Daddy Issues

Daddy Issues

By Kami Bryant

My dad walked out when I was a baby, and my mother raised me on her own. He said he came back to us, but we had moved. My mother said she got tired of his womanizing ways, leaving her, and then coming back over and over, so we moved. His other daughter, my half-sister found us in Illinois and wrote to us. She gave us my dad’s contact information and I wrote to him. I was eight when he replied to my letter. In that letter he said to never contact him again, that he didn’t want to be in my life. I was understandably crushed, and this led to a lifetime of horrible relationships with men, a fear of abandonment and daddy issues.

I am forty-three-years-old now and a single working mother, working two jobs just to pay my rent and feed my sixteen-year-old son. I work Monday through Friday 8am to 4:30pm at a hospital as a scheduler. Then I work Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 6:00pm to 6:30AM, at a different hospital scheduling their patients. I drive from one hospital to another hospital Thursday night and Friday morning and I don’t sleep until Saturday morning.

I come home Saturday morning at 6:30am completely exhausted. I drive home, park in my parking spot and then stumble to my mailbox. I unlock my mailbox and pull out junk mailers, bills, and a manila envelope. I walk up the stairs to my apartment. Before walking to my bedroom to get some much needed sleep, I open the manila envelope, inside is a black notebook. I turn it all around, baffled by it. I open the black notebook and there is a key taped to the first page. There is a note written on the first page.

Hi honey,

I want to first of all say how proud I am of the woman you have become.

I also want to say how sorry I am that I haven’t been there for you more.

Here is the address of the bank:

Go there and use the key to open safe deposit box #255

I have left you some money.

I love you.

Dad

I set down the black notebook. How did he know where I lived? He has left me money in a safe deposit box in the town I live in. I thought he lived in a different state, almost a thousand miles from here. I am confused. But if there is money, then I could definitely use it. I google the bank that is written on the notebook’s page. They are open on Saturdays 9am to 1pm. I decide to nap for five hours and then go. I take the notebook with me, set my alarm for noon, and fall into bed fully clothed, the notebook clutched close to my chest.

I wake up to my alarm’s screeching. I hit it with the flat of my palm. The notebook has fallen to the floor. I stumble to the bathroom and splash some water on my face. I decide I should probably change my clothes, brush my teeth, and brush my hair before going into a bank looking like a homeless person. I always take a small hygiene kit and change of clothes with me and reapply makeup and deodorant before traveling from one job to another. I decide I have time for a quick shower and then I will go.

I stop for a coffee on the way to the bank and try to suck down as much as the sweet sugar, milk, and caffeine as I can before I park at the bank. Then I go into the bank with the notebook. I left the key taped to the page and just brought the entire black notebook with me. I also brought a tote bag to carry whatever money my father has left to me. I figure a few hundred dollars in ones and fives rubber banded together.

I wait in line until I am called on.

“Hello,” says the teller.

“I have a safe deposit box,” I say. “Number 255.”

“Of course, I can help you with that, one moment.”

I step out of the line and wait to the side while the teller goes and gets a key. She comes out from behind the counter and I follow her down the hall to the vault. We go into the vault and she finds the box, unlocks it and brings it out to the table, sets it down in front of me and then leaves. I pull the key from the notebook and unlock the box.

I gasp a little. There is a lot of money in there. And not just ones and fives but twenties and hundreds. I empty all the money into my tote bag, use my key to lock the box and leave the empty box sitting on the table. I scurry out of the vault and almost run into the bank teller.

“All done?”

“Yes. Thank you,” I say and walk out of the bank. I clutch the tote bag full of cash close to my body. I drive home.

Once home, I shake all the cash out of the tote bag onto my bed. I can’t believe this. I haven’t talked to my dad since that letter when I was eight and he said he didn’t want anything to do with me. I don’t even remember him. I sort through the rubber banded bundles of cash, trying to make sense of it. I start counting and stacking. After a few minutes of stacking, sorting, and counting, I come up with twenty thousand dollars. I can’t believe it, so I count a second and a then a third time. Twenty thousand dollars!

I scurry back to the kitchen where I had left the manila envelope that the black notebook had been sent. I look for a return address. All there is a post office box in my town. I should write to my father. But what can I say? After thirty-five years of no contact and resentment? I grab a pen from the cup of pens in my kitchen and flip to a blank page in the black notebook.

Dad,

I look at the blank page after those three letters. I don’t know what to say. Finally after staring at the lined paper for a few minutes, I write:

Thank You.

I rip out the page of paper from the notebook and carry it to the kitchen. I find a blank envelope. I write the PO box address on the envelope and slip in the note. I find a stamp in my purse and put it on the envelope. I walk down my apartment stairs to the bank of mailboxes and slip it through the slit for outgoing mail. I walk back up the stairs. I am tired again. I work tonight. I yawn. I go back to my room. The cash is still piled on my bed. I gather all the money and put it all back in my tote bag. I then pull the blankets back, set my alarm and fall back into bed. I can deal with it all later.