, successful, wealthy, and powerful, and running for Governor, no less.

I thought if I could just meet him, he could say he was sorry and make up for lost time by giving me the rock solid foundation and unwavering stability that I craved. I could lean on him when Mom was troubled, or when bill collectors started calling. He could rescue us, help my mom, and make me feel safe.

  
3
The Universe Strikes Again

Election Night, 1990

Two years went by without acting on my growing gut feeling that I needed to know my father, but it was getting harder to ignore the whispers of my soul as they grew louder. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had to meet him. In a practical sense, I didn’t know how to find him, since this was pre-Google. I had no idea what had happened to him after he lost the election. Plus, this had been such a huge secret for so long, that I didn’t know how to share it with my friends.

The simple explanation to Brooke and Dayna was that my mother was divorced, and I didn’t see my father. I left out the part that I technically had two dads from whom I was estranged, and that I’d never met my biological father. The very term “biological father” seemed like an ailment, a wart that that would make me even more different from my friends. While I waffled, the Universe struck again. On TV.

This time it sent me a clear message just as I happened to be walking by the television on Election Day, November 6, 1990. I was fifteen years old.

“On his third try, Rhode Island businessman and war hero, Bruce Sundlun, beat incumbent Governor Edward DiPrete by a landslide,” said the CNN news anchor.

Like the big eye in the room, the television was, once again, working as a divine messenger. It seemed someone really wanted me to make a connection. All I’d done is set the intention, and the Universe provided. Via CNN, no less.

Wow, did my dad just become the Governor?

Despite what I do today, I was anything but a news junkie as a teenager and generally watched after-school specials, so I wondered if this CNN intervention was a sign, like God knocking on my head again, urging me to look at the TV, and saying “This time do something, would ya!”

I had no excuses. Even though there was no internet back then, it wouldn’t be hard to just call information to get the State House address and phone number.

The idea of contacting my father made me think about how Mom had always said I was “destined for greatness,” in part because of his genes. Was I really was just like him, like Mom always said?

It reminded me of the time she took me to see
Top Gun
and nudged me every time Tom Cruise did something amazing. “That’s what your dad did. He was a famous fighter pilot.”

Apparently, my love of horses was because of him as well. “You know, your father was a champion foxhunter with Jackie Kennedy,” Mom would say.

I loved to dive off the high dive, and ride roller coasters, and Mom always told me my fearlessness came from my father, since she was terrified of heights. Ever since her crash in a Learjet while working for my father, she could barely go on the Ferris wheel. A flock of seagulls got sucked into the engine, causing the plane to take a nosedive deep into Lake Erie. Mom almost quit her job as a stewardess right then, but something made her keep working for my father. She loves to tell the story about how she swam to shore without getting her hair wet, and still used her wet green stamps at the store. Add the fact that both my parents survived plane crashes as another thing on the list of my life that makes me a bit different, and all the more “meant to be,” as Mom would say.

After my second brush with my father on TV, I couldn’t help but think that meeting him was meant to be. My old self defensive belief that I didn’t need a father was losing traction, and I could no longer ignore my overwhelming desire to meet him. I constantly envied the father-daughter relationships and stability my friends had. I was good at hiding it, but not having a father made me feel defective and less than whole. I wasn’t aware of it then, but the fear of abandonment was so ingrained in me, that I always strived for approval. Like a two-legged stool, I wobbled on the inside trying to compensate for what was missing by trying to be perfect, making the honor roll, excelling in sports, always trying to do better, since just being
me
never felt good enough.

In my Annie-like fantasy, I told the girls my dad was a governor, and I was flying going off to meet him, since he was dying to make it all up to me now that he knew where I was. I imagined what it would be like to have a powerful father who could protect me and teach me about the world. I loved how Brooke’s father, who owned a big company, would cheer her on at our soccer games, and take her on great vacations to see the world. Hers was a storybook life; he was powerful and important, and her mom smiled all the time and made the house beautiful with hydrangeas, and home-cooked lemon mint pasta dinners that looked like they were right out of a magazine. It made me wish my mom didn’t have to work so hard.

Dayna’s dad was always worried about us and had an overprotective nature that Dayna sometimes felt stifling, but I vicariously loved the protection. I yearned for a life right out of a Rockwell painting, complete with a father who would worry about what boys were trying to take me out, and stay up making sure we came home by curfew.

I wondered if my real father could give me what I was missing. Since I now knew exactly where to find him, I had the chance to start erasing the past and create a new future that mirrored the realities I envied—like the orphan who imagines her parents are better than they are, I glossed over his rejection, and fantasized my father would be perfect if I just gave him the chance to do things right. I could have a dad that I would be proud of, and life could be even better than normal, since he was famous and powerful. I could go to the college of my dreams, maybe an Ivy League, like my father. Shouldn’t he want to right his mistakes? The fairytale in my mind was growing wings.

Mom gave me her support saying, “I don’t want anything to do with him, but he’s your father. If you want to reach out to him, I will help you.”

I was almost seventeen when I reached a point where my desire to meet my father trumped any fear of rejection, and I decided to just go for it.

In May, 1992, four years after seeing him for the first time on
TV
, I sat down at our dining room table with Dayna and wrote the letter I had been thinking about for years. She and I did everything together, and I wanted her help with what to say.

Just reaching out to my father didn’t seem good enough, and I felt the need to prove myself to this larger-than-life man, even though he had never proved to me he was worthy. Regardless of the outcome, I needed to make a move and get over my fear of rejection and abandonment. I felt shackled by feeling I needed to strive for everyone’s approval and acceptance, which ended up with me taking more crap than I should have—be it a bully, or a father who didn’t want me. I was so enamored of my fantasy that I skipped over any feelings of hurt. Instead, I wrote in my best cursive on resume stock paper, even placing lined notebook paper underneath to keep my handwriting straight.

This is a bit of what I wrote:

Nothing gets attention like teenage drama. The “serious trouble” referred to needing help for college.

I included an extra page with some facts about me, as if I really was writing a resume:

I went on to list anything I thought might make him like me and respond. Just being his daughter didn’t feel like enough. I know now that feeling “less than” is a text book symptom of fatherlessness, but back then I just wanted to win over my hero so he could see I was worthy of acceptance.

Dayna and Mom read it and approved, so I stuck the stamp on it, marked it personal, and mailed it to Governor Bruce Sundlun at the Rhode Island State House.

I figured I had nothing to lose, and hoped he would write back soon.

I never got a response. I would later discover my letter was stamped “Received May 6, 1992.” I spent months wondering if the letter had gotten lost amidst the influx of citizen complaints and gala invitations to the Governor’s office. I couldn’t imagine he would just ignore such an important letter, and part of me wanted to assume he just didn’t get it. Mom admitted that she had written him about his medical history after I was hospitalized for a rare blood disorder when I was four. Even though I was paralyzed from the waist down for three days with mysterious bruises all over my legs, he never answered her letter. Fortunately, the condition cleared up after a few days at the Children’s hospital.

In spite of my not hearing back from him, my life as a high school junior just went on with homecoming dances, football games, debate competitions, tests, and quizzes. But the quest to meet my father was set in motion and, as I had told him in my letter, I knew nothing would stop me from making that happen.

  
4
Time to Get a Lawyer

After months of hearing nothing, the reality of my father’s rejection was coloring my fantasy, but I still had an unshakable feeling that if I could just meet him, he would have a change of heart. Mom knew if I really wanted to get my father’s attention, we would need an attorney. Since my father had already rejected me as a baby through his high-powered lawyers, it would take someone strong to tackle a sitting Governor. She chose Arthur Read, a well-known leader in the Rhode Island Republican Party who, she believed, would not be intimidated by a sitting democratic Governor. Before taking our case, Mr. Read wanted to meet me, to determine if I was the real deal, or simply someone looking to cash in.

He flew me out to Rhode Island, where I spent the night in his lovely home in the quaint New England town of Barrington. It was my first time to the East Coast, and it felt strange to be sleeping in the same state as my father. The moist air made my hair curl and my skin dewy, and I knew why they called it the Ocean State. His wife’s smile was warm as she brought us some snacks and drinks, while Mr. Read talked to me in their living room, trying to size me up.

I explained I wanted to get to know my father and hopefully have a “real father-daughter relationship.” At the very least, I also thought he should help with my college expenses. I believed the deal Mom signed at my birth was unfair. Being forced to accept a small lump sum for my life was a pittance compared to the realities of raising a child. Mr. Read agreed, in both a legal and a moral sense. After determining I was the real deal, he agreed to take my case, and a more forceful letter writing campaign began. I couldn’t help but feel excited knowing that someone besides Mom thought I was right and validated my desire to meet my father.

Mr. Read called it my, “Arthurian quest.”

I didn’t want to admit I had no idea what that meant, so I was relieved when he explained the hero legend about Arthur, who didn’t know his father was a king and had fathered him out of wedlock. Legend says Arthur was the only one in the land who could draw a sword out of stone, and he fulfilled the prophecy, and took his rightful place on the thrown.

I, too, wanted to pull the sword out of the stone and take my place in my father’s life. But I worried that if I caused any epic problems, he would shut me out before I had a chance to touch his heart. Mom and I stressed to Mr. Read the need to tread lightly and avoid any sensationalism that would come if the story of my existence surfaced while he was a sitting Governor. That meant no lawsuits for now.

I hoped that Mr. Read’s letters imploring my father to get a DNA test and agree to a meeting would do the trick. I believed if my father just knew I was his flesh and blood, he would claim me.

If I proved myself, how could he not do the right thing and take responsibility?

I was wrong. My father’s attorney, Robert Flanders, responded coldly to the letter and didn’t agree to do anything, which made me mad. Wasn’t he the least bit curious about me? Even though I was only seventeen, I knew this whole runaround was an injustice, and I wasn’t going to give up that easily. One day, while I was alone at home after school, my teenage impulsiveness took over and I threw caution to the wind. Forget the lawyers; I decided to try to get my father on the phone myself.

Back then, when you needed a number quickly, you called information, so I pounded 1-555-1212, into our 90s style cordless phone and asked for the number for the Governor’s office in Rhode Island. I dialed it fast so I wouldn’t change my mind. The operator at the State House answered and I pretended to be someone my father knew. I deepened the tone of my voice so I’d sound more like an adult. “This is Kara Hewes, the Governor will know what it’s regarding.”

Surprisingly, I was put through to the Governor’s executive assistant, Patti Goldstein, who answered the phone in a friendly, disarming voice. I never expected to get this far, and my heart nearly leaped out of my chest. It was my turn to speak, and I had no plan of what I would say, so I just punted. I told her I’d sent a letter and would like to meet the Governor, whom I believed was my father.

Patti seemed to know all about me and was aware of the attempts to schedule a meeting with my father. Her voice was soft and sweet, and she talked to me like I was a child, trying to make me understand his schedule was so busy with the upcoming election and all. “Bruce does want to meet you, he just couldn’t possibly do it right now.”

Something in me made me want to scream “This is bullshit!” Instead, words I didn’t expect flowed out of my mouth from a deep, powerful place. I told her I was coming to Rhode Island to look at Brown University as a possible choice for college, and since I was going to be there anyway perhaps he could spare a moment in his “busy schedule.”

Patti’s sweet, mom-like voice asked if there was any way we could schedule another time, since they were so booked leading up to Election Day.

“No.” I wouldn’t budge. “I already have the plane tickets for this trip.”

I didn’t really have tickets, but I felt justified in forcing the issue. I really wanted this, and I wasn’t going to back down. I figured if she said yes, I would buy the ticket somehow.

Patti promised to get back to me.

I must have gotten their attention, because soon after, Mr. Read called and told me my father would meet me and get a DNA test. I’d won my first important battle, and I was giddy with excitement. So long as the DNA test came out the way we believed it would, the rest would take care of itself. Or at least I assumed it would.