I kept it in my wallet for years

Thirty years ago, I got a note from my dad. Unlike now, we didn't have email. We didn't even have long distance very often. What we had were letters. You know... paper, pen and a stamp that you had to lick first before it would stick to the envelope. And we wrote a lot. You see, Dad and I were on a mission. We wanted to salvage a potentially terminal relationship between a father and a son.

Growing up, Dad and I were close. We spent hours and hours either at the airport, flying somewhere or hanging out at somebody's house talking about airplanes. We hunted together and generally hung out together. I remember as a little boy crying myself to sleep after Dad broke to me the news that someday, when I hit my teen years, we wouldn't be close. I couldn't conceive it! But sure enough, it happened.

Unlike most father and son relationships, we didn't grow apart due to my rebellion. Actually, it was the other way around in a lot of ways. Dad dived off into New Age in about '71. And in '72 I gave my life to the Lord. He was into mind control and I was a Jesus Person (I never liked the term Jesus Freak).

In September of '74, I was entering my junior year. I remember the day Dad called my brother and me out on the front porch to inform us that he was moving to Houston. We were invited but Mother was not. Dad was running away from home at the age of 43. It was the eve of their 19th wedding anniversary.

My brother had graduated in the spring and was already enrolled in college. He already had a plan. Dad said he understood if I wanted to stay in El Dorado where I had friends and all but, I was welcome to join him in starting a new life down there. I chose to stay put. By this time, Dad and I weren't nearly as close due to our theological differences as well as his fairly extensive travel schedule.

Dad used to say that when he left El Dorado, he drove away bankrupt... financially, morally, spiritually, physically... every way there was. He so broke he couldn't even pay the bankruptcy fee. And he started over. Unfortunately, the chasm in our relationship only grew wider as he started a new life in Houston while I was stuck alone with Mother to pick up the pieces.

The following Thanksgiving break (of '75) I went down to see Dad in Houston. Before I left, my brother warned me to not be surprised at anything I might see. That's all he'd say. It was my first long trip in my van by myself and I remember being both excited and nervous about the almost 350 mile journey. I got in late one afternoon, following Dad's directions to his apartment right off of the Katy Freeway at Wirt Road. Shortly after we said our hello's, we were off to have supper with some of our family who lived farther out Katy Freeway.

After a good visit with kinfolk, we headed home. I noticed right away that we didn't take the same streets. "Todd, as you may have guessed, since moving down here I've been dating." I lied and said something about figuring he would. Frankly, I hadn't thought anything of it. I had gotten accustomed to my parents being married on paper but living separate lives. They hadn't had a marriage in years, if ever at all.

We ended up going to his girlfriend's apartment. Glenda was her name and she had a daughter about seven. I remember the first thing I heard out of that little girl's mouth was "And I thought you said he was supposed to be good looking!" Great. We visited a few minutes and then got ready to head back to Dad's apartment. I can remember like it was yesterday seeing the bathroom door open as Dad collected his toiletries. He wasn't living on Wirt Rd. He was living over there with this lady and her daughter.

Glenda and I got off to a rocky start, with or without her daughter's childish statement. Mother had her faults but she always had a bit of class. We were always country club members and her friends were all 'good people'. I still half joke that Glenda would have had to go to elocution lessons to become trailer trash. Later I realized it was a reflection of how Dad felt about himself. He had run away from the Club member and landed with a polar opposite.

Here I was, a teenager who loved the Lord and who was saving himself for marriage. Meanwhile, Dad was still married to Mother and slapping thighs with a tramp. It didn't sit right.

Before I headed back to El Dorado, Dad and I had breakfast and a long talk. He beat around the bush quite a while, talking about Mother's cousin who was a devout Baptist and a professor of urology at Tulane and how cousin Max said we did our bodies harm by waiting so long to have sex. Back in Jesus' day they got married by shortly after puberty. So, the bottom line was... it was OK for me to have sex.

"Dad, I appreciate that but you're not my only Father. My heavenly Father says 'no'."

Shock. That best describes his look.

A little while later, Dad walked me to the van and reached out his hand to shake mine. I took it and pulled him close into a hug. We both cried and cried and cried. I regained my composure enough to get going up Highway 59 toward Shreveport, crying along the way.

I didn't talk to Dad for about six months after that. I don't remember much of my senior year in high school. I do remember knowing that Dad was going to be coming to my graduation in May and it finally hit me: Did I want him in my life at all? He had bailed on us as a family, leaving me with Mother all alone and not contributing a penny to my support. And he was down there with that tramp. I was following Jesus with the best of my ability and as far as I was concerned back then, he was following the devil.

Graduation was somewhat less than a total disaster. I survived seeing Dad but even as I went to college, I still didn't know if I wanted him in my life. At some point in my sophomore year, we started actually talking about our relationship. We started working toward reconciliation.

We worked and worked on getting beyond the usual "hi, how're you?" crap and into really dealing with our feelings. We worked damned hard, so hard that I broke up with probably the sweetest girl I ever dated and ended up dropping out of college for a semester. I was emotionally spent from working on my relationship with my father.

It was 30 years ago that I went back to school. Dad and I started seeing some real progress. The hard work was paying off. We wrote every week, sometimes more than once a week. I remember finding a note in the envelope of one of Dad's letters. It was no more than an inch and a half high, torn off the bottom of a sheet of 8 1/2" x 11" paper. It read:
"This letter shouts I love you, I miss you, I need to be near you.
Love,
S.B."

S.B. was short for Sonny Bunny, his nickname with the family. Paul Harvey might have called this the rest of the story. The letter was nice, but the note was what it was all about.

I put that note in my wallet and would take it out and read it every so often. Finally, it started getting pretty worn after a few years so I photocopied it and carried the duplicate in my wallet.

A year and a half later I graduated from college and Dad offered me a job. He told me he had three projects scheduled for the same weekend- one in the US and two in Canada. And he was a one man show. Dad was very secretive about his formulas and processes. As his son, he could teach me what I needed to know.

And he did.

Dad and I learned that we loved each other more than our differences. We never did see eye to eye on theology, though I think we were much closer than I first imagined. He never did talk me into getting laid before marriage, something that he joked was a disappointment though his closest friends assured me deep down he was proud of my commitment to stay pure. From this rocky relationship with my father, I learned that disagreement does not mean disapproval. And that you could truly love, respect and even like someone with whom you disagreed. Easier said than done but proven possible in our relationship.

Dad and I only spent seven years working together as father and son in business together. I've now put in over three times that number of years on my own but I still think of ATP Results as "his" business and work hard to uphold his legacy in the industry. Yes, folks still remember him.

I learned to go deeper than the surface with Dad. It's a tougher route, but worth it. So, when you see me get a little frustrated when people seem satisfied with shallowness, I hope you understand it's because I have learned that going deeper is worth the effort. No wonder I had a family therapist say to me "Todd, you're a communicator and you married two women who don't want to communicate."

Sadly, I packed that note away about twenty years ago when I did some remodeling of the building and haven't seen it since. So far, I haven't run across it again in all my packing and moving from the warehouse. But, I'm sure I'll see it again.