So on Monday, I told y’all about how I found my grandpa after two years of searching.
When I found him, though, I faced a really weird dilemma:
Do I tell mom right away or wait until I see her?
To me, it made sense to wait to tell her for three reasons:
- She was visiting anyway. My parents had planned to visit me in Chicago to celebrate my mom and I’s birthdays since we were both born in January. Plus mom waited over 50 years … what’s another week of waiting?
- It seemed like something that needed to be said in-person. You can only convey so much over the phone! Plus I wanted to be able to show her his picture.
- I didn’t get her a birthday gift. So I might have spaced out on getting her a gift … BUT I think your estranged father’s identity beats any Coach purse I could have bought her.
I debated telling my mom about finding her father much earlier than that, of course. It’s her dad, after all. A man whose identity belongs to her as much, if not more so, as me.
Plus pretty much everyone I went to for advice (including Mrs. H) said I should probably have told her ASAP.
If I were a more humble man, I might have listened to their advice — but alas, I am not.
And so I waited a week. A VERY long week. My mom and I typically talk on the phone every day so each phone call felt like I was lying to her even though the subject of her father never came up.
MOM: How was your day?
ME: Oh, cool. Definitely didn’t find your dad yet.
MOM: What?
ME: Nothing. YOU’RE being weird.
The Friday finally arrived though when they landed at O’Hare. My original plan was to tell her as soon as we got back to my apartment and I could have the rest of the weekend without it hanging over my head. And I would have told her too if it weren’t for [BS excuse about why I didn’t tell my mom when I just really lost my nerve].
It’s the weirdest thing too. I don’t think I had been that nervous since I ran with the bulls last summer. In a lot of ways, I would have much rather been staring down 2,000 pounds of pissed-off toro bravo than just tell her those five words, “Mom, I found your dad.”
So the first day passed. We went out grabbed dinner and celebrated her birthday. Mom got to eat a cotton candy dish the size of man’s arm.
Then the second day passed. Instead of telling them about her father, I let them fix my vacuum because I’m just that great of a son.
Then came the third day — the day before they would leave for Sioux City. I knew if I didn’t tell her then, I would miss my window and be forced to either tell her on the phone or drive down to Sioux City to tell her in person.
That night, we planned on celebrating my birthday with a homemade dinner and cake. So I promised myself I’d tell her after I blew out the candles.
Aided by the IPAs I bought at lunch and the subsequent IPAs I bought while grocery shopping (thanks, Mariano’s!), I kept my cool for most of the day. I’m sure even Liv couldn’t even tell that underneath my cool, calm, and exceedingly handsome exterior, I was like that gif of Kermit shaking.
Eventually dinner arrived. Mom made my favorite dish — thit kho with the hard boiled eggs — and they brought out the cake and sang me happy birthday. Once the candles were blown out, I set the plans into motion …
… by which I mean, I chickened out again and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Until finally, when all the cake was eaten, and our hot tea had been drank, and there was nothing left to do but to give my mom the answers she had been yearning for for fifty some odd years, I grabbed my laptop and booted up Ancestry.com.
“I want to show you something,” I told my parents. “I found someone related to mom.”
Liv shot me a look from the other side of the kitchen table as my parents made their way from behind the laptop. With shaky hands, I loaded up Clifton’s profile.
“I found this man about two weeks ago,” I told my mom. “He did a DNA test too and his match is very close to you.”
My mom adjusted her glasses and stared at his profile. The picture of a smiling black man staring back at her.
“Oh,” she said. “Who is he?”
“I think that he’s your uncle,” I explained. “You both share a lot of DNA. You’re very close.”
Her eyes widened. “Uncle?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s not all though. I emailed him the other day asking if he knew anyone who was … in Vietnam.”
She and my dad exchanged looks. “Vietnam, huh?” My dad chimed in.
“Yeah,” I said. “And he replied back.”
I showed them Clifton’s email to me — the one explaining his brother Keith and how he served in Vietnam and was, in all likelihood, my grandfather. Mom’s dad.
Him.
Mom laughed, to my surprise, when I explained all this. A look of incredulity plastered on her face.
“Really?”
I turned around and grabbed her father off of my bookshelf.
So when I decided to tell my mom in person the week before, I knew I had to add a little flair to it. So I printed out the one picture of Keith I found online and framed it.
This picture.
With the picture in frame, I wrapped it all up and placed it on my bookshelf where it waited near the kitchen table until the moment I grabbed it and handed it to my mom.
“Here’s your birthday gift, ma,” I said.
She looked at me then to my dad and then back to me.
“What is it?”
“It’s … him. It’s your dad.”
She laughed again. That sound jarred me. I didn’t expect this. I expected tears. Sobs. Maybe some anger. But … laughter?
“Really?” she asked again. “My dad is in here?”
She held the wrapped 4×6 portrait like I just handed her a severed head — almost unsure of what to do. Finally, she began to unwrap it. The paper gave way to her prying hands and revealed Keith Brown, her father, my ong ngoai, underneath.
And she stared. Face frowned. Lips pursed. Glasses dangling on the tip of her nose.
It felt like 1,000,000 years before she made a noise — but then it happened: She cried.
I couldn’t tell what was happening at first. Her body began heaving in rhythm, like a marionette string was pulling her back dancing to a song only she could hear. Then tears fell onto the portrait and she began sobbing in earnest.
The pent up anger, sadness, hurt, and longing of over five decades of waiting and wondering seemed to emerge all at once in a single volcanic moment.
And so we cried together. Mom, Liv, and myself. Dad didn’t because dad’s a robot. The rest of the night went that way as we talked for hours about her experience growing up without a father. How hard it was for my lai to go to school.
And how much she thought she looked like her dad.
“Oh his lips are a lot like mine.”
“You have his brow.”
“He wears glasses too!”
Soon, after a few more pots of tea, the conversation slowed. We sat quietly at the dinner table, mom staring at her father’s portrait, Liv staring at my mom, dad with his eyes on my Ancestry.com family tree, and me looking at the scene before me like a dream. This moment was something I had been chasing for so long. It was my white whale. My Holy Grail. The Mount Doom after my jaunt through Middle Earth.
I finally did it — and it didn’t feel like it was enough.
My mind still raced with things I thought I needed to do. I have to find her sisters. I have to get them to take a DNA test to confirm. Maybe they have another photo of Keith we can have. Maybe they have records of him being in Vietnam!
Looking at my mom looking at her father though, those thoughts seemed to roll away with the years lost to time…and I smiled.
My dad stood up, shook my shoulder, and announced he was going to bed before going to his room.
Liv got up and began clearing the table.
I was about to stand up too — but noticed mom still sitting there staring at her father’s face. So I sat with her.
Finally, she looked up at me, eyes red, and smiled back.
“Thank you, Tony.”
You’re welcome, mom.
552 thoughts on “Happy birthday! Here’s your dad.”