Long Lost Fathers

shakeysix

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I hope this is the right spot for this post. I'd like to hear experiences or first impressions about lost fathers who make an appearance later in a child's life. This happened to my mother and my uncle. Their father showed up in our small town after they were grown and wanted to visit. Both refused to see him. They were bitter to say the least. In their defense I have to say that genealogical research reveals that my mother's father had deserted two other families in his lifetime. Fortunately my mom's stepfather was a great father and grandfather.

I have always been close to my father, my grandfather--step grandfather I guess, my uncles. My husband and our three daughters were very close. This Father's Day is a little sad because my husband and my father are now gone, but also because my 13 year old grand daughter is across the world. She is an only child. Her mother lived with me during her pregnancy. I was there for her birth. I never met her father, knew very little about him. My daughter did well as a single mom. She is a high school teacher, managed to buy a house and raise an intelligent, well mannered child. I filled in, taking her for weeks in the summer and every weekend while my daughter went to grad school. No sign of a father, grandmother, not even a birthday card, even though they lived only three hours away. I know my grand daughter missed having a father. Mothers' Day was always a big deal but Father's Day was always a little sad.

When Maz was 9 her paternal grandmother and then her father showed up in her life. Her father was living overseas and wanted her to meet his wife to be. The grandmother caught up the child support so her dad could enter the country. There was a wedding and Mazzy attended it. Over the last 4 years he and his mother have checked in regularly. There are annual family vacations and holidays with all the cousins and even Grandpa Marvin--a step dad of her father's who rides a Harley at 70 but is the only grandfather Maz has ever known. She seems to like him.

Maz is a well adjusted kid. She was slow to make a connection with her father and that is reasonable. Her impression of her first all alone visit with her dad was that he "let" her eat an entire steak with a baked potato and a side of French fries. No salad. Maz doesn't like green stuff unless it is Jell-O.

A day after her 13th birthday Maz flew to Hong Kong--by herself. Well, she was in the care of a stewardess but a trip from Wichita Kansas to Hong Kong would be momentous for an adult. I was worried about it because her father is not the most responsible person. In fact he has had only 2 weeks work experience--at Applebees when he was in college. He lives on an island near Hong Kong and there is only one ferry to get there. I was worried sick that he would not show up and asked Maz if she was sure her dad would be at the airport to meet her. She said, "Don't worry Grammy, the Douche will be there." I was shocked at her language. She had to laugh "you have been calling him the Douche since I can remember." I tried to say that I said "irresponsible" instead. When she was picked up on time and was at his house she called to tell her mom to tell Grammy that The Douche was there on time.

Now she is spending her first Father's Day with her dad. She bonded with her step mom almost immediately. She is Swedish and her English is good but not great. She teaches photography and Maz takes great photos. Her step mom texts every time she hears there is a tornado in Kansas to check on Mazzy. Anyway, Maz and her dad are together today. They have been kayaking and scuba diving. He has been to chef school so he cooks for her. It all seems to be working out. I don't want her to be as bitter as my mom and uncle but I don't want her to be hurt, either. This is my Long Lost Father story--no happy/sad ending yet.

I'd like to hear more stories about parents turning up late in life. --s6
 

Lavern08

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OK,

Soooo, I never knew my Father (long story), but I took the Ancestry DNA™ test a year ago in the hopes that I'd get a hit or a match...

It revealed lots of "cousins," but I still have no way of knowing whether they are from my Mom's side or my Dad's side - I suppose I'd have to "upgrade" to their "premium membership," but I can't afford that right now.

Anyway, I also thought about contacting that TV program, Long, Lost Family, but not sure my "story" would even get approved for it, based on the "unusual" circumstances surround my conception, birth, abandonment, etc.

Sooooo, I'm left still wondering who he is, how much of me would I see in him and vice versa, and most importantly, whether I could have "dated" a brother or a cousin and not even known it. :Shrug:

Oh, and P.S. - Some of you already know this, but I was 33 years old when I "met" my Mom for the first time...

(Yeah, I'm still thinking about writing that book - LOL)
 
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MaeZe

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My son's dad walked out when I was pregnant.

When my son was 12 we came across his dad playing in a band at the mall (nice place, puts on concerts all the time, that sort of thing). I told him, "that's your dad." I went in the bookstore and he walked up and introduced himself.

They got together a bit, couple weekends, the holiday stuff, then it faded.

Now my son is getting married and he did not invite his dad. He said he just has no feelings for him, like a stranger, nothing in common.

I never interfered, never said bad things about his dad. Kids have a right to two parents even if the parents are not together. I'm glad he met his dad and I can't say I'm unhappy he won't be coming to the wedding. Awkward.
 

porlock

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My wife was adopted; she does not know the father, only that he didn't want her after he got her mother pregnant. Never heard another peep from either her birth mother or dad, and wasn't interested. She was lucky enough to be adopted by an older couple and as far as she is concerned they were her only parents. She's watched some of these shows where these adopted kids get so weepy about finding their "true" parents and not being complete - that's B.S. to her, and says that if one of her birth parents did show up she'd kick their ass out. This is probably unusual, but she says if she had hunted for her birth parents it would have broken her adoptive parent's hearts.

We found out recently she's of Cajun ancestry with maybe a little American Indian thrown in. She does want to to DNA if just to find out her ancestry. Everyone has a story, but in the end she was loved by people who wanted her.
 

MaryMumsy

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My paternal grandmother's father was absent. He was absent frequently when she was a baby/toddler, and GGrandma divorced him when my Grandma was 3 (oh, the scandal! in 1906). He was totally absent after that. She had a step-father that she seemed to like (photos in an album), but he died when she was about 10. To my knowledge the bio father had no contact with my Grandma or her mother's people after the divorce. Even most of his people didn't know where he was etc. My parents said my Grandma never talked about him or any of her relatives on that side.

In doing genealogy research I have been in touch with several third or fourth cousins on that side. He remarried and it appears he had a son. Having a name for the second wife helped track down census etc records that seem to be him. His name was common enough that there was a cast of thousands of possibles. I found a death certificate in an index for CA that I think is him. I just need to move myself to order a copy. And I also found the same guy as an "inmate" in a mental hospital. Maybe a good reason not to talk about him even on his side of the family :).

Ancestry is a weird thing. If you are "first families of XX" it is a big deal to some people. To others, not so much.

I've contemplated getting DNA done. I think I know pretty much our background from both sides, but it could be interesting. My brother had it done and said there were no surprises other than a small percentage of Iberian Peninsula. That could be crossover with France, which we know we have a lot of.

MM
 

Brightdreamer

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A generation removed, but my dad's father pulled a disappearing act when he was a boy. (Drinking issues, plus gambling debts...) Both his parents remarried, at least once, but he didn't see his father for many, many years. Later, toward the end of the man's life, he reconnected somewhat with his son; I get the impression Dad sort of forgave him, or at least they didn't part on bitter terms. He doesn't talk a lot about the man, though he sounds like a character of sorts - the town drunk, known for some wild antics and ongoing grudges with the local cop, like something out of an old TV show almost. Not a stupid man, just a deeply troubled one who probably wasn't really cut out to be a husband or a father, or live in a small town.

Proof that the apple can fall quite a ways from the tree: Dad doesn't drink (he even left his church as a teen when he realized they were drinking real wine on Sundays), doesn't gamble, and has never left Mom in over 45 years of marriage.
 

Maze Runner

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My teen stepson's father is not in his life, and really never has been. A year or so ago he expressed an interest to contact him, and I, also having come up in a broken family, and often without my father in the picture, encouraged him to do so. So he did, and they'd been talking on the phone and doing email and skype -- his biological father is on another continent, till one day I noticed that they hadn't spoken to each other in a while, so I asked my son about it and he said, "It's easy to be a father, but not so easy to be a dad."

I never questioned him about it, I felt like it was between father and son, but I imagine this guy only showed as much interest as he felt he had to, and no one sees through insincerity faster than a kid does so that was the end of it. But life is long a full of twists, so I guess it's possible that one day they'll have a father/son relationship.
 

Ol' Fashioned Girl

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.... It revealed lots of "cousins," but I still have no way of knowing whether they are from my Mom's side or my Dad's side - I suppose I'd have to "upgrade" to their "premium membership," but I can't afford that right now....

If you didn't pay for the matriarchal side (at an extra $199 last I checked) all you got was the paternal side... so they're all on your Dad's side.

THEY have the info in the file at Ancestry DNA because they ran the test 'just in case' you wanted the info later - so you wouldn't have to send in another sample. (At least that's how they explained it to me when we sent in my brother's spit.) All they need/want is your payment.
 
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shakeysix

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Maz is home now. Still does not have her days and nights straightened out so I haven't seen much of her. If you look at my avatar you can see her father reflected in her sunglasses. She loves the picture and I do too. Looks like the D-word can take a photo. I have to say that this particular chapter in her LLF story has ended well. I hope there will be more.

BUT like in every family, there is always another drama brewing. I think I have mentioned before that my sister's husband had an ancestry dna test maybe ten years ago, when they were still fairly new. The test suggested that his father was not his biological father. He had suspected it before this because his birth certificate was a DYI job--a "short" certificate and his mother fought his seeing it even after he had enlisted in the Navy. She denied that his dad was not his bio dad even though they had divorced when my brother in law was only five. He never saw his paper dad again after the divorce and was trying to track him down when he had the ancestry report that said his ancestry was not what he was told it should be.

His grandmother insisted that his father was his father. His mother became furious about the whole thing and refused to answer any questions. She even hung up n a grandchild who was doing a family tree for school. After his mother died his younger brothers were going through his mother's papers and saw that she and their father were married years after my brother in law was born. There were many other secrets they had no idea about but the fact that they were only half brothers was the most shocking. I am talking old guys in the fifties. Anyway my brother in law took the news hard and became … well, one of the nastiest people I know.

And then, 11 years later, out of the blue, he ordered up a couple of new dna kits. It took even his wife by surprise. He has had some cousin matches, one in Australia, that must be paternal. All of his mother's people are from Arkansas--remember that old joke: there are only two strands of dna in Arkansas?-- Anyway, now he is registered with the same dna bank that found the golden state killer and is working to tease some family names out of the tangle.

There must be something to that hole that some people say they feel. --s6
 

Maryn

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I guess so, but to me, the man who raised you is your father, whether he shares any DNA or not. Of course, a divorce when he was five probably means that no man raised him, so there's that factor.

Easy for me to say, with no uncertainty or family secrets of this nature revealed upon anyone's death.

My stance on family secrets is that when your child is an adult, s/he has the right to know the basic truths of the nuclear family and the obligation not to blab it around if it might harm anyone.
 

shakeysix

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Yeah. I feel that way about my grandfather, my mother's step father but the one she and my uncle called Dad. She and my uncle wanted nothing to do with their bio father but they did know something about his heritage, their paternal grandmother and some aunts. My brother in law knows nothing and has been lied to. Naturally he is angry. I can only hope this search takes some of the ass out of the hole he has been feeling. --s6
 
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Lavern08

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...There must be something to that hole that some people say they feel.
There really is something to that "hole."

It's hard to explain - Especially to someone who grew up in a loving, secure and stable family - But it's a feeling of never quite fitting in, never quite belonging or feeling "attached" to anyone - Like "something" is missing, but you're not quite sure what it is.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/moral-landscapes/201711/how-heal-the-primal-wound
 
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ap123

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For a long time I would have agreed, but by now, as a woman of a certain age ;) nope. Maybe it's age, maybe it's length of time to process. By the time I was contacted by a couple of blood relatives, all it did was open old wounds and create questions they weren't able/willing to answer, them looking at me to fill a role I couldn't possibly fill, and me looking at them and seeing all--basics and extras--I didn't get.
 

Siri Kirpal

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Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

The weirdest lost father story I've ever heard concerns my FIL's grandmother. Her father was a (probably) Russian sea captain. They were in port in Cork Ireland, and her father took her with him to visit another sea captain, who was also in port. The men got to talking and drinking and the little girl (about 6) climbed into a bunk to sleep. Papa staggered back to his ship, forgetting he'd left his daughter on the other ship. The ships sailed off the next morning to different ports. Little girl never saw her father again.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

Maryn

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Oh, that's horrible! Who raised her, the other sea captain's family?
 

Siri Kirpal

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Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

I've wondered that too. As far as I know, anyone who could answer that question is dead. The rumor is that she was treated as a stowaway, so don't think it was the other captain's family, but that could have been a family joke. (I hope.)

My FIL wasn't a big talker about family (he had his reasons), so he never said. And he may never have known.

So how our abandoned little girl, who probably landed on the East Coast of the US, ended up married to a rancher in Bakersfield CA is a puzzlement.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

shakeysix

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I am hoping it turned out like a Shirley Temple movie. There is a local family here, six siblings, all brothers. They are originally from Mexico. One brother looks nothing like the others. His two children look nothing like their cousins. I have had most of the cousins in school and if I didn't know for a fact that Ana and Tomas were cousins to the other Holguin kids, I'd never believe it because they are very different, in complexion, build, learning styles. Tomas has hazel eyes and both have very curly hair.

The story is that back, years ago, in Mexico, their grandfather was working in his field when he found a very dirty little boy wandering around, crying. They lived in Chihuahua State, in rural place, near a very small village. The boy must have been walking for some time because his clothes were torn and he had no shoes. His hair was curly, tangled and full of grass, like he had slept outdoors. He had soiled himself but couldn't talk much. He didn't say mami or papi, which Sr Holguin thought was odd. He carried the boy home to his wife. She thought he looked to be about two. He did speak a little and his Spanish was like their dialect.

They gave him a bath and took him to church to see if the priest knew anything about him. Not the priest, not the neighbors had any idea who he was or to whom he belonged. So they kept him. I can't remember if the priest named him Tomas or if they did. I have heard the story several times from the cousins--neat but a mystery. --s6
 
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Maryn

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Wow. I hope you put that in a book.
 

shakeysix

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I really can't put that story in a book because it is a well known story, here in this county. I do have a couple of characters in my books who were adopted. When my Dupee characters gather for family events they always toast "all Dupees, paper or blood". My only two paternal cousins were adopted. They came to my aunt and uncle late in life, while they were living in the UK. I was 14 at the time. The minute my aunt stepped off the plane with them I fell in love as only a 14 year old can fall for a couple of babies. Because they were adopted overseas there were some court dates, some red tape. I was an anxious kid and worried for years that my baby cousins might be taken away.

Vernie and I have talked about this. Now my cousins are grandparents, like me and my sibs. Over the years have managed to latch onto many of the family eccentricities (okay, some of us are plumb goofy and blood doesn't seem to have much to do with it. My girl cousin is every bit as loopy but lovable as our grandmother. My boy cousin walks, talks and has conniption fits just like his late father.) Now I see that some of my anxiety about losing them was because I was too frightened to ask the adults what was happening--another family that all of us cousins share.


That anxiety resurfaced about 20 years ago when my cousins reconnected with their birth parents. My boy cousin had a bad experience. His mother would only meet him for lunch (In Ireland!) if he agreed to never contact his older brother! So he paid for a ticket and hotel for a two hour lunch with only his mother. No other relatives. My girl cousin met up with a bio family haunted by a congenital disease. Yes, she has a chance for it. Her mother died of it and she was in England for the funeral but then came home to us. She admitted that her maternal grandmother was cold to her. She likes us a whole lot better. We may be nuts but we are warm nuts! --s6
 

Elenitsa

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My parents divorced when my mother was pregnant with me. Well, the divorce ended when I was 2 - so happened in my country then with divorces involving children. There were plenty of terms given for reconciliation. And I know couples who reconcilied and didn't divorce anymore mid-divorce, but it wasn't our case. Now, at grown-up age, I am not sure anymore whom to believe. My mother said he didn't want to see me. My father said she didn't allow him to see me. And yes, I grew up hearing, whenever I was showing a trait undesirable by my mother, "you are just like your father!" :( (When I was a teen and older, I had a reply for this - "Well, you didn't make me all alone by yourself".)

I learnt at 8 that my parents were divorced. Until then, I thought he was working abroad. And when I found out, I had a shock. It was a court session for child support, because my eldest half-sister had graduated Uni, and since he had now only 2 children in school, my mother filed to increase child support, according to the law provisions. And the Court sent a copy of the citation and file by mail. I was the one to pick up the mail, and until my mother came back from work, I read it and understood half of it. I understood the basics. I knew what divorce and child support meant, because a friend of mine had her parents divorcing and my mother as a witness in her mother's favour. (The one whose parents reconciled in the process). I understood that my parents were divorced. I learnt my father's name and that I had two half-sisters from him. I remember that I had cried for weeks.

Fast forward to 15 years old. I had enough time to think about growing up fatherless. I also had children bully me that I was illegitimate (not true, but due to the fact that I have my mother's family name since they were already divorcing and he wasn't the one to declare me and sign. My mother had kept her maiden name through the marriage too, she never had his name, but they were legitimately married. I saw the divorce order). Another court for child support. This time, to diminish it because my father retired. And something had changed, maybe the day of the hearing, so my father had to call my mother to tell her something related to the upcoming court session. She wasn't at home. I asked who was calling, he told his name. "Are you my father?" "Yes." "Listen, I have colleagues who have divorced parents, but they know their fathers. I want to know you too." "Well, then ask your mother if we may meet." We met at my home.

Since then, we had met a few times a year, and we had talked at phone a few times a year too. My mother reminded me sometimes to call him. Two years later, he invited me at his home. I didn't feel warmth in him, and at my turn I don't think I had felt him, then, like a father. More like an uncle seen from time to time.

At my 20-th birthday, his gift for me was to bring me one of my half-sisters, the middle one, to meet her. The elder one was already abroad for some years. When I graduated Uni, he moved abroad. I visited him and my half-sisters 3 times. When they were visiting, we met too.

He died in December 2015. Upon his death, I was shocked to feel more grief than I thought I would. I wrote these two blog posts about him: https://solpicador.wordpress.com/2015/12/12/my-father/ and https://solpicador.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/rest-in-peace/ Maybe it is less than others would have written or felt about their fathers. But for me it was unexpectedly much.
 

Lavern08

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...I don't think I had felt him, then, like a father. More like an uncle seen from time to time...
It's interesting that you said that ^ Because, even though I spent several years "getting to know" my bio Mom, and a few times, she and I and my (half) sisters had fun together, our relationship never felt the way I hoped it would - More like an older, female neighbor, colleague or acquaintance than that close and loving "Mother-Daughter Bond" thingy. :Shrug:
 

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It's interesting that you said that ^ Because, even though I spent several years "getting to know" my bio Mom, and a few times, she and I and my (half) sisters had fun together, our relationship never felt the way I hoped it would - More like an older, female neighbor, colleague or acquaintance than that close and loving "Mother-Daughter Bond" thingy. :Shrug:

I agree with you. Because I had a father who made cakes for my birthdays (16-22), one who visited me and I visited him from time to time, one who brought me presents from time to time, but... this was it. A father and daughter relationship (which I hadn't) would have involved, in my opinion (I might be wrong), giving some affection, having meaningful conversations, not just travel stories and daily things, going to a park, to a movie or for an ice-cream... I have never got those. I think for a teenager, they would have meant something.

I had also been looking for father figures in my life, actually since I was 6 and I had no idea that father means to be married with mother, and that being married meant not only living in the same house and caring together for the children. I had put my mother in embarassing situations, telling about any man whom I perceived as kind and affectionate "I want you to be my father!" no matter if he was already married or with his own children (what was wrong in having siblings? Nothing, I wanted some too!) Some of them really thought that my mother wanted an affair and sent me to pick them up. (Which was far from being true, my mother never remarried, never had another relationship, she dedicated all her love, care and concern to me. A possessive love like the boy's mother in the telenovelas, but yes, all her love, in the way that she wanted me to be perfect, to become everything she dreamt of and never succeeded).

Some of these men understood, though, what I really meant and wanted. My father figures were an uncle (my mother's second cousin) who had 2 children of similar age with me (his daughter is still my favourite cousin), a male work colleague of my mother's (who was married and had a daughter, 4-6 years older than me), the father of my deskmate in fifth grade (she is still my friend, 40 years later), the Spanish teacher from the first 2 highschool years (having daughters slightly older than me, one I have befriended at his funeral).
 

Lavern08

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... I had put my mother in embarassing situations, telling about any man whom I perceived as kind and affectionate "I want you to be my father!"
*Sigh*

I hear ya - I always envied my friends who had a Mom and a Dad in the home - Even as a child, I sensed that not having a father was unnatural and somehow unbalanced (if that makes sense?)

Oh well, we survived, and it certainly could have been worse - For example, some women would rather have had NO father, than the one who abused and/or molested her, so there's that too. :e2bummed:
 

shakeysix

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I am happy that my grand daughter has a good relationship with her stepmother, and that she has a little sister. People when I grew up, where I live, in western Kansas are rural, isolated, maybe a little mean spirited. They had no problem cutting off family members, even grandchildren, after a divorce. I have a dear friend who is almost 80. Her parents divorced before her first birthday. All of her life her mother said the most awful things about her father. Her half siblings constantly reminded her that their dad-- a man who died in World War Two-- was a hero and her father was … well, he was Native American so you can guess what they said. Needless to say she never made contact with her father, never spoke with any of his family. But she is almost comically proud of her Native American heritage--to the point of carrying a card and getting reservation money.


Now, at an age when one should be thinking about setting things right in this world before going to the next, she has been contacted by a half sister, a child of her father. She is ignoring her and if the sister tries to contact her again my friend is set to tell her off. I don't get it. I'd at least want to meet her once, hear her side of things. Things between her half sibs are not any better. Two years ago she had a major surgery, was in the hospital for almost a month and then had a long recovery. Neither her brother nor her sister called, visited, even did so much as send a card. They did not contact her kids to see if she survived the surgery. I was sad but not surprised. She would have treated them the same.

Now, my brother in law, who swore that he never wanted to know anything about his fathers--not his bio father are the step father who abandoned him-- is learning to read dna. It's not easy but he is working hard at it. wanting to find something. I think it is because he is now a grandfather--and a very good one, even if he drives me crazy. --s6