We all have a past — little ghosts of heartache and regret that can haunt us forever. But for some people, the ghosts can become demons. My father was one of those people.
In his 94 years, he was married four times and had at least seven kids besides me. Three of them I grew up knowing: my half-siblings Donna, Karen and Michael, born after World War II when my father separated from the Army and came to Los Angeles with dreams of being the next Perry Como. The other kids, he kept hidden from me at all costs.
That was because he had left them when he met my mom, his fourth wife. He married her in 1982 and had me — when he was 57 — in 1984. I was the only child he ever raised to adulthood.
Growing up, knowing little of my father’s past, I idolized him. He was a decorated veteran. An usher at the Cathedral of St.
Vibiana. My grade-school football coach. Leader of the neighborhood watch.
He put the “all” in all-American. But he was almost a little too perfect. Like most people with skeletons, my father was adept at hiding them.
As I became an adult and started to make my own mistakes — as I started to understand the weight a person’s decisions can carry — I found myself longing to find a single chink in his armor; some flaw of his that would let me put my own problems into context. I didn’t want to idolize him anymore. I wanted to connect with him.
But he never let me — until our doorbell rang one summer afternoon in 2010 and forced him to. It was a woman, ab.