Undergraduate /
Still I Rise: An Autobiography 217 - UPenn Optional Essay [12]
By no means am I finished, I'm not even quite sure what direction I want to go in. I'm thinking how I met with my father in hopes of learning more about myself but I realized were not that much alike at all - maybe I'm more a product of how I was raised.. and through in some good stuff about myself.. Idk yet. ANY feedback at this point would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
You have just finished writing you 300 page autobiography, write p. 217Still I Rise: An Autobiography 217I was just about to lie down when the phone rang. There was a strong temptation to simply let the answering machine pick it up, but then I contemplated the possible importance of the phone call and begrudgingly got up to answer. I put the receiver to my ear. The last voice I expected to hear sounded on the other end of the line. "Elizabeth? How are you?" The thick Ghanaian accent that emphasized the "e" sounds in my name, was familiar and yet remote. It was a voice I had not heard in over ten years: the voice of my father.
"Fine." I choked out.
In a calm voice, he explained that he was in town taking care of some business and he wanted to see me. I could feel my heart pumping inside my chest.
"I talked to your mother." He said. "She'll be home shortly to pick you up."
I didn't know how to reply. As he said goodbye, I stood there and listened silently until there was nothing but a dial tone.
I started mechanically taking off my pajamas and putting on my jeans. I had to get ready to meet my father. A man who left when I was six years old, without so little as a postcard to compensate his absence.
When he left I was too young to fully understand the gravity of what had happened. Because he wasn't a fundamental part of my life to begin with, after a few years, it was almost as if he had never even been there. Soon, the words father, dad, and daddy became completely foreign to me. My mom asked me once if I missed not having a father, and I simply replied "You can't really miss something you never had."
Although it was never my intention, I knew these words hurt her. Over the years she had tried her without cease to play the roles of both mother and father. She always managed to muster up more than enough noise at award ceremonies, recitals, even student council election speeches, to make me feel like I had a whole army fathers rooting me on.
Thus I could convince myself to believe that I wasn't really missing out. But in reality, I did feel like something was missing. More substantially I felt like a part of me was missing, this whole other half that I never got a chance to know.
Thus as I fixed my hair and reapplied my makeup that evening, no feelings of anger or bitterness precipitated in me, but rather I became enthralled with curiosity.
By the time I was finished getting ready, my mother arrived. We drove to our designated meeting ground, The International House of Pancakes. My father was seated at a table in the middle of the non-smoking section. He stood to great us. He looked different from what I remembered: much shorter and less severe. The initial greeting was filled with awkwardness.
But as we sat and spoke much of the awkwardness began to melt away. What remained was a picture of a stranger. Although I searched the depths of his eyes to relate to him to find something that he had given me, what I found was a man nothing like me.
I was disappointed at first, even confused. I had wanted so much to see something in him that I could identify with, but I hadn't. As I sat there listening to him speak. My mom made a ridiculous joke. We both cracked up laughing, but my father just stared at us, as if we had began speaking another language.
It was at that moment that I realized how futile my original efforts were. I did not need to search any farther for my identity than what was right in front of me: my mom.
