Piece by Peice…

So every morning when I’m getting ready & listening to the radio, Kelly Clarksons song Piece by Piece, about her father that left her comes on. Every. single. morning., I listen to those words over & over and feel her pain. Before I go in to how I feel listening to her I must tell you that I have a wonderful daddy, he’s my step father & has been since I was 3 years old. I never really had any thoughts about my biological donor until seeing her perform that song on American Idol. It was like a flood gate of emotions came over me and I cried, I UGLY cried. I’ve never given that sorry excuse of a person a chance to make me feel anything, but that night and hearing this song daily has me in a series of emotions, questions & feelings that I’ve just never faced head on in my 38 years of life. She sings how she remembers being 6 years old in a airport watching him walk away, then how she was “worthless” to him. I didn’t watch mine walk away from me because well, I was a infant. A brand new baby girl that my mother tells me the nurses in the hospital went nuts over because I has soot black hair that curled over my gown collar! I’ve definitely never lacked love, I want to make that very clear. My mother and my mamaw, her mother, brought me home and I’m sure that my back hardly ever laid down for long because I had the both of them and cousins that loved to play with & hold me like their own! I can’t help but wonder if I ever realized that I wasn’t like others who had a daddy with them. A strong protector figure that chased away the night monsters, flew me around high in the air like a airplane while laughing, telling me that I was his baby girl & how much he loved me. They say you can’t miss what you never had and that seems to be true in my case. He never wanted me form the beginning, I never had even a chance at those things in my earliest years. So even though she is talking about her husband putting her back together “Piece by Piece”, my daddy, Ricky Reeder is my hearts mender. He took in a scrawny little soot black haired little girl who if I’m correct, called him daddy on our first meeting. There had to be something I saw & felt from him, maybe it was just a man figure that I wanted, maybe it was I knew he would take me in as his own and I’d forever have a daddy, a true father to take care of & protect me. It’s just something that every little girl needs in her life. Has he been perfect, no.. but neither have I as his daughter the past 35 years. We’ve caused each other tears, shed tears together and have a bond that nothing or no one can break. But I can’t shake these new found thoughts. What was wrong with me? Why didn’t he want me, would it have been different if I was a boy? I mean I was his flesh & blood, but I do know that it was a bad situation between my mom and him and he had moved on to someone else, but I, I was still his even though and he walked away, never even seeing me. What a piece of crap, a waste of good air that I struggle to breathe. Every new doctor I see asks the family history questions & well I get the please of saying “I don’t know my bio donors info” because I refuse to give him any other title, but it’s another reminder that I was left, unwanted. I’ve given my daddys info before and then stop mid sentence because I remember that his history doesn’t effect me. I never ever refer to my daddy as “My stepdad” I always just say MY daddy is Ricky Reeder! when we are out together and I introduce him as just that, we usually always get, “Well I can see it for sure, you look just like him”. We just smile at each other, thinking the same thing but never say a word. Sometimes I get ” You’re a Reeder for sure”. My daddy has been one of my biggest supporters all of my life, even on some of my dumbest decisions. Like the chorus of Kellys song..”Peice by piece, he restored my faith, that a man can be kind, and a father could be great” describes my daddy and what he’s done probably without even knowing it, in my life. Also I have to give credit to my own husband, Michael for the father he is to our 2 wonderful daughters. He didn’t have a bio worth breathing clean air either. He did abandon him at a young age but old enough to feel the sting of it all and wonder what he did & why. I never knew mine at all and still don’t. the only memory I have is meeting him somewhere with my mother and he had a raccoon. that’s all I have, and in 1999 I saw a obituary in the local paper and recognized the last name and found out it was his brother, who would have been my uncle that passed. I contacted his wife and she immediately knew who I was. We talked a long time and the most I got from the conversation was that my would be grandfather who had already passed had a wallet that he carried for years and inside it when he died was a baby picture of me. He cared, but my bio never did. she offered the wallet and pictures to me to have but I declined. I didn’t know these people and I honestly I guess was scared to. I didn’t want to hurt my daddy and we talked about it afterwards and he understood my emotions. I was only curious to know if I look like him, have brothers or sisters, would he recognize me from across the room. Guys, the real kicker and my final closure I thought was when I gave her my name, phone number & address for him to get in touch with me if he wanted and well it’s 2016 and not a word. guys he just lives about a hour from me in a close town. He stays off the grid and honestly I’m glad. I don’t want him knowing me, my husband, my girls and most of all my granddaughter. We feel the same way about my husbands bio, they both don’t deserve the pleasure of seeing who we’ve become and our accomplishments. Our oldest almost was introduced to my husbands on a trip to California with his mother but Thank you God, it fell through and it never happened. That didn’t sit to well with us after finding out after the fact. The song has just ripped opened a old wound I guess for me that I thought was sewn and stapled shut. some listen and think “O how sad for her”, while others of us live & feel the words deep in our soul. It infuriates me to see kids with real fathers in their lives and homes who don’t know or care about what they have. They were blessed enough to skip the chapter of abandonment in their lives. Even my own girls sometimes forget what they really have. I love the part where she says she “fell far from the tree, I will never leave her like you left me”, My husband fills that line & roll. He definitely through thick or thin would have never and will never stop being our daughters biggest fan & supporter in their lives even if he doesn’t agree with the choices made and paths taken, he’s always there. That’s something they can count on! I’ve had that all my knowing life too and it makes the wound slowly close again, because when the bio didn’t want me, well Ricky Reeder did and still does. We are closer now than we’ve ever been. I can go to him in any situation and he won’t always have the answers or know what to say but he listens and if I want to cry, usually he’ll cry with me. We share a love and passion for the Ole Miss Rebels and have gotten to go to games together and I’m looking forward to more of them together this season. We take our youngest daughter with us so these are memories made with her daddy too. So I guess I can end this with a “Thank You” to Kelly Clarkson for putting her painful story into a song so that I could finally face my own and get the closure I needed. I can’t say that her song won’t still bring me to tears, because well, everything does, but I can listen and say that the hero in my song is my own daddy & knowing that my girls will never feel the hole, the emotions or heartbreak of wondering why they weren’t wanted by their father is closure. Total closure knowing that I am blessed with what & who God hand picked for me, to raise me and my husband to raise our own girls. My advice to young fathers or fathers to be in general is this, raise the children you make and if you don’t want the responsibility of it then walk away completely, don’t string a innocent child along for a ride that’s going to haunt them later in life. Let them go, let their mother go and don’t look back and if along the way something changes and you grow up & decide you truly want to be a father, then take the correct steps to do so, but don’t be surprised if another has taken the position that you didn’t want. Even if my bio would have returned, still to this day..He would and NEVER could take the place of my real daddy! It feels good to actually get some of this out of me, off my heart & chest. like a therapy in itself, you never know the baggage someone is carrying that is weighing heavily on them. The best part of all to share is that I have a Heavenly Father who loves me despite my failures and faults, my sins and shortcomings He daily forgives at my asking and wakes me up fresh & new every morning. If there’s a hole in you that hasn’t been filled, just know that it can. Your Heavenly Father is waiting..